Day 2: York PA

Day 2, and a lovely day it was. We rolled into York a little after 1 PM. Odd city – very beautiful buildings and a more-or-less deserted downtown. Reminded me of New Bedford in a lot of ways. We then hopped it for Amish country, a few miles east.



We started our Amish odyssey in Intercourse – home of the oft-stolen street sign (a fellow we met said his grandfather had personally lifted three of them over the last 80 years). Went pickle-and-jam shopping and ate a home-cooked lunch. Browsed the “Old Candle Barn.” Saw buggies. Way quaint:





(Whose smorgasbord? Gabriel's smorgasbord!)



(This goat was trying to climb this tree)

Then it was back to York, and our gig at Sparky & Clark’s coffeehouse.

First thing is we don’t have a mic stand – Gabe left his in Austin over his recent jaunt to SXSW. We’re going to pick it up when we get down there, but that obviously doesn’t do us any good now. And Sparky & Clark’s doesn’t have one either. What we did have was duct tape. And they had a stepstool and a broomhandle. So we MacGyvered this contraption:



The gig went down just fine. We played to about 10 people over the course of the night, most of whom we knew by name by the end of the sets (special thanks to Nick and Michelle, by the way). Not a big audience, but a great one nonetheless. We had a blast.

(Live MP3s from Sparky & Clark’s:

Gabriel's "Tough Love" - http://econo-graphics.com/superdupersecret/ToughLoveYork.mp3
Jared's "You Got Some Nerve" - http://econo-graphics.com/superdupersecret/YouGotSomeNerveYork.mp3)

And then we went and had our first CouchSurfing experience. For them what don’t know, CouchSurfing is an international program that uses the interwebs to connect travelers with people interested in hosting travelers. Everything is monitored, and hosts and surfers are reviewed by the people they stay with/host. It’s pretty awesome, actually.

Anyway, our first ‘Surf rocked. We stayed with Brian, Nick and Lindsay, college students in York who are about to graduate and move to Baltimore. Wicked cool people, and truly an experience we couldn’t conceivably have had through conventional means. We hung out, drank a couple beers and played a little music before heading to sleep. Brian played us a couple of his songs – he’s heading out on tour this summer, and if you are around you should seriously try to catch him – http://myspace.com/sirenisaband. Great stuff, with searing lyrics. Damn. Good people who want to host our bummy corpses, who also happen to be good musicians – what’re the friggin’ chances?



Then we crashed, woke up this morning and hauled out of York on the way to Chapel Hill, where we’re gonna rendezvous with Misty and the Western Civ crew. Huzzah!!!

Til tomorrow (but that’s just some other time),

J