reunions.

Sometime on the Western coast of the US I got a message from Katie, the girl I met whilst in Chicago, telling me that she had booked a flight down to Philadelphia to come see me before I traversed the Atlantic back to the UK. I was taken aback by this news. Without getting too sappy about it, it was one of the nicest gestures anyone has ever made towards me. Who would have thought that the same girl who turned my head walking into a party in Chicago 6 weeks prior would be flying 300 miles to see me? I’d gone full circle, nearly all the way around America, yet somehow I was going to end it how it began in Chicago.

This was my third time in Philadelphia in the space of about 6 months. I love the city and, more importantly, I love the people and always have such an incredible time with every trip I made and I guess that was what drew me in for my final hurrah in North America. This time I got the privilege of being the tour guide as Rob and Katie had never been before. However, Philly’s typical trait of drinking to the early hours of the morning combined with the fatigue of having been travelling for 6 weeks rendered getting up and having productive days slightly hopeless. Yet, after you’ve seen the Museum of Art steps, LOVE park, the waterfront, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and wandered along South Street, you’ve pretty much seen Philly. Then after that you can just enjoy the company, the sun and the flowing beer.

We did make it to the Creatures of Abyss exhibition at the Academy of Natural Sciences, which was pretty awesome although we did get there really late (because we couldn’t get out of bed) and they had to kick us out in the end. Rob and I also put Katie and Kymber through the one of the worst examples of football imaginable for an outsider: England’s 0-0 draw with Algeria. I actually felt pretty guilty after that. We otherwise spent a lot of time with Kymber and Matt this time, and they were as humble hosts as any. From the vegan pizzas, to the barbeques, to owning Total Recall on DVD and to understanding and appreciating mine and Rob’s awful in-jokes; the two of them were great. Didn’t perhaps get to see the likes of Caitlin and Rachel as much I would have liked, and it was gutting to wake up too late on one day to find a missed call and a text revealing a day trip to Atlantic City that we were too late for. Dan and Nina and the rest of them were all as entertaining as ever. I’m definitely really going to miss making the trip to visit them every other month. The Megabus was definitely a bit late in introducing the $1 route straight from Toronto to Philly. I’d have been there every other week if that had been an option.

Unfortunately, the final night of the expedition was a bit of a sour one. Caitlin and Rachel held a little party at their apartment. It was all going awesome, drinking beers on the roof on a warm Friday evening in Philly, talking and watching the world of South Street go by. Then a doppelganger of Sideshow Bob went and spat fire on the roof. Damn. The police hang out a lot on South Street as it is so busy, particularly on the weekends and one of their spots is just outside Caitlin and Rachel’s apartment so it wasn’t hard for them to spot the burst of flames. They came and let themselves in (against the law) and forced us all to leave as it was some kind of fire hazard and the party was too rowdy. In reality, it was really controlled, everyone was calm and no one was particularly drunk. The policewoman who must have some kind of gender-inferiority issue in her masculine workplace decided that she needed to assert herself in the most unprofessional way possibly; by calling one of my friends a cunt because she wanted to get her bike, one a nerd because he had glasses and telling me I was looking at her like 4 year old child looks at her. If that’s the case, then her child has a lot of pent up hatred for her. Everyone was pretty upset by the whole ordeal and it further exacerbated my anger towards the way the police deal with people. The whole situation was very reminiscent of what happened in Amherst, but at least that was half-justified, there were 150 people in that house, not 20.

We ended up going back to Kymber and Matt’s but everyone was so on edge and angered by what had happened that it wasn’t quite the same. Nevertheless, we stayed up drinking until about 5am and ended up wandering around South Philly with Nina and Will as it got light, trying to find a taxi back downtown. The series of late nights would become our downfall as Katie and I then slept through the alarm that was intended to get us up to go to the airport. Panic ensued, but a couple of phone calls later and the flight was moved to later on in the day for a mere $50, which, in the end was pretty welcome. A few extra hours in bed did not go amiss, and I don’t know if I’d have enjoyed saying bye to Katie after 3 hours sleep and with a hangover crushing my skull.

The bus to New York City, after saying bye to Katie, was a pretty sad and pensive one. Spent wondering if and when I’d get to see the guys from Philly and Katie again. Rob and I didn’t talk a great deal. We then had the issue of finding out the hell we were going to get from wherever the bus dropped us off to JFK. One man on the bus just continuously talked at me, trying to explain the various different routes to go over the course of about 20 minutes, I didn’t take in any of it and it was some of the most useless help I’ve ever received. Another man noticed my blank stare at this man, and offered his help, which was much easier to comprehend. This help then turned into us going with him and him showing us where to go and helping our bags down stairs and everything. What it is to have a British accent. However, the route he suggested was via a subway line that was closed. Woe is me. To cut a long story short: I panicked a lot, Rob was pretty calm, we got there in the end but with only an hour and a half to spare. A little bit close for comfort for a transatlantic flight.