37 to 75

marks the temperature jump I’ll experience in the next 24 hours :):):) My Argentina trip has finally arrived!! I am officially excited.

I guess winter is here?!

yipppeeeee

I think I over packed. I either over pack or under pack, not sure if I’ve ever done it perfectly. Like last year I just brought a backpack for 8 days and it was heavy and annoying and I wore the same thing over and over. Three years ago when I did two weeks I also just brought a backpack and actually wore the same thing everyday- shorts and a different color $3 tank top. My friend even noticed that I wore the same thing every.single.day.

This time around I’m checking a real suitcase! I told myself last year to make the switch to WHEELS. I listened. Is 6 shoes too many? Probably… I already took out 1.. maybe I’ll take out another. Is 2 cardigans, a blazer, sweatshirt, black puffy, black cotton jacket too much? errr probably.

I removed a tank top but then put it on today as my “travel outfit”. I know if I take anything out right now I’ll be in BA in a week and think “omg I wish I had that one shirt”. If these are my current problems then life isn’t too bad :)

I’m excited to run around having no clue where I am and probably understanding very little of what people are saying (7 years of Spanish definitely down the drain). I love the challenge of traveling. I love exploring and meeting new people and learning about other cultures. I love the feeling of having very little responsibility. I love that I’ll come back refreshed and full of stories, pictures, and amazing memories. I LOVE traveling and I can’t wait for this trip.

And I managed to do everything on my to do list! If my watch is in fact fixed and I pick it up today then I officially conquered everything. Wednesday night we went to dinner for my friend’s bday at the new restaurant, Sauce, in the LES. Sauce is owned by the Frank’s and Lil Frankies crew. It’s really delicious and reasonably priced. Love that they switched wine and food. If we drank that much wine and ate that little food it’d definitely be an interesting evening.

Thursday I made it to kickboxing in the morning. Mailed 180 invitations for work.

the pretty envelope design

Went to a travel doctor (I think he was slightly mad I went the day before my trip… oops!) and got a Hep A and Typhoid vaccine. Hep A=OUUCH I have a high pain tolerance but oh god! He also prescribed me Ambien. I’ve never taken a sleeping pill but I’m looking forward to passing out for 10 hours. He says it lasts 4-6 hours but I’m banking on 10!! Take off to landing. Done.

And now five things to be happy about RIGHT NOW!

1. Argentina duh. Steak, wine, sleep, exploring, wine, food, glaciers, adventure and all with the coolest friend ever! She lives far away in London so I don’t get to see her much but she’s by far one of the best travel buddies.
2. My studio makes me happy. It’s really cozy and cute and all mine.
3. The holidays in NY. I love the feeling you get living in NY during the holidays. But I’m excited to spend Christmas in California. I haven’t been there during the holidays in like 2 or 3 years or something!
4. My sister because she’s just awesome.
5. I’m repeating Argentina because it’s the source of my happiness at the moment. I look forward to being very refreshed when I return. I’m excited for an emotional, mental, and physical vacation.

And with that being said, peace out online world!! I will not be checking emails, blogs, won’t blog myself, won’t text, call, communicate with NY. Well… I’ll inform a few people that I’m alive :)

See ya in 2 weeks!!

When are you a real New Yorker?

Lot’s of people say after 5 years you can actually call yourself a New Yorker. I beg to differ. I felt very much like a real New Yorker in the past 5 days because I’ve run into 3 friends on random corners. I think it’s the craziest thing running into people on the street. Of ALL the streets and corners and ways to walk home and you end up running into someone. This is also why I believe in fate. We make these small decisions every day that in the end mold our life! Running into someone on a corner is the craziest because if you were there 2 seconds earlier or later you would have missed the person.

I’m right on schedule before my trip. Last night I picked up my laundry… I have to admit it was kind of nice picking up perfectly folded clothes and it took zero effort on my part. Then I went and used my birthday gift card at my favorite nail salon. I got a pedicure, foot massage and shoulder massage then I got Whole Foods for dinner… a mish  mosh stuff and tomoto basil soup. Always too much, per the usual.

Pretty perfect in my book. And it was a beautiful night!

love that deep blue right before the sun is gone

It was weird being in my old hood. My old hood feels so much more like home than my new hood. My old roomie reminded me that we did live there for 2 whole years. It’s like when I first moved east I missed the way Santa Monica made me feel. To be honest, Santa Monica will always feel like home home, but I’m looking forward to the west village really feeling like home.

I’m actually ready for Buenos Aires to feel like home (how many times can I say home in one post?) We finally finalized the itinerary and only have 4 things we still need to book: activity in El Calafate, overnight bus to Mendoza, wine tour, hotel last night in Mendoza. Success!

Tonight I’m heading to Sauce (the new Italian place in the LES owned by the owners of Frank’s and Lil’ Frankies) for Alex’s birthday! Things I need to do before dinner- get my lens cleaned and maybe rent or buy a new lens.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to wake up for kickboxing. Considering I snoozed for an hour this morning we shall see if I get up. Snoozing > waking up.

I love schedules.

I think I like schedules so much because it’s one part of my life I can control. I know it’s terrible… Virgo, perfectionist, needs life in order, anything out of order slightly freaks me out. I write EVERYTHING on my google calendar and I have been for the past 4 years and before that I wrote everything down on paper in an agenda. 10/25/07 I went to a dietician and a  Vosotros concert (my friend’s music label) in LA. 10/25/08 I got a facial and had wine and dessert for my friend’s bday in LA. 10/25/09 I took a train and hiked Cold Spring in NY. 10/25/10 I went to yoga at Strala in NY and today 10/25/11 I ran this morning, will pick up laundry later and get a pedicure.

I’ve learned to let go of the whole “well a year ago we did this so we have to do it again this year” because it makes me crazy. Like when I tried to have a picnic at the end of winter this year and it was still freezing cold but last year it was SO nice. fail.

see? delish!

I love life anniversaries. How long I’ve been at my job, lived on the east coast, lived in Manhattan and so on. I love dates, lists and schedules.

This week needs to be perfectly scheduled because I leave for 2 weeks on Friday and I had lots to get done. Sunday I was able to buy my hiking/biking backpack at Paragon Sports. Last night I dropped laundry off (20 lbs is $18!?!? that is crazy talk to me. I love doing my laundry and I think this will be a one time thing due to time and lack of laundry card) and I went to yoga. At Strala! Like I did a year ago today. Tonight I am going to pick up my laundry and get a pedicure. Tomorrow I’m going to take my pretty camera to the camera store to have the lens cleaned and MAYBE buy a new lens then go to dinner for my friend’s bday (same friend as wine and dessert in 08 :) ). Then Thursday morning I may go to kickboxing class in the morning and pack at night. Then I leave Friday. Not much room for error… It is definitely a personality trait I’d like to work on. Not freaking out when things go wrong…

ANYWAY why is it so difficult walking up stairs? I just ran a little over 3 miles this morning and was fine then when I started walking up my stairs I was immediately out of breath. It was also pitch black at 6:30am. My little over 3 miles looked something like this:

Yes I ran back and forth like four times. Well I ran down to the Christopher pier and did two loops then I thought that would be 15 minutes (I only had 3o minutes to run) but it wasn’t so I ran back up then back down for another loop then back home. The view from the Christopher pier is awesome and it was actually realllly beautiful today even though it was SO dark. Does it get lighter in the am after the time change? I always forget.

good morning

hello moon

the cat scratch on the map

So pretty right? My shins didn’t hurt woohoo! but the cold hair hurt my lungs and I actually may ask my doctor about asthma. I’m young and healthy and think my lungs can be a little stronger in every activity I do.  And I’m off to hike a glacier for 7 hours… awesome!

Yoga at Strala Yoga last night was good, except we didn’t really flow much and I love vinyasa flows. There are so many poses I want to work on so I think I’ll be making an appearance at yoga classes way more often. Have you heard of grasshopper? Ya me neither but it looks awesome. maybe it was called cricket?  I love how they have sanskrit names and animal names.

That’s all. ciao!

Hi there fall!

Well wasn’t this weekend just the perfect fall weather. Crisp beautiful air and blue skies made my weekend quite enjoyable. OH YA and the 60 mile bike ride I embarked on was definitely the highlight (minus the hour of extreme ass discomfort).

Rewind. Friday I went to my favorite spin class at Equinox. We warmed up for 17 minutes then did a 25 minute hill alternating resistance and rpms. Intense. Then I met old roomie Alex at Madison Square park to enjoy the last day of the food festival. Far too much to choose from and since Calexico is always there and ran out of most meat we “settled” on Roberta’s pizza and a nutella and banana crepe. mmm I got the Bee Sting- spicy sopressata, honey, chili flakes.

I LOVE outdoor food festivals

the best

yes please

Oh ya and we drank delicious octoberfest beer.

Went to bed slightly early and got up slightly early for my longish bike ride. I was just planning on biking central park until my friend asked if he could join and suggested going further north. I thought we’d just ride over the GW bridge and around Jersey a bit then head home. BUT it has also been my dream this season to make it to the much talked about Nyack, NY, so my longish bike ride turned into a 60 mile really freaking long bike ride. Nyack is where ALL the bikers go and since I am now the proud owner of a pretty sweet bike (blueberry sunshine)

I believe you've met.

I decided that I want to go where all the bikers go. (They really just go here to chillout and eat breakfast/lunch… not that exciting but the accomplishment of getting there is what is VERY exciting).

We biked up the west side highway to the George Washington bridge. It is absolutely beautiful up in the 160s 170s along the water. Look! So pretty.

I do love trees.

Then we crossed the GW which is awesome in itself and when you enter Jersey if you bike left and down this huge hill (don’t worry you go RIGHT back up it on the other side) you enter the most majestic path. I honestly felt like I was in some fantasy movie. I wish taking pictures while biking was not dangerous because I would have totally documented this entire ride. This scenic route is open to cars as well but only FIVE cars passed us over a span of an hour. This hour involved rollings hills some hard some easier THEN the hill of all hills. I actually thought I was going to die and made a mental note to make an appointment with my doctor to see if I have asthma and need an inhaler. I sadly had to take two breaks on this massive hill and I was speechlessly (is this a word?) impressed when people passed me at a much faster speed. When I got to the top my friend was just there with the hugest grin and acknowledged that I “made it”. He also told me that he wanted to keep that one a surprise because you only experience the shock of that hill once. It’s the type of hill that has no end… you think you are at the top then you make a turn and it keeps going and now I will always know about that hill and either dread it or get excited about conquering it. Let’s hope the latter. When we reached the top we merged onto a highway type road with luckily a massive shoulder for bikers. We finally made it to Piermont, where we easily could have stopped and eaten lunch but I had this itch to get to Nyack, the place I’ve heard of for months. After a massive downhill that I couldn’t let go of because I knew we’d have to go up it on the way back and 3 hours later, we made it to Nyack.  Egg, bacon, cheese on a bagel with iced coffee and a scone? Yep!

Not sure why I grabbed 50 peppers. Anyway I had to actually mentally prepare myself to get back. I contemplated sleeping in Nyack… seriously! My body was tiiiiired and I was dreading that hill. But after we ate I hopped back on and started the ride back. I had to say to myself out loud “you can do this. seriously you can do this amanda. do NOT stop you can make it up this hill. DO THIS” It worked because I stuck with a solid pace and made it up the hill. And this is when my ass just DIED in complete pain and discomfort. I have honestly never in my life felt body discomfort like this! Sadly the rest of the ride just sucked. I wanted to cry then reminded myself to not be a wuss and I can handle this. We rode back on Riverside Drive which was beautiful but unfortunately hilly and I was ecstatic to hop over to the west side highway and start counting down blocks. At around 23rd street I got a cramp in my inner thigh, unpleasant. The second I hit west 12th I hopped off and walked my bike home.

Can I sit down on a hard surface? Nope. But that ride was one of coolest, prettiest, most challenging things I’ve ever done and reminded me WHY I bought a bike in the first place.

I magically stayed awake while cheering for USC vs. Notre Dame (USC won and it was kind of an awesome game).

Today I ran some errands… bought a cute little backpack for biking and hiking, got a bagel with cream cheese and lox from my old favorite 71 Irving, then went to the New Amsterdam Market with Alex in the Seaport, did damage at Gap, stretched it out at yoga at Kula Yoga Project, and video chatted with my Argentina travel buddy to book more stuff. Yes we leave Friday and just booked the majority of our trip today.

Food festival + free samples? my favorite.

adorable

Great weekend. I do love most of my weekends in the city but I loved the weather this weekend and the crazy 60 mile biking accomplishment. Now I need to actually pack and get ready to travel for 2 weeks!!!

Five Things to be Happy About Right Now

This is my Friday theme, btw.

1. Necesito practicar mi esponol porque… voy a Argentina in ONE WEEK. I’m going with my friend who I studied in London with and lived in Santa Monica with after college. Our apartment name was Paul Walnuts (PW) and we had the best time ever. Last year we did Iceland and decided to do a big trip every year. She’s also on board with the 7 continents before 30 situation. We fly into Buenos Aires on the 29 and stay there the night then from the 30th-Nov 3rd we head to El Calafate and get to see this beauty.

you overwhelm me glacier

And we’ll see this amazing rock structure:

so.very.excited.

Then we are staying in Buenos Aires until Wednesday the 9th then wine tasting in Mendoza!! There are bike and wine tours through the vineyards. I’m probably most excited about this. Well I’m most excited to unplug for two weeks. I don’t think I’ve ever gone two weeks without checking email/facebook. Should be interesting. Should be amazing.

What a perfect looking place to relax. Yes I will go here and drink wine and relax if you insist.

 

2. Unplugging as mentioned above. I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than a day or so not checking emails. This is the perfect opportunity to unplug from life. This has been the most insane year of my life and 2 weeks probably isn’t enough time to relax and regroup from the year but I think it’s a pretty freaking good start.

3. The amount of friends I currently have living in NY. I can think of about 20 people I’d be very happy with hanging out with one on one. However some of my absolute closest friends live very far away in LA, San Diego, Santa Cruz, London, Atlanta and Seattle. I moved here with probably 1 good friend already living in NY. Two years later dozens of people I know… it’s nice that I haven’t used the word “lonely” the past two years.

4. I keep thinking about life and the mysterious adventure that is ahead. Isn’t it crazy to think that tomorrow your life can just change forever (hopefully always for the good) but like…you could technically meet the love of your life tomorrow, get married in a year. That’s CRAZY. And I actually do not believe that will happen. BUT it’s nice thinking about how the future is so unpredictable. Sure there are lots of things I control and my job is stable and my day to day activities are pretty much the same but a lot can happen in 12 months. Tomorrow may not be different but I bet in a year from today lots of unplanned crazy things will have happened. I totally believe in fate. These little decisions we make everyday… don’t think about them but they are what create our life! K I officially have no clue what I’m talking about but this kind of stuff keeps me going. It’s exciting and very unknown. As type A and controlling as I am I like sense of mystery the future holds.

5. This is random but I’m happy that I’m going to put together the flower arrangements for our holiday dinner. I’m planning on heading to the flower market in Chelsea and putting together beautiful little arrangements.

Heat Poles are ON

It is officially fall. I know this because my heat poles in my apartment were on this morning. You know those white poles that look like just white poles but actually turn into your amazing heating system in the winter? Coming from CA I had NO clue what those were until fall/winter hit. When I discovered the heat pole in my bathroom this morning I jumped into my bedroom to make sure my plant hadn’t completely died because it’s sitting on the radiator. But the radiator didn’t actually get hot just the pole so it was alive. Still didn’t look to great though…I think I’ll take it to work and let the pros deal with it. We have plant maintenance people at work for our forest that is my office. Seriously my coworker has vines intertwined across the ceiling lights.

hi pretty plant

And I’m traveling for 2 weeks and do not want to come back to dead plant.

Anyway, I love my new apartment. LOVE the space, love the area, love the cozy feeling I have when I sit in my “lounge” section. Love that I can fit a few friends in there for some wine. I love that I feel very safe (I feel this due to hearing everything that happens above me. It’s like I have roomies!) I love that I didn’t need any help getting this apartment. I didn’t need my grandma to wire me $15,000 so I can print out a bank statement (Stuyvesant Town is crazy). I love that I saw it, loved it, applied, interviewed and got it.

“Lounge D” as my friends named it is perfect for well 2 people but 2 people can sit on my bed and 1 person in my desk chair. I think the lounge may need a new name… I mean if my bike team name is Blueberry Sunshine then the lounge can sound cooler than “Lounge D”.  After toasting to my friend getting a new job we walked down Hudson a few blocks for more wine then dinner at Meme Mediterranean. This place IS SO GOOD.

vino while we wait? yes please

Let me tell you what we ate. For waiting the nice host brought us hands down the best bruschetta I’ve ever had. Then we shared the fried artichoke with shaved manchego, baby greens and 2 heavenly sauces. We also shared the hummus with falafel, tahini and pita. I ordered the striped bass with chickpeas, paprika, cumin, coriander served with a side of saffron rice. I tried the chicken tagine with apricot, raisins, almonds, couscous and spicy carrots and the meme’s couscous with merguez and chicken, vegetables, and chickpeas cooked in bouillon over cous cous. Also tried the ricotta gnocchi with truffle cream. Seriously SO FREAKING GOOD. Everything is kind of soupy and the spices and mix of flavors are phenom.

mmmmmmm

We then danced the night away at a birthday shindig. Love random dance parties.

I can’t believe it’s already Friday. I can’t believe I go to Argentina in ONE week!!!!

Sushi for lunch. Shrimp tempura and spicy tuna roll.

Going to my fav spin teacher’s class this evening at Equinox. I love her because she started Team Lipstick and is awesome and teaches the class like you are riding outside. And she’s a ballroom dancer turned triathlete. Tomorrow I’m going on a longish bike ride over the GW. Can’t wait to ride in this crisp fall weather because I have a feeling when I return from Argentina it’ll be snowing. :/

Cultured Monday and Tuesday

I got my culture fix at the beginning of this week and hoping to get my sweat fix the end of the week.

On Monday I finally saw Sleep No More  with four other friends.  I HIGHLY recommend going to this interactive, interesting, amazing play. We went to Tia Pol for tapas and vino before (just won best tapas on Village Voice).  Croquetas de jamon, mussels, and octopus salad? Yes please. Upon arriving at the McKittrick Hotel you check all bags and jackets, stash your credit card and playing card for entrance in your bra, and head to the 1930s speakeasy like bar. They call your card number and that’s when you can head main event! Basically, Sleep No More is based on Macbeth and takes place in this old creepy haunted like hotel with 4 floors. The audience members wears white masks to remain anonymous and no talking is allowed in the hotel. You enter a hotel and are instantly separated from your friends. You enter a random floor and well… do whatever the hell you want. You can explore the rooms and if you see a scene you can watch then follow the character then watch another scene and follow a new character. The character starts sprinting you start sprinting (my one negative was my fellow New Yorkers did NOT run fast enough!! Come on people! Character runs you run). I would have loved to see this play when it first came out with absolutely no preconceived notions. I 100% want to go back because I missed some of the “really cool” scenes. I followed some guy twice because I wanted the one on one moment to happen to me! (stupid missed opportunity the first time around. Why didn’t I take the kleenex? why!?) Ya so characters pull people into rooms and do who knows what. At the end I ended up in a room and the character was the doctor. He said some prayer, threw water around, put something in my palms and gave me a necklace. It was awesome. Oh then we went to a diner and ate more. Of course.

Tuesday I get a call from my boss’ bro saying his friend has 2 tickets he’s not using to MAMMA MIA! He asked if I wanted them. Um yes I want a free ticket to a musical that has been on my list for quite some time. And the best part besides being free, my friend I used to dance with at USC was in the musical!!! It was their 10th anniversary show and Bloomberg presented an award to the creator and they did some big mash up outside after the show.

I scooted out with my friend and ate at Jeffrey’s. Wish I had pictures but it.is.so.good. I got the Charred Baby Octupus with herb pesto, almond and spicy potato salad and we shared the Lobster Spaghetti, pound and a quarter wild lobster, tomato, tarragon and parmesan. Do you want to see the dessert menu? Yes. Yes we do. Had some plum crumble. All soso good. Jeffrey’s Grocery, Joseph Leonards and Fedora are all owned by the same peeps and now I can say all three are AWESOME.  Don’t worry (I’m sure you aren’t) I’ll try cooking soon. I still need to buy pots and pans and… food. The small details.

Cultured Monday and Tuesday= workout Wednesday-Sunday.

Last night I went to spin class, booty blast and upper cuts at Equinox. For some reason (I blame the rain and wind) I just was not in the mood. I kept putting my head down and had to take breaks in booty blast. The arm class was the only thing I could actually get through! As you saw in my last post all of this does not matter because I felt like a badass after my “push up” handstand.

Today I did kickboxing before work. I love morning workouts. I don’t do them enough. I need to stop going to bed at midnight so I can do morning workouts.

Tomorrow I plan to spin. Saturday I’m going on a long bike ride and Sunday is yoga!

Till then.

I felt cool.

I went to the gym tonight to dominate spin class, booty blast and upper cuts. Domination did not happen. I thought I was going to die in spin class (the usual) thought I was going to faint in booty blast and my arms felt like jello in upper cuts.

BUT

after an insane amount of foam rolling I decided to see where I’m at in the whole let’s push up to a handstand rather than kicking up situation. Doing this with your legs together is nearly impossible for me so I went into a wide straddle and could totally see myself starting to press up. This did not happen so I gave a little tiny hop and sort of pressed up into the handstand. It wasn’t pretty and I just cartwheeled out of it and grabbed my stuff.

THEN

this guy was just staring at me with wide eyes and said “oh my god that was sooo coool how did you do that?” I said “oh that? the press up thing? haha. ummm I didn’t really do it but you just put your body over you hands” he said “seriously!?”  I said “OH YA and lots of yoga” :)

I left the gym beaming. Not sure why this made me feel so incredibly cool but it did. I smiled the whole way home and when it started downpouring hurricane style I laughed instead of cried. I also sang American Pie out loud on the streets in the meatpacking district.

oh just inside my umbrella. laughing and singing.

Just call me Danica Patrick

I love my job because I love what I do and I love the people I work with so adding really cool events into the mix is icing on the cake. Last year we went bobsledding and did the skeleton on the OLYMPIC TRACK.

Yes this happened and yes it was the most frightening thing ever

Scarier than sky diving (I'm number 2)

It was complete madness/coolest thing ever. This year we went to Lime Rock Park to learn how to race cars. Do you see a theme? We like these extremely risky near death experiences… anyway I wasn’t 100% enthusiastic about car racing before but now after oooooooh man it’s one of the coolest things I have ever done.

After a massive lesson, me asking 1 million questions, and thinking I’m about to flip over crash and catch on fire we ended up in these cars.

badass

Not sure why I’m smiling because I’m scared to death AND after asking my pace drive another million questions he asked, “are you single?” I said.. “ya!” he said… ” I know why” WHAT rude!!! I mean…. my type A slightly control freak personality mayyyyy have pushed him to ask that question but still! rude.  The teacher drew a picture of the wheel with a string attached and something to put your foot in so when you turn the wheel your foot would come off the brake or gas because you should ease up on turns and be very smooth. After I was strapped into the death car I asked my pace driver where the string and thing for my foot was….. I’ll let you guess what he said (hint the string and thingie for my foot does not exist. silly amanda)

Oh ya and I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift car. This hardcore car is clearly not automatic and is definitely nothing like my cute little automatic Ford Explorer Sport I used to rock in LA. They sort of gave us a lesson… soo after stalling about 8 times I figured it out. It was so amusing watching myself NOT follow directions. “EASY coming off the clutch and stay on the gas” so I clearly took my feet off both clutch and gas very fast. I did this probably 5 times laughing like a crazy person then when I finally figured it out I screamed as I shot forward. I was too scared to change into a higher gear (you are supposed to be in 4th gear around the track) because I obviously thought I was going to crash and blow up soo I stayed in first gear the entire first lap and went about 10-40mph.

Clearly going 100mph here, we may actually be stopped. who knows.

I felt like I was in Mario Kart and it.was.awesome. Once I realized I was not going to spin out, flip over and catch on fire I became more confident and went fast around the turns and REALLY fast on the straight aways.  The girl team got up to 80-100mph! woohoo.

still a badass

 

After racing the Formula 1 cars we split up into 2 groups. My first afternoon session was the spin out session. We hop in this car, he asks if our seat belts are on then drives around a wet track and starts spinning out like crazy!!! Then tells us we have to do this. This exercise actually benefits real life because when we are driving on you know ice, snow and water around NYC we need to control a spin out! This would have been handy in LA but more importantly… it came in handy when I raced in the relay at the end of the day!! So I hopped in the car, drove around the flooded track at 35mph until the car lost control and I had to control it. After a few180s and me screaming I figured it out.

The second afternoon session was driving high performance (lotus, lexus, m3, porsche) cars around a 1/4 mile track learning how to follow the lines (go as FAST as you can toward this cone, slam on your brakes, ease up around the corner, fast as you can through the apex, light brake at the zig zag, as fast as you can, easy around the corner and repeat). This was fun because we had a driver in the passenger seat telling us what we did right and wrong. However the best part… well there were 2 “best” parts 1)Stefano the pro demonstrating this 1/4 mile track IN A MASSIVE van. I had one arm on one side of the van, a foot on the floor and a foot on the other side of the van bracing myself. 2) we got to be a passenger as the pros showed us the true meaning of drifting (wiki says: Drifting refers to a driving technique and to a motorsport where the driver intentionally over steers, causing loss of traction in the rear wheels through turns, while maintaining vehicle control and a high exit speed.)

We ended the day with a relay race between the two teams (we were the fastest drivers but not the fastest transitioners (word?) so we sort of lost. I think we won) BUT my car started to spin out and I controlled it so I definitely win.

Then we really ended with this:

I’m tired just recapping this. Good group, good day, always good to be scared shitless! Reminds you that you are alive I suppose :)

Lovely fall weekend

I went on my company retreat Thursday and Friday (I’ll do a separate post on how amazing car racing and creating egg dropping devices was) and I’m glad we were able to come back Friday night to enjoy the weekend!

Friday night I met up with old roomie at her new place at the South Street Seaport. Front Street is pretty cute and ate and had some beers at Keg No.229 then decided to do a little pub crawl in my new hood. Went to Village Tavern, White Horse Tavern, Automatic Slims, Windsor and Wilfie and Nells. The BEST part was being able to walk home and not take a cab home.

Saturday was the perfect lazy fall day. I met some friends at Good for brunch. Had a Cameron Diaz spotting. Ate a very very delicious breakfast burrito and we shared the lemon ricotta pancakes as our appetizer.

mmm

Showed two friends my new studio. We walked down Bleecker then hung out at Doma cafe on Perry and Waverly

perfection

then hopped across the street to my friend’s place and watched her make pumpkin pie pop tarts and we got to be the tasters :) mmm SO good.

I love how NY is just a huge playground and 95% of my friends live in the West Village and we can just run around stopping by friends’ apartments. We peeled ourselves off the couch and went to Tue Thai for a cheap but delicious dinner. I called it an early night because I had an early wake up for hiking!!

Sunday I went hiking with with two friends. We did the Breakneck Ridge to Beacon hike which is about an hour north on the Metro North. The weather was PERFECT for a hike- crisp air blue skies.

White to red and 5 hours later takes you to Beacon. I love this hike because there is a lot of rock scrambling and it’s really challenging. Half the time I’m sweating and out of breath and the other half I’m enjoying the scenery.

<3 trees

We had PB&J sandwiches, almonds, apples, carrots and leftover pumpkin pie poptarts for the trail.

When I got home I met up for dinner with two other friends at Cafe Condessa (moved this from the want to to have been list woohoo!) It was amazing.  I ordered the chopped cobb salad, we shared warm brie with honey and pine nuts to start and the chocolate soufle for dessert.

Hi bad lighting. This is the brie.

Yep my weekend pretty much consisted of little movement and lots of food. This has been the theme post cleanse… the cleanse clearly taught me nothing and I decided eating an excessive amount was necessary at the retreat and this weekend.

Back to normal eating (I hope) and reality! Got an iced americano from Joe’s (yum but I may switch to decaf again because I really don’t actually need caffeine) and tomato basil rice soup and a salad from Hale & Hearty for lunch. Tonight I’m going to see Sleep No More and I.cannot.wait. I hear amazing things about the experience and I can’t wait to see for myself.