#1 The US Tore

First blog post on the Bots blog! Yeehaw!

Some logistical things

I’ve been thinking and telling a lot of people about the idea, and I need to get something off my chest: this is not at all my idea. Two of my good friends, Abby and Mel, both had travel/study abroad blogs that were hilarious, really creative, and really nice to keep in touch. There so far are zero (0) original ideas on this website. Everything is from them. Many thanks y’all for the idea. Still working on the name of mine cause I have nothing to rival “Tanzania?? More like OMG-A!!” or “Taipei Tales” right now. Mel suggested Bayleys Botswana Blog, but I fear copyright infringement from the Ball family and don’t feel like coming all the way home to fight an expensive, monthslong, probably cutthroat, exhausting, and overall just kinda silly (if I’m being very honest with myself) legal battle over the future of BBB merch.

Some more in-depth ideas about what this blog will look like: I hope to be able to post a couple times a month, but I don’t foresee anything much more often than twice a month. I could be (and hope I am!) wrong, but realistically speaking I hope to write one to two posts per month. If you can’t tell already, I am writing multiple drafts with many edits just stream-of-consiousness-writing, so it may get rambly at times. And I gurantee it will be typically Nick Bayley, in that there are a lot of inside jokes, tangents that are really not funny, and hilarious stories. My ultiimate goal, afterall, is to have this blog read like I am sitting next to you telling stories with plenty of handmotions and funny faces.

The Tore

Now to the fun part, insert trumpet fanfare, telling y’all about my world tore! As my Coly/east coast/school friends know, they mispronounce the word “tour” as “tore” and refuse to believe that normal people (ex: not them) do not do that. Noting this, and in an attempt to be civil, I have named the first blog after my confused friends.

My last hurrah in the US with all of my close friends started up north in Minnesota, before going to California, New York, Block Island, Boston, Lake Sunnapee, and Boston again. Overall goal of the trip: see as many people for as long as possible. Unintended consequence of the trip: I said goodbye for two years to everyone I love in about 10 days. yay. I won’t bore everyone with the small details, but a brief synopsis of the trip (loosely defined honestly, I had a bunch of time at home between all these things) is below.

Cabin weekend> Met my friends from abroad, Ella, Ayaka, and Frank, at my family’s cabin in northern Minnesota. We spent two nights basically rehashing our semester in Tanzania and calling other people from our program. Activities included but were not limited to paddling (and flipping) my canoe, playing less than one turn of Clue, watching two spectacular sunsets on the dock, embracing our midwestern heritage by consuming one or two adult beverages, and all falling asleep on the couch watching Shrek.

Long weekend in San Fransisco> A couple days later I flew to SF and saw my sister Nora and her boyfriend Max. It was my first time visiting Nora even though shes been in SF for almost three years, so it was really nice to see what their life was like. (Contrary to popular belief things werent really as expensive as I thought they would be. The one notable exception was ice cream though- $7.50 for one scoop of plain ice cream! That’s criminal!) We went to Muir Woods National Park, I walked and biked around a bunch of parks in the city, and we had some amazing food (Korean BBQ, athleisure bagel sandwiches, an applefritter that was the size of my face, and some massive burritos). On Saturday night we went to the Greek Theater in Berkeley to watch The Vampire Weekend perform (a band, not actual vampires. thankfully.). We skated up to the concert at the last minute (4:30 arrival and the band started playing at 8:30, so cut it pretty close), and watched an amazing sunset behind a really cool and fun show. Even though it was an active couple of days, we stuck to our Bayley roots and got some good reading done (The Martian Chronicles!).

Couple Days in NYC> After a brutal red-eye flight from SF to NYC, I spent the day walking around with Sam, and then later Sam and Jacob as well. A big group of us were staying at Ivan’s apartment, and we met back there (in the upper West side by columbia) before going together down to Steamed Little Delicious Juicy Amazing Buns, my favorite restaurant near Times Square. After ordering arguably one of the best meals of my life, we went to a bar and watch the Celtics scrape out a sad win against the much better Mavs. The next day we wandered around downtown, went to Ess-a-bagel, the public library, and the Portal. Finally we all went to a Yankee game with the worst line management of all time. Because we’re all cheap as hell we got standing room only tickets but by the time we got in the stadium in the third inning (see above re: worst line management ever) all of the standing room was gone. After some creative problem solving we found enough seats for all of us to sit together up in the nosebleeds. The next morning we piled into the Tesz mobile and drove up to Block Island…

Couple Days in Block Island> Wow this is getting long. We had two nights in BI staying at Jacob’s family house. The full day in the middle we slept in, spent a long time at the beach, adn then bought live lobsters on the way home. After trying and failing to race them on the deck (don’t call PETA it was all supervised!), Rohit killed them and made us a fantastic meal. He took out the tail meat, grilled it, made a stock from the bodies to boil the claws and corn in, and Bing Bong made mashed potatoes and some killer cholula mayo. With some Bleu Champagne courtesy of Sam, we set the table outside and ate on the deck all together.

Day in Boston> Jacob and Bonger dropped me off in Boston on the way up from Block Island, where I met Yunah! We walked around downtown Boston, going to the public library and the worlds smallest trader joes. We had a picnic in Boston Commons and went to a really nice Italian restaurant for dinner before sitting on a dock in the esplanade and watching the skyline. We say goodbye at South Station (romantic, isn’t it), before I took a bus up to New Hampshire.

Weekend at Lake Sunapee> Jacob and BONGer picked me up from the bus station, and we spent the rest of the weekend at Lucy’s lakehouse. Her parents and the GOAT Z-Man were there as well, and they took us waterskiing, wakesurfing, and fishing. It was a fantastic weekend to cap off a great trip. Lucy’s family was incredibly welcoming and friendly, and we all felt very loved while we were there. #BHCforever

Final day in Boston> The rest of the trip was spontaneous and random: on our way home from the lake the Kadambi family had Jacob, Mel, and me over for an amazing dinner, I went to TopGolf with BONGER, Cuzzo, the Leaky Sewer, and Kiwi, Jacob and I won the World Series in SMB4, we ate at In A Pickle, got massages at Happy Feet Reflexology, and finally calculated how many grains of rice there were in the Indian Market. Very exciting stuff. The final goodbye, after everyone else, was to Jacob and Ed at the airport.

That’s about it! I can’t believe how many things I got to do, the amazing weather I got, and how much fun it was to see so many people. Thank you everyone, for making my last couple weeks here the best ever. I will miss you all so much, but am very happy remembering this amazing month when I got to spend some time with you.

I am trying to figure out how to put pictures up, among many other things, but I believe they will be in the other page (should say something like “Pictures!” at the top of your screen). For now, thank you for reading this entire thing (took me ages to finish this)!!