August in America, day five

This morning, Jessica and I left Alexandria, but not by plane. No, we travelled by a more elegant transport from a more civilised age. We took the train. In just a few short, fairly comfortable wifi-assisted hours, we arrived in Philadelphia.

Ah, Philadelphia! It’s my first time in the city of brotherly love, though of course I’ve seen it depicted in many films. Why, the very train station we arrived at was the scene of the opening murder in Witness. Then there’s Rocky, Mannequin, National Treasure, everything ever made by M. Knight Shyamalan, and of course, Philadelphia.

Jenn showed us around her neighbourhood, and we grabbed a coffee at a suitably hipsterish café where the music was either from the 80s or completely new but heavily inspired by the 80s.

The plan for the evening was to go to a baseball game. When in Rome. But alas, the weather was too treacherous to trust so we went to a bar and participated in a pub quiz instead, ably assisted by the internet’s Kevin Cornell.

During the course of the quizzical proceedings, we all partook in a round of picklebacks. Jenn had previously familiarised me with the concept. A pickleback consists of a shot of Irish whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice. The theory is that the pickle juice completely erases any trace of the whiskey you’ve just knocked back. I, however, was very sceptical of the whole idea. It just sounded disgusting to me. I mean, Irish whiskey? Really? Ugh!

The pickle juice, on the other hand, was delicious.

Have you published a response to this? :

Previously on this day

10 years ago I wrote dCapsule

Add a memento to the dConstruct time capsule.

11 years ago I wrote Finding five numbers

Off-site Pownce metadata for my future self.

12 years ago I wrote Wordage

Go forth and coin.

13 years ago I wrote BarCamp London

A slumber party for geeks.

14 years ago I wrote Rocking out

If you’re in Brighton and you’re wondering what to do with yourself on a Tuesday night, why night come along to the Hanbury Ballroom to watch my band Salter Cane raise the very ornate roof.

14 years ago I wrote Web design and cultural identity

Andy "Malarky" Clarke penned an editorial a while back entitled Look out Johnny Foreigner in which he talked about web design and national identity.

15 years ago I wrote PDFs with PHP

Not all of the functionality I’ve been adding to this site recently involves JavaScript and the DOM. I’ve also added a new PHP script.

17 years ago I wrote Private And Public

I like this a lot.