City of Brotherly Love

The next day I relax while Adam is at work. I sleep in a little bit and cook some burgers leftover from a party and lounge around and watch TV until I get restless in the early afternoon and feel like I should do something. The Internet tells me that there is some bouldering in a park not too far away and I get my shoes and chalk out and go over the directions until I get them down pretty well. I take the next exit on 76 and go up a hilly neighborhood. I get turned around at one point because I think I missed my next road, but I really didn't so I end up doing a loop on some side street, and skidding out when I hit the brake too hard because a turn came up on me faster than I thought. It's the first time I locked up either of my tires, and it's really not a big deal because its the rear and I wasn't going very fast in the first place. Kinda fun, actually, but not exactly a habit I want to get into. I get lost again when I am looking for Walnut Drive on my left, and I don't realize I pass it because at the intersection, the road on the right is the name I notice, and it is not Walnut. I drive for awhile before I turn around and see Walnut on the return trip, and I make it to Fairmont Park pretty easily from there. It's a short walk down a shady road with all sorts of small dirt paths leading into the park on my left. I'm not sure which one to go down, and so I keep walking until I get to the end of the road and go in there. I find the rocks after a short while and climb around for a half hour or so. It's hard to spend a good amount of time bouldering when you are by yourself without a pad because it's just not that safe to try new climbs or high climbs, especially on rocks you aren't familiar with, so I just mess around for awhile.
When Adam gets back in the early evening we head out to get some dinner in downtown Conshohocken, and the huge beer menu really causes me some problems when I am trying to figure out what to drink. After we order, some guy comes up to Adam and starts talking about Black Rebel Motorcycle Club because Adam's got the shirt on, and they guy says he loves their first album, and when we start talking about specifics in their music, he kinda spaces out. It didn't quite occur to me that he didn't actually know anything about them except that they are a band, and every band has a first album, and he probably thought we were gay. What's the world coming to when two high school buddies can't get some food without getting harassed by gay dudes pretending to be interested in the same music you are? Jeez. I guess some people take Philly's nickname a little too literally. Adam went off to some town meeting later, he's on some municipal board, which seems pretty grown up to me, but then again so does having a job. I end up watching The Day After Tomorrow on TV into the wee hours of the morning cause I have nothing better to do and it's not very good, which is nothing less than I expected but I dig things in post-apocalyptic settings so I watch it anyway. Adam's roommate and his girlfriend get back as the movie is ending and I realized I could have had a fun night out on the town with them and gotten to bed at the same time. Oh well.
In the morning I head into Conshohocken to catch the train into Philly. Adam is going to be doing some bike race in Jersey for the weekend and I am going to be staying with Beth in downtown Philly. I can't find the train station first, then I find it just as a train is leaving and I have to wait another hour for one to bring me into town. When I get to the Market East station I walk seven or eight blocks to Beth's apartment in Old City. The apartment is great, with cathedral ceilings and spiral staircase up to the loft, and it's right downtown too. We go out and walk along Boathouse Row, where all the schools have their boathouses along the river, pretty close to where I was the day before in Fairmont Park. In the evening we go out with her neighbor to a bunch of bars in the area, which are all walking distance. It turns into a mini pubcrawl, and I think we hit up four in about just as many hours.
The next morning we walk around the Old City, and we wait in line for forty-five minutes for a cheese steak. It's Philly, and I have to get one. It's one of the more famous places for cheese steaks, and it's pretty good, but not worth a wait so long when you can get one that tastes the same or better probably at any sub shop in the States. Oh well. We hit some random stores around town, a book shop, and music shop, so on, so forth. That evening Devendra Banhart is playing in town, but we already have plans to meet Beth's friend out for his birthday party at some club called Lucky Strike, which turns out to be a club with bowling lanes marketed toward the hip younger crowd. It's on three floors or something like that and pretty crowded until they open a lower level where it's a lot quieter and we get a pool table. The next morning is Sunday and Adam is back from his bike race, and I miss the train I was planning on getting because the ticket line was so ridiculously long. I guess it's just too hard to put up some machines where people can get their own tickets. For some reason, the train system in Philly wants you to wait in line and miss your train because you have to deal with people ahead of you not being able to complete a thirty second transaction in less than five minutes. I want to go here, I have this money, thank you. Whatever. I finally get on a train, fortunately I had just bought a new book that I could read to pass the time, and get back to Conshohocken and when Adam picks me up we head out of town to his grandparent's place to have dinner with the whole family. It is a delicious beef roast. A home-cooked meal is always welcome.
The weekend is already over and I get my stuff ready for the ride to New York tomorrow. From here it's right up the Jersey Turnpike, tolls and traffic all the way, and that's just how it's going to be for the rest of the ride. The northeast just isn't the place for motorcyclists, but that's life.