Refreshed from our delightful day on Martha’s Vineyard, we headed over a bridge

and then drove on some roads for a while until we came to Hartford.

In my travels, I have noticed a recurring theme about all US cities. See if you can notice it too:

Did you get it? That’s right — buildings. Every city I’ve been to so far has buildings.

“That’s ridiculous.”

Yes. In addition to buildings, most cities also seem to have plenty of people, such as the fun person we met in Hartford, known as The Backpacking Granny. She is an exuberant person with a mission to personally start a school in Ghana through networking and donations. Pretty awesome.

She was our first host in CT and we had a blast chatting with her and meeting some of her friends from the Atheist Society. (That may not be the actual name but it was something about atheists.)

In addition to atheists, there were also some crazy people:

The two happening girls in this photo were our hosts for our second night in CT.

“Okay,” says AG, “overlooking the ‘happening’ issue for the nonce, you had two separate hosts?”

Funny you would ask! The girl in the middle is Emily Hanink, who volunteered her friend’s house (Megan, on the right) for hosting us both. Pretty sweet. I would love to be able to volunteer some friends’ homes for other people to stay at, since I know some people with pretty nice homes. But it takes a special relationship to be able to do that.

Also pictured above hanging out with Megan is a pretty sweet dude named Tom (right). Tom was a keyboardist, and they had a bunch of instruments set up in their basement. So he and several other dudes recorded some cool stuff for me.

I also met a great guy named Steve (whose last name I will figure out someday), who is a great classical guitarist. Meaning he plays classical guitar literature, not just the instrument. I also recorded him later that night.

Next morning, we went outside to see the guineas.

Here is a closeup of the male eating. He was awesome because he would always run at you to frighten you away from his babies but he would always wuss out and stop before he got close enough to actually scare you.

Then we headed out for coffee and to visit the farmer’s market. There were some fun signs on the way.

Not long afterwards, we were on our way to NYC, with no host lined up.

NEXT: NYC just barely avoids making my list of “cities I dislike for relatively arbitrary reasons.”