Verbal snapshots

Until today, when a hike in Muir Woods yielded them in abundance, I've almost completely neglected to take any pictures of my manifest and wonderful activities since Friday. Things have happened quickly, a camera would have been inconvenient, I plumb forgot, etc etc. -- but I do think I've been more in the moment without one. In the absence of such pictures, though, there are a few memories I need to preserve in words for recollection.

- Standing atop a boulder at Golden Gate Park and looking down at nearly the entire city of San Francisco from the hillside
- Running across the wet beach in my sneakers to taste the Pacific Ocean. It is salty, but not as salty as the Great Salt Lake. Its waves are bigger, though. In fact, they're bigger than Gulf waves, which accounts for this coast's legendary surfing.
- Making enormous bubbles at the Exploratorium, then making enormous smoke rings at the Exploratorium, then making enormous towers on wobbly tables through the use of counterweights at the Exploratorium
- 1999-Sushu's letter to 2009-Sushu, written ten years ago as an essay for her Chinese class, which correctly predicted what she would major in, her current unemployed status, and the fact that she'd have a wonderful boyfriend; she also admonished herself not to get complacent, as hard times are ahead. Sushu's mother presented the letter via overhead projection at the dinner.
- Jono's extemely sensual presentation of the Rocky Horror Picture Show's "Transsexual Transylvania" at karaoke
- Wearing the Raskins' python as a hat
- The plenitude of Asian restaurants in the Bay Area, and the extremely concrete and real distinctions between Japanese, Thai, Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Szechuan...), Vietnamese, Korean, Mongolian, Cambodian, and other Asian food, in contrast with Fort Myers' all-pan-Asian all-the-time approach

And then today I went for a marathon hike on the steep trails of Muir Woods. It was about a 2.5-hour walk during which I climbed, then descended, over a thousand feet through a gorgeous redwood forest and a rolling meadow with amazing views of the surrounding hills. I met two deer and a goldfinch along the way. Yes, I know, you want pictures. I was going to put them up tonight, but it looks like I'm relocating to Pacifica tonight in preparation for an early start towards Seattle tomorrow morning (not sure yet where I'll be tomorrow evening). I'll have Alexis's company, as well as (last I heard) Isaac's, though he may yet decide to ride with Aviva. All concerned have been warned that my backseat will be cramped with road tripping supplies.

Gotta get going if I want to make it to Pacifica by seven through rush hour traffic. Till next time!

Man and life

I've spent the last few days hanging out with old friends and meeting some new ones. Most especially, though, I've spent them delighting in Jono and Sushu's newfound matrimony. The weekend has been a whirlwind. Hell, in a one-hour span today alone I established in-jokes with my buddies about buffalo, pagodas, and pylons in separate episodes. (Golden Gate Park has all three.) For the record, Stephen's buffalo call is "buffalo!" said in a slightly different voice, and the famously bizarre (but perfectly grammatical) sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" relies on the word "buffalo" being a collective plural noun, a transitive verb, and an adjective, properties we couldn't think of any other word that fit. (The sentence means "Buffalo from a city in New York who are bullied by other buffalo from a city in New York bully still other buffalo from a city in New York.") The stories for the pagoda and pylon are similarly elaborate. We all learned the word "equitational" in connection with the latter.

But I digress. I should really start with Friday, a day spent mostly at the home of the grandparents of Aza Raskin (a webfamous software developer) exploring their wonderfully eccentric farm and treehouse. They have chickens, goats, alpacas, a dog, a cat, a python named Monty, an African gray parrot (not a Norwegian blue), a swing hung from tree branches perhaps thirty feet high, and two tree forts connected by industrial-strength rope netting. I traveled this strange realm with friends old and new; it's been a pleasure getting to know Aza's sister Aviva over the weekend, and I hope we stay in touch! (They have a third sibling, Aenea, and if you are observant about language you will notice that their parents have a particular playful naming convention for their children.) At the Raskin clan's house Alexis and Aviva baked a red velvet cake to complement the wedding while I wrote a story to perform at the picnic, a work of fiction based on the tales I've recounted in previous entries here; it includes elements from Ruby Falls, from Tunnel Hill, and from Winnemucca, and tells how my nonexistent friend Richard had a surreal experience while on a road trip to San Francisco to pick up a statue of St. McGuffin.

The following day I actually told this story in front of the picnic crowd of about sixty people, to general applause! Other acts included a trumpet/cello duet (?!) written especially for the wedding, some really fantastic juggling with that spinning thing on a wire, two ukulele songs, and embarrassing stories about the many ways Jono has almost killed himself over the years. During the eating portion of the picnic I wandered off with Alexis and Aviva. We found a creek, took our shoes off, and had a foot dip. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was for me, maybe more than the storytelling. Spontaneity is difficult! I love spontaneous people, but I have trouble cultivating that quality in myself. I can't go out and mindfully practice it, either, because by definition you can't plan spontaneity. So instead I just have to be alert to the times when I can break out of my own expectations to create something unexpected and wonderful. In this case I came out refreshed and with dirty feet. The willingness to accept dirty feet as the price of being able to tell this story is relevant to what I'm trying to say here.

After the picnic there was the wedding dinner, where I sat at a table of twelve and was very nearly socially functional! The toasts and well-wishes would have been nauseatingly sweet for anyone but Jono and Sushu, who are superhumanly sweet themselves and deserve all the sweetness the world can bestow on them. Afterward there was karaoke. That started out okay, but it turns out that when you pack forty people into a room with flashing lights and loud music and bad technology and people trying to make conversation with you in this environment you have a recipe for social disaster. I fled the scene after about an hour and spent the rest of the evening in my car until the friends I was driving home were ready to leave, turning the car on only to play "Blackbird" softly. I felt really awful. This is the same as the creek story except for the outcome. But I don't want to beat myself up for that; karaoke could have been fantastic and I gave it the opportunity to be. Adventures don't always have happy endings, but most happy endings come about because of adventures.

And then today I got to meet Jono's very little sister Aleksa, who is without doubt the nerdiest eight-year-old girl I know. (I'm guessing at her age.) Jono, Sushu, Aleksa, and I played some Rock Band together, and it turns out I'm best at the drums while Aleksa is best at singing. Then there was tourism: the Exploratorium, a San Francisco interactive science museum full of the coolest exhibits I have ever seen, from magnetic sand to imaging technology that draws evolving, moving stylized sketches of you in real time as you stand in front of the screen gaping at it; and Golden Gate Park, which I've already talked about. That plus the amazing Asian food that my visit to Cali has been full of made this a day well worth getting out of bed for.

It looks like I have two more full days in the Bay Area. I'm driving Alexis and possibly our fellow anime club alum Isaac up to Portland and then Seattle later this week, probably Wednesday, in convoy with Aviva. Until then I will happily stay in these bay cities that have afforded me so many adventures!

Bullet points of golden glory

Exploring San Francisco and catching up with both my aunt and my anime club friends has been exhausting! I missed last night's blog entry and don't want to blog tonight, but then I would be in "I've put it off for so long that it is now impossible to act" territory, which I'd rather avoid. So here is a succinct resume-style summary of the last couple days!

- Learned about Bay Area microclimates, whereby the weather in one neighborhood is not correlative with the weather in the next neighborhood over
- Saw San Francisco's magisterial town hall, inc. AIDS quilt where each patch is made in memoriam of a victim
- Visited large Episcopal church that had prob'ly a .2-mile-long path twisted in a circle on the floor with radius about ten feet (pic soon)
- Ate fantastic Chinese food of unknown animal provenance with Ellen and Wendy
- Captured several beautifully fog-shrouded shots of the Golden Gate Bridge
- Walked along Pacific Ocean coast
- Watched movie "Welcome to the Dollhouse" in Ellen and Wendy's home theater; good but painful
- Missed bridge tour this morning but drove across bridge to Marin County
- Toured San Francisco Academy of Sciences, whose aquarium is fantastic, particularly the upside-down jellyfish
- Got together with U of C friends for dinner of a Vietnamese soup called pho; yummy and full of noodly goodness
- Bought used copy of The Brothers Karamazov, figuring that I have to read at least one Russian novel at some point in my life and it might as well be this one
- Took pictures of bride and groom in full bridal and groomal array, respectively; he is wearing a top hat and monocle with otherwise traditional Japanese dress and looks silly but in a good way, while she is wearing a beautiful scarlet dress with veil and black shawl

I'm not an authority on the Bay Area yet, but I'm getting closer by the day :) We'll probably drive out on Sunday. Till then, I'll continue tearing up the city with my friends!

Tough row Tahoe

Today I'll be relatively brief, because it's late and I'm tired. I got the hell out of Dodge (okay, Winnemucca) early this morning to give myself time for a long detour on the way to San Francisco. My target: Lake Tahoe, the well-known resort lake on the California/Nevada border south of Reno. The lake is almost lost behind an enormous hillock that you have to crest before you can reach it, an artifact of the glaciers and volcanoes that worked in concert to create Lake Tahoe as we know it. The lake is... absolutely gorgeous. It's not at all like the Great Salt Lake, where the appeal comes in part from the intellectual act of trying to come to terms with the scope of what you're seeing. Lake Tahoe is just vibrant with uncomplicated beauty, clear and blue and with mountains on all sides. I rented a kayak from a guy in a big straw hat and paddled around for half an hour, happy as a clam. Would've paddled longer but didn't have the abs for it. Took some nice pictures, which will be up when they're up. Afterwards I grabbed a quick lunch of chicken skewers and peanut sauce and packed up for Frisco.

And that -- or more specifically, Berkeley -- is where I am now. The first leg of my transcontinental trip is complete. I've driven from Florida to California. It's a momentous night, and to celebrate I kicked ass at chess and Pente against my aunt Ellen, who's hosting me for a couple nights. I also ate her girlfriend Wendy's halibut, which was mild and yummy with some lemon and ginger on it. Once again I'm the beneficiary of touching generosity. My hosts, my hotel rooms, and the road between them -- the scale of this trip has been larger than anything I've done before. And because I'm in San Francisco and the only way back home is to drive, I know the journey will grow larger still. The next leg will take me up to Seattle, but only after a layover of several days here in the Bay Area, where I will frolic with my aunt and then with my anime club friends and their relatives, all in from out of town for Sushu and Jono's wedding. Lots of (challenging, character-building) fun ahead!

The dusty Winnemucca road

I bade a fond farewell to Salt Lake City this morning, but first I set out to explore its greatest remaining mystery: the Great Salt Lake. One would think that it would be impossible to drive past the Great Salt Lake without seeing at least three billboards for boat tours of the lake, but as far as my Googling and inquiries can discover, all the lake's boat tours are either luxury or bankrupt. The best way to experience the lake seemed to be driving across a bridge to Antelope Island, where there's a road that showcases the lake on one side and native flora and fauna on the other, but it would have been two extra hours of driving with nothing to do but gawk at things from the car. I generally like activities better that let me gawk at things from outside the car, so I took a pass on Antelope Island. Instead I pulled off I-80 at a beach (yes, the Great Salt Lake has beaches) and waded out to the water. The interesting thing about the Great Salt Lake is that you experience it with all five of your senses. The other interesting thing about the Great Salt Lake is that none of those senses can distinguish the lake from the Gulf of Mexico, the coast I'm most familiar with. There is simply no way to tell that this is a lake and not an ocean. Indeed, the early explorers thought they'd reached the Pacific.

Wishful thinking on their part. They still had a ways to go. The western mountains in this country simply do not end! Whenever you crest one, there's another behind it. Sometimes they're craggy peaks, sometimes mesas, sometimes big ol' hills that look like contour maps out of an MMORPG. But there are always more of them. It's a good thing I'm driving primarily to see the country, because if I were driving primarily to reach a destination I'd be frustrated to no end. In fact, I was frustrated today. I turned off the interstate to look for a canyon they advertised. It turned out to be a forty-mile round trip, and so inadequately marked that I never did find what I was looking for. I did hit a prairie dog while looking, though. I don't think it lived. I cried a little bit on my way back to the interstate. I was going a little over the speed limit, and if I'd been going slower I might have stopped in time. It was one of the small, careless tragedies that happen every day. I'm so sorry.

Later I finally reached Winnemucca. Winnemucca is a small town that appears to be built entirely on transient tourism like mine. Small-time casinos are everywhere, poised to rake in the passing traffic. Well, I reasoned, if I want to experience Nevada I have to go to either a casino or a prostitute, and prostitutes are expensive. I got $40 turned into chips. This was my first time gambling and very nearly my first time in a casino. I didn't know the rituals. You pay for your chips in cash, no credit. No blackjack till six. Chip bucket on your lap, not the table. Only one hand on the cards. Scratch the cards on the table to hit, shove 'em under the money to stand. No touching cards other than your first two. Drinks are free while you play. I didn't know any of that stuff, but I walked in knowing there was a lot I didn't know. I still don't know how many of those rules are universal to casinos and how many are specific to Winners Hotel & Casino. What's important is that I overcame my intimidation -- and Winnemucca is an intimidating, masculine town -- for no other reason than to practice courageous living. I didn't do too bad, either! Conservatively, I kept my winnings separate from my principal and left when my $40 was gone. At that point I had $29.50. So I paid $10.50 for a drink, some entertainment, and a bracing memory. Absolutely a fair transaction.

Exhausting the list of things to do in Winnemucca was Sid's Restaurant, sort of a de-chained version of Perkins, walls decorated with everything from framed artwork to My Little Pony coloring book pages. I asked the waitress what her favorite dish on the menu was and got a chicken focaccia sandwich -- which was not at all what I'd been going to order but turned out to be very good! One thing I've learned repeatedly on this trip is that people who know more than I do about an area, or a restaurant, or a culture, are to be treasured; it's through them that I can approach that knowledge. They don't always help, but they almost never hurt. Of course, sometimes I stumble across things on my own, too, and that kind of knowledge is also sweet, like a little secret. Which I promptly blab about to all of you. :)

City on a hill

I left Grand Junction this morning without it leaving much of an impression on me. Not that I didn't try to have an adventure! -- but adventures are harder to come by on Sundays, and Grand Junction's museums and wineries aren't really my scene anyway. I settled for the Trail Through Time, just west along the interstate. The trail winds through the hills beside a mesa on the high scrubland, showcasing classical Wild West terrain to great effect, and runs past many dramatic rock formations, some with dinosaur and plant fossils embedded in them. Courtesy of the trail, I had an invigorating and nearly solo morning constitutional, then set out for Salt Lake City.

Utah's cliffs and plateaus would have seemed breathtaking back in Kansas, but seemed gentle and a little boring after yesterday's Rocky Mountain passage. They were a welcome reprieve from the constantly-one-second-away-from-death peaks of Colorado. (Though there was some snow on the road at one point!!!) To pass the time while driving I listened to an audiobook version of Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," courtesy of Wiley. Audiobooks are much better than music as a way to kill time; they hold your attention and let your muscle memory deal with the road. Outliers is pretty good. It's a lot like The Tipping Point in that it's a book-length elaboration of a single self-evident sentence, in this case "even for the talented, success relies on being in the right place at the right time." But also like The Tipping Point, the case studies Gladwell uses to make his (foregone-conclusion) argument are fascinating in themselves. It might be better to think of Gladwell as a talented essayist who organizes his monographs around central themes rather than the social visionary he presents himself as.

But you're not here for my literary criticism, are you? Outliers was just a means to Salt Lake City. I exited the interstate at a randomly selected mile marker within the city and began exploring downtown. I soon found myself driving up a steep grade and staring directly at the Utah State Capitol, an architecturally gorgeous building very much modeled after the U.S. Capitol in Washington. I couldn't go inside because it was Sunday -- go figure -- but I got a couple pictures, plus a pamphlet about Temple Square from the tourist information center across the street. Temple Square is Salt Lake City's Loop -- a block of buildings with names at the heart of downtown. But where the Chicago Loop is very commercial, Temple Square beams Mormonism. Its centerpiece is Salt Lake Temple, which unfortunately I couldn't visit due to construction -- it figures that the one building you'd expect to be open on a Sunday was closed for a different reason! I did, however, sit in a pew inside the Salt Lake Tabernacle and snapped photos of its organ, one of the twenty biggest in the world. Just sitting in that building is a remarkable experience; the tabernacle seems bizarrely full of space for its size even though it isn't as lofty as one expects from a religious structure.

Once I was done wandering around Temple Square I got back in the car and headed for Red Iguana. This Mexican restaurant shows up in all the travel guides as a culinary center of the city. It's a pretty large place with lots of parking, yet still has a hole-in-the-wall atmosphere that makes you feel cared for even as you're stuffed into the dining rooms with a few dozen other parties. (At 4:50 it was already on a 45-minute wait! I read some Neverwhere until my name was called.) I ordered a pork shank that was served in a thick, savory sauce made from a couple different kinds of chili. It was pretty good -- which if you know how I generally feel about Mexican food you will understand is high praise!

Of course, food tastes better when you're in a good mood. I was, and still am! Salt Lake City is unflaggingly welcoming; I haven't met a person here yet who seemed jaded or standoffish. The camera around my neck earned me welcomes here rather than the benign contempt I get in other areas. The city is also very easy to navigate, either on foot or by car. This place and Eustis are the two cities I've seen so far this trip where I might actually like to live -- though every city without exception has been fun to pass through!

Tomorrow I'll tour the Great Salt Lake, then set off for the little-known town of Winnemucca, Nevada, my last waypoint before my San Francisco terminus. As usual, I don't know what to expect from Winnemucca. Making up your adventures as you go along is fun!

Over one week of junctions

I began my day in Aurora 5,471 feet above sea level and I'm now ending it in Grand Junction 4,597 feet above sea level. On net I lost about 900 feet. This does not quite tell the whole story. The whole story requires you to know that in between these two cities I passed through Alma, a town of less than two hundred people which is 10,578 feet above sea level. Yes, kids, I crossed the Continental Divide today. Don't think I didn't notice!

Unfortunately, prose is unable to convey the impossibility of the peaks and canyons of the Colorado Rockies to anyone who hasn't been there. Pictures are only slightly better. Lost in clouds though they were on this overcast day, the Rockies captured my eyes whenever I could spare them a glance as I navigated the winding roads. Poor Blackbird couldn't figure out where all the air went and had trouble maintaining her speed on the hills. She'll be happier in California. I don't have many stories from today, as rain limited my outdoor activities and the Rockies don't have a lot of indoor ones, but I do have pictures dating back to Paducah...

My room in Paducah, the first hotel room of the journey. Kazuko reclines on the bed at right. This seems like a really long time ago. I don't have any good pictures of the city.

Tunnel Hill in south Illinois. Longer and mistier than it looks. I also have a picture taken from inside the tunnel; all you can see is mist and some light at the other end.

Independence Temple's spire. The temple is the site of Jesus's Second Coming according to the Mormons. They may not believe in evolution, but I guess they believe in architecture. Magnificent.

A rose from the garden across from Jacob's flat in Kansas City. Jacob taught me how to use my camera's close-focus feature. It's the button that looks like a flower, appropriately enough.

A very relaxed raccoon at the zoo in Oakley, Kansas. He probably wanted to be asleep, but tourists like me kept interrupting him.

This prairie dog, on the other hand, was bright and alert, as were his hundreds of cousins swarming the zoo!

Wiley's mother tends her lake garden in Aurora, minutes after being terrified by a snake. The native snakes are apparently eating her fish. It's a dilemma.

We close with three views of the Rocky Mountains.

From Panorama Point on the Denver side.

From Colorado Route 9 in the midst of the Continental Divide.

From Grand Junction on the west side, where the mountains have given way to mesas and the West proper has begun.

I have plenty more photos, but these tell the story as well as any ten photos can. Time will tell what I photograph tomorrow on my Sunday pilgrimage to Salt Lake City!

Life at altitude

After a second day in Aurora, Colorado, I once again greet the evening exhausted but full of life. I've stayed both days with Wiley and her family -- who, along with my previous hosts Jacob, Zach, and Alex, must be some of the best and most generous hosts in America -- and will forge west tomorrow morning with fond memories of the Mile High City.

The days here seem to blur together, as my head is fuzzy from fatigue and altitude, but I remember a lot of words. I've had plentiful and often hilarious conversations with Wiley's clan about topics ranging from tomatoes to economics to charismatic megafauna. I've heard stories about tornado chasing in Denver, President Clinton's personal troll doll in Washington, and signs informing tourists what to do if you encounter a cow in Switzerland. We had conversations over dinner last night at a charming local Persian restaurant whose combination lamb and beef patties were new to me, over Wiley's mother's koi pond this morning as she recovered from being attacked by a vicious garter snake, and over lunch today at a Boulder tea house imported piece by piece from Tajikistan.

I've also learned many things about life in the mountains -- some from the family, others from direct experience. Most of the direct-experience items have to do with the atmosphere of a town a mile in the air. For one thing, I've spent much of my time here suffering from airplane ear from climbing and descending the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. For another, the lack of air means Aurora is far cooler and less humid than Kansas City; Wiley tells me that every thousand feet of altitude means the temperature drops three degrees. Yet in spite of the cool air, it's easier to get sunburned or dehydrated here; less air between us and the sun means that everything the sun does in Florida it does better in Colorado. I learned this firsthand as Wiley and I walked a 2.5-mile path in Golden Gate Canyon State Park outside Boulder after a dizzying climb to nine thousand feet that Blackbird struggled to surmount. I'll eventually post photos, but as usual they will be a pale imitation of the wonders that are the Continental Divide and mountain creeks and aspen groves. There was a fifteen-degree difference between sunlight and shade, and my water vanished quickly as we trod the steep paths alert for mountain lions or grizzly bears. (No "charismatic megafauna" was in evidence on the trail, but we saw some awkward and cute mule deer from the car.) The hike was the defining moment of my time near Denver, the part that made me understand how everyday life here is different from life in Fort Myers.

There is of course so much more to say, but I can never say it all and I have to hit the hay now so that I can hit the road later. Tomorrow I detour from the interstate along a circuitous route recommended by Wiley's mother. I'll get a king's view of the mountains and visit the highest incorporated town in the lower 48 states. I hope to blog next from Grand Junction, Colorado, near the western border of the state. Until then!

I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore

This post comes to you from Aurora, Colorado, just outside Denver. My hostesses this evening are my college friend Wiley and her mother, who -- like all my hosts so far without exception -- have been wonderful to me and ready to help in any way they can. In fact, I'm going to stay with them tomorrow night as well. This traveling has left me breathless! I need a one-day "weekend" when I don't have to drive five hours and can just recover from my adventures so far, and tomorrow is it. I expect I'll still be blogging, though.

Today started way back in Hays. I ate a continental breakfast of oatmeal and then set out for Fort Hays to see if I could uncover the reason a town of 20,000 grew up in rural Kansas so far from a large city. My instinct was borne out on this one! It turns out the town grew up around the fort, as the wives and children of the officers and enlisted men tried to carve lives for themselves out of what was then (in the barely postbellum United States) the frontier. The fort in turn was established as a staging area to protect the railroads from Indian raids. It was named after General Alexander Hays, a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg recently dead at the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness. The tour of the fort was itself interesting -- it was much, much better to be an officer than an enlisted man, by the way -- but the reason it will stick in my memory was that a very old stranger from the Wichita area who I hadn't even spoken to went ahead and paid my $3 admission without so much as asking first. We chatted during the tour. He's a pleasant guy who seemed like he would really rather be sitting in an armchair than taking a walking tour, but he was in good humor. He left a big stack of printed cards under my windshield wiper evangelizing the Gospel of Matthew -- a stack that I've duly put in the souvenir bin to remind me of him and the fort.

In between Hays and Aurora I was intrigued by roadway signs advertising the "world's largest prairie dog" and various other prairie animals. On their cue I pulled over in a tiny town that turned out to be Oakley, Kansas. The zoo there was full of native fauna -- coyotes, foxes, buffalo, rattlesnakes -- and the kicker was that it was built atop a live prairie dog town. The whole grounds were studded with holes that prairie dogs darted in and out of constantly. They are adorable creatures. (The "world's largest" is a six-foot plastic molding of a prairie dog in the back of the zoo.) I was a little worried about whether the animals were well cared for in this fairly primitive roadside facility, but I didn't let it stop me from enjoying my first sight of many of these animals. Afterward I went across the street and lunched at a surprisingly yummy buffet before getting back on the road.

I'm not ready to write about Aurora yet, though there's plenty to say! I'm tired and need to go to bed. What I can say is that one's first sight of the Rocky Mountains as one approaches over the eastern Colorado hills -- when you first become sure that what you're seeing are snow-capped peaks and not low-hanging clouds -- is magical and nearly traffic-stopping. This first sight was another milestone on the journey, one more reminder that I'm far from home with no way of getting back but to drive myself and with every intention of venturing further still!

Purple Hays

The skies are indeed purple over Hays, Kansas, a city of 20,000 in western Kansas. The landscape is sort of purple, too, and my mood is purple to top it off.

Today's my birthday, and it got off to a great start with a gourmet breakfast prepared by Jacob, then a lunch of a ground beef popover and a chocolate "Matterhorn" (a mountain-shaped chocolate baked atop a cookie and served with sweet cream) at Andre's Patisserie. I reluctantly bid him goodbye in the afternoon, then drove four and a half hours to Hays without stopping except to refill Blackbird's tank and empty my own. (Rule of traveling I've discovered: never pass up the opportunity to take a leak.)

I took the interstate after all, having been assured by Jacob that there is equally little worthwhile to see on any route through Kansas. I don't agree with his assessment that it's boring, but it's certainly rural, and tourist attractions are few and far between. The land's green and brown spaces are amazing. The high point of the drive, however, was certainly the expedition past a massive wind farm. There must have been hundreds of individual mills gyrating in the breeze. The three polished, rotating blades of each turbine looked so sleek and modern, like something out of a TV commercial for either renewable energy or Mercedes-Benz. If they had no purpose at all, their beauty would make them a landmark and a tourist attraction. It's odd that they're not viewed as one, and there are no roads leading from I-70 to within the churn of the wind farm.

The four and a half hour drive felt longer than it was, and I arrived in Hays feeling drained. Here I made an unpleasant discovery: my cell phone does not have any reception here. Investigating online, I made an even more unpleasant discovery: AT&T does not cover western Kansas at all, and most of the western United States in general is covered only through AT&T's presumably less reliable "partners" or is completely uncovered. Virtually all of Nevada, for example, is an AT&T dead zone. This knowledge scares me. If I break down on the highway in a dead zone I won't be able to call AAA, and God knows I have no idea how to fix anything on my own. Fortunately, I've been able to make contact with Wiley, my host for tomorrow, through Gmail, and she's expecting me in the early evening. But I need to think about backup plans for communication, or else make sure I stick to paths that get reception.

Hays itself feels oddly tense. The people have a look on their faces like they're besieged. Maybe it's the weather, which NPR says may reach 100 degrees tomorrow, or maybe it's my imagination, me projecting my anxiety onto the strangers around me. I ate dinner at Montana Mike's Steakhouse, which served a passable ribeye. I've been trying to avoid soda this trip, but I couldn't pass up the most unique thing on the menu, Sierra Mist with pear flavoring. Sweet! The pear taste was overpowering and delicate at the same time. As usual, I almost didn't order it but then thought "what the hell." I'm learning to recognize the moments when I should say "what the hell" and live a little.

Happy birthday to me! With luck, the next post will come from Aurora, Colorado, outside Denver. In the meantime I'll try to figure out why Hays exists, out here in the boonies, as opposed to being a tiny interstate stopover like the other towns I passed.

Everything's up to date

Today I'm posting from Merriam, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City! I'm staying with my friend Jacob from the Utena forum, who's already shown me a good time in the form of a rose garden and lively conversation and will show me a good breakfast strata in the morning. I'll post all about KC when I've seen more of it. Today I post about the in-between space and time.

I closed my stay in Paducah by visiting the riverfront. I owed this city, which grew up around the Tennessee River, at least that much, and this is the part of the Mississippi my trip takes me across. It was... cool, if not exactly visually stunning. Actually, I found the insect life more interesting. The pier was overrun with bugs I've never seen before; they looked like large earwigs flying around on damselfly wings. I asked a passerby about them (he was on a road trip himself, from Texas to Pennsylvania) and he says the locals call them sand flies. Wikipedia's idea of a sandfly looks nothing like these bugs, unfortunately, so I can't tell you what they were.

As I drove across southern Illinois en route to Missouri, I pulled off the interstate to check out a winery advertised on the roadside. I couldn't find the winery, or indeed any other human beings at all. Instead I found a trail called Tunnel Hill -- a cliff-bordered nature walk, miniature creeks flowing on each side from recent rains, unkept and gorgeous in the heavy morning fog. After a quarter of a mile, the trail entered a tunnel which was itself probably about a quarter of a mile long. Its interior was completely dark except for the points of light at each end. Walking through it bordered on a religious experience, each step an act of faith: will this step be the one that lands on a rattlesnake or in a bottomless pit? I was afraid, but I pushed forward and exited the tunnel at the other end, very proud of myself. Sadly, I soon had to turn around again because it had started to rain.

And what a rain. It was the longest, hardest sustained deluge I have ever driven through. Lightning flared down in all directions and the winds buffeted brave Blackbird as she strove across southern Illinois. With patience we continued our mission in spite of the blinding rain. In the end we were rewarded as we pulled into sunny lands whose gas stations have quarter-operated cologne dispensers in the restrooms. (I got a teaklike fragrance that's supposed to be a knockoff of something called Aramis.)

In St. Louis I had to use a parking garage by myself for the first time. My city friends and most of my suburban friends are cracking up right now, but it's true! I had to find a parking garage and keep track of where it was all by myself, even as I ate at Einstein Bros. Bagels and toured Forest Park afterward. I didn't get to see much of Forest Park, a very large place where the World's Fair was once hosted; what I saw was verdant and pretty but not memorable. The seemingly endless straight drive across Missouri along I-70 afterwards was more memorable, if only because I had finally joined the artery that will carry me most of the way to the West Coast.

When I finally arrived in Kansas City, I checked out the Mormons' Independence Temple (the future site of the Second Coming of Christ according to their church), which has an architecturally gorgeous spire that I took a good picture of. This aesthetic experience, however, was far overshadowed by the artistry that was Korma Sutra, an Indian restaurant in Highland Park that Jacob recommended to me. The A/C was busted and they hardly spoke English, but the food was by far the best Indian food I've ever eaten, and probably the best food of any kind I've had since Balthazar in New York City last year. I ordered lamb marsala and chai; instead I got lamb marsala made from Aries' own daughter, chai spiced with clove and cinnamon and ginger, and many foods I didn't ask for, such as garlic naan, a toothpick of creme bruleeish ice cream, some kind of pita that I very much liked with the spicy dipping sauce, something Jacob tells me was called "gulab jamun" that consisted of caramelized who-knows-what whose sweetness concentration was so high that my mouth nearly melted, and some kind of milk/melon concoction that Jacob can't identify from my inadequate description of it. The whole culinary masterpiece was topped off with an actual hand-bath administered with warm water poured from a pitcher by my waitress while I squeezed a piece of lime between my fingers. Six stars out of five, if you want my Zagat rating.

And that was today, pretty much! Now to find out what tomorrow is like!

Days like this, part 3

This is the third and last part of a three-part post. Please read part 1 first; it's two posts below this one. Blogs aren't like novels; you have to read them in reverse order. It's like the movie Memento, except not actually intended to be viewed that way. Bizarre.

Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, was my next stop after Eustis. I rushed to Decatur to meet my host Zach, who was generous enough to wait for me before heading to a biweekly get-together at his friend's house to play tabletop games. I was looking forward to getting to know Zach (a friend's friend who I'd never met before) and his cohort over a board game -- but things didn't quite work out that way! Zach's friend was MIA, and through a series of increasingly frantic phone calls Zach eventually discovered that game night was canceled. He didn't even hesitate before dialing yet another number, then several more, organizing an impromptu meet-up at a local Thai place. The ginger chicken was nice and savory, and the conversation was a real challenge; I navigated a sea of unfamiliar names and relationships that emerged among the four of us there. Unfortunately, amidst the general rush of the evening I didn't have my camera with me, and the Slug Incident back in Zach's apartment was a sucker punch that knocked any will I might have had to photograph anything out of me. I feel very much like Bilbo Baggins -- someone not naturally proactive or good with exigencies who nonetheless finds himself on an adventure and doesn't always know how to cope with it.

I mentioned in the last post that the three towns I've stayed in have been completely different, and Decatur is the polar opposite of spacious Eustis -- ultra-urban, with everything crammed into as little space as possible, bending streets and buildings in the process. It's not a pretty place -- is what I thought driving in on Sunday evening. But this morning (was it only this morning?!?), driving out, I saw the way the skyscrapers vanished into the dawn fog as though their tops were rubbed out with an eraser the color of the sky... and I decided maybe Decatur wasn't so bad.

I did get a picture from Decatur, but it's not the skyscraper one. It's the side of Zach's apartment building, a poor picture that could have been taken anywhere. I wish I had pulled over and snapped the shot of the skyscrapers.

As I passed through southern Tennessee on the way to Paducah, I saw several signs for some tourist spot named Ruby Falls. I was on track to get into Paducah very early and had some time to kill, so I figured, what the hell, waterfalls are pretty. Right decision. Turns out Ruby Falls is an underground waterfall at the end of a half-mile cave a thousand feet beneath Lookout Mountain, just outside Chattanooga. Twenty bucks bought me a gorgeous tour -- and one that I do have pictures of.

A tourist-oriented cave tour is not photography-friendly. Though everything is lit just right, you're never at rest for long, and when you are there are heads or hands between you and the thing you want to photograph. Nevertheless, I got some fantastic shots, which I present here without further comment, except to say that they are all much more beautiful in person. If you're ever near Chattanooga, go.





And now is the part where I want to regale you with tales of the wonders of Paducah... only writing these posts has ended up taking most of my spare time this evening, so I haven't seen much of the town. Actually, I'm glad. The last few days have been full of sensory overload, and so for once it's probably better for me to sit inside staring at an electronic screen than to be outside getting fresh air and discovering things. I'm sorry, Paducah. You seem like a nice town. You are two hundred years old and full of river lore. If I ever come back I promise I'll give you the exploration you deserve.

Days like this, part 2

Before you read this post, please read part 1, below, which is about the act of traveling. Done? Okay, good. Now we can move from journeys to destinations. Or rather interim destinations which are themselves waypoints in the larger journey.

I've stayed in three towns so far -- Eustis, Decatur, and Paducah. No two are anything like each other. My camera is full of Sunday's pictures from bucolic Eustis and its neighbor Mt. Dora, both rural communities in central Florida where tractor supply shops are cultural hubs. Those pictures mostly do not do the area justice. The horizon over Lake Dora, for instance, is far more beautiful than a camera can capture, at least in the hands of an amateur. But here are a couple snapshots that did turn out well.


Snap! The great heron of Eustis, commemorated in fountain statuary. Does it represent ibis-headed Thoth and my symbolic entry into the underworld of my own psyche? No, it's just a bird, but thank you for giving me so much credit. That's downtown Eustis in the background. That's all of downtown Eustis.


Snap! Olivia's Cafe, Eustis hotspot and beacon for open mic night devotees. My hostess Alex and I were entertained by live performers on the cramped stage in front of the bar more or less throughout our evening in the cafe. I sipped ginger peach tea that you taste with the roof of your mouth instead of your tongue -- you have to taste it to understand -- and taught Alex chess.


Snap! Here she is after her narrow defeat. During the early game both of my bishops got exchanged for both of her knights, leading to fun situations where she learned the potency of her long-range alternate-color bishops as well as that of my leaping, forking knights. I think bishops are probably her favorite piece now.


Snap! Alex with her favorite chicken -- one of many her family farms. She also has a dog, two cats, a beehive, and a cockatiel. All are adorable, even the bees. Alex says her dad fancies himself a "gentleman farmer" (though he's actually an accountant). Whether that's just his fancy or not, the hens' brown eggs are real, and they are delicious. Bubbles the cockatiel also lays eggs, but I guess you don't eat cockatiel eggs. Alex worries about Bubbles depleting her calcium.


Snap! The roof of the Donnelly House, a sightseeing spot (and Masonic lodge) on the National Register of Historic Places. The Masons are big in central Florida, apparently. I think of the Masons the way I think of the Mafia -- once influential, now moribund -- but in Mt. Dora, at least, being a Mason (Masonry?) is still a way of life for some. These are the things you learn when you have a host.


Snap! The Mt. Dora historical museum, once used as a combination firehouse and jail. One jail cell is visible in the back right. (I have a picture of myself in jail, too.) That hand-cranked record player still works. I got a personal tour by virtue of Alex's serendipitous employment with this very museum, which is normally closed on Sundays.

Things I didn't get pictures of: the church sign in Mt. Dora reading "Life is fragile. Handle with prayer." The alpacas farmed down the street from Alex's house. The moment when Alex presented me with an extremely comfortable belt, whose infinitely adjustable metal buckle is helping to hold my pants up even now. (I swear to God those pants fit when I packed them. They got looser as the day went on until I could hardly stand up.) The aging, slightly awkward guy who ran a roadside boiled peanut stand -- another cultural phenomenon I had no consciousness of until Eustis. And much else. It's amazing how much Alex and I crammed into my short time in Eustis!

Next post: the other waypoints!

Days like this, part 1

Happily ensconced in a cozy Days Inn in Paducah, Kentucky, I sit down to write a blog entry and realize there's so much to record about my trip so far that I'm already (after just three days) having trouble holding it all in my head! Why haven't I written a nice long entry sooner, then? Part of it is that I've been effing tired from all the driving; I'm still getting used to feeling my buns fall asleep as I spend seven consecutive hours behind the wheel punctuated only by a gas stop. But today, while I'm tired, I feel better, and moreover I have my own private room. This last matters. I've loved staying with my hosts -- people who know the area, can take me to the good restaurants (or cook up something delicious themselves!), can chat with me after a long and lonely stretch of road -- but one's own room is comforting in a different way and engenders a different kind of consciousness that's more conducive to writing.

Now, how to write? There's a certain irony about roadbound travelogue in that driving is the common and dominating feature of my days, yet there's not much to say about it. I've been on the interstate since Eustis and so I can't share quaint rural towns' oddities as observed from the car. (I think I'm going to take the back ways through Kansas in a couple days.) The most interesting thing about the driving has been the changing landscape. South Florida, for those of you who've never been there, is flat like a board. I'm not used to driving on hills. The pita-bread terrain of north Florida and Georgia was a novelty, but it wasn't until the long march through Tennessee where I-24 is flanked by sheer cliffs as it jags in all three dimensions that I realized how much hills matter in driving. Cruise control does not always work on hills, and the gas pedal doesn't work normally either. Fortunately, Blackbird is tolerant of my learning curve; she is a fantastic car. Later, after a breathtaking series of interchanges in Nashville that would have been nigh-unmanageable without GPS, the skies opened. As the rain poured down I wondered how people in the Rocky Mountains get around during a storm. Nice thing about that is, I can just ask my friend in Denver when I get there in a few days.

While my eyes scan the road, my ears are kept busy with music, NPR, or random local radio stations. I listened in fascination to a Georgian call-in show aimed at conservative housewives; the hostess spent fifteen minutes promoting a website billed as a Craigslist for conservatives, which helps make sure you don't accidentally do business with a liberal. Not that she's a liberal-hater, exactly. She was just using conservatism as an index for cleanliness and conscientiousness, and I have to admit that if I was going to hire a lifeguard from Craigslist sight-unseen, I'd be reassured to know he was a Mormon. Talk radio: a window into culture, including our own.

At this point in the entry I'm conscious that this is getting a little long. I have a lot more to say and no knowledge of when I'll have another writing opportunity like this, so I'm going to plow right along but split this post into a few parts. This way, if you don't want to read the whole update, you can stop here and come back tomorrow! But first, check out the double rainbow my friend in Eustis and I spotted outside her house...

Sluggish

I am exhausted and lightheaded from seven straight hours of driving. I got out the pillow I'll be using this evening to find, when I got it up to my host's room, that there was a slug on it. Now I'm terrified that my whole trunk might have slugs, but I can't know till the morning. I feel petrified! I desperately need sleep and so I won't elaborate, except to say that first thing tomorrow I'll figure out whether I have a problem and then how the hell one deals with slugs in the trunk.

But on the bright side, finding my host, who I'd never met before, was easier than I expected, and he drew me a map showing several breakfast places in the Decatur area. However else I may feel when I set out tomorrow, I won't be malnourished! And the slug, the exhaustion, are part of the adventure. True, I didn't specifically foresee that slugs might be an obstacle on my journey, but I DID foresee that I might encounter unforeseen obstacles, so I give myself credit where credit is due. Must sleep now.

A double rainbow

The first half was the drive. Four hours from Fort Myers to Eustis, where I'm typing this entry. It was exhilarating and triumphant, the culmination of the preparatory journey I talked about in my last post. I listened to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" on NPR, then turned on the iPod, which randomly blared songs including I Woke Up In A Car, I'm On A Boat, and I'm On A Blimp, giving me a travel theme to go with my first day of journeying.

The second half was Eustis. My tour guide was a friend from the Revolutionary Girl Utena forum, and she showed me the prettiest parts of this rural community a hundred years old. (Tomorrow I get to see the most historic.) I taught her how to play chess, and she taught me how to play with chickens, of which her family keeps something like fifteen. The highlight of the evening was our visit to Olivia's Cafe, an adorable hole-in-the-wall run by Santa and Mrs. Claus, right down to the board games stacked on a bookcase on one wall. I couldn't have asked for a better first day.

Tomorrow it gets harder. More driving and a late arrival in Atlanta to an address I don't have yet. It'll be an adventure! I'm already foreseeing a problem with the writing end of things, though; I'm tuckered out after writing this post, and I didn't even have to design an itinerary today. Hopefully as I get into the swing of the journey the writing will become part of the routine. Until next time!

Every exit an entrance

Well, here we are at midnight. It's been a frantic couple of weeks, but everything's in place with eleven hours to spare. What's funny is that getting this far has been a journey in itself. I've had to walk a long way down the footpaths just to find the beginning of the highway. So tonight and tomorrow morning mark not only the beginning of one journey but also the end of another. Now the terrain changes. I've prepared, but not for everything. I don't know where I'm staying on most nights, how I'm getting from Denver to San Francisco, or even where I'm doing my laundry. That's enough planning. The future is a glorious mess. For the next month, preparation and execution will be simultaneous. I don't know what's going to happen -- whether this will be one of the best or worst times of my life, or what kind of meaning it will turn out to have, or if it might turn out to have no meaning. I don't know. But that's the point.

The car's name is Blackbird. That's also the name of the song I'll cue up on my iPod when I pull out of the driveway. I'll see you next on the road!

Tremors

I'm not shaking.

I could be. I'm excited and nervous enough. I'm leaving in a day and a half and it still seems like there's so much left to do. I have to get my checks and credit cards in order, transfer my files to my laptop, pack everything, shave, try to sleep... and I have five hours of work tomorrow that God knows how I'm going to focus on. And when that's all done and I set off at 11:00 AM on Saturday I'll be embarking on a journey of I-don't-know-how-long to I-don't-know-where. I'm scared. But I'm not shaking.

And as long as I'm not shaking my hands can hold a steering wheel.

Packing list

As of this writing, I've got all the following, mostly ready to go.

- My car. Still unnamed. (I discovered that when she's coasting down from a high speed she makes a subtle noise like a siren or whistle. It's very distinctive. She should have a name that honors that.) Also, car supplies: tire gauge, tire inflator, spare tire, directions, AAA member card, windshield fluid, paper towels, and requisite paperwork proving ownership and insurance.

- Seven or eight changes of clothes; also, a laundry bag and an extra pair of sneakers.

- Sleeping bag and pillow.

- Groceries: plastic silverware, various nonperishable food items like snack mix and canned oranges, a few perishables like bread, cheese, and jam in a cooler with ice packs, and lots of water.

- Toiletries, including medications; also, emergency medical kit, containing various Band-Aids, antiseptics, Tylenol, emergency blanket, etc.

- Six electronic devices and their power supplies and other cables (see last post).

- Small box of surprises.

- Cash, credit cards, and passport (in case I can't resist hitting Vancouver).

- Books; pens and paper.

And I think that about covers it! :D We're close now. If all goes well, in 72 hours I'll be touring Eustis.

Dreaming of electric sheep

My God you guys I am so busy! So much time and so little to do! Wait -- strike that -- reverse it. Thank you.

Today I thought I'd share my electronics catalogue. I'll be accompanied on my journey by no fewer than six gadgets. To wit:

- My cell phone, of course.

- Kino, my voice recorder.

- A Garmin Nuvi GPS for the car, which nearly guarantees that as long as I know where I'm going I will never get lost.

- A brand-new Sony digital camera.

- An Inspiron laptop, a very old one that my brother used in Japan; it's slow as the devil to load up, but it'll serve my purposes.

- A 30-GB iPod Classic, which just arrived today.

My brother argues my car should also count as a gadget, but I think he's being silly. The car is a car. It is way above the level of gadget. (And as of tomorrow evening, it will have its permanent tags.)

Cutting a swath

My itinerary is coming along nicely. Leg One of the trip is Fort Myers to San Francisco. I need to make this trip in at most twelve days in order to attend wedding festivities on the 27th, and in case of unexpected developments along the way I've planned it so that I'm crossing most of the continent in half that time.

June 13: Set out from Fort Myers, FL. Stay the night in Eustis, FL, just north of Orlando, with Alexandra/moroschino from IRG. Totally gives me a reason to leave the house in the first place! Meals: with Alex; attractions: at Alex's discretion.

June 14: Stay the night near Atlanta, GA, exact location TBA but hopefully with a friend of Alexis, a friend from anime club. Meals and attractions TBA.

June 15: Stay the night near Paducah, KY, at a hotel. Meals and attractions TBA.

June 16: Stay the night in Merriam, KS, just outside Kansas City, with Jacob/Stormcrow from IRG. Another day to look forward to! Meals: Korma Sutra (Indian) or Free State Brewing Co. Attractions: Independence Church, the site of the Second Coming of Christ according to the Latter-Day Saints.

June 17: My birthday! Have lunch with Jacob at Andre's Confiserie. Stay the night near either Hays, KS or Stockton, KS, depending on whether I take the interstate or local roads; it'll be a hotel either way. Dinner and attractions TBA.

June 18: Stay the night in Denver, CO, hopefully with Wiley, a friend from the U of C. Need to get in touch with her. Meals and attractions TBA but plentiful.

From there the itinerary is still very much under construction. The two major choices are whether to get on I-80, taking me through Cheyenne and Salt Lake City en route to the West Coast, or whether to stay on I-70 into southern Utah and take local roads across Nevada. If I really do arrive in Denver on schedule on the 18th, though, I'll have oodles of time to get to San Francisco, so I may do something more radical like cut south through Albuquerque and take the by-all-accounts-gorgeous drive up the California coast. Will make contingency plans.