September 30- October 5 NYC—>Philly—>Canastota, NY
We took the Megabus back to Philly then spent awhile trying to figure out how to get to the airport to pick up our car and all the people who worked at the Philly train station were unhelpful jerks. Finally we figured it out on our own and paid $7 to get to the airport that wasn’t that far away. WTF? Getting to the Portland airport is less than $3 from anywhere in the city. SEPTA, you are mean and expensive and your attendants smoke out the windows. What’s that about?
I almost forgot, in case you didn’t know, one of my favorite spectator sports is to watch the sinking ship that is Microcosm Publishing. It’s great that I don’t feel so attached at all these days but, I had to admit to myself that I must enjoy gossip because I find it pretty amusing to see the drama unfold from time to time. Usually my tip off is seeing hit spikes on this post and this post. This time it had to do with a space in Minneapolis asking not to have the latest Microcosm tour in their space. Then there was someone posting their “sunshine is the best disinfectant” e-mail correspondent with Elly. Which lead to Ciara posting “extortion is so punk rock” on her blog. Maybe it is just me who has been banned from anything Joe puts on the internet, but does anyone else find it amusing that he never seems to be the person writing anything publicly anymore?
anyway…
We drove north passing through the east coast’s sorry excuses for “mountains” listening to our ridiculous Spotify mix. We called it KJQ after the radio station we listened to growing up in Utah. The theme of the mix is if KJQ had frozen in time in 1992. It’s 22 hours long and has lots of 80s and 90s college/alternative/modern/synthpop/etc. music from the Cure to Ministry to the Fixx to Material Issue and more! Go here if you have a Spotify account and appreciate that sort of thing and put it on random. Let me know if you would like and invite.
This part of the trip was the part of the trip that we weren’t too sure about. We were headed to upstate New York to visit Paul’s family that we had never met before. Paul’s dad was also going to be there visiting his girlfriend. I guess he didn’t seem to think to find a place for us to stay until a few days before even though we had told him months in advance when we were going to be there. A few days before we headed north he told us that he had secured a place for us to stay in a camper at Paul’s cousin’s he had never met before. Ok. We had some trepidations and figured if things didn’t work out we could head west to visit our friend Derek in Buffalo or take a peep at Niagara Falls.
Autumn was in full!
We got to Canastota , NY and met up with Paul’s dad and headed to Connie and Paul’s (Connie had a partner Paul, too!) In an instant all of our reservations were gone. Connie and Paul were gracious and wonderful people. The camper we stayed in was so cozy and awesome and we just felt some comfy and welcome.
Our home away from home in Conastota!
We had many late night talks and were introduced to the wonders of cider and whiskey! Which we brought home:
so good!
to be continued…
Alex Wrekk 