By Isaiah Philips

It all started the day I left Richmond, CA to go to Richmond, VA. It was a sunny day, though my luggage included things to wear in case the weather turned out to be the opposite of nice in bizzaro Richmond (VA). I got to the airport first, and when I saw the others arrive I hid behind a sign in the airport to surprise them by walking behind them saying nothing. I didn’t want to be too surprising because I didn’t want to seem too suspicious.

At security they made me take off my CAM walker brace for my broken foot. Everyone in the airport and I was relieved to know that there was nothing out of the ordinary inside. I saw Bam Margera at the Charlotte airport buy a slice of pizza; he was limping and I saw that he recently tore his MCL. We had so much in common, being injured and just being two dudes who do whatever the crap we want all the time.

The B&B we stayed at was a nice little house with a white picket fence. I slept on the couch — it was a pretty nice couch. There were two bathrooms so one person could be showering in each one while another two people were able to use the toilet at the same time. I hid the Mylar dinosaur we won at trivia inside of the compartment of horrors in one of the bathrooms.

Lindsay’s friends set us up so we had food and beer when we arrived. One of them hung out the whole time and drove us around. Thanks, Aaron! He gave me some stickers that said “motion activated”, “clap activated”, and “voice activated”. Those were fun, I put them on everything in the men’s bathroom at the brewery we did trivia at.

I met Ian F. Thomas at the Amaco booth. He was making some wonky pots with faces and pouring white underglaze on them. He’s cool, I’d like to have that dude as an instructor but he teaches in Pennsylvania and I don’t want to live there. I like living here. Caught the Paul Briggs demo/talk too, which I missed last time he was in SF, that was cool.

The day before we returned my girlfriend adopted a dog, and when she picked me up from the airport I got in the back seat with George. He’s a six-months-old poodle doodle guy and we love him. He finally started pooping normal recently and we are very proud of his cool new 💩.