Stephen, a good mate who is currently doing his PHD in New York recently posted a story about the time we were in Montauk working as chefs. It was a few years ago now and a lot has happened since then, but neither of us will ever forget it. 3 months and 2 weeks or so we spend in the states with plenty of dollars in our back pockets.
Stephen’s bed was in the sitting room… and he never got much sleep. Added to that was the fact that there was another bed in there with two girls who were (whats a nice word for drunken messy idiots). The “apartment” was a mess but it was ideal for student accommodation. At any one time we had anywhere between 8 and 15 people sleeping in a place that had beds for 9. Anyway here is a picture of the Tipparary Inn kindly supplied by Google Maps:
I will never forget the first day when Stephen had to cycle to the Lobster Roll on his own. The basic directions was head to Montauk village and hang a right and keep going until you see it. But what did Steve do, turn left and cycle about 5 miles to Montauk Point Lighthouse where he realised that he had gone wrong. I have done this cycle and it is tough. Now he was at least 15km away from where he needed to be…
There was one other very funny instance when Carmel and myself asked Steve to pick up our washing from the laundry service… it just needed to be put in the dryer. We came home after a late shift and went into our room to see a mountain of clothes, most of which didn’t belong to us. The next day we both had double shifts so we couldn’t do anything about it. The following day, I put all the spare clothes in a black sack to bring back to the landry so that the people missing probably all of their clothes could hopefully be reunited…. Luckily and rather embarrasingly I met two girls on the way who were desperately looking everywhere for their clothes… 
Perhaps the most bizzare of instances that occured was when Stephen arrived in one night and told me he had fallen asleep on his bike on the way back down the hill into Montauk Village. I told Stephen he was crazy and it was impossible to fall asleep on a bike… about two weeks later, after working 3 days of 12 hour shifts, I was cycling down the same hill and fell asleep. I managed to cycled down Main Street, turn left and I didn’t wake up until I hit a speed bump on the way out… Very strange indeed…
There are tons of other stories about Montauk and I might try and add some over the coming months. There was the time we decided to cycle on the hottest day of the summer and didn’t bring any water and decided to take the scenic route which was twice as hard… we were both dehydrated but Stephen was in worse shape and the head chef made him sit in the freezer to cool down… There was the time we almost got knocked down by some idiot who saw a car parking space…
One small correction in that mostly true story: after finding myself 15km from the job, I still got there on time for my first shift!
Because I’m good like that.
S
Comment by Steve — 20 February, 2006 @ 17:06