I was looking through some of my old tales from 2000 and came across one of my favorites: the Sept. 2000 trip to NYC. Ah, the days when my life was full of cute bike racer boys and smelly motel rooms! (Just kidding.) Anyway, for anyone that cares, I feel the need to clarify the story of the tap shoes. The tap shoes recently came up (why??) in a conversation with my dad, who said they came with the car when he bought it in Bakersfield, California. He forgot to throw them out, and so they traveled all the way across the country with me, then to many bike races, until I made Dane chuck them in a diner in Monroe, N.Y. Although Dad read about the shoes, he forgot to tell me about them, thus allowing the proliferation of my (inadvertently) fabricated shady parking lot attendant story. Now that I know they weren't planted by said attendant while using my car to pick up his kids, I feel much better.

Not that I will stop hating New York City or anything.