5/17- Last Visits of the City

The next morning I was hung over but focused on going to see Maddy for a good visit and still not over run my get together with Lica. I said my goodbyes to Ingrid and made my way to Red Hook where Maddy's boyfriend, Ben, lives. I'd never met Ben before and I liked him immediately. The building he had was pretty snazzy in its gutted state and chickens wandering about in the backyard. He was a laid back guy who seemed like someone who gets a lot done, but at his own pace.

Maddy was lovely as ever to see as well. She is an old friend from the first days of SVA and we've undergone an odd, but always close, friendship since then; she is very much like a sister to me. When I got there I was almost immediately given a coffee. Maddy has been drinking coffee since she was two, so what I was given was, as expected, the sort of coffee that rips your eyes out. It was heaven.

I was a bit bummed that I was going to have only an hour with them, since Lica and I had arranged to meet at Columbus Circle. As usual though, what ever time I had with Maddy seemed good enough. We all laid about chatting casually about our goings on and then when I had to go, I had to go, and they waved me off goodbyes. It was refreshingly homey.

Now I was to meet Lica. This was a meeting I couldn't for the life of me understand why I was so drawn to do it, but I was really compelled. Lica and I knew each other only vaguely through sharing the same aquaintances and occasionally being on set together. Hence the strangeness of the draw; I wasn't at all sure what to expect out of this visit, but I knew it would be an important connection.

We had arranged to meet up at a Starbucks at Columbus Circle. I'm not much of a Starbucks fan, but my boycott of them is waning and in the hurried conversation we had to get together and having no idea about that area I didn't see the point in changing places. She found me standing inside as she walked up and we met at the entrance. Almost immediately neither one of us really wanted to be there so we headed around the block for a diner or some place to eat. It turned out she knew of a place to get a great burger that she wanted to treat me to so we headed for that. I was expecting some little Brooklyn style diner remake that they do in that area of town. We walked into one of the swankier places I've been. Ivy climbing the walls, golden elevators to the second floor where we sat in muted elegance and class enjoying what was a very fine cheeseburger.

Immediately we set to talking and got into both our urges to travel. She had sent me an email back when I got in touch with her on Facebook that she'd had the travel bug when she was younger and still felt it in her, but was settled down now. I had figured that to mean she didn't do much adventuring these days and wallowed away at work. Instead, she probably gets out and goes camping more regularly then I do. Definitely more than when I'm staying put. She also has two stepkids that she's trying to turn on to camping, swimming, rafting, etc. It turned out that my gut had once again been right and that we had a ton of things to say to one another.

Once the burgers were long gone we still sat drinking coffees and going on about problems of the world that we saw. We didn't talk so much about the general gripes of this and that, but more hit on the overall things that we see of the fears in people against things that they don't bother to confront and therefore never see if they're even there. I was really surprised to look down and find out that three hours had gone by, and now was worried that I'd be messing up plans with my friend Elissa in Connecticut.

Elissa is a friend of mine from high school back in Longmeadow, Mass. She was another Facebook find to discover that she lives down in Greenwich now. The plan for that day had been to take a commuter train up to Greenwich after meeting with Lica and meet up with her and her family. After Lica and I spent the afternoon talking it was now suddenly 6:30pm on a Sunday. Greenwich being a notoriously well to do area I was now worried that I might be too late for a visit with her. What surprised me then was that Lica, with out me mentioning any of this, then offered to give me a ride up there.

I took her up on the offer. One, because I was having a really great time visiting with her; and two, I figured it would get me there quicker without having to hastle Elissa with picking me up at the train station. I gave her a quick call as we were heading out of the restaurant and it turned out all those plans were for naught. Elissa's daughter had caught a nasty fever and it would be a really bad time to have guests, but that she'd love to drive up to Mass and see me there in the next week or so.

I relayed this to Lica, but she was still up for a drive to Connecticut. I figured what the hell, so we clammored in her car and were off down the highways continuing our chat where we'd left off. She took me all the way to Stamford, just above Greenwich. We pulled into a park on the coast we found and wandered about scouting places to for me to tuck in at. Finding a perfect little nest for me in an old discarded iron works in the trees I walked her back to the car.

It was really an amazing visit catching up with her. Not only did she treat me to lunch and give me a ride, but she had put together a care package of Thera-Flu and hand warmers with two books she thought I'd like. She then hopped in the car and drove off again, and I meandered back to make my home in the iron works thicket for the night. It was good to be camping again.