I excitedly arrived in Harrisburg, albeit an hour late. After the welcome hug, I explained to Dave that the bus hold up was, at least in part, my fault. Dave had come with his dad, and soon we were on the way to Dave’s hometown of Middletown. I couldn’t wait to see where the monster that was Dave Madsen hailed from.

Dave lived in a wonderfully quirky place with cool trinkets around every corner. I got some way through admiring them before I got introduced to the dog. Barks instantly rained in like machine-gun fire: “WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF, freaking WOOF”.

Then I got some heat from Dave’s mum for being unemployed. She was unimpressed as I explained that my situation wasn’t exactly conducive to holding down a job, and she was even less thrilled that I borrowed the term “funemployed” to describe my circumstance. This followed up the Skype conversation Alan and I had accidentally had with her on Day 4 or 5 of the trip. This is a running joke Dave’s mum and I share. A laughter-less joke…

Dave and I walked his dog around his quiet neighbourhood before inhaling 2 giant Slushies. The sugar-rush was truly mental and I was tripping balls within minutes.

That evening, we had some beers on the deck and I met 2 of Dave’s friends; the wittily named “B-rad” and “Skinny”. That resulted in a night out of sorts in Middletown with next door neighbours Tony and Angie. From there, it was a blur, but I know someone suggested they might shag me because of my accent. Not the kind of thing you forget.

Some other stuff happened, but most noticeably, I woke up in Dave’s bed with the smell of grass filling my nostrils. Honestly, it’s not what you think. Unless, of course, you assumed that we had, in a drunken stupor, somehow got our hands on a baby rabbit and had made leafy, cardboard-box home for it next to the TV. In that case, it is exactly what you thought.

We weren’t up to much on hangover day, so we just chilled all day before going to Hendrick’s (Dave’s buddy) awesome place. Along with B-rad, that made 4 of us. Predictably, we played drinking games while discussing Hendrick’s back story for the ladies in Atlantic city. He was the Powerlifting champ at the 1996 Olympics, even though that would have made him 10 when he won it. The plan was surely watertight.