You Don't Need No Wax Job, You're Smooth Enough for Me.

Count so far: 4 live deer, 3 dead deer, 1 dead fox, 674 dead snipes. I saw all three dead deer before I saw the first live one.

I woke up late on Sunday and headed into Philadelphia thinking the city would be relatively quiet and parking easy to find. My plan was to spend most of the day in the art museum and wait until Monday to hit up the bookstores.

I got into Philly at about 10:30 and couldn’t find parking within like 20 blocks of the museum. I found a spot in some residential neighborhood near an elementary school, and after leaving the van and walking towards the museum, I realized I’d neglected to make mental note of the van’s location (more on this later).

The library was having a book fair and the streets all around it were congested with children, performers, and book vendors (the pic of me with toot from the last blog came from this festival).

In addition to the book fair, there was a pro-Israel festival and parade going on in the area directly in front of the museum. A large section of the downtown was blocked off because of this, and all the parking spots on those streets were unavailable.

So the city was very busy, which was a good thing.

I walked through both festival crowds, making sure to grab food in both places (I think I got hot dog mustard on Toot’s back), and stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the museum. I was considering doing the whole Rocky thing, but as I stood there deliberating, three coach buses behind me unloaded about 250 elementary school kids. Every single one of those kids blew past me, ran up the steps to the top, and jumped up and down with their arms held high in the air. When I saw how stupid they looked I decided not to follow suit, even though (despite the extra weight of my fanny pack) I coulda smoked all those ten year olds (except maybe for one sporting a Kahloesque moustache who looked like he’d been held back a couple times).

I walked up the steps like an adult and got in line for the museum. After waiting for about 30 seconds I decided against visiting the museum. The place was swarming with thousands of children, and the line, if stretched out, was about a football field long. I wandered back out into the streets and took some more pictures of the parade and festivals and downtown area. Much of Philadelphia is very similar to Boston—by design I’ve been told.

The Philadelphia library is pretty incredible. The inside is beautiful, their author lineup is packed with huge talents, and the outer doors are automatic . . . just like Wal-Mart!

After hours and hours of wandering around Philly, trying my best to avoid dwelling on the fact that I didn’t know where my wheels were, it was time to go. My feet weren’t accustomed to the work boots I was wearing. I hadn’t worn them since last summer at the farm and all the Philadelphia walking had given me a couple sizeable blisters.

I trudged up a hill in the general direction of my car, knowing I might be in for a very long search. I tried as best I could to retrace my steps, but there weren’t many landmarks in the area I’d parked. As I reached the top of the hill, I took a right to begin zigzagging my way back down, but as I neared the end of the side street, the sunshine reflecting off the lettering on the rear windshield of my Odyssey caught my eye. I’ve never been so happy to see that ugly white beast.

I took off my fanny pack and climbed in, determined to find a bar in which to watch the second half of the Celtics game—game seven of their series with Cleveland. The three or four bars I found in Philly were playing a Philadelphia hockey game on one television and a Philadelphia baseball game on the other (if they even had two televisions), so I gave up and decided to head back to the campsite. I’d have to read about the Celtics game the next day.

Just outside of Philadelphia I saw a large bar and decided to give the Celtics game one more shot. I parked the van, strapped on my fanny pack, and walked in. The place had about eight televisions. The Celtics weren’t playing on any of them.

The guy greeting people at the door noticed me surveying the televisions and asked me what I wanted to see. I told him the Celtics and he changed the channel on the television right over the bar. Then he turned down the volume on the other televisions and turned up the volume on the Celtics game. The fourth quarter had already started, Celtics up. I thanked the man profusely and told him about my arduous search for the game.

The bartender, a cute youngish woman, approached me as I sat down.

“I’m sorry in advance,” I said. “I know this is pointless, and I always make fun of people who order them, but what kinds of non-alcoholic beer do you have? I have a bit of a drive ahead of me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said with a kind smile. “You’re being responsible. I admire that.”

She listed off three varieties of non-alcoholic beer. I’d never heard of any of them.

“Have you tried them?” I asked.

“FUCK NO!” She said, laughing. “There’s a reason I work here, honey. I’m an alcoholic. Why waste the calories?”

I picked a beer at random and she brought it over.

“I like every kind of alcohol,” she said, “except for gin. That’s how I know I’m not a true alcoholic.”

She hung around my end of the bar while I watched the Celtics and drank my big boy soda. While I watched Pierce drain a number of difficult shots, she told me about the boyfriend who’d just dumped her. She told me about the unbelievable love letters he’d written her, and how they didn’t matter since they were nothing but lies.

“He just called me up one day and said that everything he’d ever told me was a lie. As you can probably tell, I don’t handle breakups too well.”

“You handle it better than some,” I said, as I watched Lebron screw up a jump-ball play.

I liked talking to her. I hadn’t really spoken more than three words to anyone all day. And although I wasn’t that interested in her ex-boyfriend, and she wasn’t that interested in the Celtics, we got along well.

As the Celtics won, she told me how she’d once mistakenly referred to the Clemson basketball team as the Clementines.

I told her it was an understandable mistake because they’re both orange.