Philly

So as Dianne wrote, new jersey was super hard to bike through, all our
small looking routes turning into immense highways in the blink of an
eye, making for constant revisions and backtracking... We did
eventually make it through but were then late for our show at
marvelous music in Philly... Supposed to be there at 7, as another
completely different show started at 8:30! We actually thought we
might make it when we entered the city limits around 6:30, but soon
got thrown off our course (rt 13) by a bunk sign, asked some cops how
to get back on 13, which thee never heard of, and gave us different
directions between bouts of incredulity and proclomations that it was
impossible and that "you'll have to go under the L!!" which was no big
deal as it turned out.. Their directions called for an immediate left
onto a one way road going the wrong way, which I pointed out, and they
revised their directions seeing as we went with the flow of traffic..
Weird!
We got to the beginning of walnut st 45 minutes later, and needed to
get to walnut and 42nd in about 5 minutes, if we were going to play at
all... This was the fastest and hardest I've ridden ever, in high gear
the whole way up, weaving through the standstill traffic and
eventually breaking through the downtowneyness and racing to the show,
arriving in just enough time to play really really short sets (upon
arrival we were told we had a half hour to set up, play, and get it
put away) which we did - I played first and in my rush to set up,
tangled the cords into a rats nest and tried to work it out during the
prformance, accidentally disconnecting plugs and cords in the
process.. U got the feeling that the doc in "back to the future" must
have felt when the plug from the clocktower came undone, though u had
only to walk over to plug it back in, while he had an exciting ride
down a cable into some bushes to fix his... Not quite the same,
nevermind!
Anyways, then kurt put a chair in the middle of the room and started
to play, though partway through the first song the soundguy tossed a
cable across the record bins towards him, followed by a mic stand and
mic... Basically did the soundcheck during the second verse! Kurt
played 2 more songs, and we all (we had met up with Brooke from espers
and Mary, with whom we were to stay that night as well as my friend
aliene from Northampton) went to Indian Buffett and let Mary drive our
gear back to her place while the rest of us followed Brooke on a
somewhat helter skelter ride up one way streets, down sidewalks, over
cars, and so on, presumably it's Philly bikers like Brooke the cops
were referring to when they were suprised at our hesitance to go the
wrong way up a one way street!!
Got to Mary's, she showed up later, having gotten caught in an hour
and a half traffic jam, tough!
Hung out for a minute, then showered and passed out hard!
Woke late the next day, and basically took forever to get going, but
did eventually, and followed the greenway through some oil refineries
and then down on some little paths through state parks bringing us to
wilmington, deleware, where we ate salad pizza for dinner, and
recieved a couple warnings that our route would take us through the
bad part of town, and we should reroute immediately, which we did, and
upon mounting our bikes to head out again, another cyclist suggested
that our new route was ridiculously out of the way to avoid an
imagined danger, and we should take a simple route that he laid out
for us.. And got us lost in what i presume to to be the bad part of
town (not so bad..) and we ended up just happening upon our intended
road!
About an hour later we stopped at a gas station for further directions
(we make it up as we go along) and state police officer Fry
recommended headind west through Newark to some state reserved land he
thought we could find camping in... We ended up finding a ginourmous
field with super long grass (really good to sleep on) and upon waking
saw several deer across the field, excellent spot! On to Baltimore...

Sent from my iPod