What you are about to read is a true story. In no way is this account embellished or extorted, fabricated or falsified, contrived or otherwise dubiously concocted for entertainment purposes. All information contained within is factual and presented chronologically, as it transpired. It is my belief that no hyperbole of the human mind could ever encapsulate the sheer volume of buffoonish hijinks endured by any one individual in the city of Rochester, New York, on his way to a physics conference during the fateful weekend of April 17, 2026…
Aidan vs. Research Funding
It is three hours before the last train to Rochester starts its journey northward. I am broke and blind, and the great gods of Vassar research and travel funds have withheld their heavenly finances. I am sweating like a sinner in church. There’s a pile of bitten-off fingernails at my feet threatening to require its own postal code.
Time passes, my hairline recedes and I have no more fingernails. Money is not coming, but I must embark. I whip out my card, secure a hotel room and train tickets and return my card to my desk drawer. Thirty minutes later, I am $600.35 in debt and on Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited. Rochester is within my grasp.
Aidan: 1 | Rochester: 0
Aidan vs. the Amish
I must preface by stating that I love the Amish. Rather, I love to observe the Amish, emboldened by nine-year-old me’s brilliant ruse to woo women by reciting “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Amish Paradise” at recess. After hitting Albany, our train picks up about 30 Amish people en route to Toledo, Ohio. This is a classic sight. What I have never seen, however, is an Amish baby.
There is an Amish baby sitting four rows ahead of me, looking back at me with its fat cheeks stained with what I presume is Amish applesauce. This baby is loving the ride, and I am loving messing with her. I discovered, through a methodically executed game of peek-a-boo, that object permanence is a fairly new concept to this cherub. I am actively gaslighting this Amish baby into thinking that I am disappearing and reappearing like Harry Houdini in this train car. She is loving it.
Whoa, there, tiger, easy on the applesauce. She spits up.
Her parents are not amused. I get shot a glare of a thousand hand-whittled daggers from her father. I cease peek-a-boo operations and return to my silence. Goodbye, Amish baby, have fun in Toledo, Ohio.
Aidan: 1 | The Amish: 1 | Rochester: 0
Aidan vs. Rochester Nightlife
I disembark my beautiful, safe, warm train and take the first confident step along my 11-minute trek to the Downtown Rochester Wyndham Hotel. It is important to note here that I have never done crack cocaine.
After about 26 confident paces, a lovely gentleman approaches me and extends his palm with a Ziploc bag enclosed. A bag of crack cocaine. “Wow!” I exclaim internally, “Crack cocaine!” I have never seen crack cocaine, but I cannot let the gentleman know this because I am cool. I politely decline his gracious offer with a wag of my finger.
I beat on, my little boat against the current of the Genesee River, borne back ceaselessly into the past. At a river crossing, I am approached once again by Rochester residents. This time, two drag queens: Miss Appropriation and Larry. My night, or rather my morning, is completely made. Thank you, Larry and Miss Appropriation, for the lovely nods along my way as you passed by me on the sidewalk, and for not making fun of my distended backpack with my quantum computing research poster bulging out like a construction zone hazard flag. I will always remember you two.
Aidan: 2 | Rochester: 1
Aidan vs. the Mud
After meeting some of the nocturnal residents of Rochester, I cross the river. Perchance, you have heard of Washington leading his battalion across the Delaware on Christmas Day? That, dear reader, is how I felt. Except that Washington wasn’t going to a physics conference; he was going to war. The city of Rochester, at this point in the night, has decided to declare war on me.
SCHLIPP! KRAKOW!
I find myself falling. Legs uprooted from below my waist, turned toward the sky, I take a generational tumble to the cold, hard asphalt. Except it’s not so hard. It’s mushy and gushy—smushy, even. I have slipped and fallen into a pit of mud. Goodbye to my eggshell-colored shorts; they are brown now, brown like poop. Damn you, mud. Damn you, Rochester.
Aidan: -1 | Rochester: 2
Aidan vs. the Wyndham Hotel
I arrive at the Downtown Rochester Wyndham Hotel. I am wet, cold and covered in mud from the waist down, but I have a gumption behind my eyes, a swagger in my walk, a cut to my jib and a deep desire to pass out on anything that resembles a bed. The lobby is crowded for 1:00 a.m. on a Saturday. People are splayed out, parents are on phones, there is yelling, there is groaning. A man with a guitar weeps in the corner. I approach the front desk.
“We’re overbooked. We can’t help you tonight.”
The man at the desk looks at me with such great indifference that my gumption, my swagger, my muddy trousers all fall away into the abyss. All I can feel is a cold, bony hand on my shoulder. The Grim Reaper. He’s here for me. I found hell, and it’s Rochester, New York.
Aidan: -10 | Rochester: 3
Aidan vs. Janice
Retreating to stage left, I call Janice at the Rochester Downtown Hilton Garden Inn. Janice shares her deepest condolences that the Wyndham Rochester Downtown has overbooked me with a warm greeting: “The hell do you want?”
“I’d like to book a room for the next two nights.”
“Yeah, we got rooms. Just get here in the next 10 minutes.”
Noted, Janice. I book it out of the Downtown Rochester Wyndham Hotel at top speed. I make it to the Hilton Garden Inn in eight minutes—take that, Janice.
I bound into a barren lobby; Janice is seated behind the desk, asleep. “Where the flip is everybody?” I ask myself, sparing profanity, because I am a polite young man. Janice comes to, and I ask what the urgency was. Janice replies, “I was just messing with you.”
“What the fuck, Janice?” This time, I curse. Not to Janice, of course, but in my head. Damn you, Janice. Damn you, Rochester. Going to pay, I reach into my pocket only to find a gaping credit-card-sized hole. The usual resident of that now-void space in my mud-stained shorts is seated happily in my desk drawer at home.
I stand in front of Janice, trembling. “Please excuse me.”
I retreat to the side of the desk to deliver a somber soliloquy to the Chase Bank AI Assistant, pleading for a transfer of funds, sobbing to the cold servers of a robotic chatbot to let me avoid overdraft fees. Eventually, I prevail over the robots.
“I have the money now, Janice,” I retort. I pay, I receive my keycard and I begin a walk of shame up to my room. But at least I have a room. Things are looking up.
Aidan: -3.14 | Rochester: 4
Aidan vs. the Keurig
Entering the room, I am greeted by a beautifully set bed, a television set with the Rochester local news blaring at a volume that, if I had to guess, is not a multiple of five. I am relieved. So relieved, in fact, that I will celebrate with a piping cup of decaf coffee from the in-room Keurig machine. I fill the single-serve apparatus with Rochester tap water of the finest quality, load the K-Cup into the receptacle and program the machine to “Brew.” It just so happens that when affixing the pod into its welcoming cradle, I jostle the water container just enough to loosen its lid. Water is heating up, gurgling.
“That’s a lot of noise, damn.” I’m alone, so I can swear for real now.
BUBBLE, BUBBLE, GURGLE-SPLASH
Boiling water, the temperature of a small main-sequence star, comes bursting from the Keurig and onto my person.
“Ow.”
Aidan: –106 | Rochester: 5
Aidan vs. a Crotch Stain
I am a little burnt and a lot sore from this interaction with the Keurig, so I give up on the coffee, knowing that there will be vats of piping hot joe waiting for me tomorrow at the University of Rochester. Everything is peachy. We’re A-OK, and we made it to a room! Now, I decide I should unpack my belongings. I’ll prepare my darling outfit for tomorrow. How about that?
While the train ride was far from turbulent, it seems that somewhere between my tumble in the mud and sprint across Downtown Rochester, a biblical flood had been released in my bag. The meager floodgates of a plastic gravity-fed curl cream bottle have given way to the powers that be. My dress pants, specifically the crotch area, have been obliterated. Once beige chinos are now a fecal-accident brown, inundated with Hydrogenated Castor Oil, stained permanently. Better than the mud, at least.
Aidan: -1023 | Rochester: 6
Aidan vs. Sleep
It is past 2 a.m., and the only thing on my mind is sleep. I set my alarms for 6 a.m. for my call time at 8 a.m., plug in my devices to the room’s outlets, draw my shades, slip into curl-cream-soaked pajamas and crawl into bed. The journey seems a distant nightmare—the scoreboard of this proverbial Thunderdome match is wiped clean, and my tally resets to zero. Goodnight to this room. Goodnight to this terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. And good-freaking-night to Rochester.
Aidan: 0 | Rochester: 0
Aidan vs. Wall Outlets
A shaft of blazing sunlight beams through the shades. Rochester’s avian population scores the soundtrack to a peaceful morning. I am so well-rested. Too well-rested. I look for a clock. The wall-mounted clock connected to the room’s outlets is dead. Crud. I search blindly without my glasses for my cell phone; it’s dead. Crap. I fumble through the bedside drawer for my watch; it reads 10:30 a.m. Holy fuck.
Aidan: –(i’ve lost count) | Rochester: 1,000,000
Aidan vs. the Conference
In a flurry of panicked dressing, I tear myself out of my pajamas, don my darling outfit, grab my poster and race to the street below. An Uber driver named Boris picks me up. God bless Boris. The conference began at 8 a.m. I am two and a half hours late. May I reiterate a previous point: Holy fuck. Inshallah, I will make it to this conference. If it’s the last thing I ever do, then so be it, but I march in, poster in hand.
In what seems to be another God-given miracle (the first was Boris), the University welcomes me and allows me to host my poster presentation. I am forever indebted to the scheduling flexibility of the University of Rochester’s Physics Department. Some hope is restored. The conference comes and goes, research is presented, free cookies are stashed in my pocket. I am weary, but there is a fire in my bones. A fire with the desire to set the city of Rochester ablaze as recompense for this entire ordeal. But I am Zen. The worst is behind me…
Aidan: -1023 | Rochester: 1,000,000
Aidan vs. Rain
The conference passes, and I decide to decompress from my misadventures with a walk. A scenic, three-mile walk along the river from the University of Rochester back to Downtown. It is about the 20-minute mark of the journey when the sky darkens, and the heavens above Rochester decide I’m having just a bit too decent of a time.
KABOOM
Thunder claps, ringing throughout the land, the small, stupid land of Rochester, and out from the once clear skies come torrents of rain. Rain from every direction. Rain from above, from the sides, somehow from below. The entire city is engulfed in falling water, almost as if to say, “Time for a shower, stinky boy.” The city of Rochester is laughing at me. With the one shred of dignity I have left, I keep on.
Aidan: – ∞ | Rochester: 1,000,000,000
Aidan vs. Rain, Now with Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
By the time I reach the Downtown Rochester Hilton Garden Inn, I am soaked to my bone marrow. I look up from my downturned head to see my snickering greeter at the front desk—it’s Janice. I pay her no mind because all that I can mind is my current, unending wetness. Ta-ta, Janice.
Reaching my room, I dry myself off and start to plan the ultimate quest of the day: dinner. My stomach yearns for Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, and so I go out once more to brave the journey to sweet, sweet ribs and half a chicken, an order that I place online. Drenched in my own shame, but driven by a deeper, gastronomical force, I make it to the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que after 15 minutes of walking.
My order has been forgotten. An hour passes before the angelic smoker voice of a 50-something-year-old lady named Edna graces my ears with the beckoning of my name. Finally, food has arrived. I tie up the flimsy plastic bag and head back into the rain. It is, somehow, raining harder now, so hard that the rain makes my grip on the frail bag susceptible to slippage.
FLOOP
The bag slips out of my hand and opens to the elements. I gather the handles of the bag and look up only to find a small trio of Amish people staring at me. They are across the street, high and dry under a comically-oversized, three-person umbrella. I watch as they snicker at me. My opinion of the Amish has been tainted.
Getting back to my room, I open the waterlogged bag of barbecue, ready to make Denethor, Steward of Gondor’s feast look like a private school kid’s dainty little clementine-and-cheesestick snacktime. I look into the bag in horror—they forgot my cornbread. Damn you, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Damn you, Amish. Damn you, Rochester.
Aidan: K.O. | The Amish: 2 | Rochester: + ∞