East Coast Adventures: part 3

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…

East coast adventures: Part 1

I’ve been back home for a week and a half and yesterday was first day I left more than a mile radius of my house…it was also the first day I felt caught up enough to do so. I guess I didn’t post while I was gone so I’m gonna make a run down of our trip here:

September 21-26 Philadelphia, PA

Webly, Paul and I left Portland on a red eye on September 21st headed to Philadelphia. We were stoked to go to Riot Fest to make our inner 15 year old happy with some awesome bands like: The Dead Milkmen, Weston, and Plow United. We stayed with my friend Max and his housemate, Will, in West Philly.  Max lives around the corner and down the street from the Dock Street Brewing, which was our favorite brewery from the entire trip, probably because it tasted like NW ales.

Max has a muppet like dog named Sprocket. She’s a ball of energy bouncing all around and sitting in laps. The most ridiculous thing was her behavior with the cat, Lewis. Sprocket would try to play with the cat who would vacillate  between fighting back with paw swats or just  ignoring it. This would amount to the dog literally putting the cat’s head in its mouth and the cat would just let it. It was so weird! Occasionally the cat would retreat to the dog free space behind the West Philly window bars on the inside.

kitty jail is a safe space free of dog slobber.

Other amusing sites in West Philly:

I'm assuming this is what the east coas thinking being greee means? Small cap = less waste... uh hu, sure.

Stolen Skerple Revolution? I'm still kicking myself for not buying these! So ridiculous!

We checked out a bunch of awesome vegan restaurants and even tried to take a silly haunted tour. It didn’t end up being a haunted tour. It was more of a tour about the history of brothels and how there are dead bodies buried in all the parks. It was interesting, but not what we expected. On top of that we got caught in an east coast downpour and of course we didn’t have unbrellas. Oregonians don’t use umbrealls….but oregon doesn’t get rain that is like someone dumped a bucket on your head.

Oh! How could I forget! We went to the Mutter Museum! it’s a museum of medical oddities and it was pretty rad and totally worth the price to get it. The fetal skeletons and syphilitic brains and skulls were freaky. I totally suggest you check it out if you are in Philly.

Riot Fest was fun. It was like the Warped tour for adult punks in bootlegged Operation Ivy shirts. We tried to play a game of figuring out the ratio of  Black Flag tattoos to Misfits tattoos…but we gave up. Here are some photos:

Weston! I haven't seen them since 1995 in the basement of DV8. This big dumb stage was a far cry from that, but I still enjoyed it.

Paul and I sat on some bleachers and looked at a big dumb stage.

Philly sunset

Who in a million years would every have thought that Plow United would have been on a jumbotron?

Dead Milkmen in their hometown. It was excellent! I believe in swordfish!

More to come….