My friend Jonathan was turning thirty and throwing a big party. That was the reason I was going originally. When word got out I was to be in New York for Earth Day weekend, my place of work arranged for me to run our booth at Earth Day New York.

I left my apartment in the Lower Haight at 9:45am on Friday. I finally reached my hotel at midnight that night. The first day was not a statistical outlier, as (according to my rough estimate) almost half of the time on my “vacation” was spent in transit. Mass transit, mostly. For instance, to get from my first hotel to my second, I took a shuttle then a monorail then a train then a subway. Not a day went by where I didn’t spend at least three hours trying to get somewhere else.

My New York navigational muscle is largely vestigial so I had to take the word of any map, schedule, or signpost that happened to point me in a direction. Besides being overwhelmed by the fact that everything is in Helvetica (one of my favorite typefaces before this trip), the scale is also troubling. I was waiting for a train for quite some time before I realized that both tracks on the platform were going the same direction—there was an entirely different platform for uptown traffic.

The ultimate insult visited upon me occurred Sunday morning, after I had managed to find a cab to meet a friend for brunch. Just as I hailed one, a couple behind me hailed one and we both gave the same address. It seems that they were off to brunch at the same restaurant (named for one of the three Wise Men, everyone kept saying). It being Earth Day and my already feeling guilty for taking a cab instead of… uh… I dunno, recumbent tricycle… I offered to pay for their fare.

As nice as this may sound, New York has a way of hardening us woo-woo West Coast people. I will never split a cab with someone else again. They were pleasant enough, chatting about how they heard this place had a great brunch and did I know it was named after one of the three Wise Men (why does no one mention the MAGI SuperComputer?) and how they had a big birthday bash the night before as well. Then, as we all stumbled out onto the curb and said our goodbyes and nice-to-meet-yous, the cab drove off.

With my luggage.

And when I say “my luggage” I really mean “my luggage and its contents, which included quite a few work-related items not the least of which were the names, contact, and billing information for over 100 new members as well as several hundred dollars in cash donations”. A pretty big oops. In my defense, it’s not like I was the first person to ever leave something important in a cab. In fact, New York is so big that there’s more than one police precinct dedicated to “Lost & Found”. Yes, really. After a few calls with people who sounded exactly how New York police officers are supposed to sound, I managed to track down my stuff.

Seriously, New York. We get it. You’re hardcore. Next week, I’m going to drive to Mexico.