Carowinds, Day 1

Once again I am off and traveling, this time I will add two states, one theme park, and up to twelve roller coasters to new experiences.  I decided a few weeks ago to check out Carowinds theme park, which sits right on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina next to the city of Charlotte, North Carolina.  Much like Kings Dominion, it was owned by Paramount before Cedar Fair bought it in 2006.

I'm happy to report that so far it has been a high-quality visit, much like my other visits to Cedar Fair parks.  The longest I waited for a ride was about 40 minutes, and that is because it is very popular.  Even with being able to run 48 people through at a time (2 cars x 24 per car) there's still a lot of people who want to ride.

The other thing is that with this trip, I would finally cross the 100 coasters mark.  I have now ridden over 100 different roller coaster rides in the world.  The honor goes to the Thunder Road coaster, on the North Carolina side. Thunder Road is unique in that it is a racing coaster that sits over two states.  One side is on North Carolina, and the other side is on South Carolina.  I happened to ride the South Carolina side first, and then rode North Carolina.  Now there are some who would argue that it should not have counted for two different rides because the tracks are a mirror image of one another, but I see it as different because you're going in different directions.

Anyway, so after the 7 1/2 hour drive to Charlotte (Thank you Vz Navigator for helping me to avoid traffic) I got to Carowinds, parked in the season parking pass area, and got into the park.  After picking up a map and finding my way around, I got to Afterburn first, which had virtually no line, then Ricochet (wild mouse type of coaster), then Thunder Road.  Next I would hit up Carolina Goldrusher, Carolina Cyclone, and the Hurler.  Here's a fun fact about the Hurler.  It was originally named after the movie Wayne's World when Carowinds was a Paramount park, and the speakers at the wait station would play clips from the movie.  King's Dominion has the Hurler as well, and according to the RCDB, those are the only two parks that have it.  

Anyway, I then hit up the Rugrats Runaway Reptar and Fairly Odd Coaster.  These are both small coasters designed for the kiddies, but big enough to allow the kid at heart to ride as well.  It was also the first time I witnessed a hanging coaster for kids because most of them are the standard sit-down cars.  

By this time I had been at the park for about 4 hours, and it was close to 7 PM, so I decided to head to my hotel.  I scored an awesome deal on a Motel 6 about a mile from the park, $55.  I was expecting it to be way more because of the holiday.  It was also what gave me some incentive to head this way for the weekend.

I went back to Carowinds at about 8:30 to get in line at Nighthawk because they would close the queue at 9, and I figured I'd get a ride in since it is normally so busy.  I snapped an awesome picture on my phone of Carolina Cyclone as a silhouette in the sunset.  Wish I had my camera, but oh well.

After that ride, it was time to look for dinner, and that's where I had a bit of a scare with my car.  I had tried driving to one place, but they closed at 10, and it was 9:52, so I wasn't going to be a dick and make them have to work again when the place was empty.  As I'm driving back, I suddenly have white smoke coming out from under the hood and my temperature gauge has shot straight into the red.  I feared that I had a hose bust in there so I pulled into a nearby parking lot and opened the hood.  It turned out that somehow my radiator cap had come loose, so it started shooting coolant from that part of the car, and coolant hitting the hot engine was what produced the smoke.  So I carefully got the loosened cap back into place, but then I had to deal with trying to get the engine to cool back down again because it was still spiking a bit as I would drive.  I'm going to re-check it in the morning and see if I need to add even more coolant than what I already did.  I think the cap came loose because I didn't tighten it up quite enough when I checked out the car this morning.  It's a good thing it didn't happen while I was driving towards Charlotte.  I came to the hotel and ordered pizza delivery instead.

So for tomorrow the plan is to go to Carowinds when the park opens, and hit Carolina Cobra and Vortex since I have not ridden either one yet.  Then I'll hit a few favorites from today, mostly steel so I can avoid being shaken to death.  Wood coasters have their own charm and I like them for the most part, but I have to be careful of how often I ride them because the shaking will give me a bad headache.  I'll probably leave during the hottest part of the day to chill at the hotel and rest up before heading back in.  They're having a fireworks show tomorrow night for the 4th, and I can't wait to see that either.  Sunday will depend on how I feel, I do have a long trip ahead, and I was thinking of heading back around noon, but maybe I'll go earlier.

One other thing I noticed is Carowinds is working to get rid of their Nickelodeon merchandise in the stores.  I'm not surprised, I bet the contract to use Nickelodeon characters in their kiddie area is expiring after this season, and they'll probably bring themselves to be in line with other Cedar Fair parks.  That means next year we'll see a Peanuts themed kiddie area unless for some reason they decide to take out a new license agreement to use Nickelodeon characters.  I doubt it.

Vegas

After my plans to go to Latvia and Italy were canceled due to illness, I received an opportunity to travel to Las Vegas. Friends of mine, CL and GR were going out that way for CL's grandmother's 90th birthday and they made the offer to join them if I wanted to split a hotel room with them. I have never been to Las Vegas so I decided to jump at the chance to be able to finally see just what everyone is talking about. Besides that, it meant a flight on Southwest, and this trip plus a future trip will earn a free roundtrip, so it's a win-win situation all around.

The flight to Vegas went fine as usual, except for the stupidity that is Kansas City International Airport. To explain, KCI has a really screwy layout compared to most airports. Instead of passing through a central security area and walking to your gates, imagine the width of a building, then divide it in half, on one side is the outside area where you first walk in, on the other side is the gates. Now subdivide those gate areas into 5 gates each, and they each have their own security screening area. The gate areas are not connected to one another on the inside, you have to go outside and back through security if your gate changes and it's not in range of the five gates around you. Now I had taken an empty bottle of water with me and filled it at the drinking fountain in Baltimore before boarding the plane. When I got to KCI I had to leave the area where I deplaned and walk to another cluster of gates to board, which meant going through security again. I put my bag through security, and guess what, bag check. I had completely forgotten about the bottle of water I had filled up in Baltimore. So, I had to leave security, dump it out, and then go through security again. It was when I got through and was waiting at my gate that I realized that all the drinking fountains in the airport are on the outside of the gate. So I could not fill my water bottle at KCI, but I was certainly welcome to pay $3.00 for a bottle of water at the Wolfgang Puck kiosk that was conveniently located in each cluster. How about no, so in my mind KCI sucks and they're not getting a dime from me.

Flew to Vegas, and it turned out I got there ahead of CL and GR because their flight had been delayed in Atlanta. I waited at the airport for a few minutes before they arrived and got their things. CL's sister and her husband were also on the flight and they had rented a car, so we packed our things in there and made our way to the hotel. Traffic on the Vegas strip sucks during the afternoon and early evening BTW, whether you're in a car or on a bus. The problem is many of the roads have construction going on because Vegas is playing catch-up with their infrastructure due to the massive amount of people that have moved there in the last few years. The other big project is they've been taking down all the power line and burying them underground, so of course that means tearing up the roads and putting them back together. There would be many a time this weekend that it took a while to get up and down the strip, simply because of the traffic issues.

We were staying at Treasure Island, and we had some very nice rooms there. If you can score a deal on staying there like we did, I'd suggest you stay there. You're nearly in the middle of the strip, and there's a nearby bus stop on each side. If you know you're going to be traveling up and down the strip often, and especially if you want to go down to Fremont Street, where some of the old casinos still stand, take the Deuce bus, which is exclusively for the strip and downtown. It runs 24/7 and is $3 each ride, $7 for a 24 hr pass, or $15 for a 3 day pass. You'll probably use the 3 day pass if you're going out multiple times.

Anyway, so after getting settled we did go down to Fremont street for a late buffet dinner and a bit of gaming of course. To get it out of the way, I basically stuck to slot machines only, and primarily the penny machines. It's what I'm used to playing from being at the Indian casinos in Arizona. Did I win this weekend? Not really, I probably lost $100 overall, so I have no major complaints there. I did also learn quite a bit about many of the different machines there so I know which ones will drain your money fast, and which ones you can play for about an hour on $5. I definitely had fun with them though, a favorite machine being the gold fish machine since I tended to hit the bonuses pretty often. Also, I got one of the best deals on a beer while down at Fremont street. 44 oz of beer, served inside a football shaped glass. Football and beer, two things that most men love put together...there's a third thing that would make it absolutely perfect, but it can't be mentioned here ;-)

The other thing about this weekend is that Vegas can do a number on your schedules. I have probably lost weight because of how many meals that were missed from being out and about, and my sleeping schedule is definitely off. Hell, despite traveling all day on Thursday, I was up for about 22 hours. We'll see how quickly I get back on schedule.

Friday was primarily spent wandering around the various casinos in the area and doing a bit of shopping as well at the tackiest souvenir shops. Passing by Madame Tussauds, they had out the wax figure of Michael Jackson for people to pose with for pictures and leave cards and such. Harrah's offered a free picture with a showgirl so we got that done, and then she tried to steer us towards trying to get signed up to hear a timeshare pitch to get a gift of some tickets, however, the guy blew us off because they want single folks to be over 40 and he was turned off when he found out CL and GR were the ones together (same-sex couple). Later that afternoon it was just myself and another friend of CL and GR, MV. Her and I got along pretty well considering this weekend was really the first weekend we got to really meet. I got plenty of pictures of Vegas all weekend long as well. Towards the evening hours, CL and GR went to see CL's grandmother before coming back to pick us up to take us over to Arizona Charlies casino, which is off the strip, but grandma goes there to play bingo, plus it has various tables with low limits until late at night. It was a pretty good casino overall, definitely had the classic casino look about it.

Saturday we all wandered to a few places, including taking a ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I got some great pictures of the Vegas landscape, including the surrounding mountains. Later we came back to nap for a bit. I crashed the hardest with a 2 hour nap, then we went over to Fashion Square mall for some gelato. CL happened to drop by the half-price tickets place to see what they offered and found out there were tickets to Bette Midler at 7:30 available for $65. I thought about it, and then decided to go for it, though I was on my own for seeing the show. The twist was that the woman at the desk told me I had to be over at the box office at Caesars Palace by 6:30 to get my ticket, and no they will not refund my money if I don't make it. It was 6:10 so it was a matter of could I haul balls down to Caesars in time? Yes I can because quite frankly, I am either insane, a masochist, or both. The reason being that I was running down the strip in 100 degree weather to try and go nearly 1 mile within 20 minutes on a Saturday night when the sidewalks were crowded. I made it with 6 minutes to spare :-D The bonus was the guy at the box office upgraded me from nosebleed seats to rear orchestra seats, score!

Before the show started, the couple next to me asked where I had gotten my shirt (I am currently away from my desk) but since it was a gift from my parents, I have no clue at this point. It turned out they had seen me in the casino and thought it was clever, and it just happened I got a seat next to them. They were from Chicago and had brought their daughter and some of her friends to celebrate her 21st birthday. Nice people.

Bette's show was amazing of course. I had a great view of the stage and she basically was doing her acts of singing, dancing, and comedy, all while backed up by a live band, her trio of assisted dancers, and a chorus line of showgirls. You of course got to hear her perform "The Rose," "From A Distance," "Wind Beneath My Wings" "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," and a few others. She did jokes about getting old, along with her mermaid act, and even did a burlesque act as Soph. I enjoyed every minute of her show. If you get to Vegas and she is performing, go, seriously, you will not regret it, especially if you score cheap tickets.

After the show I went back to the hotel and then MV and I took a cab over to Arizona Charlies again. The other folks wanted to go back there because they had done well playing craps the night before and wanted to try their luck again. I think everyone did well overall that evening. I probably lost $50, damn slots.

Sunday started out with breakfast, and then a bit of a long afternoon. We did agree to sit through a presentation of another timeshare place to score tickets to Jubilee. After the spiel was all said and done and they had us tour a property, now it came time to tell them No, repeatedly. It killed me that they tried to get all of us to fill out a credit application before we even saw the property or got prices to know if any of us could afford something like that. Quite frankly, I give the salesman credit for even trying, he went as far as to say that maybe we could all buy in together to be able to afford it. Here's the deal, even if they really did give me everything they claimed they would and didn't try to screw me on the fine print (fat chance) I think that paying my hospital bills are way more important right now than buying time at vacation properties :-) Eventually we did get our tickets.

Went back to Fremont street to do some last-minute shopping before heading to the hotel to change and head to watch Jubilee. Jubilee is basically your standard showgirls type of show, which there aren't many of anymore (Does Cirque de Soleil really need 5 different shows in Vegas...really?!). It was enjoyable, lots of singing, dancing, and some awesome sets. If you're in Vegas and want to see something classic, go see Jubilee, and there are coupons everywhere for it as well. If we had not done the free tickets, we would have done the half-price coupon I found in one of the guidebooks. Just don't bother with the Saturday show, since it's more "family-friendly" and not the true authentic Vegas style show ;-)

Hit the Victorian Room at Bill's Saloon and Casino for a very late dinner (midnight) and that is about where things went to hell for a bit. They were busy and we had to wait for 20 mins for a table, which wasn't so bad, but then the service wasn't as great. It was clear that the waitress was not happy about something, and it showed in her attitude, big time, we all noticed that. However, the icing on the cake came when our food finally arrived. After setting the tray on the rack and putting down two of the plates, the rack became unbalanced, and down went mine and GR's orders onto the floor.

*headdesk*

By this point, I'm exhausted, and starving, it had been about 12 hours since my last meal. I believe my words to the table were "This is one of those moments where I need to either laugh, or lose my mind." I chose the former, though more in a "go to a happy place" kind of way. Eventually new food arrived and we were able to eat with the rest of the group. Then for me, I had to basically walk away from the group and go back to the hotel because as it was, I was looking at 4 hours of sleep before going to the airport. Got back to the hotel, packed my stuff up, and went to bed.

The flights back to Vegas were fine, though as usual I banked way too much time to get through check-in and security. The reason was that I was advised that you had better take the 2 hours at Vegas because most folks flying are tourists, and it's pretty well known that tourists and families tend to take a while. I got in line to check-in for my flight at 7:30, got through checking in, then went through security, and it was 7:52. 22 minutes to get through the lines, so now I had just under 2 hours to kill. Lesson learned, I might be able to get away with 90 minutes before my flight on a weekday at LAS.

Overall, my trip was a blast, and there is talk of making this a yearly thing. Since Vegas changes often enough, and there is still plenty for us to see, I could definitely swing something like that. Did I mention I also loved being back in the dry desert air? Seriously, it's hot, but it's dry, so you may sweat, but you don't end up with your clothes completely stuck to you, simply because your sweat evaporates too fast. The catch though is you have to be especially vigilant about your water intake because you will dry out fast.

Soon I will have pictures uploaded for your enjoyment, mostly of the outside sights of Vegas.

Give and Take

A few weeks ago I wrote about some frustrations I had felt in regards to the fact that I had my surgery and how it had turned my life upside-down in ways that I didn't really appreciate. Someone pointed out what sounds like a cliche but holds true in this situation. It was that true friends will step forward and help you out and share in the burdens that are going on with you. I certainly saw many examples of that over the past few weeks, and perhaps it was a sort of lesson that I needed to learn for myself.

It can be generally said that if something happens to someone I know or they call for help in some way, I will step up and do what I can to help them out. I don't expect anything in return, I just do it. However, I completely and utterly suck at the reverse. I have difficulties with asking for help or even taking help from the folks I know and care about. A little of it is my nature, I'm a fairly independent person and pretty used to doing things for myself. However, it's also a bit of learned behavior in that I fear crossing that line where I'm going from getting a little extra support to becoming a mooch or lazy. It was like I was saying a few weeks ago, I felt wrong that someone was cleaning up my apartment and doing my laundry because my immediate reaction is they shouldn't have had to do it because it wasn't their mess to clean up, it was mine, and I should be responsible for it. However, considering that I was still using a chair to pull myself up off the couch because it was too painful to shift all of my weight into using my legs (as anyone would do), there was no way in hell I could have handled carrying clothing. What I needed to learn was that the people involved understood this and that was why they were willing to step forward and take care of things. Normally I'm the one who is thinking that I get what another person is going through and it's why I help them out, well I needed to learn that there are other folks I know who think the same way.

The other thing I got out of this was learning just who my friends were and where the quality relationships are in my life. It isn't just with those folks who visited at the hospital, gave rides, or stopped by; it was also those who expressed their concerns when they heard what had happened. I guess you do learn just who cares about you when you end up with something more involved than your standard sniffles.

Ultimately what comes out of this is the life lesson that it is perfectly okay to ask for and receive assistance from those you love and care about, especially when you're in a situation where some of your capacities are limited. Am I going to be perfect in recognizing when it's completely okay? Probably not. I will still have to overcome my natural instinct to be Mr. Independent, but at least I have a better sense of understanding that other folks I know will step forward if they feel it is right to do so, and if they didn't, I wouldn't hear from them.

Since we were on the subject about my surgery, I was asked the other day if I was scared of going under the knife. The answer is No. It's not because I am under the delusion that I am invincible or anything like that. However, I was in some pretty hardcore pain and puking my guts out every hour thanks to my reaction to morphine so I really wasn't in a state to sit and let my mind run through the possibilities of how this surgery could go and get worked up that it could go wrong. Besides that, I have no real fear of hospitals in general, and you can thank (or blame) my parents for that one ;-)

Back to Normal

Went and saw the doctor today for a follow-up.  That had to have been one of the shortest visits I have ever had, simply because I'm basically fine.  My scar has healed up very well, and I am up and moving about and look great.  Not much else had to be done except to look at the scar and advise me to keep it out of the sun as much as possible.  Apparently it could end up looking really ugly if I don't.  Now I normally like being out in the sun anyway, so I'll have to make sure to cover it in sunscreen.

Have I mentioned that medical bills suck?  That's a whole other story though.

Besides that, now it means no more restrictions, and it's about freaking time.  I was starting to feel a bit like a blob because there is some exercise I have not been able to do for the last few weeks, such as my shovelgloving, or even some of the strength exercises on Wii Fit.  Now that I can do them again, I will be working out with a vengeance.  I already did so tonight.

Now I can ride roller coasters as well, which is good because I have been making plans to make a few park visits.  As it is, I am up to 96 coasters ridden in the world.  I will be crossing the 100 coasters mark in the next few weeks when I make my very first visit to Carowinds down in Charlotte, NC.  I can't wait to go because it looks like there are some good coasters there, and it's another Cedar Fair owned park.  I also scored an awesome deal on a hotel that is a mile from the park.  Perhaps there is someone who is interested in joining me?

So glad to pick up where I left off, in a sense.

Tragedy On the Rails

My heart goes out to all of those who are affected by the tragic collision that occurred today on Metro.  I hope and pray that those who were injured have a speedy recovery, and the families of those who were killed are able to find comfort.

I also hope the folks at Metro and the NTSB can figure out just what the hell happened, that it wasn't because of major stupidity on the part of a conductor, and that steps can be taken to prevent this from happening again.

Seriously, I am just floored that this collision even occurred in the first place.  For me, Metro has generally been safe and I put a lot of faith and trust in their staff that when I commute back and forth to work that I will get there safely and in a good amount of time.  I don't want something like this to become a common enough occurrence that I have to be continually on guard for the safety of myself and those whom I know. 

Edited To Add: I decided to pull up Metro's stats on ridership, they have a lot of folks who come through the system every day so they seem to generally be safe.  You're probably more likely to get hurt while driving or walking to the station than you are on a metro train.

Pride Activities

This weekend was DC pride, and it was a rather busy weekend, but totally worth it.

Saturday morning I dropped by CT and RE's house to pick up the postcards that we were going to use for the booth on Sunday, and also helped them get some things set up for the parade later that afternoon. The beads were strung up and loaded into the truck and such, and we were good to go.

I rode to Dupont Circle on Metro to meet up with other folks at St. Thomas. Of all the weekends that Metro could have chosen to do track work at Dupont Circle, they picked the worst possible one with the pride parade on Saturday. I am sure I was not the only one who got stuck having to get off at Farragut North and then waiting for another train to get to Dupont Circle. Not smart on the part of Metro.

The picnic was fun, got to meet a number of new people along with hang out with a few folks from church while having some yummy food. Later in the afternoon we walked over to the parade area to get the truck set up and wait to get ready to go. Bishop Chane was there since he was riding in the parade with us (isn't it awesome to have supportive folks at the higher levels?).

Eventually the parade kicked off, and there was a great crowd of folks there all along the route to cheer us on. We were waving flags, carrying banners, and of course, throwing free swag. The popular item...bouncy balls. It is a bit of a pleasure to bounce them towards the crowd and watch folks scramble for them. I also handed out a number of postcards advertising St. Georges. Perhaps some folks will see them and decide to drop in for a service.

We all got to the end of the parade, and a few of us dropped into Thai Tanic for a drink (Chang (sp?) Beer is awesome BTW) and the big discussion was how much we enjoy being in the parade because of seeing all the people who do come out and watch and cheer us on. You tend to forget just how far the distance is or that you've walked a long way holding a banner to the point where you should be hurting, but for some reason, it just isn't there as you see everyone yell and scream as you go by, especially when you also see familiar faces. I think it's why most of us keep on doing the parade year after year, even if we don't participate in other pride activities.

After Thai Tanic, I decided to head home. I was tempted to head to another bar where I knew there was an event going on, but by that point I was tired and sore, so it would have just not been my thing that night. I might have also considered taking a nap and doing Blowoff later, but doctors orders have said no dancing yet. Oh well.

Sunday morning my plan was to go to 8 AM service and then head down to Pride, but it didn't work out that way. My front door of my apartment jammed, and so basically it was the landlord and I working first to get the door open, and then get the doorknob replaced because it turned out the latch had frozen so the doorknob was not pulling it back anymore. At least I was able to get out eventually the morning.

Went over to the festival, got the booth set up with a few other churches, and started working and chatting up folks as the festival got underway. Eventually RS and GS stopped by to bring water, and I brought GS over to the booth while RS parked the car (GS had broken her foot so she was using a wheelchair to get around) and I talked with one of my friends from college. It's kind of funny how our lives have mirrored one another. She came out, I came out, I converted to being Episcopalian from UU, and she did the same about a year after I did. So she's like my female doppelganger.

After being at the booth for an hour and a half, it was time to wander the festival. JS had arrived with Aiko so I was hanging with him before TB and his friend JX arrived. We all wandered the festival for a while before JS took off and TB and I explored the booths and chatted with folks we knew who were there. Later on we got lunch with CT and RE, but not before making a bit of a scene with one of the folks at my booth because I was walking around shirtless by then. It was pretty funny for various reasons.

After lunch it was getting close to 4 PM and I was beat and TB had to head back, so I decided to head home anyway and put my feet up. It was when I got back to Greenbelt that I realized my phone was missing, but at least I got it back later, as I explained in my last entry. I decided to break out the foot spa and soak my feet because between walking 2 miles of the parade and then several laps of the festival, I think they were ready to secede from the rest of my body.

So another year of Pride down, my fifth one actually. I definitely had a good time and I am thankful for all of those who came out to walk or ride in the parade, and who came to cheer us on at the parade as well. I was also glad to see folks at the festival that I knew and could chat with. Plus I'm grateful someone who knew me found my phone :-D

If I had Any Doubt Before...

...I was shown today that there is a God who is looking out for me.

For the very first time in seven years, I lost my cell phone.  In this case, it had fallen out of my pocket at Archives/Navy Memorial/Penn Quarter Metro Station. I had gotten to Greenbelt and I was getting up when I realized that I did not have my cell phone, period.  I frantically searched my pockets and my bag, but it was gone, and while I suspected it was at Archives, I was now 11 stops away and it was likely picked up.  

During that search, I discovered on another seat of the train that someone had left their cell phone.  I picked it up and turned it in to a Metro worker so that hopefully whoever lost it would find it again.

In the meantime, I went home and put up a tweet and a Facebook status that said my cell phone was lost and not to text or call it unless someone thought they could recover it.  A friend of mine on Facebook, Shane, said he had found it, but I called bullshit because I thought he was just messing with me.  I went to the Verizon store so I could get the old phone deactivated, and also get the ESN because Metro's lost and found would not necessarily be able to match up my phone unless they had it.  Besides that, I needed a phone, simply because I am one of the many households these days that only have a cell phone, no landline.  So, I forked over the $150 it was going to cost me since I am nowhere near eligible for an upgrade and headed home.

When I got home, I had a message on Facebook from Shane, giving a description of my phone and where he had found it, and everything matched.  It turned out he had found the phone on the bench at the station and decided to open up the phone and see if he could figure out who it belonged to, and he recognized some mutual contacts, and then found a picture of me in the phone.  He called one of my contacts to let them know he had found my phone, and he was about to call another but then it had locked out thanks to me going to the store to get it deactivated.  I was floored that he was the one who found it and that he also works up near my apartment.  So arrangements have been made for me to pick up my phone tomorrow, and I will return the one I just bought.

I really truly believe Shane was meant to find my phone to get it back to me, but only because I had done the right thing in finding that other person's phone on the train and turning it in to Metro.  If I had not done that, I doubt I would have seen my phone again.  Call me crazy, but I am willing to take a leap of faith on this one.  The odds were very low that not only someone would find my phone and get it back to me (lots of people due to the ride festival), but that it was someone who knows me, and works near my neighborhood.  So because I did the right thing, I got back something very good in the process.

So major thanks have to go to Shane for finding my phone.  I can get it back and I should be able to get Verizon to switch my phone back to my current one.  I'm also hoping I can get them to waive the re-stocking fee that they will charge me for returning the new phone because I have not removed any of the protective covers or taken anything out of their bags in the box.  If not, well, $35 is much better than $150.