Dispatch from Columbus Circle…

I finally did manage to calm down and make something of our experience at Da Ranch. Got a stone massage, explored some of the tiny towns in the Berkshires and saw Seabuscuit which was more than a little bad. Suzan left for home. I arrived in New York on Thursday.

“The men” descended yesterday afternoon and we spent the evening pigging out on smoked meat (in Manhattan. Who knew?) and talking about technology, politics, movies and our lives until the early morning.

It’s amazing, when I tell people each summer that I’m headed off to something called “Men’s Weekend”, they usually think beer, loose women or drumming and bad poetry. I guess there’s some of all of that but it’s really a chance for the seven of us, seven buddies from college to get together once a year and catch up on each other’s lives. It was a bit more cliched when we started it, nine years ago on Valentine’s day when we all hated women and decided to go eat steak and smoke cigars instead. But that was a long time ago. One of us is married and three are in serious relationships. We talk a lot about career, dreams, plans for the future. Kids even and if we want them or no.

We’re old old friends and decently evolved human beings so our connections are little bit more Ya-Ya than reunion weekend at the frat house. At a certain level then, I think that groups of old friends interact pretty similarly regardless of gender. Sure, we don’t really praise each other’s outfits or talk much about the wives and girlfriends, except to ask how are they. We probably talk more about people from college we would have liked to gotten freaky with and called each other “gay” and thought it was funny. But the nugget of why we travel thousands of miles to convene in one spot each year is that our connection is vitally important to all of us. It’s how we stay a presence in each other’s lives as we grow from college kids to men with jobs, relationships, house, families and probably old age someday. I want to be around when it all happens to these guys. And I want them to witness it happening to me.

• Category: On the road...