2004-06-21 - 11:35 a.m.

Our one night in Northampton was a brilliant one.

The Roommate and I spent a number of hours on a bus from Boston to Worcester (which I really want to visit) and then to Springfield, where we had a few minutes to walk around before our change to Northampton departed.

Springfield was kind of depressing--literally half of the people walking around the city either had some sort of handicap, or weighed over three hundred pounds. The city itself was very pretty.

We were very excited when we got off the bus at Northampton--we had blazed through miles and miles of beautiful weather (I hardly spent any time with my book, the trees were so nice), and we had a couple of hours of sunlight left on the day (the day before the first day of summer, by the way).

We got a 12 pack of the Champagne of Beers and checked into our hotel, and spent a few minutes there doing hotel things before we left to see the town.

Northampton is one of the prettiest towns I have ever seen, and bigger than I expected it to be. We hit a used CD store first, and as I was browsing the Hs, I turned to my right to see a breast nub sticking out at me--a little hippie girl was next to me and was wearing an extremely revealing blouse. This was a good sign--okay, I said to myself, play it cool--the rumors were true and this place really is crawling with cute hippie chicks. Unfortunately, that was my one and only sighting, but I guess one is enough.

We walked around a little more and made a mental list of stores we wanted to visit before we left, and ultimately found the brew pub there, where, outside on the big patio, we started on our course of drunkenness before the sun had finished setting, but we had a big meal and it turned out okay. Everyone we talked to was really excited at the prospect at recommending bars and stores to us, and we hit the Tunnel Bar next.

The Tunnel Bar turned out to be the most beautiful place I have ever had the pleasure of drinking a Bud inside of. I won�t say anything else about it--just that if you ever find yourself in Northampton, make absolutely sure you hit the Tunnel Bar for at least one beer.

I had forgotten my CDs (Robert Pollard, GBV single, Mary Timony, and an old Twisted Rico sampler, all cheap) at the brewpub and raced back across the little town to reclaim them, no problem. That kind of stuff never happens, but I think life decided to look the other way for me for just one night--maybe it didn�t see me escape the confines of the (617) area code--and so I started getting breaks I never usually get, and on the walk back to the Tunnel Bar, I saw some fireworks in the sky.

We got directions to Hugo�s after the Tunnel Bar, and the guy made it seem as if we�d be walking for hours, but we were there in five minutes. Actually, we stopped off in a better dive across the street from it (it had a beer can museum) and had a few before Hugo�s, which was less a dive and more Northampton�s equivalent of the Model.

From there, and drunk, I guessed a good route back to the hotel and was right, and on the way discovered a bowling alley, which I insisted we visit.

They were playing hits inside, and kids were actually line dancing for prizes. We got our shoes a size too big because who wants tight rented bowling shoes, and got lane 10. I turned out to be very grateful for the privacy--I had never used the big balls with finger holes, and the only one lying around that fit my fingers weighed as much as a 30-pack of Bud. I must admit that my balance was a little off as I tried to figure out how to bowl the normal way for the first time, and this, in conjunction with the very slippery floor and my own drunkenness, resulted in a couple of falls with momentum for me, and I crashed into a few things. Fortunately, I didn�t feel the pain �till the next day.

I also continued my mastery of the robotic claw game, and won the Roommate a stuffed pink elephant with a little stuffed ball attached to its trunk. She named it (ahem) Pinkieball, and has been quite attached to it ever since. Guess who carried it home?

When we got back to the (non smoking) hotel room, we watched some cable and I went out for a few butts. We had mountains all around us (or at least �mountains� by my speed) during the day, and my only disappointment was that the night stars were not more brilliant than in Boston, but I was okay with that.

When I woke up the next day, the Roommate had been wrapped up in a movie starring Mos Def and some guy whom she insisted was not Geoffrey Rush, and we got ready and checked out on time and walked back downtown, past the annoying tree we kept having to get out of the way of, and she said this is the last time we�ll have to go past this tree, and when we got to town we promptly realized that we had forgotten out bus tickets.

Back at the hotel, I found them instantly and handed them to the Roommate, who continued to search for them.

We got cheap food and coffee in town, and went shopping. We got our photos taken at an ancient photo booth (you can only do those when you�re out of town), and I got a nice summer shirt with an outrageous collar at a vintage clothing store.

We tried the other two (!) record stores, but they weren�t as good as the first one (Turn it up!), and then we hit the Army/Navy store. The one that had been in Boston had closed down years ago, and I love Army/Navy stores, and we spent an hour in the basement with nobody bothering us, playing dress-up. We both left having made purchases.

We walked around for a while more, and finally hit Packards, the other of the two dives that were recommended to us. We liked this one much better, and now we know, and I had perhaps my last butt in a Massachusetts bar, and then we left.

I got on the bus with three magnets (Northampton, Springfield, and a reproduction of an old Washburn guitar ad), two shirts, a full stomach, and carrying a pink elephant, and it didn�t really cost that much.

The bus ride home was similar to the one up--it was nice to be with the Roommate, speeding through still more perfectly good daylight, but when we got to Boston we still had a little more time, so we had dinner at Bennigan�s (Wirth�s was closed)--I had my yearly Monte Cristo--and then a couple of Pabsts at the Tam, where we watched the Simpsons on closed-caption.

And that was it.

We�re going to go back.