Day 0

Planning

U2 in Montreal mid july? Awesome. I’ve always wanted to go to Montreal.

Bono. Back Injury. Tour postponed.

D’oh.

What now?

According to many attendees, the UFC fan expo is a rollicking good time.

The last one was Memorial Day 2010. Where could the next one be?

Late august in Boston.

Whoa it’s on R&R. I should totally go.

$50 Ticket to UFC fan expo? Check

I might as well attend UFC 118.~$150 in the bleeders? Oh well, it’s my first UFC show. Check

Wait a sec, I’ve always wanted to go to New York City and I’ll be so close geographically.

But I don’t want to spend an entire week in Boston and the most logical time to visit NYC is after boston, so where else could I go?

Chicago would be interesting.

So it’s settled.

Work à Chicago à Boston à New York City à Apartment à Work

Rationale

Prior to leaving, for 16 weeks I was trying to cut down to featherweight (145lbs) and my upcoming vacation gave me a hard deadline. The last few weeks were especially tough as the volume and intensity picked up and I was consuming a mere ~1500 calories/day. I got down to 150lbs and realized I might be able to make bantamweight (135lbs). However, my body rebelled and I became ill thus potentially derailing the final stages of the weight cut. Luckily I recovered with a few days to spare and I managed to dehydrate down to 135lbs only to re-hydrate to 150lbs 12 hours later.

Unsurprisingly, as I pared myself down to 135lbs, food occupied most of my thoughts and the bulk of my trip planning occurred around this time.

Urbanspoon was my goto restaurant reference. Why? For Vancouver, Bon’s off Broadway is in the top 25 restaurants. For the uninformed, Bon’s is near Nanaimo and Broadway and serves an outstanding $2.99 breakfast. And there’s no way in hell that Bon’s would ever be in any Vancouver guidebook, yet Bon’s is exactly the type of place I’d want to visit. Urbanspoon is also an aggregate of opinions, so here’s a higher likelihood of me agreeing with 100+ positive reviews versus the opinion of a single person (ie Anthony Bourdain).

Occasionally I checked out locations recommended by my guide book (Frommers) and any other interesting restaurants that I walked by, but otherwise, I stuck to top 100 restaurants from urbanspoon. Yelp.com was also helpful for determining restaurant hours and whether casual attire was appropriate or not.