SAAAAAAAAVAAAAAGE!

What a beautiful day! Troy, NY to Killadelphia...The drive to Royersford, PA was less than five hours and was worth the detour in every way!

Our dear friend Mark from the Conservation School back in Maine grew up just outside Philly and invited us over for Sunday dinner with his parents. None of us could have anticipated the amazingness of the evening! We arrived around 4:30 and were greeted with warm smiles, hugs and snacks. Kathy and Ty were two of the funniest and most hospitable people I have met in a long while. Kathy is truly wonderful in her quilting, she also started cross stitching recently and seems to be great at most any craft she touches. We chatted and shared stories for a while in the living room while munching on cheese and crackers. Got to see some great pictures of baby Mark and high school Mark when he was clean cut and wearing a suit!!!! Dinner time proved to be quite and event.

Kathy and Mark had prepared the food and Ty had made some great cookies for dessert. Dinner consisted of a great creamy chicken tortilla soup which had a nice kick to it, this was followed by open faced roast beef sandwiches and top ped off with chocolate chip cookies with milk(as promised!)

After we were not allowed to help clean we hung out some more, got directions to Abs place in North Philly, listened to more stories about Mark-including his epic performance of Van Halen at Air Band. Also heard about their epic family trips to a camp in Canada where Fidel Castro, Norman Rockwell and other elites used to chill. Kathy then played mom to Bubba and I...she packed us food to take and the coolest part of the evening-which felt like Christmas-was when she sewed our clothes! My plaid shirt had about 85 holes in it that she patched up amazingly, then she fixed my jeans and Bubs shirt. Mark gave me possibly the coolest/trashiest homemade screen printed back alley sold Paul McCartney concert Tshirt. Although we could have moved in and stayed forever we left shortly after 8 to meet up with Vicky's friend Alex Murphy whom she met in Thailand. We had a snack (although Im not sure how any of us fit anything else in our bodies after the huge Savage meal.) and paid for it via gift cards from the Savages. Alex is gearing up to go to Africa with Peacecorps.

After the most intense bloody nose I have ever had we said our goodbyes and were off to Philadelphia. Bub drove and got us their without missing the exit. After short introductions and a lovely back and forth with Cesar bubba and Vicky decided to sleep while Abs, Cesar and I went out to see Jae and South Street. Jae had been at the Eagles game earlier and introduced us to his roommate. Took some photos and were off to Lorenzo and Sons for pizza bigger than your head, where i got yelled at for taking photos-surprise, surprise. Got home and after some short pillow talk, crashed around 3.

Decided not to go to Midtown and pay for parking so we chilled at the aparment with Bruce the psycho kitty who tried to eat my compute and face patted Vicky all night.

Off to Washington, DC

Dont forget to smile