(lazy) Bitch on Wheels (of some sort)

This is the end, my friends, the end

2009-08-26T10:52:00.001-07:00

The time with my Montana family was short, but sweet. I spent my time out here riding, roping, conversing, Scrabbling and, of course, eating. And snacking.

I'm about to board an airplane home to Seattle, so this will be the end of the travel blog. Thanks for following, dear readers. From now on, if you want to know what I'm up to, you'll have to call or email. I will even accept snailmail, once I have an address. Anyone who wants to visit me in Seattle is welcome. I can't guarantee a fancy guest room or anything, but if I have a roof over my head and food in my belly, you will, too.

It bears repeating...

2009-08-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

Don't waste your time. We don't get that much. Make heaven here on earth. Grab life by the balls and wrench every last ounce of worth out of it that you can, whatever that may mean to you. Don't wait around for anyone else's permission or approval when you find something you want to do. (But, of course, DBAD.)

I'm still here

2009-08-19T09:46:00.001-07:00

Wyoming and my family here are the best.  It's been a mellow time of hanging out, talking, reading, drinking beer, playing fetch with the relentless dog, cooking, playing scrabble... There's even been a bit of jacuzzi time, hiking, wakeboarding and hanging around a backyard fire.  I also got to drive two forklifts, one large and one small.

Tomorrow I'm going to my aunt's house in southern Montana, where, if my past experience is any indicator of future occurrences, I will have even worse cell reception than I have here.  Thanks, AT&T!

I'm planning to come home on the 26th, and am starting to stress a bit.  I've never before been in the situation where I haven't had a job or a place to live in a year and a half, so I'm a little worried about the logistics (and the reality!) of re-entering real life.  I really need to quit thinking about, you know, stuff...

I gotta get a bracelet

2009-08-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

DBAD

Adorable puppy upstages sixteen performers

2009-08-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

I went out on my last evening in Nashville. There were four bands playing, who were supposed to be pretty good, but I have no idea, since they were all trumped by the adorable cuddly puppy that some train-hopping, hitchhiking travelling kids had brought to the club. I ended up sitting outside all night, puppy-sitting while they watched the show. I couldn't help myself.

I'm now on my way to Sheridan, WY to visit my uncle. It's my first step toward home. I should be back before the weather turns nasty...

More nothing.

2009-08-03T18:17:00.001-07:00

On Friday night, I had the urge to go out, so I went down to the club to see what was going on. It was a sadly dead Friday night-- I think there was a lot of competition around town that night. I ended up finding myself in the uncomfortable position of really liking all of the musicians who played that night as people, but not really being into any of them as artists. Kinda weird.

I watched a fascinating documentary last week called "Iron City Blues," about this crazy town in southern Tennessee where there is no law. None. There used to be a single police officer, but after he quit, they never found a replacement. A Nashville blues singer went down there to make this documentary and write a blues song about the town, which is, of course, included in the film. If you have 53 spare minutes, this is a decent way to spend them.

Still more show reviews

2009-07-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

Last week I caught Nashville's own Spinal Tap, Rowena of the Glen. She was so cute and sweet, I thought of her as the Dolly Parton of magickmetal. At the beginning of her show, she walked around the room with incense, blessing everyone. Even though it wasn't my kind of music, how could I leave the room? I stayed for the whole set.

On Saturday I got into the sweaty hot sold out Gogol Bordello show, which I've been looking forward to for at least a month and a half. Those guys did not disappoint. They brought all their energy and played two sets rather than have an opening band. Afterward, I went across the street to check out some fresh meat. They were pretty good for high school kids. Better than a lot of the twenty-somethings I've seen lately.

I swear, soon I'll move along and stop doing show reviews.

Hey...

2009-07-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

Maybe some of you beer-loving scientists can tell me why any other beer consumed post Fat Tire tastes like bananas. I've noticed it particularly with Black Butte Porter and Yuengling Lager, but that observation has been limited by personal experience.

I've been too heavy on the show reviews, so all I'm gonna say about last Saturday's show was that I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you like experiprogpostrock, check out Gunslinger and Pushy Lips. I know, I know, I chose to attend based on the name alone...

Oh, and Seattle? Don't think I didn't notice that your weather has actually been nicer than Nashville's a couple of times recently. You're on my list, pal, so just watch your back.

I saw a saw!

2009-07-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

On Monday night we went to a show in a super divey bar with terrible sound, but some friends were playing and a 22 ounce bottle of Fat Tire was only $4. The first band, who I think is split up and reformed and possibly changing their name, but here's the singer, was quiet and pretty, but I wasn't really picking up what they were putting down until the drummer traded in his sticks for a saw. A saw! I've never seen anyone play a saw before. It was amazing how he could get such precise pitch just from bending it. The sound was hauntingly lovely, and he played... at least three or four other instruments during the show, including a violin, a harmonica, and something that looked like a giant harmonica. I found out it was called a bass harmonica. Wacky. The third band, Bankrupt and the Borrowers-- whose myspace page doesn't really do them justice-- are some guys we met in Austin. Easily the best band of the night. Check them out if they make it to a town near you, although I think they might be (out of money) just about done touring for a while.

Tuesday night we went to see the Jesus Lizard, who are touring again after something like ten years of disbandedness. They were really good, but I am not a fanatic, and they weren't good enough for me to stay in the crowded hot sweaty smelly sold-out room, getting jostled by every sweaty loser in the room every two seconds (okay, maybe I woke up a little cranky that day), so I took off after three or four songs. But it was reportedly a great show, and those guys can rock pretty hard for their age, or any age.

So much for this week's show review...

I thought nothing was worse than those skinny hipster jeans

2009-07-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

Then I was subjected to skinny hipster jean shorts. On guys. I didn't get any pictures, but I don't think you would thank me if I did.

So far, things have been fairly mellow in Nashville. I've seen a couple of local bands play. Sound and Shape stood out. I got some ethiopian food that wasn't as good as my fave places in Seattle, Chicago and Austin, but it's not the only game in town. On the Fourth of July, despite the apocalyptic combo of thunderstorms and a celebrity shooting, we managed to go out to catch the "last show" from The Pink Spiders, which was tight and energetic. Those guys know how to put on a show.

Even I am bored reading this blog post, but it has been a couple weeks, and I felt the need to reassert my presence on the planet, so sorry, and check out the cool bands...

Later, gators!

2009-06-27T19:47:00.001-07:00

Did you know that Gainesville is the home of Gatorade? Now the name finally makes sense.

We managed to ditch the kids during my last week in Gainesville, so we had some nice relaxed grown-up time of doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. I will spare you the details, but I assure you, there was shopping, swimming, tanning, beer drinking, grown-up food eating, beach going, and the assembling of many many puzzles. So with a heavy heart I bid farewell to my Gainesville family, because tomorrow I am headed, once again, back to Nashville. I just gotta try to get something out of my system...

My day, in two short acts

2009-06-18T17:24:00.001-07:00

Auntie:  Who took a poop and didn't wipe or flush?!
Boys:  Not me!
Auntie and Me:  Uh-huuuhhh....
Me:  Well, you're both taking a bath tonight, and I'm not hearing anything about "But I'm not dirty!"

Later...

Me:  Alright, it's bathtime.  Be sure you both wash out your bums really well.
Seven-year-old:  What's a bum?!
Me:  What do you think I WANT you to wash?!
Seven-year-old:  Our butts...

And scene.

This trip continues to surprise me

2009-06-16T20:19:00.001-07:00

I never ever ever ever never thought I would be lounging by a pool in Florida, COMPLETELY. JEALOUS. of the weather in Seattle.

I also never thought I would be a party to the perpetuation of the tooth fairy conspiracy.

Kanapaha

2009-06-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my aunt, uncle and I went to the Kanapaha Botanical Garden. I've kinda been going to a lot of those over the last year, and they weren't all in season, but even if they had been in season, I don't think any would have been as good as this one. My first indication that it was a good place was the presence of a bottle of Off! insect repellent in the entrance building, available for everyone to use. Good idea! The place is huge-- 62 acres total-- and seems to have been carved out of a large forested area. There is a loop path that meanders through the forest, connecting the separate gardens, and is lined with those little signs describing the native flora. The herb garden is huge, with separate sides for edible herbs and scented herbs, and guests are invited to touch the scented herb plants to get all of the scentiness. I could go on and on, but it might get boring, and the gist of it all is that this place is really well designed, and if you are at all interested in botanical gardens, and find yourself near Gainesville, FL, you should most definitely check it out, giving yourself at the very least three hours.

The nannying continues to improve as the boys and I get more used to each other. If anyone reading this is considering getting work in the field of home childcare, I would suggest getting a job that pays in beer and has a pool. I dread the days in which bad behavior forces me to take away pool priveledges, because I suspect I value that time even more than they do, so that is always the last resort. It's so hot and humid down here, you can't just send the kids outside to play, because they can only tolerate about ten or twenty minutes before they turn bright red and sticky...

Hot and lazy...

2009-06-01T18:08:00.001-07:00

Being a nanny is just about as easy as I thought it would be, which is to say not really at all. But we're learning who lays down the law (what has two thumbs and is the boss? This girl!) and it goes more smoothly every day. Other than that, Florida is awesome. We go swimming almost daily, and my aunt and I philosophize the evening away out on the patio, listening to the chorus of birds, frogs and gators. The gators make a gentle piggy grunting noise quite often, and it is a lot less worrisome than the bellowing.

I have also been back in the kitchen, and you may notice I've added a new recipe blog to my links, as making another blog seemed to me to be the simplest (laziest?) way to share. So if I've cooked for any of you, and you are missing the food, the recipe will probably show up there eventually, and of course there will be new things as I discover them. If you are looking for a particular recipe, drop me a line.

Brr. I'm heading back to Florida.

2009-05-27T10:51:00.001-07:00

The Minnesota trip was a whirlwind of driving (1538 miles total!), family time and very little sleep, except for the day I got to nap twice at my aunt's house near Bemidji. I very nearly accomplished everything I had hoped to, so it was a good trip. It was nice to get back and see people I just saw last July, and didn't think I would see again so soon. It would have been nice to spend a little longer, but circumstances made that difficult.

So now I'm back in Gainesville, fully ready to chill with my aunt and nanny my cousins. Wish me luck with the humidity and the, you know, children...

Taciturn Update of Nothingness

2009-05-20T18:13:00.001-07:00

Unexpected family business has brought me back to Minnesota for a week, then I'm headed back to Gainesville, FL, because one week wasn't enough.

Tucson was Tucson. It's still not my favorite city, but I like it more than I did before. I wish I had gotten more of a chance to check out the city and scene, but maybe next time. I spent the majority of my time split between hanging out in the retirement park with my grandparents, and relaxing at my cousin's house out in the desert outside the city. The stars were out in full force there.

It was around 100F every day, so outdoor time was limited to early morning walks and pool time. Toward the end, my aunt and uncle came down from their place in Bullhead City. The plan was to return to their place with them, but the aforementioned family business threw a monkeywrench in that plan. It's okay, I'm going to try to get back there in the winter when it's cooler, since it's in the Mojave desert and all...

I went out!

2009-05-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

To celebrate my road-iversary, I went downtown to the Solar Culture Gallery, to check out the Joe Lally (who is a tiny little man!) show. I took the bus (sadly, Tucson is no Austin), so I got there a bit early, but it was okay, because the venue is also an art gallery. I spent a bunch of time checking out the paintings and listening to the trains go by the back door while I waited and waited for other people to trickle in. Not only was it Cinco de Mayo, but it was apparently also finals week, and they were competing with another show.

The audience ended up being me and a dozen or so other music dorks. The opening guy had to cancel, so Joe and crew played two sets, which was fine by me. Their style was... I dunno... I suck at describing music... Jazz, punk and blues influenced mellowish trippy hard rock? In the same basic vein as Fugazi, but differently interesting. If anyone knows some kind of music geek terminology to describe this, please share, because I always just want to sum up this type of music as "adult punk." It has the same sensibility as punk, but with a greater range of style and talent. Joe Lally was solid on bass, and although I don't feel he's the strongest vocalist, I was digging the lyrics. The drummer, Ricardo Lagomasino, was heavily jazz influenced, and proved that it's not the size of the kit, but how you use it. He had his eyes closed for most of the time, and when they were open he was kinda staring blankly into space. I wondered where he went, but it must have been somewhere good. The guitarist, Elisa Abela, was tight, ranging from bluesy to controlled noise with plenty of stops in between. The crowd was subdued and respectful. I wished, and thought others were with me on this, that we could have been more people for them. We stood up close and clapped a lot, but it still felt kinda sad. Maybe it was just my mood and extreme lack of energy, due to me being on the retiree schedule, and the show starting after my bedtime. Also, this is an art gallery, not a bar. A beer or two might have upped my energy levels a tidge.

Between sets I chatted with Elisa about tattoos and travel, and she told me about some women she had met on the Isle of Lesbos. She also said it didn't bother them that it was such a small crowd, that they just loved to play. It showed.

Sorry about the super detailed show review. After five or six days as a retiree, all of the stimulation kinda got to me...

365 days of loafing like a bum

2009-05-05T20:45:00.001-07:00

Yup. Today is my one year road-iversary.

I wanted to write something all contemplative and meaningful to mark the occasion, but I got nothing. I've just been chillin' here in Tucson with my grandparents, enjoying two more members of my family with whom I have not spent enough time. It's interesting how this trip started out with a desire to travel and see the parts of the country that I had never seen, and talk to people from all over, but every time I stopped at a relative's house, it became more about that. When people ask me what the best thing has been about this trip, sometimes I say something about having time alone to think and discovering my mental and physical limits, but I always end up talking about how great it has been to have extended one on one time with family members. In families as scattered as both sides of mine are, it can be difficult enough just to get at least half of us together for a family reunion, and when that happens, most of the focus is on large group activities, so there's not a lot of time to have real conversations with people. I don't know how everyone else feels, but I feel like I grew up so far away from my family, and then spent so much time depressed and lazy, not even trying to form relationships with them, that in a group setting I feel like a bit of an outsider. This year has been good for my soul in that it has brought me a lot closer to people I probably should never have felt so far from. It is only natural that even though I am burnt out on the other aspects of travel, I still have a list of people I want to spend time with. And cook for.

I'm excited about the coming months.

Oh, Biden!

2009-04-30T09:14:00.001-07:00

What will he say next?

I woke up this morning and checked the headlines on MSN before packing up and heading to the airport for my trip to Tucson. The first headline I saw was about Joe Biden saying he recommends avoiding all crowded places like planes and buses. Sadly, avoiding crowded areas won't help him, since he is already infected with a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease. Within an hour or two, his office was already backpedaling, trying to soften his words and placate the already flagging travel industry.

That guy. I'm going to risk it and fly anyway.

People aren't kidding about Austin

2009-04-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

This town is great! It has moved up to the top of my list of places I would live if Seattle was no longer an option. The public transit is pretty comprehensive, and bus passes are only $18 a month!

After a few mellow days hanging with my friend's mom in San Marcos, during which time we ate, drank, chatted, drove over to Devil's Backbone, saw glassblowers make a lampshade, and I got my hair cut and colored, I headed in to Austin to meet my friend.

We kicked off a really great trip by going to see The Kills. The show was fantastic, and I don't think it was just the secondhand smoke talking. The crowd had incredible energy, even showing much love to the opening band, The Magic Wands, which was a couple originally from Nashville whose smooth sexy style made some of the songs seem a bit like foreplay. I doubt anyone in the audience had heard of them, but they were totally into the show. My friend happened to know them (small world!), so we got in for free, but the show was good enough that it would have been worth the money to pay for it. We weren't so into the second band, The Horrors, which was some tragic 80s sounding stuff, but they were good at what they did. It seemed like all of the bands were really feeding into the crowd's energy and responding in kind.

The next night we did a bit of random barhopping, to take in the Saturday night in downtown Austin scene. There was a ridiculous amount of blatant public drunkenness, as well as a huge police presence, but the police were just standing around watching out for violence and leaving the drunks alone, so that was cool. Most of the music venues here have outdoor stages, since the weather is generally so nice, although the actual stage and at least a small area in front of it is always covered, which came in handy during the frequent storms and showers that were happening for most of the week.

Sunday night we saw a local band from San Marcos, Zlam Dunk, six college boys with a ton of energy, decent talent, some creative songwriting, and just the right amount of cowbell. Afterwards we hung out with some friends of friends who worked at the club, which was pretty chill, since most of the bar patrons left after the music ended.

Monday was stormy and we were partied out, so we stayed in and discovered the best public access show ever, Cookin' Good, starring the Cola sisters, Arcie and Shasta. This show should be on real TV, and these girls should get big money for their awesomeness. Seriously. We were just channel surfing, and paused a bit on this show that looked like a white trash cooking show, wondering what it was. When we heard the stuff coming out of their mouths, our jaws dropped, and we were sold. If you like the TV I like (and you know who you are!), check it out.

Tuesday I dropped off my bike and gear at a bike shop to be shipped home, and that night we checked out more local music at a different venue, but none of it was really worth writing home about. It was fun, though, and the last band, Snatch Racket, was loud, fast, and funny, which always makes for a decent show.

There is a really yummy Ethiopian restaurant (Aster's) right next to the hotel, and they have a lunch buffet. We got addicted and ended up eating there three times, so if you're ever in Austin, that is the place I can recommend the most. We enjoyed the street vendors downtown, too, and I heartily recommend "The Cuban" with slaw, from Beelzebun's. But only if you are a really really bad vegetarian, like me...

Tomorrow I'm headed for Tucson, to visit my Grandparents and some cousins for an undefined length of time, before I move on to an unspecified location.

It's the end of this trip as we know it

2009-04-16T16:21:00.001-07:00

And I feel fine.

I was never really excited about returning to my bike, but I did it anyway, because I thought maybe once I was back on the road, I would dig it again, and I wanted to get into and out of Arizona before it got too hot. There was a brief period of excitement, but it didn't last long, and the dog bite killed any hope I had of regaining my love of biking. I became increasing paranoid and negative-- even getting out of Louisiana didn't help enough. The only thing that gave me any happiness was looking forward to meeting my friend in Austin, and that day just couldn't come fast enough. Over the last few days, I had reached the decision that I would probably ship my bike home from Austin, and if that proved to be too expensive, I would sell the blasted contraption. Yup, that's how much I hate my precious Surly LHT right now.

Today, after another hilly, windy ride, I reached a really nice clean trailer park in La Grange, TX. I set up my tent, had a lovely shower, then returned to my tent to fetch my laundry. The tent zipper exploded. I tried in vain to put it back together. I ended up taping the thing shut-- no easy task. There is a lot of tension in that system, and stuff doesn't stick to mosquito netting so well. I noticed that my friend's mom, who lives not too far away in San Marcos, had called, so I returned her call in a sorry state. We laughed that my equipment had failed right around the same time as my fortitude, and she offered to come pick me up in the next day or two. Sweet! I love moms...

So anywho, the biking portion of this trip is done, and the blogging will be fairly infrequent from now on, since I don't have much to say to the public when I'm just hanging with my family and friends. I won't subject you to any more Trivial Pursuit reports. My flickr will probably get more action than this blog. I'm still planning to travel for a few more months, but at this point am primarily interested in spending time with my peeps, not seeing the sites. If anyone would like to petition me to come to their town, or meet them somewhere random, have at it, I'm footloose and fancy free. Have credit card, will travel.

Ho hum.

2009-04-14T16:53:00.001-07:00

More riding, more sun, more hills, more wind. I didn't meet any other cyclists today, but when I stopped at the store in Independence, they gave me a book to sign, and the last ten people I met were in there. I guess we all get hungry going through those hills.

I'm camped at a Corps of Engineers campground on Somerville Lake just north of Gay Hill, Texas. Yup, Gay Hill (tee hee!) I'll never grow up. I was excited to check the place out, because my past experience with these places has been that they are nice and/or super cheap. This place is meh, and priced a little high for what I'm getting, in my opinion. And the water tastes funky. But I've already paid for two days, so I'll attempt to quit whining.

I am titleless today

2009-04-13T17:16:00.001-07:00

Today started out lame: I packed up my soggy dew-moistened tent and rode off into the wind. Sigh. At least it was sunny. I chatted with six other cyclists today, all headed east. I envied them, but they all claimed to always have a headwind, too, so I guess things are tough all over. Other cyclists always ask how your trip is going, and I found myself today complaining to complete strangers. This is normally something I avoid, but that's what was on my mind, and I've discovered my conversations are much more interesting (to me anyway) and constructive if I just start talking about whatever I'm thinking rather than bothering with social niceties. I can see why people get into that whole radical honesty thing.

The third cyclist I met was this wacky kid (http://twitter.com/xcryanpfeiffer) from Chicago who is riding for Lance Armstrong's cancer charity. (livestrong.org/grassroots2009/xctour) We got to babbling away, for I don't even know how long-- at least an hour-- beside the road until three other kids showed up. There we were, all five of us standing over our bikes with our assorted Ortlieb panniers (every single one), chatting away on the roadside. That was a nice break. After that my route turned a bit so that I actually had some tailwind, and I rode into Navasota, which has grocery stores and a park just outside of town where you can camp for free. It even has a shower. Nothing fancy, but it's better than that pit I stayed at in Louisiana... So my day ended much better than it started.

Sorry, I'm too lazy to make my links work today, so you'll have to copy and paste if you're interested. And while I'm linking to unselfish touring cyclists I have met, some guys from Toronto are riding for this charity: http://athletesforafrica.com/

There are people more obnoxious than rednecks?!

2009-04-12T16:36:00.001-07:00

The overflow campground mostly cleared out yesterday, and around the time I was crawling into my sleeping bag last night, there was just the one most obnoxious group of rednecks remaining, who had proven themselves to be not so bad. Then the Mexicans pulled in. They set up camp and blasted their own brand of obnoxious, terrible music until-- I'm not exaggerating-- dawn. The rednecks, who seemed pretty feisty when surrounded by other rednecks, were uncharacteristically silent on this one. They actually packed up and left around 4:30AM.

Then the rain came, and the storm. It was so bad some rain snuck into my tent, and several regions were flooded. Actually, pretty much the entire field I was in was flooded. I stayed afloat on my thermarest life raft until it stopped, and the sun came out, and the birds started talking. By this time, I had the whole place to myself, and was able to empty my tent and dry out a bit, as well as get some much-needed sun power to my phone. This place is really pleasant when not overrun by noisy litterbugs...

Excuses, excuses...

2009-04-11T12:26:00.001-07:00

The rednecks quieted down shortly after ten last night, so I managed to sleep pretty well, but on waking, was still not feeling so hot. I figured since I really have nowhere to be, it's cheap here, I have a bit of cell reception, and it might be a challenge to find another campsite during Easter weekend, I may as well sit tight. Tomorrow is supposed to be stormy, so I'll probably just sit that one out, too.

I'm finding myself in that weird place of zero urgency again. The only real reason to ever leave this spot is the lack of grocery stores...

My redneck neighbors are having some sort of obnoxiousness contest

2009-04-10T18:27:00.001-07:00

They are all going to win.

Riding went fine today. I met several other cyclists headed in the opposite direction, so I warned them about the pit bull specifically, and about Louisiana in general. They are all riding much faster than me, though, so they'll be in and out in no time.

Toward the afternoon I started to feel lousy, and was entertaining thoughts of taking another day off, since I have some time to kill anyway, but now I'm not so sure. I was headed for a campground in the Sam Houston national forest, but then I realized it was Easter weekend and everyone would be there. I stopped at the ranger station to see if it was full up, and the nice lady there told me I could stay in the overflow camping area, which was free, and I would just have to pay a five dollar day use fee for the facilities, which were very close. That sounded like just the price I wanted to pay, so I went for it. It turns out the showers are a bit further away than I was led to believe, (I call it the journey of a thousand steps) and the overflow area contains many people who seem lame. And "redneck" is what they were shouting about themselves, not just something I chose to label them, so I'm not being snooty. Anyway, I'll have to see how annoyed I am when I get up in the morning... Country music never sounds worse than when it's blasting from someone's crappy car speakers.

Yawn. Stretch.

2009-04-09T17:33:00.001-07:00

It was time for a rest day and this place is cheap and has laundry facilities and a decently stocked little store, so I stayed put, and pretty much did nothing all day, except that load of laundry.

I smell so clean!

The wind was still pretty strong today, but I think it's supposed to be better tomorrow, when I'll start inching along toward Austin. I've arranged to meet a friend there, but that doesn't happen until the 23rd, and it really won't take me that long to get there, so I plan to take a lot of days off and explore the pretty wooded part of east Texas.

I might as well continue to review campgrounds, because I don't see enough of that on the internets. Other cyclists tend to talk mostly about the riding, unless the campground is exceptional in some way. This one is not. I am at Browder's Marina and Campground on Lake Livingston Reservoir. It has the necessities, like toilet paper and showers, but the facilities in general are not well kept up, and the shower was kinda luke. It's cheap, and the employees are friendly. Many of the tenants seem to be long term RVers, so they are a quiet, friendly bunch. I was stretching on the grass in a position where I look all crumpled up, and one of them drove his golf cart over to ask if I was ok. Cute!

I really am out west again!

2009-04-08T16:32:00.001-07:00

I spent most of the day on decent roads. There were a few miles of exceptions, but the bad roads in Texas are still better than most of the roads in... Ahem... Other places. The wind was only slightly less awful than yesterday, but I stuck to my guns and made it to my destination. Once, when I stopped for a roadside snack, someone stopped to ask if I was okay. When I got to the campground, it wasn't the nicest place ever, but I got the half-price cyclist rate. It's been so long...

I'm still in the puppy love phase, for sure. I really missed riding in the west, and to have this sudden transition from deep backwoods rural south to something that really does feel like it wants to be Montana (thanks, Steinbeck) is just glorious.

Also, most dogowners here have fences.

Texas = smooth roads

2009-04-07T15:51:00.001-07:00

Many with actual shoulders! I feel like I'm back out west. I'm so happy! This morning I returned the Uhaul truck less than a mile from my route, then hit the road.

But the wind! Yeesh! Will it ever be beneficial? Today was a struggle, and I knew there was no chance of making it to the far away campground that I harbored vague fantasies of reaching. I was planning to push on for a few more miles, but had been on the lookout for stealth camping for most of the day. When I saw a dirt road heading into the woods, with a sign that said "Hardin County Park" and commemorated the eight mile logging road through the Big Thicket, I decided that meant it was public property and I could camp here. I found a spot off a 4x4 trail off the dirt road that is hidden from the casual authority driving through, but quite visible from the 4x4 trail, so I don't think I'll get shot by hunters. But if I'm never heard from again, start looking here: N 30°24.368' W 094°33.629'

I don't really have any cell service out here, just barely enough to slowly, painfully post this. Not enough to look up what kind of wildlife is in the area... But I'll tie my food up and everything will be crescent fresh.

Dear Louisiana,

2009-04-06T18:45:00.001-07:00

When we first met everything seemed so right-- you were so attractive, and a great cook. But over time, I began to see your uglier side. I would make excuses: oh, you're just having a bad day, or I shouldn't have done that thing to upset you like that. But as I was lying awake in bed last night-- yes, you managed to wake me up again, for the third night in a row-- listening to the howling tent-shaking wind, I thought about us. I mean, really thought. I considered my options: I could either spend another night at the gross campground that I hated, or I could struggle all the next day against the very strong wind, trying to go the fifty miles I needed to go to get to the next camping place, but likely failing and having to stay in a hotel. Or possibly even further injuring myself. Both of these options were so unpalatable that serious consideration of either one made my stomach turn and I wanted to cry.

We couldn't go on like this, Louis! What I'm trying to say is that it's better for both of us if I just leave, as quickly as possible. I packed up my things this morning and backtracked sixteen miles to rent a fourteen foot U-haul truck to take me away from you, straight into the open arms of Texas, who may not be perfect, but hopefully will treat me better than you did.

Don't try to find me, or I will take out a restraining order.

Goodbye,
Cheri

I came up with this plan around 3AM, all frustrated and sleep deprived. It wasn't cheap, but I estimate I would have spent about two thirds as much on food and lodging riding all of the miles I drove through instead, and I'm quite happy about it, so it was money well spent. The wind was so crazy strong, it was difficult to drive. Riding would have been really unpleasant. I got to drive on the twenty mile bridge across a big swamp, which I would have skirted on my bike. Halfway across the bridge I stopped at a lovely rest stop and called my dad to tell him where I was, since we had just been discussing Louisiana the day before. He told me I was in the only nice rest stop in the whole state. I will have to take his world for it, since I never saw any other rest stops. He also joked that I was escaping from prison. It kind of felt that way. Once in Texas I stopped to camp at a campground run by an adorable old couple, and the woman knocked a couple bucks off the price since I got in so late in the evening-- around seven. I don't think that has ever happened before. I'm sure the euphoria will pass, but tonight I'm stoked to be in Texas.

I'm medicated and healing

2009-04-05T16:15:00.001-07:00

More from yesterday-- Cletus, who is actually named Billy, and some of his friends were out here yesterday fixing something. They were drunk. When it was fixed, Billy came over to talk to me about it, because that ole boy wants a reason to talk to all of this. Just then, the thirteen-year-old boy member of my camp neighbor family yelled that there was a big snake. Billy's bud took off running, shovel in one hand and giant can of Busch beer in the other. He took quite a few poorly aimed whacks at the snake. It got angry and curled up, shaking its rattler, according to Billy's bud. I was not close enough at this point to see or hear any rattling. He finally hit it enough to damage it, then attempted to remove its head with a shovel, which was unsuccessful, but he claimed it was done on purpose because he wanted to keep it intact. We all looked at it for a while, and there was some debate about what type of snake it was. They eventually decided it was a rattlesnake because it had a few rattles, but later got back to us that it was a kingsnake. I looked it up. It was a speckled kingsnake. Anyway, Billy's bud wanted to keep the thing, so he got a grocery bag out of the car and picked it up by the tail. Blood was dripping out, the snake was long, and he was beery, so he had a bit of difficulty getting the head in the bag. By this point, the camp neighbor and I were giggling and making quiet jokes about bringing home some groceries. Billy's bud had some sort of plan that involved scaring his neighbors back at the trailer park, or perhaps making boots, and Billy was telling him that if he brought that thing anywhere near his wife, she would shoot him with her pistol.

Those guys are weird to hang around, but they are capable of putting on quite a show.

I forgot to mention that they measured the distance between the two deepest puncture wounds (the canines) at the hospital yesterday, and it was five centimeters, so if anyone needed a bit of size perspective on that picture, there you go.

Today the dogowners came back to drive me a long ways to a pharmacy that is open on Sunday, so I could get my antibiotics. Those twenty pills were $75, after tax. Yikes. It was so nice just to look at the total, shrug, and look at someone else. They definitely had sticker shock.

This evening, just as I finished eating dinner, Billy drove up and offered me a big bowl of seafood gumbo and some crackers for dinner. I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad I missed out on that... I'm better off, though, because dinner was a heavy can of beans I didn't want to carry, and I was positive there were no roofies in it. He brought his bud with him, and the whole time they were here, the ole boy was yammering away on his cell phone about something he hit with his car last night. I sure hope it was a critter of some sort.

Thank you to all of my friends out there who worry about my safety, share my pain, and celebrate my triumphs. This trip could have easily been a very lonely experience, but instead I'm making new friends all over the country, and maintaining the friends I have back home. I always know there's someone out there to talk to, that someone knows someone who is close enough to help me out if I need it, and that people are wishing and praying for my safety. I want to give a special shout out to Susan, who early on really influenced this facet of my trip. The world needs more like you, lady!

Doctoring's done

2009-04-04T18:09:00.001-07:00

Can't say as much about my civic duty, though...

On the advice of... Oh, just about everyone I know, I called the dogowners and made them take me to the hospital. They begged and pleaded with me to say it was a stray dog and not get their precious taken away from them. I laid out my moral dilemma and told them I was a terrible liar, but went along with it because they were paying and they promised to keep Cujo chained up. The doctors gave me a scrip for antibiotics, then called around to find rabies shots and told me to go down to Baton Rouge tonight and begin the ten day, six shot course. The dog is healthy, and I'm not willing to deal with all of that, especially since the last known case of rabies in Louisiana was in 1979, and was from a squirrel. I like those odds! The doctor told me to take it easy tomorrow, so I'm taking one more day off, which is fine, since it may storm tomorrow anyway, and there's a headwind.

I came back to the camp, and my new camp neighbors are nice, and we're hanging around a fire. They have a dog, which freaked me out a little at first, but we made friends and I am on the road to recovery. I have a good story about Cletus and a rattlesnake, but I guess I'll save that for tomorrow.

But at least my tattoo still looks good...

2009-04-03T17:48:00.001-07:00

***SAFETY ALERT! For anyone cycling the Southern Tier through eastern Louisiana: a bit east of the junction of 440 and 1061, you may be chased by two pitbulls, a smaller white one and a larger brown one. These are not dogs who want you to leave their territory. They want you off your bike. STOP. GET OFF THE BIKE.***

I'm never sure what to do in these situations. Usually, the dog just wants me to leave, so I keep riding. This dog, the larger brown one, did not like that. He bit my rear pannier. Twice. There are two lovely sets of puncture marks in my formerly waterproof saddlebag. Then he bit my leg. I stopped, reaching for my weapon, but once I stopped, so did he. His owner was home, so she brought me inside for peroxide and bandages. When I rinsed the wound, I saw chunks of flesh on my leg, and managed not to hurl. She insisted that he was such a nice sweet good dog, who just went crazy around bikes. And motorcycles. And four wheelers. And lawnmowers... She insisted that he had had all of his shots. She said that he had only bitten one other person-- just a nip, really-- but he had been wearing jeans. (So he was lucky.) She gave me her number, and I rode on, just wanting to get to the campground and relax and take tomorrow off.

A few miles later, it became apparent the bandage wasn't cutting it, so I rigged something up with a maxipad and athletic tape. This is when I noticed the chunks of flesh on my pants, and the holes.

I got to the campground, which was just reopening after being flooded. The owner was there to attempt to restart the pump and get the water running. He hadn't mentioned this when I called to be sure he was open...

I called Anna crying, and she made me laugh by telling me about the April Fool's snow in Seattle. Then the owner and his good ole maintenance man, who will heretofore be referred to as Cletus, came to tell me the water was on. I played the pity card, and Cletus gave me a ride to the nearby store to pick up some food for my day off. It's less than a mile away, but I'm done riding for now, especially on this busy street where no one slows down, and there is no shoulder. Most of the roads in LA have been decent, and the drivers largely courteous, but this one is evil. (38 from Kentwood to Chipola, if anyone cares.) Anywho, Cletus was real nice and I picked up some delicious crawdad pies and whatnot. I considered asking him why people choose to live in godforsaken swamps that flood every year, but I only understand about half the words he says, and there are a couple of bottles of booze on the rider's side floor of his car, and I didn't want to be rude. He also offered to drive me to the hospital if I needed it.

So here I am, at a newly unflooded campground, with gross bathrooms (freshly mopped by Cletus, cuz of the flood and all) that would have been gross even without the flooding, but there's toilet paper and one of the most striking sunsets I have ever seen. The campground, outside the bathroom, is lovely, and I have it to myself, although apparently another coupla touring cyclists will be in later, headed the other direction. I will be sure to warn them about Cujo.

On the bright side: My leg still functions, it's doubtful I have rabies, and my precious tattoo is untouched. And I've stopped bleeding. And flesh washes out of pants.

But it's more electrical tape for the old pannier. I'm sure glad I bought them in black.

Louisiana, baby!

2009-04-02T18:19:00.001-07:00

I have to enjoy this feeling of cruising through the states quickly, before I hit Texas.

I fully ignored the warnings about "possible" severe storms that "may" produce large hailstones, and got a nice early start. It was quite a lovely day, until the storm clouds gathered while I was navigating through Bogalusa, LA. I considered taking shelter at one of the many churches I passed, or maybe the library, but I opted for getting as far away from that armpit as possible before the giant hail hit. That place gave me the heebie jeebies. Everyone was looking at my bike and gear like it was a shrimp po'boy, and they were starving.

I managed to get a few miles out of town before it started raining. It started gently, and the thunder and lightning seemed to be moving away from me, so for a while I entertained the fantasy that I was skirting the storm. Then it started pouring for reals, right about the same time that I saw an open garage/storage shed thing right by the road that had just enough room for me to pull my bike in and stop for lunch. There was no giant hail, nor any tornadoes that I saw, despite the tornado watch, and the rain passed shortly. The sun came back, and I got back out there.

I was moving through some kind of camping dead zone, headed for Franklinton. The sole hotel in town was a little more than I wanted to pay, so I kept an eye out for stealth camping, but that didn't pan out. Following the lead of someone from crazyguyonabike.com, I called the Franklinton sheriff's office to inquire about camping, because that guy had been allowed to set up his tent in a fenced area behind the police station. Either he is more charismatic than I, or he just got lucky with who he spoke to, but when I tried it, the guy just suggested I go to a campground about ten miles further than I wanted to go, a few miles off my route, that "might" be open. Well, at least I tried. I had enough daylight to get there, but wasn't sure I had the fortitude. I decided to call them for info, since a lot of campgrounds are flooded right now, and a place with "bayou" in the name didn't seem too promising. I didn't reach an actual human, but their machine only mentioned RV sites, so I gave up and went to the hotel. It's a decent place. I got excited when I realized it was Thursday, and I could watch must see TV, but sadly, it has been taken over by ER, so it's a Comedy Central kind of night.

I managed to save a few bucks picking up supplies at the Dollar General and the scavenger grocery store or whatever it's called that are right by the hotel, so I can feel a little better about the money I spent.

Maybe I should write a guide to cheap camping

2009-04-01T15:55:00.001-07:00

I'm sure that's never been done before. Maybe I should buy a guide to cheap camping.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but the historic section of Mobile, AL is really beautiful. The streets are lined with these majestic old trees that I didn't have the opportunity to photograph, but I'm sure that's been done to death. There are also some pretty buildings downtown.

I got a late start today and didn't go too far because I'm working with campsite availability. The ride was uneventful-- I didn't run over a single one of the dogs who chased me. I am staying tonight at the lovely Haas-Cienda Ranch in Poplarville, MS. It's a really peaceful place run by a very sweet family who live here all year around. I suspect it's about to get less peaceful, as the waterslide opens Friday, and the summer season will get into full swing. Their tent camping rates are quite nice, and there is toilet paper in the bathroom. It seems like it's way out in the country, but is actually just on the outskirts of a decent sized town, so I'm close to all of the amenities like grocery stores and cell phone reception. If you come through here looking to camp, I would recommend it, but be warned: they don't take credit cards.

I passed by my first Southern Tier touring cyclist today. He started in Houston, and is headed for Mobile, where he will meet up with some other people and ride up the Underground Railroad route. It seems like it would be a nice trip.

There's no cozier sound...

2009-03-31T17:14:00.001-07:00

Than rain falling on your tent-- as long as your tent isn't leaking.

It rained for most of the day, and I truly enjoyed it from my snug little nest. The thunder was vociferous and non-threatening. The mugginess was muggy. I spent much of the day reading from John Steinbeck's travelogue "Travels with Charley in Search of America," which my stepmom gave me, and I have been attempting to read for the last three months or so. It's not that large of a book, and I should have been through it quite quickly, but as a general rule, I am not a travelogue reader, so despite his apt descriptions and skill with metaphor, it hadn't really gripped me yet. Today, it is finally working for me. I think the laziness of a day off on the road lends itself well to his writing style. It's odd, but his general attitude makes reading the book feel a bit like I am talking to a more literary version of myself.

I found my new favorite sentence: "Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans."

What's that smoky, burny smell?

2009-03-30T15:41:00.001-07:00

Is that an ash in my food?

Last night the toilet paper in the crusty ladies room ran out after the office closed, and it hadn't been replaced by the time I left. I vented my spleen at the poor guy working the desk, which didn't get me any money back, but at least my complaint was heard. And probably ignored.

I rode off into another beautiful sunny windy day, which was fortunately a crosswind most of the day. Not the tailwind I had hoped for, but better than a headwind. Around mid-afternoon I reached the lovely Airey Lake Camp, which is free of charge, courtesy of the USFS. Thank you! It's nice to see my tax dollars come back to me. I have realized that, with a few outliers, my love of a campsite is inversely proportional to the price I pay to stay in it. Anywho, this place has everything I need: a dry little flat-topped hill on which to set my tent without fear of flooding, a pump with nice clean water, and a sturdy little brick toilethouse where I may end up weathering tomorrow's storms. The prediction is not good, so I figured I may as well hole up in the free campground and take a day off. No reason to push myself too hard too soon (in yucky weather!), since I'm kinda starting off cold again.

I got here early enough in the day to clean some stuff and make a nice dinner. For a little while I was smelling smoke, but a call to the fire people informed me that there is a prescribed burn a ways downwind of me, so everything is cool. The call also informed me that my meager cell reception here may be just barely good enough for slow internet, but talking is pretty much right out.

I... love it?

2009-03-29T18:07:00.001-07:00

On Saturday my uthah muthah had a book signing in Mobile, AL, so I hitched a ride in order to avoid a week of navigating Alabama. I've decided I'm no longer in any mood for route planning; I just want to ride. I've purchased the Adventure Cycling Southern Tier maps-- yes, the ones I poo-pooed back in Montana, where there was only one road and no navigation required-- and the route happens to run right through Mobile. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to meet Chris's brother in Birmingham or Beth's mom in the panhandle, but happily, I didn't have to ride my bike anywhere near Birmingham.

We spent the night in a hotel in Mobile (a little send off gift to myself), and this morning I took off riding west. It was a beautiful sunny day, with not a cloud in the sky, which is a relief after the stormy weather that has been happening. The only fly in my ointment was the brutal headwind. Welcome back to the road, Cheri. A kindly gentleman stopped me just before I reached the Mississippi border to warn me that the road was flooded ahead with water about a foot deep. After consulting a map, I decided that fording a river four times barefoot carrying everything I owned would be easier than a detour, so I went on. Besides, every other vehicle that passed was a pickup, and people love a damsel in distress, so I figured I wouldn't get wet.

When I reached the flooded spot, it was every bit as bad as the man had said. I assessed the situation, then began removing my shoes and socks. Just then, a kindly couple in a big shiny pickup stopped and offered me a ride. Yay!

Everyone else I talked to all day was very friendly, and when I stopped to phone a friend, I found myself babbling about how great it was to be on the road again, and how most people are inherently good, and how you get back what you put out there, and how people are so nice to touring cyclists, and how the karmic gratification when I'm on the road is pretty much instantaneous.

In my final mile of the day, a chihuahua and a... I dunno, let's say a terrier chased me. I had my eye on the chihuahua, and I felt my back tire run over something. It wasn't enough of a bump to be the whole dog, so it must have been his foot or something. He stopped chasing me. Maybe that'll teach him. This time, I didn't even stop. It's so much easier when you don't actually see their head go under you tire.

Finally, I reached the campground that had a sign out front that said "RVs and primitive camping." The guy had the nerve to charge me an arm and a leg, and explained that all of the sites were the same, with power hook-ups and whatnot, so it was all the same price. I asked about the primitive camping and he just shook his head. I suspect he saw a rich cycling yankee coming and decided to screw me. I didn't have any other option, as everything is far too flooded to even consider stealth camping, and I was too tired of fighting the headwind to ride further. This place is such a friggin' pit. It is full of trashy trailer people who largely seem to be living here on a near permanent basis. The bathroom is a dank hole, and the cleaner shower stall was in that condition because it was missing a door lock. The water was hot, but somehow... Slimy? I couldn't seem to rinse off the soap well enough. During my entire shower I was treated to the sounds of some harpy yelling at her worthless brats. I couldn't even bring myself to sit outside of my tent for long enough to make a decent dinner, so it was lunch all over again. I would recommend against a visit to the Bluff River Campground in Vancleave, MS. The day didn't exactly end well, and I'm a bit grumpy right now.

But I'm still glad to be back on the road. And tomorrow I should have a tailwind.

Blowing my own horn

2009-03-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Huntsville, where phones and internets work. I don't have much else to say, so I'm just going to give you this: Yann Black updated his website, and I made the cut!

And some people love pain.

Airports are my fave.

2009-03-23T11:52:00.001-07:00

After a fun, relaxing week in Gainesville, I am now headed back to Huntsville, just as the weather is turning in northern Florida. Heck yeah! Upon my return, I will be headed out to the farm for a couple of days, and it is a bit remote, so I will be out of contact until some time on Wednesday.

Later...

What is better than classic Trivial Pursuit?

2009-03-21T13:54:00.001-07:00

The Nineties edition of Trivial Pursuit.

We played the crap out of that game.

We have also done a bunch of lounging around, talking and eating. We went for a swim in the cold cold pool, and found some craigslist furniture for my aunt. Today we went out to St. Augustine, oldest city in America, intending to go to the beach, but it was cold and windy. We settled for viewing the fort and the town, then headed back to Gainesville, where it is warmer than on the coast right now.

I wish I was staying longer, but I'm out on Monday.

Welcome to Florida...

2009-03-18T12:53:00.001-07:00

After a terrific weekend in Nashville, I flew down to Florida to visit my aunt and cousins. The weather is fantastic here. On Tuesday we hung out at the beach a little, and played in the clear water on the pretty, clean-looking, soft sand. In the evening, we sat outside in the mild night air, listening to the chirping of the crickets and the bellowing of the alligators.

That's right.

Bellowing of the alligators.

If you are ever in gator country, and hear a low growling sound, it is most likely an alligator defining his territory, so he probably won't bother you if you don't go any closer to him. Probably.

Nashville has some sort of hold on me

2009-03-15T08:10:00.001-07:00

I spent a relaxing week in Huntsville, hanging out and going to the Space and Rocket Museum. It was all right, if you like that sort of thing, but it had this big open warehousy kind of feel that bugged me, because there was no real route through the place, so I felt like I was wandering back and forth, trying not to miss anything, and nitpicking the grammar and spelling on the signs. Before we left, we rode on the Mars Rover simulator (I won't give away what is actually located on Mars) and the Spaceshot, which sent us straight up in the air and then dropped, simulating weightlessness for a few milliseconds. Good times! Don't miss those two things if you ever go to the museum.

I was planning on returning to the road, I swear, but a combination of bad weather, last minute plan changes, and the presence of my new favorite band, DD/MM/YYYY, in Nashville on Saturday night caused me to once again board a Greyhound bus and head back up there for the weekend. Fortunately, it was a short, daytime ride, so I wasn't too cranky when I arrived.

DD/MM/YYYY's set was a little wacky because they were on a very small stage, and there are five guys in the band, who switch instruments, so things looked a bit tight. This led to antics that included singing while hanging upside down over a railing beside the stage, and an (intentional) fall from the stage at the end of the show. The first time they switched places, the girl next to me said "musical chairs!" Heh. Nice.

The show was the most random line-up I have ever seen. The first band was some Lillith Fair sounding girly rock. Then DD/MM/YYYY did their ridiculously talented thing, followed by a basic rock'n'roll kind of band that did a few covers of stuff like The Cars. There was a fourth act who cancelled at the last minute, who was apparently kinda bluesy, according to the cranky people who asked for their money back. The good thing about this line-up was that it gave us time to hang with some of the DD/MM/YYYY guys after their sweet sweet set, since we weren't missing anything inside the club. We bought them beers and thanked them profusely, and they gave us t-shirts.

Nashville report

2009-03-09T20:12:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty sure Greyhound's practices violate the terms of the Geneva Conventions. I knew the overnight bus wouldn't be a hoot, but I thought if I picked the bus route with no transfers, it wouldn't be too bad. How wrong I was. Every couple of hours, when we stopped in a major city, they MADE everyone get off the bus for about an hour, and sit inside the uncomfortable, well-lit station while they cleaned the bus. Seriously, how clean does this thing have to be? I don't need to pee or smoke! Can't I sit out here in the dark? Blurg. And the Louisville station, though it had larger, cleaner bathrooms than the Indianapolis station, had barely any seating. What's that all about?

After a nap, some tea with the woman who works at Music City Hostel, and a shower, I felt much better. The place has a homey feel, like you're just hanging out in someone's dining room or living room, chatting with whoever happens by. I sat outside in the sun for a while, and one of the guests played his guitar and sang. In the evening, I got tired of hanging around, and left way too early for the show I wanted to see, so I had to kill some time and beers in a random sports bar. Meh. When I finally went to the show, I was the ONLY person there. It turns out the show I had planned to see was cancelled, and there was some lame free show happening that no one went to. Darn. I tried to chat up the oddball proprietor, but he made it a chore, so I spent a while outside chatting with the bouncer. Nothing else was happening in town that night drew my interest, so I ended up giving up and going back to the hostel early. I was tired, but I ended up staying up super late anyway, talking to a couple of hostel folk.

I spent all day Saturday urban hiking with another girl from the hostel. We went to the Frist Center for Visual Arts, where we saw a really fantastic collection of oil paintings of people. The styles were all over the place, so it was quite intriguing. After that we wandered around the city looking at apartments, because my companion is in the process of moving to the city, and I had nothing better to do than wander around seeing different neighborhoods and getting a bit of a sunburn. After a shower and food, we went to the same place I had attempted to go the night before, but this time the scheduled show was actually happening. The nice bouncer let us in for free, and we ended up passing much of the night chatting with him and whoever else passed through the door. The music was okay, but not really holding my interest like the people show that was happening in the outside smoking area. It was a really varied crowd, from hippies to everyday normal guys to frat guys to tattooed freaks to some guy in super tight clothes and a fantastic gold jacket. It was an 18+ show, so there were all kinds of shenanigans involving underage drinking and girls passing out on the men's room floor.

The first act was a "DJ" who was just up there with a laptop, pushing buttons and dancing. It was confusing. Was he actually doing anything? He could have just popped in a CD. The other acts had multiple members and instruments, but, as previously stated, seemed more like background music for the real show that was happening all around. At least it was worth the money I paid to get in. I would have still been happy if I had paid the five dollar cover.

On Sunday, a kindly local squired me about town to see the view from Love Circle, a park on a hill that overlooks the city. The view was so good I forgot to take a picture. We checked out the Cheekwood Botanical garden and sculpture park, and saw a dragon in a park.

On Monday my stepmum and her friend (the one with all of the animals) came up to Nashville to get me and her friend's son. We had some wacky adventures involving crossing the tracks to a squatter camp, copper wiring, and Mexican food, then we headed back to Huntsville.

That ain't science! Screw this, I'm outta here.

2009-03-05T21:11:00.001-08:00

Saturday night we attended a fun architect party. Perhaps they were discussing their craft amongst themselves, but my cousin and I managed to get ourselves into many varied and interesting non- architecture conversations.

Sunday we got food from Ethiopian Diamond. Yum! It was as good as my favorite place back home, Enat, in North Seattle.

We've basically been playing Trivial Pursuit for three weeks straight, and I've become so cranky with the quality of the "Science and Nature" questions, I started taking pictures and decided I needed a cathartic online kvetch. I was fed up with the astrology questions, and then a question about a superstition nearly caused a fit. I really got vocal when I got a question that is actually not true, though widely believed by many. I didn't photograph this one, but it claimed Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet. It is almost forgivable, since he did actually exist, and was a plumber who improved upon the flush toilet and marketed indoor plumbing fixtures. This question is when I completely lost it. Come on! I thought that was as bad as it could get, but Trivial Pursuit managed to outdo themselves with this joke.

I am now on my way to Nashville, via overnight Greyhound bus (you gotta try everything once!) to spend a few days in a hostel taking in shows before heading back to Huntsville. Wish me luck, and if anyone has any recommendations that don't include country music, please comment!

What's that? I can't hear you!

2009-02-28T14:28:00.001-08:00

I've gone temporarily deaf.

On Sunday we went to see "Slumdog Millionaire," which we quite enjoyed. We got home in time to see it win pretty much every Oscar.

I split the weekdays between convalescing with my about-to-be-a cold, and cooking more delicious food. Sweet red pepper soup with risotto dumplings! Olive lentil casserole! Quinoa, broccoli and cheese casserole! Barley chickpea pilaf! Mmm.

On Thursday I discovered that one of my favorite bands, Don Caballero, would be playing on Friday! What, what, what?! I would have bought a ticket even if I was bleeding out my eyes! Fortunately, the threatening cold did not fully materialize, so I was free to enjoy the show.

I could not convince my country music lovin' cousin to accompany me to the math/prog rock show, so I went alone. The place was a sausagefest-- a fresh sausagefest, it being a seventeen and up show. I kinda figured this band would draw more dudes than chicks, but dang! I managed to befriend a woman who I think may have been the only other woman who was there sans man. I believe the two of us were in the top five percent, age-wise, and sadly, she didn't make it past the third band to the real treat, Don Cab. The first band, White Devil, was tight three-piece prog rock with no vocals. The boys were quite skilled, and I enjoyed the set. The second band, Cougars, was... well... let's just say I composed the better parts of this blog entry in my head while they played. Like half of the audience went out for a smoke during their set. The very theatrical lead made a joke about it, and they handled it well. I felt a little bad for them, but not a lot bad, because they weren't that good. The third band, a five-man group out of Canada named DD/MM/YYYY (pronounced Day Month Year) friggin rocked my socks off. They were ridiculously talented and interesting, and the kids SWITCHED INSTRUMENTS several times during the set. Who does that?! At all times, they had a guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, and a front man who kinda switched off between singing, extra percussion, some keyboards, and a horn of some sort. Good times! But then... Then...

Don Cab. Kicked it hard. So awesome. The prima donna drummer is the only original member, and he knows he is the show. He wore a stripy shirt and red gym shorts, while the two other dudes wore all black and were a bit self-effacing. I felt a bit sad for them, but not too sad, since they are touring musicians who are probably making a living off of their music, so they're basically living the dream. I tried to pay attention to the guys in black, but it was next to impossible to take my eyes off of the drummer. He seemed like he might have OCD or Asperger Syndrome. You can't be normal and drum like that.

Many of the younger, skinny jeans wearing hipster kids left after DD/MM/YYYY, so the Don Cab crowd was a bit older and less interested in how pretty and trendy everyone thought they were. Someone yelled out a song request, and Don Cab said that this wasn't a democracy, and if we had paid to come in, we should just trust them. Heh.

Fortunately the show was just a single train ride away from my cousin's place. A really long train ride, but no transfers or anything, so it was all brainless. I heart the train. That is one thing Seattle is lacking. I mean, we're working on it, but...

Derby Mayhem!

2009-02-21T12:54:00.001-08:00

For V-Day, my cousin and I were joined by a friend of hers for a chick flick ("He's Not That Into You"-- I was not that into it...) and more "Shekels and Swords." On Sunday I went to church with my cousin (well don't look so surprised, I'm capable of behaving for an hour at a time!) and then we shopped and chilled and what not.

The weekdays were a blur of five-bean chili, banana chocolate chip muffins, curried sweet potato soup, our grandma's baked beans, oatmeal peanut butter cookies, and of course, the new workout video we picked up at Target on Sunday. It is the Dancing With the Stars Latin Cardio Workout. I approve. The difficulty of the steps occupies your mind and distracts you from the sweating and burning.

On Friday night we went to see the Windy City Rollers. One of the matches was almost painful to watch, because the winning team quadrupled the losing team's score. They had really good Jammers. As it wasn't too exciting, and the Budweiser was $6.50, and there were only a few injuries, we used this time to come up with our rollernames: Andi Capper and Cher the Pain. (My cousin also suggested Turner Over, which is an extremely close second.) The other match up was much more exciting, with the teams rolling close for the entire bout. They took the lead from each other every few minutes, and had the best ending ever: during the last few minutes the song "Final Countdown" started playing, and the lagging team scored a series of dramatic points to finish as winners. It was a really fantastic finale.

Shekels and Soup

2009-02-14T08:31:00.001-08:00

After a couple of sunny days off in Huntsville, we got back in the truck and headed north just as the weather in the eastern part of the country began to turn. We drove through some on again, off again rain that somehow managed to pour buckets every time I stepped out of the truck. Seriously, as soon as I had to pee, and had an opportunity to do so, the heavens opened, and I was soaked within seconds. Then it would literally stop raining right after I returned to the truck.

We were lucky enough to get an opportunity to stay at the Whitehaven rest stop near Paducah, KY. It is an old house that was preserved and converted into a really neat rest stop. Apparently they give free tours in the afternoon, but we couldn't stick around for that long. I couldn't even get a decent picture, first because of darkness, and then because of rain. Maybe next time...

It's interesting to see how connected the weather is out here, how the larger systems move through such large areas. When it was thirteen degrees in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, it was extra cold in the south. When it started to warm up in Florida and Alabama, it also got really nice in DC and Chicago. When it cooled down and got rainy, it happened all over. I suppose I pay more attention to the weather now than I did before, but I never really felt connected to the rest of the country in this way when living in Seattle. So much of our weather moves in from the water, and systems are blocked or changed by the mountains. It's tempting to extrapolate this disconnectedness to other areas of life.

When we got near Chicago, my dad dropped me off at a train station, and I rode a commuter train into the city, where my cousin picked me up. Before long, we fell back into our breadwinner/housewife routine, and I spent much of Friday cooking lentil soup and baking banana crumb muffins. Yum. We also played a game straight out of her childhood, a Christian children's game called "Shekels & Sword Game." One part of the game involves choosing a character from the bible, and there are fun little things that each character has to do. We discovered that the male characters are more likely to get financial rewards for their tasks than the female characters. Hmm. So if any of you ever run across this game, and decide to play it, it's best to be a male character. If you really must be a female, choose Martha.

More notes on the trucking life

2009-02-06T07:32:00.001-08:00

You know how fires are like camping tv? Watching people park is truck stop tv. Of course, if that gets old, you can always head inside to the bar attached to the chain restaurant attached to the truck stop, and take in the cover band.

After dropping off our load in Connecticut, we headed to New York to pick up some PVC pipe bound for West Virginia. Then we went to Ohio to get a couple of trucks headed for Florida. Southern Florida. Just outside Miami. Just when I thought I might lose a coupla toes to frostbite, and my single pair of long johns had become too funky to wear, we got a reprieve! I also got my first truck stop shower while in Ohio, which, after five days, was most definitely overdue.

Dad has mentioned a few times how difficult it is to get a load out of Florida, so I crossed my fingers and hoped we would get stuck there over the weekend. Sadly, we immediately got another load, headed for Illinois (brr!), so we had to turn around and head right back out. At least I got to take off my gloves and coat for one day. We will get a chance to return to Huntsville on the way back, and I'm as yet undecided about my future plans.

Trucking is an ugly way to see the country. It's all billboards and concrete and truck stops. The rest stops are generally the nicest places I see. Thursday morning we stopped at a sunny Georgia rest stop, and I heard birds talking in the trees. I don't think I've heard any nature sounds since boarding the truck.

It's a hard knock life.

2009-01-31T19:20:00.001-08:00

Trucking ain't easy, baby.

At first, I found myself making note of every sign I saw for a campground, and checking the terrain along the way for stealth campsites. I don't think I've been doing that much during regular driving experiences. Perhaps it's that being on the move again put me back into bike travel mode. It's starting to fade a bit now, though.

Our first stop was near Chicago, where we unloaded three vans for auction, then picked up some scaffolding that was bound for Connecticut. Since it wasn't due until Monday morning, we stayed the night at an enormous trucker heaven south of the city, and my cousin came down to meet us for a delicious truckstop dinner. Okay, delicious might be pushing it, but the hot food was hot and the salad was cold. We had a great time reminiscing and gossiping for five hours or so, then it was back out into the bone-chilling cold night to sleep in the truck. It was so cold, we left the truck running all night, partly so we wouldn't freeze, and partly because if the engine gets too cold, the truck won't start again. Dieselicious! But I was toasty in my wonderful sleeping bag.

I realized that not only have I lived in Seattle my whole life, but I have never traveled anywhere during the winter where the temperature was consistently below 20F. I really liked Chicago in the summer, but the thirteen degree weather was brutal for me. My cousin was just happy that it wasn't below zero. I'm not sure I could become accustomed to that sort of lifestyle...

We drove all day today, and although we didn't take the same route that I took on my bike, we were close to it, so about every hour or so I would point at a sign and say, "I slept in that city!" It's odd how having ridden my bike through an area, and camping or eating there, makes me feel... proprietary. It's like everywhere is my hood. Dad and I talked about this, and he said that, as a long haul trucker, he feels connected to the whole country, because he's always driving through everywhere.

Driving through Ohio was especially fun for me, because I was thinking so heavily about all of the great people I met there. So here's a shout out to all of my OH hosts: Katie, Austin and Josh, Alan and Pennie, Rona and Gary, and Danny and Danielle. And also big gratitude to all of the other kind people I encountered: Sheri, Jen and the gang at the Lazy River Campground, that woman who gave me peaches from her tree, those random cyclists who gave me cash on the bike trails in Northeastern OH, and, of course, Allan from Connecticut who I met in Ohio. And that's just the one state. So many people along the way, in every state, have been so wonderfully kind and generous. I want to believe karma exists, and you all will get what you should.

Okay, enough of the final thought stuff. I guess being on the move again has made me contemplative, but this is starting to read like my trip is over for good! Rest assured, I am just getting warmed up. Again. (In my sleeping bag.)

Time to keep on truckin'

2009-01-28T10:52:00.001-08:00

Not much has happened here in the last five days outside of a couple bike rides, a day spent cooking indian food (I made my own paneer!) and a bunch of tv watching. There's really no reason to blog at all, except to report the possibility of things to blog about in the near future. I'm about to venture out with my dad in his big rig, to experience the life of a long-haul trucker for a non-predetermined amount of time, on a non-predetermined route. All we know is that our first stop will be Chicago. I may or may not have something interesting to say in the near future, that I may or may not want to share with the world at large, so... What was the point of this post again?

I'm still on wheels, I swear!

2009-01-23T07:24:00.001-08:00

On Tuesday I went out to the farm, where the puppies live, and got some more pictures and videos, like a giant spaz. Eventually, this whole puppy fixation should wear off. Probably when they are bigger. I just feel a bit proprietary toward them, since I was there when we found them, and I got to puppysit early on. And didn't kill any! And I'm extra fixated because Paige kept my favorite puppy, and she gives me ridiculous puppy hugs and kisses whenever she sees me.

We went for a walk in the freezing cold, and it actually snowed a bit. Just a flurry, not even enough to be visible on the ground, but it sure was pretty in the air. Wednesday morning we went for a nice horseback ride, which is something I love to do, but haven't done for years and years, so it was great to get back in the saddle.

On Thursday I rode my bike to Tennessee and back. It was fun on the way there, but when I turned around I realized the wind was stronger than I had thought, but I made it back before dark, so it was all good. While I was in the town of Ardmore, TN, I was chased by every freakin' dog in town, including a pack of Chihuahuas. Again. This time, I didn't run over any of them, although I certainly threatened them.

Cruise report

2009-01-19T11:40:00.001-08:00

After an uneventful flight to Miami, a night of talking, and a couple of hours of sleep, my friend Anna and I made our way over to the Port of Miami, where we met up with my mom, step-dad, brother, and sis-in-law and got on the boat. We acquainted ourselves with the boat and had some food. When we returned to our rooms after dinner, we were pleased to discover a snake in the bed, left by our wonderful room steward, Florin.

Our first afternoon and night at sea were pretty mellow, as we were still in fairly shallow water. The morning of the second day, we docked in Nassau, Bahamas, and went ashore for... well, people seemed to mostly be into the shopping, but the young'uns in our group opted to rent scooters and cruise around the island for a while. When we returned to the ship, we noticed this sign, but figured Carnival probably just couldn't get a cut of the scooter rental, so they were discouraging participation. That evening, we returned to our room to find a playful puppy.

The third day was spent entirely at sea, and we had gotten out into deeper waters by that time, so the seas were a bit rougher. No one in our group actually vomited, but some of us were looking a bit green around the gills after having a glass of wine with dinner. There was a frog infestation in our quarters.

Day four was another shore day, this time in St. Thomas, USVI. They drive on the left, as a remnant of their original colonization, but they have to use standard US cars, so the drivers are all way out on the edges. It's a bit wacky. Our group split up for our own activities. Anna and I went to "Blackbeard's Castle," which was a tower atop a hill, surrounded by several historical houses and a rum factory. Their pineapple rum was delicious, as was the rum punch. We then went to a beautiful beach, Secret Cove, recommended by the information lady. It had great sand and fantastic snorkeling opportunities. (We saw a turtle!) After some swimming and lounging, we had a beer and watched the sun set. We picked a beer called "Virgin Islands Summer Ale," assuming it would be local, but it was actually brewed in Maine. Sigh. At least it was tasty... When we got back to our room, we discovered a chilled out bunny watching the Simpsons. He let us join him.

Day five was another shore day, this time in St. Maarten, NA. We hopped into a taxi, completely bypassed the shopping area, and went to the french side of the island, where we caught a "ferry"-- really just a largish motorboat-- out to Pinel Island. It was a nature reserve area with beaches, snorkeling, and a couple of open air restaurants. We considered staying there forever, but our iPods were on the boat, so after a nice loungy day, we came back to a stampede.

Day six we were at sea all day, but had become more accustomed to the movement of the boat, so only the elephant got sick. He had a cold, though; it wasn't the seasickness. He was whisked off to the infirmary, and a kooky monkey moved in. Anna and I treated ourselves to full body massages, with complimentary mini-facials, for exorbitant prices, but we figured we had done really well with money on the trip, so we might as well treat ourselves. There was an UTTERLY FANTASTIC 80s tribute show in the main theater that we enjoyed more than anyone on the boat. Anna and I were so into it, we went to both showings. In between the shows, Florin treated us to a towel folding lesson, and showed us his own creation, which he had used when working out of Galveston, TX.

Day seven of the cruise was also at sea, and the weather turned cool, so everyone was kinda trapped inside the ship, and we were not feeling too sad about our impending disembarkation. We will miss the nightly towel animals, though.

We got off the boat in Miami pretty early, then went on an airboat ride in the Everglades, and looked at free and caged alligators and crocodiles. Then it was off to the freezing cold Miami airport to wait around for our flight. We all happened to be on the same first leg of the flight, but were not able to sit near each other. We did, however, get to play trivia on the fancy little touchscreens on the seatbacks, and we could see how the others were doing and what they had answered, so it was almost like hanging out. That flight left a little late, so it was a bit hairy making my connecting flight, but I just barely scraped by, and now I am back in Huntsville, swaying with landsickness.

This morning on our walk, we saw a bovine couple in the beginning stages of sweet lovemaking, but they stopped as soon as I started clapping and pulled out the camera. Next time I'll be stealthier. Who knew they were so shy?

Later, suckers!

2009-01-10T05:53:00.001-08:00

The new year has been all about lounging around. We made some apple fruit leather and visited the two remaining puppies, who are no longer roly-poly babies, but skinny leggy little things. They are still very cuddly and sweet, and seem to have a good life on the farm, chasing the chickens and cats around. I also got a chance to go to the Huntsville Botanical Garden. It seemed like a pretty cool place, but nothing was in bloom and most things didn't even have leaves, so I'm guessing it's a much better outing from May to September. But I got a few decent pics of both the garden and the puppies, as well as a short puppy video, so check those out if you are so inclined.

I am currently en route to Miami, to go on a week long cruise in the eastern Caribbean with family and a friend. I will be out of contact until December 18, at which point I will return with many pictures.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T09:28:00.001-08:00

Things have been fairly mellow since my return to Alabama. The weather has been sunny, but chilly, so there have been plenty of opportunities for walking, running and biking outdoors. For about forty-five minutes at a time. Then it's back inside for a hot shower. Holiday television programming has offered many opportunities for tv bulimia-- binge on a marathon of NCIS or Mythbusters, purge by turning off the tv and turning toward the kitchen.

The kitchen has been a fun place lately. We made our own mayonnaise for the first time which turned out to be quite tasty. We used it to whip up that southern classic: pimento cheese sandwiches (pronounced "pimenna-cheese"), using Miz Childers' (of the raw milk farm) recipe, as well as her homemade raw milk Colby cheese. But don't worry. We... fed it to some animals... or something...

My latest experiment in the kitchen was to make eggnog from scratch. It turned out to be completely awesome. The only bad part was that we took it to a New Year's party, and the other partygoers drank it. I mean, I guess it's good that they liked it, but we feel like we should have had more for us, so I may need to make more soon. It being made almost entirely of eggs, whole milk and cream, it may become a meal replacement drink for us at some point.

Boxing Day Pupdate

2008-12-26T21:20:00.001-08:00

After a few relaxed, snowbound days in Seattle, I caught a snowy Christmas day flight back to Huntsville, AL. My first flight arrived in Denver (where it was actually warmer than it was in Seattle!) about a half hour late, so I only had a half hour until my scheduled departure way at the other end of a very long terminal. I speed-walked all the way down there, forlornly passing up New Belgium Brewery's version of an airport bar in my haste. My dream of drinking in an airport bar on Christmas day was out the window. When I arrived at the gate, sweaty and needing to urinate, I discovered that the plane had not even arrived yet, and they just hadn't updated the info board thingy. Sigh. They were so stingy and optimistic with their information, I didn't feel comfortable leaving the gate area to go back to the bar. But it looked more like a well-lit café anyway, so it wasn't going to be the seedy, depressing airport bar experience I was seeking, and I don't think I missed anything.

When we were finally able to board the plane, one of the flight attendants made this announcement: "This is the flight to Huntsville. If that is your destination, great! If not-- Huntsville is a little bit warmer than Denver right now, so why don't you just ride along with us, and we'll figure out a way to get you back later."

After an uneventful flight, I arrived in Huntsville on Boxing day, and inquired about the puppies. The one I poisoned lived! Four out of the six were adopted out, and the remaining two stayed at the farm, destined to live a dog's dream life. I will be seeing them soon, so there will be pics, if I can get them to sit still for it.

Seattle Storm '08

2008-12-22T17:46:00.001-08:00

I hung around all week watching the cats and chickens, and wandering around the neighborhood watching people snowboard and cross-country ski. By the weekend I needed to get out. My mother kindly agreed to thaw the chicken water for the weekend while I crashed at friends' houses in the north end. She also kindly drove me up there when it became apparent that the Metro buses hadn't figured out how to deal with the huge amount of snow that had fallen in the south end on Thursday. During the weekend, even more snow fell, so that by the time by bro picked me up and brought me back to the south end, there was something close to a foot of snow. And it's mostly still there. Crazy. (see my flickr...)

I'm spending my last few days in Seattle pretending to be snowed in with my brother and sister-in-law, and with two of their friends whose flight home was cancelled, so they actually are snowed in. Into the city, that is. We managed to leave the house long enough to buy some new board games and load up on food and beer.

White Pre-Christmas

2008-12-15T22:14:00.000-08:00

Friday night my brother, sister-in-law and I went to a Christmas bash for charity at the really fantastic Club Motor, which featured live music, burlesque, circus freaks (who claim they don't want to be called circus freaks, even though they were billed as such), and a raffle. We won two prizes, and gave one away. Not because I didn't want to keep it, mind you, it was really fantastic, but I'm just not really in a purse-owning place right now.

Saturday night, it snowed, and never turned to rain as it generally does out here. As of Monday night, it is still snowy and icy, and shows no sign of a thaw in the near future. Weird. The chickens' water freezes over every night...

Foxy pink gorillas

2008-12-10T14:03:00.000-08:00

I've spent the past week eating, drinking, and hanging with my friends and family-- in short, there was nothing interesting to post about.

Until now.

Last night I went out with a couple of people on an impromptu investigation of the free Tuesday night burlesque show at Sea Monster. The place is tiny, and features about three tables, six bar stools, and a live band, in addition to the 9PM and 11PM burlesque shows. We were pleasantly surprised to find the band was good, and the burlesque was fun. The highlight of the show was the performer "The Shanghai Pearl," who has a twisted sense of humor, and great theatrical presence. In her last act, she came onstage dressed as a pink gorilla-- not a sexy gorilla in any way, just a full body pink fluffy gorilla costume with mask and french maid outfit, which she removed to much applause. She then continued to dance around the stage in her gorilla costume for most of the number, before finally reaching the obligatory disrobing during the final seconds of the act. This was a highly entertaining way to spend a cheap Tuesday evening. It's a tiny bar, and it seemed like the performers used it as a practice venue, so if you decide to head on down, you'll enjoy it more if you have no expectations.

Hometown Tourism

2008-12-03T11:22:00.000-08:00

On Monday we wandered around downtown, window-shopping and playing tourist. We stopped by that zany fun house, the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library, because I had never bothered to check out the new building while I actually lived here. It was a treat. In the afternoon, we drove to Tacoma to drop my cousin off at the Amtrak station, and we had enough spare time on the way down to stop by Weyerhaeuser's Bonsai tree collection, which is both fun to look at and free. We also dropped a buncha cash at the shooting range in Tacoma, where we tried out a .357 something or other handgun that was wrist-achingly heavy. At least it didn't eject the spent shells directly into my forehead, like the 9mm did.

Since then it has been all about chillin' with the cats and chickens, who seem willing to eat almost any table scraps except onions. We have a lot in common, the chickens, my brother and I, but you can tell us apart because my brother and I will eat the onions.

Feeling Taciturn

2008-12-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

I don't have much to say on the blog right now, because I'm getting the chance to say it all in person! As many of you know by now, I made a brother-instigated surprise trip back home to Seattle for Thanksgiving. (More thank yous to him than I can possibly express. This was a fantastic idea.) This is the real reason I wanted to be in Alabama by Thanksgiving-- I was planning to fly out of Huntsville the day before Tofurkeyday.

On Wednesday, my stepmom and co-conspirator dropped me off at the airport for an uneventful flight home. On Thursday, I got to surprise my mom at her home for breakfast, and one of my oldest friends at a Thanksgiving dinner. On Friday I got to surprise one of my other oldest friends at her mom's house for leftovers. Saturday and Sunday were all about chilling with my brother's cats, chickens, and various people I love, until the one last surprise for my brother, which is that I got our cousin to come up and meet me here for a few days. The master surpriser got the tables turned on him, mwah ha ha! It was fun to see how differently everyone reacted.

Now that the surprise traps have all been sprung, I can blog again. I am here in Seattle until Christmas day, so there will be plenty of time to hang with everyone. Hey GS people, I am crashing your beer hour on Friday, so show up early, before I drink all of the Fat Tire.

I hope your Thanksgivings were all as good as mine was. I am sure feeling thankful about now.

Thanksgiving is already over

2008-11-26T11:01:00.001-08:00

On Sunday evening, my uthah muthah and I drove to her friend's house out in the country, where the puppies are staying while looking for homes. We got plenty of animal time with the five puppies (one already found a home), two dogs, five cats, four horses, eight goats and numerous chickens.

On Monday we took a trip to Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, AL, a store where the contents of unclaimed airline baggage is sold. It is basically a giant thrift store, except that everything in it is really nice, because the previous owners weren't actually intending to get rid of this stuff. They pretty much have every imaginable thing for sale there, from VHS tapes to wedding dresses to handmade silk rugs from the middle east to cell phone chargers. It's amazing how much stuff never gets reunited with its owner. I try to never have to check bags, but now I will be even more militant with my packing. The store has become a huge tourist destination, with busloads of consumers arriving daily. This was pretty much the worst place in the world for a person who has been living minimally for six months to go. I have been wearing the same approximately three outfits this entire time, and a bit of boredom has set in. I went nuts trying on clothes and flipping through CDs, DVDs and books. In the end, I managed to reign it in and just buy a couple of things, one that I actually needed, and some that I kind of sort of needed. (How am I going to pass on a really cute performance thermal undershirt for $6? I need that, right?) I tell ya though, if I lived near that place, I would have a lot of random stuff, and great Halloween costumes, as well as seventeen pairs of glasses. They had a whole wall of glasses ranging in price from $3 to $25, and there were several pairs I really liked. If any of you are in the area and need to get new glasses soon, consider picking up some frames here, and changing out the lenses. Cheap!

On the way back to the puppy boarding house, we got a flat tire, and were assisted by a kind young man who would not have been able to sleep at night if he had let us change the tire ourselves. Okay, those were my stepmom's words, not his, but he was still very much a southern gentleman.

I volunteered to stay with the animals that night, while my stepmom went home to take care of some business and her friend went to a gathering in Nashville with some friends. I was alone with the animals for less than an hour when I discovered one of the puppies had gotten into some heart medication belonging to one of the older dogs. She had somehow chewed the bottle open and an unknown quantity of pills had been eaten by an unknown number of puppies. Yipes! Panic! I monitored them for a while as I researched the medication online. Shortly, one of them began vomiting fairly often, and my research suggested the possibility of her heart stopping. Yipes again! I made a few panicky phone calls, and the puppies' foster mother calmed me down and said it would all be okay. The vet, on the other hand, said to bring her in right away, but that there was really nothing they could do for her. Helpful... Anywho, she lived through the night, which was promising, although she was still pretty lethargic and a bit vomity the next morning. Blurg, at least all of the other animals were fine. 1/~50 isn't a terrible failure rate...

On Tuesday, my stepmom picked me up and we drove up to Nashville to join the party. It was a gathering of Christian truckers, who were having an early Thanksgiving in a timeshare. There was a sermon and communion before the meal. Once again, I felt like an infiltrator. This time, I avoided caffeine, spread out the desserts, and managed not to attack, although things were much less ugly than at the Republican women's luncheon, so it was easier. It was difficult to keep my inner smartass in check, though, but I managed it by hardly talking the whole day, and emailing a bit of smartassery to a friend. I ate a metric ton of delicious homemade cooking, including homemade pie and cake for dessert. Yum! We were joined by a Shoney's waitress the others had met a day or two prior, who writes and performs and sells CDs of poetry. She showed up in her work uniform-- she had to work later in the day-- and gave us a show. Then it was back to Athens for a bit of down time.

Two hundred days and counting

2008-11-23T09:04:00.000-08:00

Thursday was day two hundred on the road. My statistics for this one hundred days are less impressive than my first one hundred, in terms of biking and sleeping outdoors, but I've heard that I don't need to work anymore to impress you guys. Perhaps next spring and summer I will be hardcore once again, but I am quite happy with giving myself a break from the hard life. I celebrated my latest milestone with a ride out to a nearby state park, which was both lovely and quite peaceful, it being November and all.

Friday we went down to the Civil Rights Museum and 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, where we and all of the other predominately white tourists were assisted by the entirely black staff.

Saturday we went to the Ave Maria Grotto to see all of the miniature shrines and whatnot created by Brother Joseph Zoettl over the course of about forty years in the early twentieth century. He made use of a lot of material that was either found or given to him over the years, and his work was so precious and detailed, my stepmom and I were all sewed up in horse pies.

So for all of my statistics loving pals: My total miles travelled on my bicycle in the first two hundred days of my journey has been 5477.1, but the miles that were actually loaded touring miles were 5124.7. The breakdown for days 101-200:

-2633.6 total miles ridden during 50 days of riding, for an average of 52.7 miles per day.
-2435.4 miles ridden loaded toward a new goal during 44 days of riding, for an average of 55.4 miles per day. The rest were unloaded miles ridden while sightseeing.
-8 consecutive nights sleeping outside
-37 total nights sleeping outside
-33 consecutive nights sleeping indoors
-30 nights I paid for lodging
-$795 spent on lodging

Caffeine and Republicans

2008-11-19T15:54:00.001-08:00

Since my dad and other mother picked me up from Virginia, I have been lounging at their place in Athens, Alabama (near Huntsville), making cookies, eating, biking, watching movies and taking walks with my stepmom and her good friend. The walk this morning was the best ever, filled with puppies and ice. If you are a puppy freak like me, check out my youtube, because I actually uploaded FIVE videos of the puppies... And have no fear, the puppies have been moved to a safe place, and homes are being sought as I type.

Later, I accompanied my stepmom to a luncheon for the Republican Women of Madison, where she was touting her new book. I was sadly, grossly, pathetically, woefully underdressed, but the southern belles were gracious. Things went pretty smoothly, but I was feeling so out of place I ended up downing four cookies and five glasses of iced tea. After the luncheon, four or five women were still hanging around, kvetching about the president elect, and it was interesting to see how the same fears the liberals had about the Bush administration heading towards becoming a nazi-like fascist regime have now become the conservative's fears about the Obama administration. It seems like whenever anyone in this country disagrees with anyone else, the go-to insult is "Nazi." It's the new n-word. To quote Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, "you have to try really hard to be that evil!" It's a facile and generally completely inaccurate comparison that we make way, way too easily. Anywho, I managed to just sit back and listen for a while, but then things started to get too ugly, and all of the sugar and caffeine kicked in, so I took on the whole room. Fortunately my stepmom, who has totally missed her calling as a conflict negotiator, jumped in and brought the energy level of the room down before I started throwing punches.

Once again, I quit

2008-11-15T15:23:00.001-08:00

Saturday, 15 November: I spent some time looking at weather reports last night, and saw that my future involved rain, snow, strong headwinds and very low temperatures. Realizing that my heart is not in this right now, I called in the cavalry. My dad and stepmom are on their way to pick me up and take me to their place in Alabama, where I will regroup and decide how the rest of my travels will be conducted.

Check back infrequently...

Another inch forward

2008-11-14T15:13:00.001-08:00

Friday, 14 November: The weather was alright today, kinda sunny, not super windy, and I took yesterday off, so why is today so difficult?

A couple of hours into my ride, I stopped for some gas station coffee. I'm seriously addicted to that syrupy-sweet stuff that comes out of the "cappuccino" machine. I noticed there was a Greyhound station right behind the gas station, and was seriously tempted, but I decided to ride on. I kept following USBR 76, which is always taking long scenic detours around populated areas, which can be a good thing, unless you encounter a sign a couple miles into your hilly detour informing you that the road you are on is closed ahead. Sigh. No choice but to backtrack, unless I want to follow the posted detour route to who knows where and for how long. Since the backtracking brought me back to the bus station, I took it as a sign and went inside to inquire about the possibility of getting me and my Surly to Huntsville. The guy working there didn't know if they could take my bike, and said it was really up to the driver, and he had no way to ask. I could either hang around the bus station until after dark when the next bus was due to arrive, and hope that the driver would take pity and let me aboard, or ride on. Not wanting to risk a nighttime ride to shelter in the predicted rain, I rode on, reminding myself that there is no such thing as "a sign." A few minutes later, I had a roadside meltdown. When I saw that I was only a couple miles from a KOA, I called it a day. Sadly, I didn't get very far today, but at least I was able to dry out my tent (I packed up wet this morning) and do some laundry in the cheapest laundromat I have seen on this trip. Maybe tomorrow I will get somewhere, although the weather report suggests that may not be the case.

Lovely fall weather

2008-11-13T16:15:00.001-08:00

Thursday, 13 November: It rained today. I stayed put.

Inching right along...

2008-11-12T15:54:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, 12 November: Another cold, hilly day. In the afternoon I decided that, although it might have been possible to reach my intended destination (another KOA) before dark, I didn't want to try. Those hills are killer. I backtracked (blurg!) a couple of miles to a state park. I consoled myself about the short day and the backtracking by telling myself that at least it would be cheaper than the KOA. Wrong. They have done that thing that many state park campgrounds seem to do late in the season, which is to close down the cheap camping area and refuse to bargain on the price for the expensive sites. And there are way too many park employees milling around to try to cheat the system. I guess I could have put an empty envelope with a fake name and address in the drop box, but I just couldn't do it. Someone has to pay all of those park employees.

At least I got another hot shower and was able to charge all of my electronics.

Happy Veterans' Day!

2008-11-11T15:51:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, 11 November: Today I was faced with a tough choice: stay on USBR 76 and skirt some large population areas, riding on tranquil country roads into a corner of the national forest where I could probably do some backcountry (free) camping, or stay on the highway through some cities and pay to camp at yet another pricey place. As much as this seems like an easy choice, there were complicating factors. 76 is a longer route, and appears to be more hilly as well. I am still feeling black bear-anoid, and tying my food up after dark is no fun. And last but not least, it has been pretty cold lately, and a hot shower before bed is great for bringing the feeling back into my toes. As I sat on a roadside break contemplating my options, a police officer pulled up and ran my ID and asked me a bunch of questions. It seems there have been some "B&Es" in the area recently (I had to ask: it's breaking and entering) and he thought it would be a good idea to question the transient. He was very nice about the whole thing, but this still helped me make my decision. I don't want to give these guys more reason to hassle me, so I went for the pay camping option.

The ride went fine, although it was less than pleasant going through the cities. In case you were wondering, Salem, VA is full of teenage boys who shout unintelligible things from their reeking filthy trucks. Seriously, doesn't Virginia have emissions laws?! My lungs are illin'! But I digress. The hills were manageable, and I made my destination before dark, where I received a pleasant surprise: I was only charged $8 to camp. Now that's more like it!

All in all, a pretty decent day.

KOA is still pricey

2008-11-10T17:20:00.001-08:00

Monday, 10 November: Felt like crap. Stayed in my sleeping bag all day. Was bummed that I was wasting a sunny day, but thought that it would be better to take one day now than two or three later.

Today was almost like a do over of yesterday

2008-11-09T16:43:00.001-08:00

Sunday, 9 November: I woke up late again today, but this time because of exhaustion, not partying. It wasn't warm like yesterday, but it was sunny. I had a cold, mean headwind.

For the third time this trip (or is it the fourth?), I sold my soul to the devil for cheap goods. When a girl needs such disparate items as headphones, tortillas and Luna bars, and is a little short on time, where else is she to go but Wal-Mart? My favorite headphones that I continue to buy because they are comfortable, even though the left ear always stops working in less than a year, were cheaper there than I've ever seen them. (What's the deal with that left ear, Sony?)

I got tired and called it quits early, since I was at the KOA, and my next camping opportunity was too far away to reach before dark. I seem to have lost the ability to find free or cheap camping. It's partly because of my mood, but also because I don't have enough daylight hours to go asking around and then move on if I'm out of luck.

I think this is the first time I've stayed at a KOA on this trip. To me they always seem like the epitome of luxury "kamping," but they are actually cheaper than the place I stayed last night. Which isn't saying much.

I'm basically following the I-81 corridor southwest through Virginia, and then will continue along I-75 through Kentucky on my way to northern Alabama. And camping is pricey this close to the freeway! At least it exists. If any of you know of someone along this route who would take in a stinky dirty cyclist, please let me know!

Another gorgeous day

2008-11-08T17:50:00.001-08:00

Wasted on pedaling uphill against the wind. Blurg. At least it wasn't raining.

Saturday, 8 November: I got a late start due to last night's festivities, and my own dilly-dallying. I am sort of following US Bicycle Route 76 diagonally across Virginia, with some modifications. On my way through Afton, I stopped by the cookie lady's house, hoping at least to meet her, and possibly to sleep there. Sadly, she did not seem to be home, and the cyclist house was closed for the winter. I'm bummed that I missed her, because she's practically an institution in the cycle touring world. I rode on, bypassing the part of the route that went along Skyline Drive. It was just a bunch of unnecessary hills. That road won't get me again! Instead, I went over to the other side of the mountain that I had spent much of the day riding up, and headed for an exorbitantly priced campground. It was my only option. But I guess I get enough free days that it all equals out. I rolled in after sunset again-- gotta stop doing that!-- and found it to be a pleasant enough place run by a very sweet man. Not sweet enough to give me a discount of any sort, although I didn't try for one, but sweet enough that I didn't hate handing over my money to him. That seems like a good persona to cultivate if you are in the service industry...

I tend to be an accent sponge anyway, but Southern accents seem to be the most infectious. Two seconds into a conversation with a heavily accented person, I find my vowels slipping a bit. Although it seems to facilitate their understanding of the words that are coming out of my mouth, so it's not all bad. I just worry that people will think I'm mocking them, when they know I'm not from around here.

I love a sunny day off

2008-11-08T04:57:00.001-08:00

And warm, too!

Friday, 7 November: I took a day off and explored Charlottesville, VA. I walked to the UVa campus to check out the really cohesive architecture, then took the free trolley downtown to wander a bit. The free speech wall, which is basically a giant chalkboardy area, was a fun idea, and had some amusing stuff on it. And a lot of lame teenager garbage. I ate at the Tea Bazaar, which is a super mellow place to sit for a while, then took the free trolley to the campus, and walked back to the apartment. It turned out to be my host's birthday, so we went downtown for a beer and some food, then came home for more beer and Rock Band. I could get addicted to the drumming...

Charlottesville is a pretty cool city. It's in what I'm discovering is a sort of sweet spot for population size: around fifty thousand, although the student population swells this number some. This seems to be large enough to give a decent variety of restaurants and theaters, but small enough to be pretty friendly. They also have what appears to be good public transit.

I am now headed, once again and despite my better judgement, into the mountains of Virginia for some more pain. For various reasons, this seems to be the best route if I want to get to Alabama by Thanksgiving. That's right, as catchy as "Alabama by Christmas" sounds, I would really rather be there by Thanksgiving, as it is my favorite holiday, and I don't want to miss out on any mashed potatoes and gravy. I heard that there are areas of little reception in the mountains, so there may be some days when I don't post.

The applesauce was homemade

2008-11-06T19:42:00.001-08:00

Made with Lodi and Rambo apples, sugar and lemon juice. Fantastic!

Thursday, 6 November: After a very VERY leisurely breakfast and chat with Margaret Dawson of Dawson's Country Place Bed and Breakfast, I struck out for parts south. Last night I kvetched about the price, because for someone who tries to camp for free as often as possible, it was a little over my budget, but if you are a couple looking for a quiet getaway, it is actually pretty reasonable. They are located just a short drive from Shenandoah National Park, Charlottesville and three presidential homes, including Monticello. The house is set on 28 acres, mostly wooded with walking trails, abutting two hundred some acres of farmland, so it is quite peaceful. The food is tasty, and the conversation delightful. 540-948-3119 or 866-538-0138, if you're going to be in the Madison, VT area.

I had time to laze around because I was only headed to Charlottesville, just a half day's ride to the south, to stay with friends of friends. The ride in was uneventful. I stopped about two blocks away from my destination to consult my GPS, and was overtaken by my host, who was biking home from work. Exquisite timing! After some good conversation and a shower, we went to the Saigon Cafe, a Vietnamese restaurant recommended by Margaret Dawson. My food wasn't quite what I expected it to be, but it was still pretty tasty, and the price was good. After more conversation, an intrusion from a random guy selling firewood door-to-door (?!) and an excellent new episode of "30 Rock," we were off to bed.

I couldn't hack it

2008-11-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

It was just too brutal.

Wednesday, 5 November: Wooooobama!

I spent hours and hours today riding uphill through dense fog and drippy rain. It was brutal, with no compensatory views. I literally had to eat every three miles because I was expending so much energy. The cars and I couldn't see each other until they were right up on me, and there was no shoulder, so every time I heard a car coming I just pulled off onto the grass, thankful for the break and the fact that the pavement didn't have a big drop off at the edge.

I finally reached a high point and headed down into sunshine and beauty and fast fast rolling. My goal of reaching the only open campground in the park, 42 miles from my starting point, and having a shower was starting to look attainable. Then I reached the low point and started heading back up again. I consulted my maps, and it looked like I was in for some ridiculous climbing, so I took the opportunity provided by the crossroad at the low point to exit the park for good. At least I can say I've been to Shenandoah National Park.

I had a wonderful roll out of the mountains, into the sun and warmth and gently rolling farmland hills. I was on a fantastically smooth road with little traffic, headed for a campground that my AAA campbook said existed, and had tent sites. I considered calling ahead, but I couldn't get reception when I thought of calling, and my phone was dying and I wanted to hurry to get there before dark. The campbook had not yet led me astray.

I arrived at the campground about ten minutes before sunset, only to be told that they only accepted RVs, and had no place for tent campers. I pretty much pleaded with the woman to just let me camp on the lawn where no children were playing, but she would not budge, and had no compunctions about turning a lone cyclist away at sunset. She tried to direct me to a campground that was "eight" miles away (closer to ten. I saw the sign. But who's counting?) but I said I couldn't make it that far tonight. She sent me instead to a somewhat pricey bed and breakfast-- although it's not as bad as that hotel in Jersey!-- that was "three" miles away. Actually 4.75, and this time I'm counting.

I arrived just as it was getting dark enough to be scary, and man, did she do me a favor sending me here! The couple running the place just keep getting nicer. The woman said she would knock ten bucks of the price, then she gave me dinner (I think the applesauce was homemade!), then she knocked another fifteen off. It's basically just a big house (I guess that's what B&Bs usually are) with two guestrooms. Mine is a whole little suite over the garage with a kitchenette and a tv and everything. I was excited about watching "Pushing Daisies," but it doesn't seem to be on. Man, that month off sure brought back the tv addict right quick.

The ups and downs today were steep like the mountains.

Did I pick the wrong route?

2008-11-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

So far, Shenandoah is beautiful, but brutal. I'm not convinced yet that the beauty outweighs the brutality.

Tuesday, 4 November (election day!): I made it to Shenandoah National Park with almost no rain, which was great, since it had been predicted with a fairly high probability. I saw evidence of brief sprinkling, but I missed most of it. When I got into the park, I climbed 1300 feet in five miles. Blurg. Not so fun toward the end of the day. I was planning to stealth camp, but I chickened out, and there weren't a lot of good places anyhow. I stopped at the visitor center and got a backcountry permit and directions to the nearest place where that sort of thing is allowed. I got there shortly before dark, scarfed a bunch of food, tied the rest of my food up, and pitched my tent in the dark just as the rain was starting in for serious. Now I am safely ensconced within my tent, too exhausted to even bother with the handi-wipe bath...

Virginia is for lovers

2008-11-03T15:13:00.001-08:00

I can't actually vouch for that, but I can say that it's pretty nice where I am.

Monday, 3 November: With some difficulty, I left my friend's house and headed west, toward Shenandoah. I'm not in quite the best riding shape after my lazy month off, but am certainly better off than when I started the trip back in May.

I stopped in a national park for lunch, and a kindly ranger who also happens to be into cycling stopped by to chat. I picked his brains about my upcoming camping options, since it had become clear to me that I had grossly underestimated the distance to my intended camping spot. My options were poor, and I steered the subject around to stealth camping possibilities, not specifically for tonight, but for when I'm riding through Shenandoah, since most of the official campgrounds have just closed for the winter. Once we had discussed this a bit, and I said the magic words ("leave no trace"), he offered to let me stay in the picnic area of the park. Given the choice between riding a half day and camping for free or riding really hard until dark and paying money to camp, I went with the former. Now that I am headed south, and am really not that far from Alabama, I'm not feeling the need to push myself too hard. Besides, I don't want to end up in the sorry state I was in when I arrived in Virginia a month ago. I took him up on his offer, and am now lounging in a beautiful meadow surrounded by trees. I have a covered picnic area and pit toilets, and the ranger will lock the gate at sundown. There is no water here, but the kind ranger offered to fill up my bottles for me. He returned with an extra gallon on top of that, so now I don't even have to think about conserving water! Wooo!

Also, it was a little bit sunny.

Don't go to beauty school

2008-11-02T20:17:00.001-08:00

Well, not for a haircut. Not if you care how it looks...

Friday, 31 October: I spent two hours getting a haircut at the local beauty school. That route is definitely one for those with more time than money. I enjoyed watching the cute beauty school kids, but was a bit unhappy with the haircut.

I dressed up as the bottom of the closet (odds and ends from costumes past, with a few socks, random scarves and a hanger hanging from my clothing) and attended a Halloween party with my gracious hosts. Fun stuff!

Saturday, 1 November: Brunch, lounging, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."

Sunday, 2 November: Brunch, lounging, shopping, laundry, packing... Yup, I'm getting ready to scoot tomorrow.

I am increasingly unhappy with this haircut. At least it grows quickly, so I should be able to get it fixed up before too long.

Baltimore-- Who Knew?

2008-10-30T17:29:00.001-07:00

Maybe it's because of the sunshiny John Waters tinted glasses I'm wearing, but I kinda dug Baltimore. It's quirky, and the people seem pretty friendly.

Monday, 27 October: Nothing to report, not even a new episode of "How I Met Your Mother." Sigh. I'm gonna miss that show when I return to the road.

Tuesday, 28 October: I took the MARC train from DC to Baltimore for the low low price of $7. I met up with an ex-labbie who recently moved from Seattle to Baltimore, and we went back to his place for some of his wife's delicious cooking. All of you ex-labbies who have had her cooking know you're jealous! It's funny, they are now living about five miles south of the place in Maryland where I camped in those peoples' yard when there was a really bad storm, but at the time, my friends were not yet living here.

Wednesday, 29 October: I walked around a little by the waterfront in Baltimore, and climbed up to the top of Federal Hill Park for a nice view of the harbor and the city. Then I scooted over to the American Visionary Art Museum, which was completely worth the $12 entrance fee. All of the art there is "outsider art," or art made by artists with no formal training. Seriously, if any of you are ever anywhere remotely near to Baltimore, do yourself a favor and check it out. I ended up only allotting about two hours to it, but could easily have spent three or four. It was pretty much completely awesome.

I swung by the lab to surprise my ex-labbie's current labmates, who all moved lab together from Seattle. We popped by the graveyard where Edgar Allen Poe is buried before heading back home for more delicious food and the Obama variety show. The food was better than the infomercial. Mmm, fishballs.

Thursday, 30 October: I wandered around some more in the waterfronty downtowny sort of area, then met up with the scientists for lunch at the Lexington Market, which is apparently the oldest covered market in the country, according to something someone told me. I had "the best crab cakes in Baltimore" (according to the sign), which were indeed delicious. I wandered past the Washington Monument, then caught the train back to Arlington.

Hanging and whatnot

2008-10-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

Thursday, 23 October: Much lounging.

Friday, 24 October: Some hanging. I went out in the evening to a nearby bar that serves barbeque seitan sandwiches. I was really excited about that, but then the barbeque sauce was not very flavorful, so it was kind of a let down. The horseradish coleslaw that came with it did everything it could to help, but in the end it was only adequate.

Saturday, 25 October: Some vegging. We dressed up and went out to a nice dinner, then went to Brickskeller for some beers. They have about a jillion varieties, and the cheese plate was quite tasty, especially the smoked gouda.

Sunday, 26 October: We rode out to Mt. Vernon to take in a little history. There is a nice bike path that goes all the way there, so we just had a couple of miles on the road getting to the trail. We saw a historical reenactor guy who was supposed to be George Washington's valet. He did a pretty good job, but didn't stay in character for too long. He spent more time answering historical questions out of character, and talking a lot about the relationship of GW to his slaves, which was more interesting to me than the acting bit, so yay. Then we walked through the house and looked at the outbuildings, before racing the sunlight home. It's kind of a bummer we got a late start today, because I could have spent a lot more time walking the grounds and doing some of the historical walking tours, but I may go back if the weather holds next week. It was a really nice ride.

Back in Arlington

2008-10-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, 22 October: I spent last night in New York, where I pretty much did nothing but talk on the phone, photograph my tattoos, and sleep. Today I had some sushi before catching the bus home. I really don't have much to say in this post, I just wanted to make sure you are all aware that there are pics of the tattoo on my flickr, and point out that I have now added a link to youtube videos. There is nothing good there yet, but now that I have set up the account, I will make an effort.

I heart Montreal

2008-10-21T14:57:00.001-07:00

This city is so chill. If I had even an ounce of style, I would want to live here. As it is, I am on par with the Montreal homeless population, so I guess I will stick with the original plan of going back home to Seattle, where I am average.

Thursday, 16 October: After an eleven hour train ride, I arrived at the hostel in Montreal in time for the weekly Thursday bar tour. It was interesting bar-hopping with a group of 23 people, but we managed to stick together until the bars closed at 3 am. Then everyone scattered in search of food.

Friday, 17 October: I awoke in time for the Mont Royal/ poutine walk. This isn't the cheapest hostel around, but they have activities all of the time, and the people who work here are really nice and fun, so I'm happy. After all the hard work of walking over to Mont Royal Park and climbing the "mountain" for a spectacular view of the city, my first encounter with poutine was excellent. I went with the classic gravy and cheese curds, but they offered many other interesting looking combos.

Saturday, 18 October: I spent all day getting tattooed by Yann at Glamort. I am completely enamored of the work, but hadn't considered how old and faded my other tattoos would look in comparison. I had thought they were holding up pretty well...

Now my legs are burning with the fire of a thousand suns.

My friend from Ottawa and her husband (an ex-labbie) came to meet me in Montreal, and we stayed with her cousin, who lives near many good food shops. We ate like kings.

Sunday, 19 October: After sleeping in a bit and having a leisurely breakfast of croissants and pastries from a fantastic local bakery, we went to Mont Royal Park for a walk in the sunshine. Although I had just been there on Friday, I was glad to go again, because it is a huge park, with many trails and a lot going on. Every Sunday while the weather holds there is a "tamtam jam"-- basically a big hippie drum circle that waxes and wanes throughout the day. We stopped for a bit to watch them on the way into and out of the park, but didn't hang around long enough to get a contact high. At the same time, nearby, there is a weekly medieval battle. There was an interesting range of warriors present: from people with full costumes and crests on their shields to dudes in KISS T-shirts who like swords. One guy had a door for a shield.

We went out to eat, and I had to try the Mexican poutine. It basically had nacho toppings, with a sort of salsa-ish chili-ish sauce in place of the regular gravy that is usually on poutine. It was not as good as the classic.

Monday, 20 October: I wandered around for a while today, and got Vietnamese food in Chinatown. I attempted to go to an art exhibit that I had heard good things about, but the place is closed on Mondays. C'est la vie...

Tuesday, 21 October: Another ten hour train ride back to New York. It rained on both of my train riding days, but was nice the whole time I was in Montreal. It's like my time there was favored by the travel gods.

When did Gaiken grow all of those extra chins?

2008-10-15T18:29:00.001-07:00

He must have gained weight during his pregnancy.

Tuesday, 14 October: It was only 4.5 grueling hours by bus from Arlington, VA to NYC. There was a ridiculously polite kid on the bus who was chatting with his seatmate, and he actually referenced his time in the Boy Scouts. It was such a cliché.

I dumped my stuff at a hostel, then walked to Times Square, that gaudy ode to consumption, and found the half price ticket booth, where I picked up a ticket to Monty Python's Spamalot. At half price, it was right at the upper limit of what I was willing to pay. The show was completely awesome, and was only dragged down a little by the presence of Clay Aiken, who was adequate in his multiple roles (kind of an inspired choice for Brave Sir Robin, actually) but who seemed a bit in love with being Clay Aiken. Unfortunately, he was the only "name" in the show, so all the Claymates were cheering for him, even though he is the least experienced actor in the show.

During intermission I chatted up the lone woman seated next to me, who turned out to be a reporter from Copenhagen. She had lived in New York for several years as a foreign corespondent for a Copenhagen newspaper. Shortly after moving back home, her boss, who also publishes travel books, sent her back here for two months to write a New York travel book. It's a tough life. I asked her to join me for a drink after the show, and we went to the bar upstairs at Sardi's, which was quite mellow. Our conversation was a bit odd, for a couple of reasons. She is one of those people who loves New York, and she spent a lot of time trying to convince me that it is a great city, and that I should give it a better chance, and why all of the things I dislike about the city can actually be interpreted positively... The love-New-York people and the hate-New-York people will never understand each other. The other thing that was odd in our conversation was that I found myself clashing with her Euro-brand super-liberalism. It's not that I necessarily disagreed with her critiques of our country, but I found them to be really condescending. She had that sort of "you unsophisticated gun toting Americans should just grow up and throw out all of your guns because you don't need them and your brand of democracy is weird" attitude. So sorry we invented it! I found myself in the strange position of having to defend gun ownership and the electoral college. Well, I guess I didn't have to, but I was feeling like *someone* should. I wasn't in the mood to agree with her condescension.

Wednesday, 15 October: I dragged myself out of bed super late this morning, after enduring hours of sleep interruptions from my thoughtless roommates. Seriously, people, if you are sharing a room in a hostel and plan on getting up at 4:30 AM, you need to figure out how the key works in the door, and you need to either pack the night before, or do it in the hall. You can not spend half an hour rustling through every single thing in your luggage while four other people are trying to sleep.

I needed some Canadian cash, but sadly my bank seems to be the only one that does not change money. All of the other banks will do it for their own customers, but not my bank. Sigh. I ended up at Western Union, which gave me a decent exchange rate (I think) and only charged me $5. So that's taken care of.

I spent the larger part of the day wandering around Central Park, which was pretty nice. I started to think maybe I hadn't given NYC a fair shake, and should have stayed longer and explored more, but that feeling went away once I left the park. Just kidding, I think I would come back with a friend, but I've had enough alone time here.

After Central Park I decided that a subway ride would be the cheese in my New York cake, so now that's done. The subway system seems pretty fantastic.

I checked back at the half price ticket place, but they didn't have tickets for the other show I wanted to see, which is just as well, because it would still be pricey, and I was beat anyway. Better to go to bed early, so I'll be ready to catch the train to Montreal at 8:20 in the morning. I'll likely be out of contact for the next five days while I'm there.

Many of you know that I've never really been interested in visiting NYC, because the bigger the city, the less I like it. And this one seems like the d-bag capital of the world. But I couldn't travel the entire country and just skip New York when I am *right here.* So I forced myself to come, kinda like when I went to Niagara. Besides, I shouldn't judge it without visiting.

This city is a trip. There is this kind of lawless feeling to people's actions, that reminded me at first of Montana. Everyone just does whatever they want, and expects everyone else to deal with it. That works okay when you live in a town of six hundred people with no stoplights, but in a city this big and crowded, pretty much anything you do, ever, will cause you to tread on someone's toes. It could be argued that this gives people all the more reason to behave selfishly since you will never get what you want unless you get assertive and take it for yourself. It could also be argued that people go too far with this mode of living, and that if more people followed the rules, there would be a lot less people getting angry about things. But the anger seems brief, and a way of life. People shout or honk at each other constantly, then walk away and forget anything ever happened.

The lawless individualism is paired, weirdly, with herd behavior. As soon as a few people start to trickle across a street against the light, the floodgates open, it's safety in numbers, and everyone is in the street. The cars are pretty much completely subject to the whims of pedestrians, and all they can do about it is honk. A lot.

It's weird to be in an area this crowded. I'm completely over-stimulated, despite the fact that I haven't had a real conversation all day. Central Park was better than the streets, but there is not really anywhere truly peaceful. I guess no one comes to New York looking for peace and quiet, and the people who live here can just go home and close the door and windows, and hope they have good soundproofing. Or maybe the noise doesn't bother them. After being here for a day and a half, it's easy to see how people who live here have to tune everyone else out, for their own sanity, which is why it's possible for people to be murdered in the streets while all of the neighbors pretend it isn't happening and don't call the police. You also have to pretend everyone else can't hear you, otherwise you would never be able to have a normal conversation. That's how you end up with something like this.

And of course, everyone is always talking on their bluetooth devices. Hardly any of the devices are imaginary-- way fewer than I expected.

Brr

2008-10-14T07:26:00.001-07:00

It's a lovely day, but I'm on a highly air-conditioned bus to NYC, where I will be splurging on a hostel and visiting the obligatory sites. Everyone on the bus is wearing a jacket. This is ridiculous.

Friday, 10 October: We went to the Dogfish Head Alehouse, which is run by my favorite brewery. The actual brewery is in Delaware, but one of the two random alehouses they run happens to be just a few miles away, in Falls Church. I heart their beer, but the alehouse was a bit of a letdown. The food was adequate, and they were out of a beer I wanted to try. The beer I had was good, but I had tried it in Chicago. They sold some stuff to go, but not the thing we wanted, and were out of another thing I wanted. The waiter was kind enough to direct us to a small neighborhood grocery store that specialized in beer, which is pretty close to the apartment, and well worth the trip.

Saturday, 11 October: We had a nice bike ride out to Bethesda for lunch. I reached a new personal best: 1.1 miles without touching my handlebars. And I could have gone further, if it weren't for those meddling kids! Several times I got to about 2/3 of a mile and had to brake when confronted by too many other trail users. The last time this happened, I wasn't having it. I held up my hands and yelled "Don't make me touch the handlebars! I'm setting a record!" They moved aside. I thanked them on the way past.

In the afternoon we returned to the beer store for a beer tasting, and spent much time discussing porters with the devoted beer lover who was pouring.

Sunday, 12 October: I dragged myself off the couch for just long enough to go to Hellburger, because my friend claims that they serve the best burgers ever, so despite my love of guilt-free protein, I had to see what she was talking about. The burger was alright, and they offered many delicious topping options, but the bun disintegrated quickly, and the burger was just too big for me. My mouth is tiny. It all fit in my stomach, though, with a little help from my friend the fork.

Monday, 13 October: I took a nice bike ride around Arlington, in a loop on three different bike paths, with barely any time on the street.

Oh My God, Are You Serious!?!

2008-10-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

As much as I want it to be a joke, (seriously, stick around for the last two minutes, it's worth it) AIG asked for another $37,800,000,000 bailout after spending $440,000 on a corporate retreat after getting an $85,000,000,000 bailout from the government. I could have just typed "billion," but I thought all of the zeroes were more effective.

And speaking of corporate financial shenanigans, a friend's blog alerted me to the fact that 79% of US corporations pay no taxes at all, according to a report by the Government Accounting Office. It's all very well said in that first link, so I am going to move on to the real purpose of this blog, and you can choose to dig it if you wish.

I think being in the DC area right around election time is having an effect on me...

Tuesday, 7 October: I showed up late for pub quiz, and was no help at all, but our team won, so my two beers were free.

Wednesday, 8 October: After giving the nice man several hundred dollars, I picked up my bike from the shop, and man is that thing sweet. I glided (glid? glode?) soundlessly back to the apartment.

Thursday, 9 October: I considered riding my bike, but then I didn't. Maybe tomorrow. There is a surplus of nice weather here right now, and getting on my bike doesn't really feel urgent.

I like to lounge around.

2008-10-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

It is good.

Friday, 3 October: We went out to a pirate bar in Maryland, where we enjoyed (some of us enjoyed it too much-- and by some of us, I mean me) some tasty grog. Which is pretty much a fancy name for rum, rum, rum, triple sec, and spices. On the rocks.

Saturday, 4 October: We met my mom and her friend in Annapolis for sushi. Yum yum yummity yum.

We went to the haunted forest, which was pretty much a giant money pit, but, you know, for charity. I had fun. The best part was when we got in a discussion about what sorts of things would be scary for adults. April 13th and you haven't done your taxes! Your mortgage is past due! Then we started personalizing the scariness. Mine was "you have two flat tires, no spare tubes, and it's raining, so you can't patch the tubes you have!"

Sunday, 5 October: I did nothing, unless you count eating, reading, watching tv and napping.

Monday, 6 October: Much like Sunday.

Whitest. Day. Ever.

2008-10-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

Thursday, 2 October: This morning after breakfast and morning news I got dressed and walked to Whole Foods to buy some food. I found myself in the midst of a consumer mecca, replete with bike and coffee shops. It was interesting to note that almost all shoppers were white, and basically every person working in the service sector was not white, with the exception of that heavily tattooed kid. I passed by the park on the way back to the apartment, where I spent the rest of the day rocking out while baking, cooking and cleaning, and of course, catching up on a few shows I miss, since I don't have a TV.

In the evening, the girls and I watched the vp debates. A good drinking game, with simple-to-follow-rules: drink every time Palin says or does something cutesy/folksy (gol'durnit!), and drink when either candidate attempts to identify with/ ingratiate themselves to "Joe Sixpack."

Friday, 3 October: More of the same, although I'm hoping to also fit in some yoga, and maybe go out for some beer and food tonight.

(Sorry I went a little link crazy. Posting from an actual computer is so much easier than from my phone.)

It's day 150 on the road...

2008-10-01T14:57:00.001-07:00

...and I quit. Temporarily, of course. I'm a little bummed that I didn't quite make 5000 miles before the break, but 4934.3 is pretty close. Painfully close.

Wednesday, 1 October: I rode easy today, with my only goal being to facilitate my salvation by getting closer to the DC metropolitan area, but not too close. The ride was mostly non-treacherous, thanks to a little advice from last night's hosts, who invited me in for breakfast and bathroom time this morning.

Once I got closer to the large population center, I parked my bum at a bar to wait for one of my oldest friends to arrive in her internal combustion-driven road machine to rescue me. I am really looking forward to taking a little bike break. Hopefully soon my muscles will stop being sore, those three brand-new aches that popped up yesterday will go away, and my enthusiasm will return. So you all can look forward to a time of sporadic, boring posts about bike maintenance, baking cookies, bus trips to New York City, and train trips to Montreal, while I look forward to a birthday dinner with my mom.

Riding my bike too much is making me dumb

2008-09-30T16:12:00.001-07:00

Seriously. And even less coordinated than I was before.

Tuesday, 30 September: I was miserable and hating life all day. I made it to Maryland, and the hills got smaller, but the headwind got stronger and the shoulders virtually disappeared in the afternoon. I called and cried to Newscat, whose house I am headed toward, but she was unable to rescue me today. She promised to rescue me tomorrow, however, so I would not have to deal with actually riding into the city, so that lifted my mood considerably.

I headed to the next town and inquired about camping, since I was no longer concerned with making it to my intended ending point, which I was totally not going to reach anyway. Someone at the grocery store suggested an empty field that he doubted I would get rousted from. I didn't quite find it, but I found a smallish field or park looking area that I thought I might be able to hide in, although it was pretty close to a house, so I wasn't sure. Then I noticed the people from the house were eating in their backyard, so I (stupidly) wandered in and tried to explain myself. They were (rightly) freaked out by my presence, but they settled down after a few minutes, and even gave me some dinner. The woman remarked that she was reminded of how her mother used to feed hobos. I joked that I had been near a lot of train tracks on this trip. After dinner and some chatting, I started setting up my tent in their backyard just as some thunder rolled in. I finished and hopped inside just as the sky opened up and dumped. It was a pretty terrific storm, quite electrically active. At one point I heard a siren and thought it might be a tornado warning siren (or maybe hurricane?) but I am still on solid ground inside my tent, so I guess things will be okay.

Philly should drop the P

2008-09-29T20:26:00.001-07:00

Monday, 29 September: Ugh. This morning, after no warm-up time, I had a miserable, painful, pathetically slow ride out of Philly. Once I got a little ways out of the city, the hills got a bit more mellow, but then the headwind picked up, so it wasn't much better. After a phone call to the birthday girl, (I heart you!) I felt cheered up and a bit energized for a while, and traffic got lighter, and people got friendlier. But then the hills got worse again and I barely made it to my destination before dark. The guy working at the campground was super grumpy, and didn't explain things to me very well. He was like "do you need to go to the bathroom?" and I was all "well, not just now..." It turns out that what he meant to say was "there is a primitive camping area that has no bathrooms and is closer than the other camping area and probably much much cheaper." But I figured that out way too late. I think I showed up during the calling of the lotto numbers, so he was planning to hold me responsible if he had won, but didn't realize it. Cuz you can only get those numbers from the TV, not from tomorrow's paper...

It turned out to be all for the best, as their showers were fantastic, and I had a good time hanging out by the fire for a couple of hours with my camp neighbor-- I'm not kidding-- Cletus, originally from West Virginia. I know this is a super left coasty thing to say, but I never thought I would meet an actual flesh-and-blood person named Cletus. He was not a slack-jawed yokel; he was a very nice guy who gave me a burger, some beer and some good conversation.

Here's to thunderstorms

2008-09-28T18:01:00.001-07:00

Sunday, 28 September: Sleeping in, ice cream, oatmeal fudge bars, and red curry. Mmm.

The weather was occasionally very bad today, with much rain and some thunder, so I'm glad I was able to take the day off indoors. It's kinda funny-- if it hadn't been for a thunderstorm that passed over when I was in Hingham, MT, I wouldn't have met the touring cyclist I'm staying with right now, when he and his riding partners ducked into the bar for shelter. Because in Montana, the only thing that is always open in every small town is a bar...

From state/province nineteen back to number eleven

2008-09-27T21:07:00.001-07:00

So tired.

Saturday, 26 September: Today I had a fairly uneventful ride through the drizzle, mist and sprinkles. New Jersey was fairly flat. Pennsylvania is pretty and hilly. There were several detours on my route as I neared Philly, and people were helpful in an extremely unhelpful way. I would ask a question about how far the road was blocked, because I wanted to return to that road, as it was the most direct route to where I was going. Instead of giving me a useful answer, people would ask me where I was going, like they were going to give me a whole new route or something. I couldn't even answer that question, because I was on my way to see another touring cyclist I met on the road, and I just had his address. I would be like "Um, Philadelphia..." because I didn't know the name of the neighborhood or anything.

I made it to his place before dark, and he took me out to Pat's in South Philly for a cheesesteak. I wish I had brought my camera. It is right across the street from Gino's, another famous old cheesesteak place, which has a ridiculous amount of neon on the premises. A game had just ended, so the sportsfans were out in full force, and the lines for sandwiches were long, although the business is quite efficient, so things moved quickly. It was fun being down there at the height of the mania.

When does the hurting stop?

2008-09-26T20:24:00.001-07:00

Friday, 26 September: Today was rainy, as was last night. Every time I pack up my tent in the rain, it rains harder just as I'm starting to pack up, then slows down once I've shoved the whole sodden mess into the bag. Nature thinks it's hiLARious.

My Garmin spit out a route that probably would have worked fine, but I was all "Oh no, I can make a shorter route that has less hills!" I'm not sure I did either. I just made today worse, I think. Part of my proposed route was on a divided highway-- not my favorite to ride on, but they generally have big shoulders, and things go pretty quickly. Not so today. This was practically a freeway, and the shoulder came and went at random. I got off of that pretty quickly, and had to meander through the sprawling Jersey suburbs to get back on track. At least the roads are all labeled, and the drivers are much more careful with my life than NY drivers.

Hey MSN: next time could you work out all the bugs BEFORE you roll out a new product? And make sure it works with your OS and browser? I'm just sayin'.

$4 mocha. $3 tiny cup of fruit. $6 sandwich. $2 muffin. Paying for the whole shebang with a Starbucks gift card then scarfing like a pig while you drip all over their nice clean "café" and charge your phone: priceless.

A woman drove up next to me for a mobile chat, and offered to let me stay at her place, but it was only 3 PM, and I wanted to go a lot further today. I'm set on making it to Philly tomorrow, and I needed to reach a reasonable halfway point. Tomorrow I'm following Garmin's instructions to the letter.

I made it through the day by promising myself a motel stay tonight, to make up for all the rain. And there was no way I was going to camp in *that* tent. So for some reason I decided there would be hotels and motels in the direction I was headed, but that was dumb. When I got around to checking, the one I was headed for was not actually a hotel (thanks Garmin!) and I had to switch directions at 6 PM and head to the only other hotel I could even hope to reach. Night fell like an anvil on the way there, and my wet glasses made it impossible to see when there were headlights coming at me. Also, I broke my headlight. So I took off my glasses (and the rear-view mirror attached to them), put on my tiny headlamp, and rode (blind) to the hotel. I was getting pretty panicky, but I made it in one piece. Then, after getting literally soaked today, I got figuratively soaked by the hotel. Yeesh, is it pricey! And I called around-- nothing is cheap in this area of friggin' nowheresville New Jersey. Blurg. I guess that's the price I pay for poor planning. I don't even want to type how much it cost, but I will say it approaches the total amount of money I spent on camping for the previous 44 days. And no free breakfast! And a twin bed in a tiny room. Although the bathroom is big enough to pitch a tent in, so I did just that. And I'm on the third floor, so a porter had to help me carry my bike and stuff up the stairs, and I felt obligated to tip. But with all of the free camping and kind hospitality I've received lately, I have no right to bitch.

After spreading all my stuff out to dry and lubing my bike chain, I hopped in the tub for a soak. Then I realized I was totally wasting my time! One should always take full advantage of a tub one doesn't have to clean, especially when one has paid dearly for the privilege of using said tub, so I got out the weedwacker and went to work. Who's a lady? Me! (Do I have to leave a tip for the cleaning person, too?)

New York pushes, and I push back

2008-09-25T17:17:00.001-07:00

Thursday, 25 September: It was kind of a tough ride today. There was no direct route through the part of Connecticut I was in to the bridge over the Hudson that I needed to cross in New York. I spent the morning working my way through a bunch of quiet, lovely, but ridiculously hilly roads in a wooded part of southwestern Connecticut to get to a main road. Once I got there, it was both a relief and a bummer.

It was interesting to note how much the courtesy afforded me by the other vehicles on the road plummeted once I had rolled across the border into New York. There was a fairly clear demarcation.

Once again, I underestimated the distance to my intended camping spot, as well as my stamina on the hills. And the hills themselves. I saw a good spot to stealth camp, but I hadn't filled up my water, because I thought there would be more, you know, anything other than residences on this side of the Hudson. I rolled on until I reached a town that pretty much had nothing in it but a bunch of houses and a really big library that was open until nine! I went in and inquired about camping, and the nice girls who worked there couldn't think of anywhere close I could go. Since they were young and hip, I got a bit more assertive-- NY drivers are rubbing off on me!-- and asked if I could camp at the library. They said it was fine to set up behind the library, since I was planning to leave well before it opens again tomorrow. I thanked them, filled up my water in the bathroom, and set up. I even discovered an outlet on the backside of the building, so I was able to charge up my phone, since there was no sun today. Yup, I stole power from a library where I was allowed to camp for free. Take that, New York!

Connecticut has a couple of hills

2008-09-24T17:05:00.001-07:00

But so far, it's nothing like Rhode Island. And it doesn't even approach Wisconsin.

Wednesday, 24 September: Today was beautiful, and Allan rode with me for about thirty miles before heading back home. It was kinda nice riding with someone else, even though we weren't really chatting much or anything. We got to point out things we thought were funny or neat or wacky, and we made many jokes about the surfeit of Dunkin' Donuts.

Most of the time I had good shoulders, thanks to the Connecticut bicycle map and route planning assistance from Allan.

I continued westward into a part of Connecticut that has no legit camping options, but does have a large greenbelt area near some power lines, perfect for a little stealth camping. I slipped down into the trees and waited until it was almost dark to set up my tent. Here's hoping I don't get caught, or trampled by that deer I just saw.

There's an odd noise that sounds a bit like a drum circle, so there may be hippies in these woods, but I'm guessing I have more to fear from raccoons than from hippies. Although, with their opposable thumbs, hippies do have a better chance of getting my food out of that tree. But they'll be giggling the whole time, so I'll totally hear them.

Recovering in Connecticut

2008-09-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

I spent the day hanging with Allan and his wife, eating, route planning, talking bikes and, of course, petting the dog. All of the route planning helped me to feel a lot better about heading down the east coast. We planned a nice little NYC-avoiding route, since the thought of riding anywhere near there makes me pretty nervous. So I guess I found one more thing I'm afraid of, in addition to bears...

Sadly, I'm developing a brutal case of texter-thumbs from all of the typing on my phone, which has been exacerbated by the many recent tires changes. (You rely pretty heavily on your thumbs toward the end of the process.) If I get a bit terse for a while, that is probably why.

Rhode Island tried to kill me, y'all!

2008-09-22T20:22:00.001-07:00

Seriously. It was like western Wisconsin all up in here! I cycled through every gear I had every five minutes or so. Luckily for me, I was rescued by Allan, the touring cyclist I met outside of that ice cream shop in Ohio. He swooped in with his newfangled horseless carriage and picked me up at the border of Connecticut and my physical limits, and whisked me away to his home, his wife, her brownies and the dog.

Monday, 22 September: I packed up, careful to remove my own trash, but none of the pre-existing trash, from the vacant lot. It's like I was never there. I headed south through Rhode Island, and its monstrous hills. At least it was pretty out there, though road conditions were spotty, and it was cloudy all day. I was headed for Allan's place, and he offered to ride out a ways to meet me and guide me back, because there were some tricky spots, but I was dragging, so when he offered to come get me in his car, I was all over that. I insisted on riding to Connecticut on my own power, but after that I was all about the internal combustion. Sadly, once again I either missed the sign at the border, or there wasn't one.

I got a nice tour of the route we would have ridden, then a shower, dinner, beer and brownies. And, of course, much conversation and dog petting.

Massachusetts tried to keep me for another night

2008-09-21T17:34:00.001-07:00

But I escaped.

Sunday, 21 September: I had more navigation problems this morning trying to reach a main road. I figured out what must be happening. The road I'm on forks off in a non-obvious way, and looks like a lesser road, so I stay on the "main" looking road, and suddenly I'm off track. This has happened multiple times. On one of these excursions, I got stuck on the wrong side of the train tracks, waiting for a very slow, very long train. Just when the end was in sight, the train stopped. Then it reversed. Slowly. When the end was once again in sight, it stopped again. It was such a cruel joke, but after a minute or two, it moved again, still in reverse, so I was on my way. Whew.

Flat tire in the afternoon. In the new tire. It appears that those Tuffy strips I bought in lieu of thorn resistant tubes are only good for making tire changes take longer, and making me crankier.

All of this misnavigation and tire changing slowed me down enough that I once again could not make it to my intended destination before dark. I did make it out of Massachusetts, however, and into lovely Rhode Island. Once again, there was no welcoming sign, so I have no proof tat I am here. I'm in a pretty, well-treed part of the state, where the shoulders are wide and smooth. Ah. I found a piece of undeveloped property for sale in a sort of commercial area outside of a town, so I pushed my bike past the garbage people had dumped there and set up camp. If I ignore the trash, it's really quite lovely, with lots of trees and bushes and crickets. I'm hidden from the road, and feel pretty safe. Having cell reception is a pleasant surprise, because it's pretty hilly out here, bordering on mountainous, and not super habited. But I think I'm pretty near to several towns, so I guess I got lucky.

I wish I could teleport out of Massachusetts

2008-09-20T18:43:00.001-07:00

I would like this state a lot more if they could just go ahead and label ALL of their streets.

Saturday, 20 September: It was a lovely morning to ride along the coast. That is also what literally hundreds of other cyclists thought. Most of them were going the opposite direction as me, so I think it was some sort of organized ride. I wasn't really sure of the protocol for this sort of thing. Usually I wave and greet all cyclists I pass, but there were just way too many of them, so I did a lot of smiling and nodding.

I somehow made it into Massachusetts without seeing a welcome sign. I don't know if I just missed it, or if they didn't bother to put one up. I'm going with the second option, since only about two-thirds of their streets are marked. Obviously they are bad at signs.

Since I wanted to ride down the coast, and was being indecisive about my route and destination today, I ended up taking the long way. The very long way, since I got lost a lot. I would be riding along on a road that I didn't think had any turns, and there would be an intersection where nothing was marked, and I would go the way that seemed right, and then discover I had turned onto the wrong road. I would stop, turn on my Garmin, wait for it to boot up and find satellites, and then refigure my route. Sigh.

There is a Canadianesque scarcity of good shoulders in many parts of this state. Usually I can deal with narrow shoulders, but the people who built the roads in Massachusetts used a mathematical equation that made the width of the shoulder inversely proportional to how twisty, hilly, shady, and overgrown with vegetation that portion of roadway is. I spent most of my afternoon watching my rearview mirror, waiting for impending doom. A few times I almost hoped I would get hit so I wouldn't have to ride here anymore, but the drivers were actually surprisingly courteous. Massachusetts' score stands at drivers: 1, infrastructure: -14.

There is pretty much only one place to camp many miles outside of Boston. I didn't want to ride through Boston, but I wasn't sure I wanted to take that big of a detour. I considered a route that skirted Boston a bit, and had no camping, but then I got a mental image of riding through suburbs all day and staying at an Econolodge, which didn't appeal, so I headed for the campground. I'm still not sure I made the right choice. My route took me through a really seedy city, where I got lost some more, but was afraid to stop and check my Garmin or talk to anyone. I just kept riding until I got out of town, then refigured my route.

All of the navigation problems put me behind schedule, and I knew I would never make it to the campground before dark. I kept wasting precious daylight asking people for help, but no one knew anything or offered to help. A police officer in a small town hemmed and hawed and asked questions about my trip until it got a bit darker, and ended up directing me to an empty fairground about two miles away. He seemed unconcerned about me riding after dark, and my statement "I'm afraid to ride after dark, and am starting to panic a bit," had no effect. A block or two later, I ducked in to a fire station to plead my case. Those guys didn't want to scrape me off the road, so they were more helpful. The lieutenant ended up driving me to "station 3," their training facility, a couple of miles out of town, where he let me inside to use the bathroom before I set up my tent behind the building. There was a shower in the bathroom, but I didn't push my luck. I was kind of anxious to get to bed anyway, and with the cooler weather, I'm less gunky at the end of the day.

So many heavy sighs...