Forboding Signs

17-Jan We drove up to New York City today to prepare for the flight tomorrow. We're flying out of JFK Airport in Queens, New York City, to Narita Airport near Tokyo, Japan. Our flight leaves at 11:30 AM tomorrow - a wholly reasonable time until you consider the two-hour pre-departure check-in requirement and the fact that I live in Maryland.

I booked Scott and I's flights out of JFK Airport in Queens, NYC, to save money - but when you add up the travel costs to get there and spend the night before the flight, it was definitely a wash.

The saving grace of going out of NYC was that I ended up selling my motorcycle right before the trip. I had listed the bike for sale on Craigslist a couple times with minimal interest. I'm not sure what I changed the last time I listed it, but I got about seven offers within a week from a posting in the Washington, DC-area Craigslist section. I ended up finding a buyer who paid my asking price two days before I was set to leave. He happened to be in New Jersey and offered $200 extra to deliver the bike to him on the way up. So, of course, this seemed like no problem at all to me and I agreed.

Then it started to snow on the drive to Jersey. It hasn't snowed all year - in fact, it has been one of the mildest winters I can remember in the mid-Atlantic region. But while I'm driving to New York, motorcycle and backpack in the bed of our two-wheel-drive pickup truck, it starts to snow. Great. Is this a sign of things to come? Alas, I can drive in the snow fine - the real question is how am I going to take this bike off of the truck and get it into the buyer's truck if everything is slick with snow? It was enough of an adventure getting it into our truck last night with a dry ramp!

We got to New Jersey around 3:30 PM after leaving Maryland at 11:30 AM. The buyer for the bike happened to be an exceptionally normal guy (for someone who uses Craigslist, in my experience) and the deal went smoothly. His friend rode the bike home in the snow - which is about the mentality I'd expect from a Craigslister - so loading it into a pickup bed in the falling snow was not a problem. We got to the Doubletree Hotel JFK around 7:00 PM and were all exhausted. I ate my last burger from the States - for $15 from the hotel restaurant - repacked my bag a final time like any proper first-time backpacker and finally made it to bed around 1:30 AM.

Airfare $2,850
Tolls to NYC $40
Gas to NYC $40
Costs to Date US$2,930