OMG, this was a fun trip! Since Sandwich was going to be in New York, he invited me to meet up with him and his kid brother Jed (AKA Splinter) and we managed to get GE on board as well. We' planned this trip for over a month. Let's just say there were...complications when me, Sandwich and Jed went to meet GE at Penn Station...
Okay, get this. I drove up to Sandwich's uncle's place in New Rochelle from my dorm in White Plains. The three of us take the train from New Rochelle to Penn Station (via Grand Central) and we get there around 11am; we were supposed to meet GE at Penn Station around 11:30. So we wait a half-hour, then head over to where GE's train is supposed to be getting in.
We ask the conducter there if this place is where the passengers from Philly are supposed to exit the train. He replies that that spot is only where the passengers in the front of the train get off and that the passengers at the end of the train exit somewhere else. He gives us some vague directions about where this other waiting area is and we try to find this place. We don't find it (for those of you who have never been to Penn Station, the place is
huge) and so we're wandering around for another half-hour just killing time. We go into a bookstore to kill some time when we hear the PA page Sandwich by his real name.
"Michael Cohen, please meet your party in the main waiting area. Michael Cohen, please meet your party in the main waiting area." The three of us spend another 40 minutes looking for this mythical main waiting area and fail to find it. So we head over to the customer service area and decide to try and page GE ourselves and have him come to us.
Now, keep in mind, that none of us had ever met GE in person before. Our main assumption was that GE would recognize Sandwich because everone here has seen the "Serious Sandwich" pics, making Sandwich easily recognizable. (I had no trouble recognizing Sandwich when I first met him, so we figured GE wouldn't either.) Unbeknownst to GE, I had PM'ed him my cell phone number in case he had any trouble. Unbeknownst to I or Sandwich, GE had PM'ed Sandwich that he would be wearing a Hawaiian shirt to make him recognizable. (I was wearing my ThinkGeek.com binary joke T-shirt to make myself more distinctive, BTW. There's another story that involved that shirt that happened later that day, but that story will be told later.) So we were wondering why GE wasn't calling me on my cell. After paging GE by his real name, we waited a half-hour, then paged him again and waited
another half-hour. By this time, it's almost 1pm and we've been in Penn Station waiting for almost two hours. Finally and reluctantly (because we had no desire to diss GE since he had come up from Philly to see us, but we couldn't wait all day), we decide to leave.
As we're leaving, Jed says he has to go to the bathroom, so we wait for him. Not a minute later, we see a 20-something guy weaing a Hawaiian shirt and carrying airport-notice-style a notebook marked in big black magic-marker with the letters "HLP". Sandwich says to the guy "GE, is that you?" and the guy looks over, instantly recognizes Sandwich and replies "Sandwich?"
And that's how me and Sandwich met GalacticEmperor face-to-face.
(It turns out that GE has also paged
us three times, but since we were on different floors at the time, we never heard the second or third messages for us.)
I'll leave my ThinkGeek.com binary joke T-shirt story for either GE or Sandwich to tell.
Oh, and here's a memorable quote from that day when the four of us were waiting in a REALLY long line for the Skyride in the Empire State Building...
GalacticEmperor:
Do not try to ride the ride. That's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth.Me:
What truth?Me and GalacticEmperor (in unison):
There is no ride. 
