I'm writing these lines sitting on the stairs between the first and second floor, in front of an AC unit that's barely blowing. One step to the left or right, and I'm in a furnace. It's nearly 40 degrees out. Anyway. A week ago, there was a pretty lively pre-holiday mood; after all, Independence Day was coming up. July 4th, a morning like any other, business as usual. Around lunch, I headed to Brighton because I had a cunning plan to hit the beach, chill out, and then head to the center. The beach was gorgeous, even though it was pretty crowded... but that just made it more fun. The sun was blazing, the water was cool—in short, it was awesome. After our swim, Captain Ravshan and I headed to Manhattan. The impressions started right at the subway entrance. I'd never seen so many people on the platform. The thing is, the trains were running on a weekend schedule... a super weekend schedule, once every 30 minutes. And they weren't even on their usual tracks, skipping half the stations (which was better for us). But the funniest part was when all this crowd started pushing into the already packed cars, the train driver would announce over the speakers, 'Where are you all pushing? There's a half-empty train coming right behind me.' The funniest thing is that people actually listened and didn't get on.

Manhattan was a mess. The crowd was explained by the fact that at 9:00 PM on 11th Avenue, from 36th to 60-something street, there was going to be a fireworks show. Macy's was the initiator of this event, and every year they drop a million dead presidents on it. So there was an incentive to see this grand celebration. Reaching 11th Avenue, I felt like I was at the Olympic Stadium at a Slipknot concert. There was an unreal amount of people. But the catch was that you couldn't go past 11th Avenue; there were police cordons across the entire width. To hell with them. But every street has these high-rises, so even if you really wanted to, you couldn't see any fireworks. So, we kept walking along the streets, looking for the best vantage point. Along with us, 100,500 thousand people were also trying to find a prime spot. Skipping the unnecessary details, I'll say we didn't see anything, we only heard it. Honestly, it didn't really smell like a million dollars, although it smelled for a very long time after the fireworks. And thousands, thousands of them... you couldn't get through. In short, America's Independence Day is the biggest troll job the Captain has ever witnessed. But at McDonald's later, we really got back at those Americans—I won't go into details xDDD.

I didn't make it home again because my bus (none of the five) doesn't run at night, neither from Brooklyn nor from Manhattan. But the next day we were hanging out at the beach again; a very good friend showed me a gorgeous spot where we watched the sunset, washing it down with rum.

Time flies, very fast.