Friday afternoon, Paul and I drove to Reno. I had never been across California that far north by car. It was utterly gorgeous, especially when a full moon came over the mountains.

We got into Reno late, went and ate at a buffet, and then I gambled a dollar in a Circus Circus slot machine, promptly winning thirty three fifty. Go me!

The next morning, we left Reno and headed into the desert.

After getting a teensy bit lost in Virginia City, we found ourselves at the US/Molossia border, where we were greeted warmly by His Excellency, The President.





We went to customs, where we paid in pocket change and surveyed the rules of Molossia.



A public square in Molossia.



Paul at the border!



( More photos here! )

We were quite sad to leave. It was such an amazing trip! The President was extremely kind and accommodating, the residents friendly (if loud barkers), and the land beautiful. I recommend that everyone make a trip to Molossia.

The Khamsin Molossia News covered our trip here.

After we left Molossia, we went back a different way, and stopped down near the south end of Lake Tahoe, which I have never seen. It was gorgeous.

Also, I've never seen clouds like this before. What are they called? They looked really odd.











It was a long and late drive back, but we got home to a very happy, silly Oliver.

Just until I get all of my Molossia pictures/stories up!

Had my pasta creation for lunch and it was absolutely delicious. Unexpected but awesome bonus: the little hard yellow heirloom tomato turned out to be this decadent, sweet variety that unbelievably delicious, especially with the savory basil/garlicky tang of the pesto.

(And when I Googled to see if I could identify the variety, I found out that there are a lot of kinds of yellow tomatoes. Wow!)

In other news, Paul and I will be venturing to The Republic of Molossia (which has now earned its own tag) this weekend. Pictures and stories of our adventure will be up here afterwards. I'm so excited! I've also never been to Reno.

Last weekend, before Paul left on his road trip, we spent the weekend together having grand adventures. And it was a weekend of pure awesome.

( weekend of pure awesome, commence! )

It was a lovely day, all in all, and an amazing weekend. Here's my favorite shot:

I took a lot of fun pictures while Rebekah, Sarah, Ryan, and I walked around Chinatown today, but this is by far my favorite:

Tonight, Sarah and Oliver and I went on a long walk. We got as close to the Bay as we could without crossing the highway; all in all we walked about five miles. We found this fantastic wall about halfway in between the apartment and the water.



Near the water, I began to take long exposure shots of the highway. With my shutter speed somewhere around 40 seconds, I had time to do some flash experiments. The last one is my favorite.

A few days ago, I got a phone call from Matt, a friend of mine back in DC.

"So, I have something to tell you."

"...er, what?"

"I'm standing in the middle of the AU parking lot, in front of this SUV."

"... okay."

"It's green. Texas plates."

I had a flashback.

"The SUV that was carrying the carload of sorostitutes who made the illegal left turn and plowed into my car while you and Amanda were driving with me last fall that took months and month to get fixed and reimbursed because they claimed that they weren't doing anything illegal and refused to file a claim with their company?"

"Yup."

"You sure it's the same one?"

"Let's put it this way - I can see where they hit you, still. And it's the same plates and bumper sticker and everything."

"Ohmygod."

"And what's even better is that I can see at least five more accidents' worth of dings and dents and scrapes on this vehicle."

"... you realize this makes my week, right?"

I could hear his grin, even over the phone. "I figured it would."

We chatted for a bit about California, but then I had to go to work.

But yeah. Just wanted to share. In a way, I feel that poor Beatrice has been vindicated.



In other fun news, on Friday night, I was working and Eva's roommate Mica and her girlfriend Gladie were hanging out in the apartment.

We were in the middle of Eva's shower when the lights flickered, dipped, and then completely went out.

The bathroom was pitch black. I made sure Eva was secure and then went out to the living room.

The power went back on, but only slightly (something that I now understand to be called a "brown out"). The television in the living room was blue with lines of light shooting across the screen.

"Guys?"

Mica and Gladie appeared, Mica using her cell phone as a flashlight. I went and got the flashlight from my backpack (I have a little flat one that I carry about with me). I went back into Eva's room to finish the shower.

Mica stuck her head in the door. "Uh, guys? There's some kind of alarm going off downstairs. Do you think it's a fire alarm? Should we evacuate?"

Adrenaline flooded my system as I listened for the alarm. If the elevator was down, that means that we'd have to walk down five flights, and I'd had to either put Eva in a manual chair, or carry her down the stairs.

I ran into the bathroom and got her dried off and in her pajamas. Mica came back in.

"I don't think it's a fire alarm, I think it's just from the generator kicking back on," she said.

We plunged back into darkness.

"Uh..."

Mica and Gladie lit candles. Eva snuggled into bed, we set up a table and chairs in a half moon around her, and by candlelight, I read from Different Loving, which is a book on S&M that I'm currently reading.

"Today's reading selection is from... Different Loving," I intoned, to a fit of laughter. We read about infantilism (adult babies) and spanking and even had a small discussion. The candlelight flickered and we speculated about the blackout and told jokes and when Casey called me, they made faces and made me laugh.

As my shift came to a close, Kat and Tali, the two other roommates, arrived from their vacation to Jamaica. We all hung out and laughed and reminisced, since it's been weeks since I've seen them and I miss them and despite the fact that I've only been working for Eva for two months, it's been seven hours a day, five days a week, and I feel like I've known Eva and her roommates for ages.

It was fun.

All right, time to get my day started.

The minute we left the Grand Canyon, Arizona seemed to change. The hot red earth lost some of its color, the vegetation because less sparse, and we headed toward a group of mountains (or, comparing it to the Rockies, hills, I guess) in the distance. We began to climb in elevation, whipping along at 80 mph and only occasionally crossing exits that led to small towns.











The Dixie Chicks are fantastic traveling music.

I've been a long time gone now / maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down / but I've always found my way somehow / by taking the long way / taking the long way around

As we continued to drive and emerged from the other side of the mountains, the landscape changed again. It went back to desert. But it was a different kind of desert. It was brown, and sideways slanting rock formations jutted up toward the sky. We hit another set of hills, and signs implored us to turn our radios to an AM frequency to hear the latest traffic reports around the Hoover Dam.

The station informed us that there was construction around the Dam, and we were to drive slowly, and also everyone would be required to stop at a security checkpoint before the dam and was subject to a complete and thorough search.

We turned the station off and continued to drive. My left arm was getting a bit sunburned from being in the sun, so we decided to switch places. We stopped at a Love's to get gas and lunch and the wind was INSANE. It whipped across the landscape and lifted my hat off my head and once we got back on the road, pushed poor Beatrice around and around. Errol had to adjust the steering for the wind.

Once Errol was driving, I switched CDs and buried my nose in the book that he'd been reading while I'd been driving - a morbidly fascinating book about deaths in the Grand Canyon. Every so often, Errol would touch my shoulder and I'd look up to see a lovely bit of landscape, which I would promptly photograph.

A few miles outside of the Hoover Dam, I put the book away. We pulled into the aforementioned security checkpoint. A large woman in an official looking outfit stood up from her chair. We rolled the window down.

"Hey."

"Hello." I looked as chipper as possible.

She looked at the back of Beatrice.

"You got a lot of treasure back there."

"I'm moving," I said. Visions of having to unpack Beatrice danced unhappily in my head.

"Ah." She gave me a long look, and then said, "Carry on. Have a nice day."

"You too."

We drove to the Hoover Dam. We parked the car and got out.







The Hoover Dam is much smaller than I would have thought. It's not small, by any means, just not as big as I'd always imagined. We got back in the car and drove down, down towards it, crossing over it and doing our best to avoid pedestrians.

There was some confusion over where the state line for Nevada was ("Look at that plaque! Is that it? Is it?) but we made a general "Towanda!" as we entered the second-to-last state on our trip.

We left the Hoover Dam and continued onward.

More desert stretched out before us. We went through a town and then more desert. It seemed to go on forever.

Then, I saw it. Rising out of the desert like some shimmery mirage, I could see buildings. Errol saw it too.

"Is that... is that Vegas?"

"I think so."

We began to get onto the highways that loop around the city, and I'm really glad Errol was driving, because it was INSANE. People cut us off, threatened to kick our ass, honked their horns, drove like maniacs, and by the time we pulled into a Kmart to ask for directions, I was just about ready to keep driving to California.

Inside the Kmart, people were sitting at slot machines. My brain almost shut down.

I managed to get directions. We headed to the hotel - Circus Circus.





It was hot. It was unbelievably hot. It was 102 degrees, and dry as anything, and windy, and I felt like I could just melt into the sidewalk. We dragged our luggage through a mall, an amusement park, a casino, and into the lobby.

The line to check in was about 100 people deep, so Errol and I traded off standing in line and sitting down with all of the luggage. By the time we got to our room, we were half dead with exhaustion.

After resting for a bit, we met up with Errol's very awesome friend Tony, a guy who used to live in Vegas. He gave us a full tour of the strip, taking us past all the hotels and then around to the airport. It was strangely beautiful in the twilight - the distant mountains were all dusty and lovely.

Tony then took us to the one thing I wanted to do in Vegas: a buffet. He treated us to dinner and we stuffed ourselves silly at Mandalay Bay. I had shrimp and scallops with butter and seaweed salad and crab legs and pasta and salad with mozzarella cheese and pot stickers and fruit and cake and little fruit tarts and chocolate mousse tarts and ohmygod. They practically had to roll me out of there. I felt vaguely guilty about eating after I was full (which is, I believe, the very definition of gluttony) but it was amazing! Here are Errol and Tony after the buffet.



We then went for a spin around the strip. Everywhere we walked, men with handfuls of shiny laminated cards tried to thrust advertisements for "GIRLS NOW" into my hands. Unbelievably beautiful people staggered around and talked loudly. It was garish and ostentatious and decadent and oddly enough, lovely. In its own bizarre way.





































































We stopped in the Wynn Casino and I gambled $2.50 on a game called Egypt. I didn't know how to play, so I just hit buttons and lost everything.



By the end of the night, I was dead. The dry wind and the smoke in the casinos had my eyes burning, and my feet hurt, and I was dehydrated, and I was exhausted. Vegas was nice, but I'd had my fill.

Tony dropped us back at the hotel. I crawled into bed and clutched the bedspread.

I'm not sure that Vegas agreed with me. But it was interesting, no doubt about that.

Today: Morro Bay, CA.

I woke up early on Sunday, long before my alarm went off, and went and sat on the porch of the hostel, overlooking the main street of Estes Park. It was cold, I was in my pajamas, and I could see my breath, and these things combined with the informality of the hostel (incidentally: this was my first hostel, and I LOVE it. I think that hosteling agrees with me) made me feel like I was a ten-year-old Girl Scout camping in the Poconos in November again.

I put on some shoes and my cowboy hat and went for a walk. At some point, I turned around and there they were - the Rocky Mountains. I shivered, and it wasn't from the cold. Sometimes, when I'm in geologically interesting places, I get these... these impressions of how the landscape was formed, as though something in me is connecting with the ancientness of the earth beneath the pavement. As I stood on that street in Estes Park in my flip flops and my cowboy hat, I imagined the violence that occurred millions of years ago; the tectonic plates slamming together and the earth's crust rupturing and the Rocky Mountains, in all of their huge, magnificent splendor, jutting towards the sky.

Despite the fact that my favorite natural landscape is the beach, I think mountains are a close, close second.

On the walk back up the street, I saw something really fantastic: a hearse (yes, just like the one I always wanted) parked in front of a house.



I went back to the hostel and got ready. Errol was already up and showered, and we packed the bags in Beatrice (but not before fixing a "Rocky Mountain National Park" sticker to her bumper) and drove down from the mountains.

We'd originally wanted to take mountain passes to go through Colorado, but the weather is bad and snowy and we didn't want to get stuck in a blizzard. So we made our way towards Boulder and Denver - all the while keeping the Rockies in our sights.









We came out the other side of Denver and drove into more isolated country. The Rockies never left us.





After awhile, we came to a point where the mountains seemed to surround us almost on every side. I realized that to progress, we'd have to go through at least some of them.

And we did. We wound up into the thin air of the snowy mountains, passing snowslide signs and avalanche signs and mounds of snow and... it was beautiful.









We arrive in Durango around six, and met up with my friend Jeff (who canvassed with me for the DNC when I was just a freshman in college, and has since moved from DC to NM/CO) and his girlfriend and his girlfriend's really cute three-year-old daughter.









We stayed for many hours, eating and drinking tea and yes, I played and played with with the daughter because I love love love kids, and they never get sick of my silly faces or goofy jokes. And just as we left to head to the motel, I caught the sunset.



And I then proceeded to pass out in bed.

Today is going to be great. We're going to see the Four Corners AND Mesa Verde AND the Grand Canyon (we're staying by the Grand Canyon). *squee!*

Love you all! Bye!

*hits the road*
*but not too hard, the road has been very nice to us*

Before I go into the awesomeness of the day, I would like to share with you a picture that pretty much sums up how I feel about life right now.



I woke up early this morning and hopped online. With the spotty motel wireless, it took a bit of wrangling to get that last entry up, but I did it! For all of you! Well, and for me. But also for all of you!

*loves all of you*

Anyway, by the time we got all showered and wolfed down complimentary bagels and coffee, it was around nine. We hopped into Beatrice and made our way out onto the open Wyoming road.

The landscape was, by and large, the same landscape we saw yesterday. Gorgeous, huge skies, wide, open spaces. I, however, was not distracted by this natural beauty. My eyes? Were fixed on the horizon.

"I see the mountains! I see the mountains!" I shrieked, bouncing in my seat. Beatrice swerved slightly.

"I think that might be a hill," Errol said.

It did, indeed, prove to be a hill. A short time later:

"There they are! I can see the snow!"

"I think those are clouds."

They were. So we drove along, Joni Mitchell crooning at me as I frantically searched for the Rockies.

Around Cheyenne, not too far from the Colorado border, we drifted over the swell of a hill and... there they were. Snow capped and majestic and blue with distance.

"Oh. My god." I felt that pressure behind my nose like when I'm about to cry, and I had to take a deep breath to keep from doing so. "My god."

We went through Cheyenne and over the Colorado border.

"TOWANDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

We stopped for gas; I made my voice post, we checked the oil (good until Las Vegas, I'd say), and we got back on the road, silent, doing nothing but stare at the mountains.

We turned off the main road and headed toward Estes Park. We went through a town called Loveland where there was a lovely lake (looking at a map, I think it was Boyd Lake, but I'm not sure) with a little park and a great view of the mountains. We stopped to stretch our legs and absorb the majesty for a bit.







As we got ready to get back into Beatrice and continue on our way, Errol pointed out some statues to me. Read the last bit carefully.







It says: Invictus. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. William Ernest Henley

Errol smiled at me. "It seems appropriate," he said.

Hands shaking slightly, I got back into the car and we kept driving... into the mountains.



We drove slowly, soaking in the sights as we climbed higher and higher into the mountains, passing through small towns with cabins for tourists. After a while, we arrived in Estes Park.

It was gorgeous. The town was clean and bright and you could see the snow capped mountain peaks in the distance. We had a delicious and surprisingly inexpensive lunch at a pizza restaurant and then made our way to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Sadly, we're here about a month out of season, so certain passes were closed (I am, however, absolutely positively determined to come back here during the season at some point). We did, however, get some amazing pictures. It was breathtakingly lovely.





















Also, while I was hanging out taking photos on this rocky outcropping, I made friends with a very personable furry woodland creature who got very, very close before scampering away.



After we were all Rocky Mountain-ed out, we headed toward the hostel. By accident (though I'd been wanting to see it, we hadn't planned on it) we stopped at the Stanley Hotel, which probably has all kinds of rich historical things attached to it, but which I love because it's where Stephen King was inspired to write The Shining.



After we left the Stanley, we found the hostel. The manager and her son were busy setting up mattresses and things. The son, Joel, was a shy sixteen year old who helped me out getting internet up. Then he, Errol, and I helped drag some boxsprings and mattresses onto bedframes.

Later, Errol and I took a walk around Estes Park. I bought a big ol' cowboy hat at a leather shop. The owner nodded his head approvingly when I tried it on. I looked in the mirror. It looked pretty darn cool.

"Now, here's the question," he said. "Are you the type of lady who pushes her hat up off her face, or the kind who pulls it down low?"

I tugged the hat down low on my face.

"This way," I explained. "I can see them, but they can't see me."

We walked around. I bought a "Rocky Mountain National Park" bumper sticker for Beatrice, and a little Buddha for my dashboard in a Nepalese shop (interesting fact: there are something like 4,000 people from Nepal living in Estes Park during the normal season. Apparently it's a huge destination for the Nepalese). The girls at the shop told us that we'd apparently missed snow in Estes Park - get this - by a day. Whew. We're just going to have to be careful tomorrow - don't want to get trapped in any freak blizzards.

Anway, the hostel is lovely and nice, and I really want to come back here some time in the summer. They have a map on the wall of where people are from, and I stuck a pin in PA and DC.

So, in conclusion: Rocky Mountains = *indistinct gaping noises combined with a waving of hands*

Love you all! Tomorrow we travel to Durango.

It's a drizzly, gray morning in Madison. We're heading out in about ten minutes. Today is House on the Rock, the Summer Kitchen, and my aunt and uncle in Savage.

My alarm went off at six, and I had been dreaming about rain. In the dream I was high in the mist of the West Virginia mountains, lying on my back in the middle of the road as the rain fell down, and I was soaked and melting into the wet pavement.

It took a second for the alarm to register. I grabbed my cell phone, turn it off, and groaned.

Must... peel self... off... air mattress.

I showered and packed up my things, and around seven, Errol and I took off up Indiana.

We stopped and got gas, and I ran into a Starbucks to get us some coffee. Inside, a chipper barista said "Good morning!" in a voice that was entirely too bright for this hour of the morning.

"Two... big... coffees."

"You look tired," he clucked as he made the coffee. As I unfolded dollar bills to hand to him, he stuffed a donut and coffee cake into a bag. "Here," he said. "On the house. You look like you've got a long way to go."

"Thank you."

Outside, I got into the car with the spoils. "Some guy thought I looked so sleepy he gave me baked goods," I told Errol.

"Oh?"

"Or maybe he thought I was cute, so he gave me baked goods."

"Maybe," Errol suggested, "he thought you looked cute when you were sleepy."

"Maybe. Or maybe he was just nice."

We drove on.

Errol sat in the driver's seat and I took pictures from the passenger seat until I drifted off to sleep. By the time we reached Indianapolis, we hit rush hour traffic, and I woke up and began to highlight bits of the atlas as we crawled through the city. I fell asleep again and woke up when we were clear of the city and driving straight along I-65. The landscape was flat and sprinkled with farmland and small towns, and I put on a CD and stared out the window as we continued.

Eventually, as the coffee we'd gotten began to take hold, conversation began to tumble out. We talked about our roommates and then our families, told various stories about our parents and ourselves, and passed the time as the flat green farmland flitted past.

We got up around Gary (city motto: "Not even an eighth as good as the song promises!") and began to head toward Chicago. Just before approaching the city, we stopped at a gas station. Errol filled up and I got quarters and went to the bathroom. While back outside, I realized that I was hungry (the donut didn't fill me up), so I ordered a breakfast sandwich. The woman behind the counter was very nice, so we chatted for a bit. Errol came out of the bathroom and we waited for my sandwich.

After a few minutes, it was in a travel bag, and the woman pushed it toward me and said "So sorry about the wait! I put a hashbrown in there 'cause it took so long."

Back in the car, I explained the idea of Midwestern friendliness and hospitality to Errol. "People out here are just nicer," I said.

We got on I-90 to go around Chicago, but we hadn't been there for more than a few miles when there were signs telling us that I-90 was closed due to construction and to seek an alternate route. This set off a chain of events that, an hour later, had us still hovering around Chicago. We made wrong turns, got onto strange roads, and, at one point, Errol forgot himself and we ended up on the wrong side of a concrete divider. As I instructed him to "turn around," (okay, so, it was "Ahhhh we need to turn around this is the wrong side of the road ahhhhh!"), a cop noticed that we were, I don't know, ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD, flashed his lights at us. I had a horrible sinking feeling. Were we going to get a ticket?

He drove over and blocked our car from the rest of the traffic (not that there was much) and asked us where we were going. We told him.

"Ah, okay," he said. "You just need to take this exit back to..."

He gave us directions that would take us exactly where we needed to go. Then he told us to be safe. Then he drove away.

"SEE?" I said. "People in the Midwest are just freaking awesome. So nice."

We took the detour and swung around Chicago. Up through Illinois, I put in Sufjan Steven's Come On Feel the Illinoise!, which was lovely. As we made our way through Illinois, I called my grandmother to let her know we would be there soon.

As soon as we crossed over the border of Wisconsin ("TOWANDA!"), I feel giddy with nostalgia. Ever since I was a little girl, we'd do the two day drive from PA to Wisconsin to see my mother's family. I haven't been back since before I went to college. And here it was, beautiful farmland and fragrant air and blue skies. We hit Janesville and went west to Evansville, where my grandmother lives. As we drove, I fired off every story I could remember about my cousins and my grandparents and visiting this state.

Evansville has changed. The Coach House has burned down, the pharmacy has been moved, and the endless cornfields behind my grandmother's old house - the fields where my cousin Jessica and I used to run and eat raw sweet corn in messy, decadent quantities - have been covered up with a huge housing development. It made my throat feel raw.

When we pulled into Kelly House, I got out of the car, grabbed my left ankle with my right hand, and bent down to the ground, letting everything pop as I bent over. I did the same with my other leg.

Inside, my grandmother was waiting. She'll be ninety next month, and she looks fantastic. A little hard of hearing (to be expected), but still the same feisty woman I'd always remembered. She introduced me to all of her nurses ("This is my granddaughter, Carmen. She's moving to California!")

I drove her to a local restaurant (seeing as there were only two seats in Beatrice, I had to take her and then go back and get Errol) and we had lunch (only in rural Wisconsin can you get a triple decker sandwich, fries, pickles, and soup for five dollars). We talked about the cousins and aunts and uncles, the marriages and pregnancies and divorces and children and adoptions. It was so good to see her. She was a little frailer than I remembered - and was the skin of her hand just more slightly translucent? - but overall she looked wonderful.

She made me promise to call. I took her back to Kelly House and gave her a kiss and hug (but not before taking her picture, which is the last one in the previous post) and then hopped back on the road. I swung around to the restaurant to pick up Errol. He was inside, chatting with a gentleman. I asked him, as we climbed back into the car, who that was.

"He saw that I was sitting alone and started chatting with me." Errol looked amazed. "I see what you mean about Midwestern friendliness."

We left Evansville and headed to Madison. We picked up the beltway around the city and went to Attic Angels to visit Mrs. Jacobs, a very, very old friend of my mother's and my "fairy god grandmother." She's a ninety-six year old woman with an incredible life story*, funny as hell, and lots of fun to be around. We spent an hour and a half talking to her.

"I'm so proud of you, Carmen," she said. "You can do anything. The world has opened herself up to you."

We left Attic Angels around four-thirty and made our way toward my Uncle Nick's house. We got a little turned around and ended up in downtown Madison near the capitol building, but with the GPS and sheer patience we found Nick's house.

I love my Uncle Nick. He's a dear, sweet man, and it was so nice to see him again. He gave us a tour of his trees and mulch and shrubs and then made his special recipe fish (with fish that he caught himself in Canada). He then helped me figure out the route for tomorrow and gave me a bigger Wisconsin map than the one in my atlas.

Another awesome thing: I actually got to see all three of Nick's kids! They're all cousins who are older than me, but he managed to wrangle them all together. I haven't seen them in... well, a very, very long time. It was so good to see them. What's even cooler is that my cousin Tim is actually moving to Colorado soon, so I might be seeing more of him in the near future (not on this trip, but when I get out to Colorado again).

Anyway, it's really late, and I need to sleep. I hope you're all doing well. Tomorrow: House on the Rock, the Summer Kitchen, Aunt Mary Ann and Uncle Tom in Savage, MN. Yay!

*which I will tell, in as much detail as I know, at a later date

Nothing stellar picture-wise thus far in the trip (meaning: we were covering a lot of ground and didn't stop for a lot of pictures) and I'm not on a computer where they can be edited, but here's some of what we've been seeing.

I didn't cry.

It was raining, and I was sleepy, and I kissed my grandparents goodbye and got into Beatrice. I pulled my traveling hat snugly around my ears and stared at the rain through the windshield. The inside car was quiet, and all I could hear was the muffled sound of the rain. I curled my hands around the steering wheel.

In the house, my grandfather had made me waffles and coffee. As I hugged him goodbye, he smiled brightly. "It's going to be okay, Carmen. I promise."

I believe him. I really do.

I rolled down the driveway and into the street. I waved goodbye to my grandfather as I drove past the house.

In Silver Spring, I hugged a sleepy KC in the doorway of her apartment. I then went and picked up Errol. I hugged Amanda goodbye. I told her that I loved her. We got Errol's backpack into Beatrice and the trunk closed. Success.

We got on the road.

We took off across Maryland, starting from her wide eastern side and moving to her narrow western handle. I thought that I'd never been this way before, but I have; I recognized the road, the small, lush mountains. This was the way that we used when we used to go to West Virginia. We passed through the place where the West Virginia bound group would stop for lunch - a section where the highway passed through the mountain. The mountain had been blasted away and the layers of rock were visible where the earth had pushed up and folded upon itself; split open, it was raw and beautiful.

Errol and I talked. We told stories about friends and lovers and family, and commented on the beauty of the places we were passing. We decided on a road trip battle cry - "Towanda!"

It rained and rained. Mist clung to the mottled green mountains. The windshield wipers pulsed. Other drivers sped past us.

We passed through Frostburg, where my father went to college.

"TOWANDA!" we screamed, pumping our fists in the air as West Virginia welcomed us.

Errol murmured a prayer in Arabic. "What was that?" I asked.

"Traveling dua," he said, and then translated it for me.

We stopped at a gas station high in the mountains. We filled up, shivering in the drizzly morning air. I went inside and went to the bathroom, making a note (by which I mean "taking pictures") of the shelves of kitschy statues and clocks and trinkets. I bought a soda. At the counter, a woman with frizzy blond hair said "It's miserable out there."

"Yeah," I agreed. "It's been raining all morning."

"You been driving for a bit?"

"Since six this morning, yeah."

"Where you going?"

I felt a tiny glow inside as I said "California."

"Ooh! Visiting?"

"Moving."

She tilted her head to look past me and saw Beatrice filled to the brim with boxes.

"Wow." She handed me her change. "Good luck with that. I hope the weather improves."

"Thanks."

"Travel safely."

"Thank you."

Somewhere high in the mountains of West Virginia, it began to snow. Not much, or heavily, but fat, white flakes swirled down with the rain. Our ears popped. We talked about religion.

We passed into Pennsylvania. "TOWANDA!"

We passed animals. Dead animals. Roadkill, sprawled out along the side of the road. I counted eight dead deer with their backs broken and bodies folded; rabbits and groundhogs blasted apart by the force of semi tires.

Errol took a nap, and I listed to my road trip mix. We stopped for gas again and switched places. He drove and I made sandwiches in the front seat. The car was warm. I got a phone call from Rebekah.

"I'm standing by the Pacific Ocean! And I thought of you!"

I'm coming, I promised her.

We passed into West Virginia again briefly ("TOWANDA!") before moving into Ohio.

My mom called to ask how the trip was going. "Did anyone lose their pool privileges yet?" she joked, referring to the Wisconsin road trips we went on as a family when I was a child and how my frustrated father would start stripping privileges left and right as we poked each other, screamed, fought, and threw tantrums. Despite the threats, however, when we landed at the hotel on the first night, we always went into the pool anyway. "We had to get you tired for the next day, so you'd sleep in the car," Mom later explained.

"No one's lost their pool privileges," I said, smiling.

Errol drove and I took pictures*. I watched the drivers in the cars that we passed. People argued and talked and sucked away on their Big Gulps.

Indiana.

"TOWANDA!"

Around 5:30, having been on the road for approximately 11 hours, we made our way to Natalie and Michael's house in Bloomington. We had to wait for Natalie to get home, so we chatted with Michael and played with Charlie Rose the dog. After she got home, we went out for beer and burgers and a tour of the Indiana University campus (which is GORGEOUS! And also is where Kinsey did all his research!).

Back at the house, we met up with Sarah Brown! Who is lovely and awesome! We hung out and chatted and I gave her huge hugs to give back to the people in DC.

This post seems a little loopy, but that's cause I'm so darn tired. This was the longest day of the trip, and we passed through five states, and I need to get to bed.

I love you all. Good night, good night.


*pictures forthcoming, just not tonight

Hey everyone! Thomas has been working on The Next Great Adventure facebook application, and you should totally add it to your profile because it's awesome.

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=12579724038

(I did tag some people in a note about it, but I reached my tag limit pretty quickly.)

Three days and counting. :)