Leaving home
So, last week on tuesday, me and my friend Anna started our to be three week long trip to the states. We made it to the airport early in the morning, well night, really, and then got on the plane to Heathrow airport in London to switch plane.
Long flight, short story - we made it to Newark airport, and set off to our pre-booked hostel in NYC.

First impressions
The first impression of the states was when we were waiting to get through the customs. There were two separate lines, one for foreigners, and one for americans. The fun thing was that the american line was shorter, but alot... fatter. Pretty much everyone in the line was overweight or heavily overwieght. Stereotypes 1 point.
The second thing that made a big impression was Manhattan, seen from the taxi when the sun was setting. Now that was BEAUTIFUL!

NYC
From then on we spent two days in NYC. We pretty much just chilled out, met a mutual friend of ours and just had a good time. Walking alot.
I bought a Microtrack 2, that was broke. I got it replaced, and the one I now have seem OK. Cool little device, and 150USD cheaper here than back home!!

Leaving NYC for the mod-meetup
After this, we got picked up by Malachy of newgrounds, to make our way to Philly and for the moderator meetup.
This is the first time I actually meet up with anyone from the internet, so I was really excited! First whom I saw was Pox in an angryfaic tee. With him outside to meet me up was StephanosGnomon. In the van was Malachy, being a little grumpy and annoyed by driving in the NYC, but it was all good. In the end. I guess. :)
We left and picked up Avie along the way. Nearly hit a racoon, and had problems finding his house ("hey it's the house with a porchlight, ya cant miss it!:).

At the NG office
We woke up in Philadelphia the morning after, and got picked up by the guys in the van again (me and Anna stayed at a hostel, the other mods got drunk at some hotel...).
Made it to the NG office, and was greeted by Mindchamber at the door. His first comment was "Tom's inside, go say hi and steal some of his powers".
Holy crap, that office is huge! There is so much space at that place and so many weird things... Most noticable is where the large TV and the videogames are at tho, guessing alot of brilliant ideas are shaped there...
Basicly we hung out at the office, starting to get to know one another IRL (most of us have had some kind of interaction with one another online, being mods and all, and many of the mods have been there for previous mod-meets).
But yeah, if I was a flash artist/programmer/similiar it would probably be a dream come true to work at a place like NG!

At the cabin
We set out after a few hours to the cabin the meetup was gonna be at, that place was freaking awesome! Tim made chicken, hotdogs and burgers - those burgers was just OMFGHOLYCRAP awesome. Alot of beer happened too, and some of you might have caught us live or posted in here.
All in all, a bunch of nerds (mods, in this case +Tim, Bob, Tom Mike and Wade) had beers and got to spend some quality time IRL - I never saw this many newgrounders at the same place, well, I've never seen this many to begin with. It's a really special experience to hang out with ppl like that.
Basicly, everyone is just supercool and really friendly, I had a wonderful time and I'm already thinking about next years meetup - if I'm still a mod, and have the money to spend, I'll easily be there!
I'm mostly surprised how everyone was so nice and that everyone got along so well, it really felt like hanging out with a bunch of friends, that I never met before! Odd feeling! Of course some I got to spend more time with than others, and some less, but I have to say that the one who I recognized myself in the most was SardonicSamurai, who happened to be as hyper as I was his age. And as for this being a flash-site, watch out for me in the future: AfroNinja taught me the basics in actionscript. OH YEAH!

I'll get around later on to make a short comment about what I thought of everyone who was there, just hopping the bandwaggon here (since many other mods who attended did that :3 ).

Philadelphia
After the mod-meetup, me and Anna stayed in Philly for three days. It's a really nice town, with a freakin awesome cheesestake. We had one at Jim's, and holy crap-a-doodle, it was just awesome! We basicly just wandered around, took some pics of monuments, shopped a little, and just took it real easy. I had dinner with some of the NG staff and some of their friends one night (Anna had a bad stomache so she didn't join), and that was just something to be remembered as Good Times (apart from the fact that I too had a bad stomache, diharrea is not a walk in the park...). On wednesday the 2:nd we left for Washington DC, to spend a few days there, and to hook up with UberBarista!

Washington Written updated 8 july
We arrived farily late, and had managed not to write down where our hostel was going to be at. We made it to a library where they had internet, and found out where to go. We had to fool around with busses and shit, and apparently our hostel was in the ghetto more or less. Wasn't all too pleasant to walk around there with big backpacks while street-thugs were hanging out in the corners etc. Anyway, we made it to the hostel, that turned out to be a hotel. The girl in the reception had no clue of what she was doing, so we were gonna get the room dirt cheap (though when we left we did have to pay what we were suppose to, which still was like 60-80$ less than the standard rate. they screwed themselves over hurr hurr).
Washington is a cool town, we checke out the White House, the big washington monument a.k.a. Hughe Wang, a few of the museums (saw a 3-d show in the air and space museum about black holes. Pretty neat). On thursday we hooked up with UberBarista and his girlfriend Nicole (she's fucking awesome, great job there, Paul!:). They took us out to a place (god damnit, what was the name again? PAUL PLZ TELL ME???) EDIT: the place is called "Rock Bottom" where they brewed their own beer, down in Arlington somewhere. They beers, the food and the company was just awesome!
Next day we were supposed to hook up with them again to see the fireworks (since it was 4'th of July), but after having been out walking in the odd weather (oppressing heat, kindof), and it started to rain, none of us felt like going out. We ended up in the hotelroom, just eating and watching TV. :(

Back to NYC
So, we took the bus back to NYC on saturday, and arrived on the afternoon. Basicly since then we've chilled out, checked out a few things in the city (a fairly lame comedy show amongst other) and today we were on an outlet store in New Jersey. Tomorrow we'll be hooking up with a mutual friend of ours, and it's time for me to fulfill my part of the deal me and Anna have - joining on the Sex and the City tour. I'm not a big fan of that TV show, buuut whatever, it could be fun I guess (or 4 hours of pain, suffering and agony).

NYC again
We got back and checked in on our cheap chinese hostel, in a claustrophobic sized room with no windows and a "double bed" way smaller than my single bed I've at home. But it was cheap, and we weren't intending to stick around the hostel anyway, so whatever.
The rest of the holiday was spent in this hughe city, with alot of shopping (which includes ALOT of walking...),
The sex and the city tour was looong, 3.5 hours... I did manage to survive the last 30 min by falling asleep though. We had cupcakes too! Seriously though, if you're a fan it could be worth it, me I've seen the show occationally, and never really liked it that much... it's not that it's bad, it just don't appeal. Also, it doesn't have Richard Dean Andersson, like SG1 had numerous seasons. Hurr hurr. Fun thing with the sex&city show is that alot, and I mean ALOT, have been filmed on various locations around NYC, which would make the tour even better for the fans.
What else did we do... climbed the Empire State building one day (and knocked down Kong from there), went to the beach... which is when I seriously doubted the whole trip, even though the waves were fairly small (I <3 to surf, even if I suck at it...). We met a mutual friend (same from the sex&city tour) and went out drinking (well, drinking was included in most days anyway). One day we spent on one of them outlet-malls in New Jersey. Basicly we just had a good time in NYC!

Going back home
On sunday it was time to go back, we made it to JFK airport, and after boarding the flight, we had to wait in a "flight line" to get airborn. Took us 2.5 damn hours of wait to get up! It was pretty close that we didn't make the flight to Sweden, since we had to transfer in London Heathrow. Oh well, we did make it anyway, and now I'm sitting in my apartement typing this. Came back last night around 21.30 or so, fell asleep around midnight... woke up 4.20 in the morning. Hello jetlag, let's be friendss for a few days!

All in all the trip was a big success. Highlight for me was the mod-meet though. It was so cool to actually meet the people I chat and keep contact with on a more or less daily basis, I had a really really good time and <3 all of them! And the staff are just awesome too, so extremley friendly and good people! Well, I guess I'd be a friendly guy too, if I worked with what I loved to do in an office with a bigscreen TV like that... :)

Even if you're not a moderator you can still go to the random NG real life meetups that seem to be more and more frequent, I personally hope to make it to the London Meetup that Luis-the-Mexican is managing. I might have to work that weekend though, so time will tell...

<3 NG