Visiting Dr. Smith in New York
We got up early to catch the bus to New York. According to Greyhound
Canada's website, there was an express bus leaving at 11am with ETA in
NYC at 6:30pm. That would get us there in time for the gig.
We'd decided to try and make it to the bus station early in case there was a lineup. Left the house a bit before 10. Made it to the metro station. No go. Orange line was down. Then we tried to hail a cab. None to be found. After 20 minutes of freezing we finally tracked one down on Notre Dame and made it to the bus station.
No 11am bus. There was an 11:45 bus with regular service. That would get us in at 8:20pm, way too late for dinner with Lonnie. We bitched to customer service about incorrect information on the web. I'd even brought the printed web page. But they didn't care. So we had to live with the 15% reimbursement charge. Grrr!
We called Via Route and rented a car for a couple of days. Off we went towards New York State.
Because I'm not Canadian I need to fill out an I-94 visa waiver form before entering the United States. It's odd. Denmark is part of the "Coalition of the Willing", whereas Canada isn't. Canadian passport holders are let through the border without blinking, but Danes have to fill out forms and get fingerprinted.
This is usually a very smooth process when flying. Except that not all Canadian airports have I-94 forms readily available, so I usually keep a bunch around in my travel bag -- just in case. This time I didn't have any.
We made it to the border crossing, they took our passports and we waited for like 40 minutes before we got to talk to an immigration officer and ask request the bloody form. What a hassle. If they'd kept a pile of I-94's around I could have filled out about a billion of them during the waiting time. But no. We had to wait to get a form, fill it out, and then wait again. Not exactly a pipelined process. Good thing we weren't on the bus. It would have taken off without us.
Anyway. We made it to New York about 7pm. We didn't have time to drop off our luggage, so we headed straight to meet up with Lonnie at a sushi place across from The Village Vanguard.
We had an excellent meal. Lots of sushi and a nice chat about Hammond organs and all the sucky clones and replica out there. We all agreed that we like spinning wheels better.
At 10 to 9 we crossed the street to the Vanguard. Lonnie managed to get us in despite the fact that both sets were sold out. We hung out backstage for a bit before the show. Got to stand in the back for the first set and Lonnie got us some really awesome seats for the second one.
Lou Donaldson on sax, Randy Johnston on guitar, Fukushi Tainaka on drums and Lonnie on organ. Wow. Same old jokes, same old music, but boy can those cats play. Great to see them all again.
Lonnie had a problem with percussion on his organ that we were going to look into, but the Vanguard kept being packed after the show and we all had trains to catch. So we ended up heading out after talking for a while.
Vanessa and I were staying with Chris Budhan up near 125th st. We were hurrying out of the club to make it up there before it got too late. However, much to our surprise Chris was waiting for us outside the Vanguard. We ended up talking outside for a bit. Then we said goodbye to Lonnie and headed uptown.
At Chris' place we crashed really hard. Long day. But seeing Lonnie was well worth the drive. Lonnie is shining. I'm so inspired. Need to practice more...
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