A brief remark.

After seeing the study floating around online about how Internet Explorer users are dumb, I checked the stats from this blog, and found that the majority of you are Firefox users. Congrats, smartypantses! I am also highly amused that people are ending up on my site after Googling things like "American brothels". Sorry boys. (I also just had to look up whether or not "googling" should be capitalized. Chicago Manual of Style says yes, but I lean towards not capitalizing. Learning things is fun! And on that note, I also learned that Apple has more money than the U.S. government at the moment.)

Here is a picture of a voodoo queen's tomb in New Orleans. I will get around to putting up some pretty pictures of Memphis and N.O. soonish.

Le Bon Temps.

As I write this, I am sitting on a balcony with a wrought iron fence, overlooking St. Anne’s St. in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Bourbon Street is a block and a half away and mule-drawn carriage tours are passing below me. Life is good again after having a strange 36 hour episode of one of the blackest depressions I have ever experienced.

Driving through Mississippi last week, I was caught on the highway in the heaviest downpour I’ve ever seen. You mid-westerners may be familiar with this, but as a west-coaster, the onslaught was frightening. The heavens opened up, and the apocalypse of rain obscured even the hood of my car. I couldn’t drive faster than a crawl, despite the supposed 70 mph speed limit. Just as I was about to pull off before I died of either a horrendous car wreck or by drowning, I could see blue sky ahead of me, and in a few minutes, it was sunny and dry again. Weather is weird.

I had a parallel experience after I left St. Louis.  Staying with Roland and Tricia, old friends from back in the Eugene days (circa 2003-4?)  was great fun. We saw the arch, heard some great blues, talked and drank and I made friends and got to experience some St. Louis kickball. 

On my last night there however, as I lay on the floor in my sleeping bag, the whole dark world seemed to stretch before me and I felt so lost, so untethered, so afraid of everything, and so so so tired.  In retrospect, I can say that probably the stress of moving and starting school, the fact that I have been travelling almost non-stop for nine months, and the worry that I had no where to go or stay after Missouri had finally caught up with me in that moment. But as I experienced it, there was no possible way to go on. I had exhausted every last reserve of joviality and endurance, and I could not possibly face the prospect of continued life. Dramatic and ridiculous, yes, I know. But still.

I left St. Louis and drove without a goal for several hundred miles, until I finally had to stop. I took a motel room off the interstate, lay in bed. Watched TV. I was too tired to sleep. Too tired to even move my eyeballs. I didn’t think I would ever make it out of Springfield Missouri. I wondered if it were possible to die of world-weariness. I wished I would.

I didn’t, of course.  The next day I drove to a hostel in Memphis and fell asleep again, still exhausted. When I woke up, I found I was sharing a room with a German guy, a French guy, and a Swiss girl. It was the first time in the States for all of them, and they were happy and excited.  So I pulled myself together enough to go out with them.

 We drank big ass beers, and listened to music, and danced. The German and I got up on stage and sang “Sweet Home Alabama”.  The night was goofy and fun. And just like that, the storm had passed. 

I still feel that profound tiredness sloshing around in my head in my downtime, when there is nothing on the surface to distract me. But after Memphis, we spent five or six days in New Orleans, so there was precious little of that time. 

 As I finish writing this, I am sitting in a café in Pensacola Florida. There is supposed to be a punk house I can stay in around here somewhere that some kids I met busking in N.O. told me about. I also have a possible couch to crash on in Panama City. And so the Epic Cross Country Road Trip rolls on.

Laissez le bons temps rouler.

1500 miles later...

Before I left the Northwest, I had registered my car in Washington for less expensive insurance reasons. I was a little sad about this, because I liked my Oregon plates:

OMGWTFBBQ!

But then I got my Washington plates and thought, well, it's appropriate at least.

Ooo.. is that something shiny over there?!

I am currently in Wisconsin and will be heading on to Chicago tomorrow.  But on my way here...

Yellowstone was crazy gorgeous

Buffaloes are surprisingly massive animals. And they don't really look like anything that belongs in nature; they seem more like Jim Henson creatures.

Missoula Montana was a great town and a random that I was hanging out with gave me a Thor comic book (also random!). I went to Deadwood, South Dakota, which is a little mountain town entirely devoted to drinking and gambling, as is appropriate. It's where Wild Bill was killed over a poker game. I saw his grave, and the chair he was killed in at Saloon No. 10.

Sioux Falls, of all places, was a crazy party night. I started out at a cigar lounge, listening to a bluegrass band, and ended up climbing fences in an industrial area at 3 AM.

I spent the next morning, hungover, drinking mimosas and watching Top Gear with an ex-race car driver.

Then there was Minneapolis, where I got to see some of the old Eugene crew!

 

 

St. Paul Saints game with Jef and EJ

BBQing with Mo and Taro

There are many more stories and pictures, of course. The specter of law school keeps getting bigger and closer as well. I applied for a grad PLUS loan and signed all my promissory notes the other day. Funny how I feel like I should be signing in blood.

And yet, somehow I keep having dreams that I'm back in Tamarindo.

On the road again!

After getting back to the states, spending a week in LA and a month in Portland, I am finally off and traveling again. This time in the form of an Epic Cross Country Road Trip. 

Some pictures from ECCRT day one:

Starting out at my mother's beautiful new house in Bellingham WA

Goodbye, Pacific Northwest! Also: this is my new car. Her name is Hester.

Heading east, and I am soon out in the desert again. Oh, how I missed it!

This was my campsite the first night. Beautiful and creepy abandoned farm.

Wildflowers

 

 

The entire second floor had been claimed by nesting birds.

Whoever used to live here had fantastic taste in wallpaper!

Where will I end up tonight? You never know.