Friday morning, we headed up to Nashville, as the shows we wanted to see didn’t start until later. Stephanie had never experienced the joys of the South, so I aimed to show her the highlights. We started at Bongo Java. She witnessed the miracle of the Nun Bun, and I bought coffee and some souvenir underwear, because it’s what I do. The coffee boy freaked when I pulled out my wallet. He said, ‘Can I take a picture of that?’ and pulled out his camera phone. I held it up for him, and he told me about his Hello Kitty fandom. I said, ‘Well then…’ and put my keys on the counter so he could see my Hello Kitty sushi chef keyring. Then I showed him my cellphone. He looked like he was going to pass out. He dug in his pocked and produced a little Hello Kitty, which he placed lovingly on the counter. It was a moment.

We drove over to see the Parthenon. Stephanie was unimpressed. As a sports fan, she was way more excited by the Coliseum (I even learned there’s a sports team there called the Titans, and apparently they play a game known locally as ‘football’), which was crawling with country music fans in town for the CMA festival. We drove around for a while trying to find a parking spot amongst the crowd of cowboy-hat-tube-top-wearing fans. The nice thing about Nashville is that all the funny touristy stuff is confined to a few blocks along Broadway, from Ryman Auditorium (the original Grand Ole Opry) to the… well, Hard Rock Cafe. Whatever.

Anyway, we wandered. I pointed out the Batman building. We went into the offensive souvenir shop where half the merchandise comes emblazoned with a confederate flag. We stopped into Hatch Show Print, because I’m obsessed (my upcoming portfolio is a tribute). We marveled at the fashion we saw:

‘Was that a one or two-piece hot-pink bodysuit?’
‘How does he transport that giant beer gut on those spindly legs?’
‘What’s the connection between NASCAR and country?’

We stopped to get our photo taken with Elvis, and to talk to some country music fans on the street, who told us about the festival events, and the loads of free crap to be had. We decided to check it out.

They had a bunch of tents set up, selling state-fair food (again!), and crappy beer. There was a tent with Sharpie markers, one for eBay, and a cooking tent sponsored by Mrs. Dash. No, I’m not joking. There was even a karaoke stage, on which bemused fans in various degrees of patriotic decoration were belting their hearts out to today’s greatest country. It was… interesting. We went to the Charlie Daniels museum instead. And then, we were just in time for the opening of the world-famous Wildhorse Saloon. If you’re not me, you probably don’t recall that it’s the place I learned to line-dance.

I was feeling nostalgic, so I ordered fried pickles even though Stephanie wouldn’t touch them. I ate a few, then had a ‘cowboy’ caesar salad. As she pointed out, I was eating the same thing I eat at Luce: caesar salad and a diet Coke. I told her to shut up, since it was the only thing on the menu I could eat.

This would become a theme.

We headed to Katy K’s Ranch Dressing. I can’t say enough good things about her custom western wear, so I won’t. You just have to see it. She noticed the kitty shoes I’d bought from her last spring. I bought a tshirt with her logo. She gave us directions to Bonnaroo. I wanted to hug her goodbye, but I restrained myself.

So we drove the 70 miles to Manchester. The main exit was closed, so we had to go three miles past it and turn around at the next exit, as instructed by about a hundred state troopers. There were cars lining the freeway for those entire three miles, and they didn’t seem to be moving. People were hanging out of their cars and wandering around on the side of the road. We decided to stop at the gas station to pee and get snacks and water.

We got on the entrance ramp and sat parked there for half an hour. I got out and talked to the passing folks. One boy with rhinestone sunglasses told me he was parked about a mile and a half up the road, and it had taken him three hours to get to that point. We turned off the air, opened all the windows and sunroof, and settled in. I watched the temperature creep from 92 to 101.

We crept down the three miles of I-24 and reached the Manchester exit after almost 4 hours. We were thrilled to almost be there. We were drenched, had to go to the bathroom, and were running out of water. We had watched people walking down the highway twice the speed we were driving. We watched them climbing into the woods and peeing, and seriously regretted being girls.

At the exit, the friendly troopers told us we were entering total chaos. There were 90,000 people there, way more than they expected. There wasn’t enough room for all the campers, so people were just parking anywhere. It was a mess. They were amused. We were not. We realized that the traffic backup didn’t end at the exit, and that we had farther to go, but no idea just how far.

A total of nine hours after leaving the gas station, we were parked at Bonnaroo. They were correct about chaos. We drove through rocks and grass and mud and found a parking spot amongst the campers. We weren’t camping and were supposed to be parked in a separate area so we could leave later, but they had abandoned any order. I asked three different people in STAFF tshirts and was told they had no idea how I was leaving, since all the exits were blocked by cars trying to get in. My favorite response was, ‘I heard there was another exit around here, but I’m not sure. It’ll probably be cleared up by 8am.’

We tried to remember where we parked in the dark, and walked a mile or so into the festival. The main camping area was full of vendors. They had some tshirts and such, but mostly it was glass pipes and ganja brownies and mushroom truffles and inventive mixed drinks. It would’ve been really funny, had we not sat in the car for 9 hours without water, having to pee. Knowing we would have to face the dreaded music-festival port-a-potties. Shiver.

It was a life-changing event for me. I tried about six bathrooms before finding one that seemed tolerable. I climbed in with Kleenex and seat covers. Since it was dark, the stalls were pitch black; she held the door open partway while I peed and watched the folks outside buying weed. As we traded off, passing hand wipes, a girl came barrelling out of the next stall, stoned and freaking out. And the Dead weren’t even playing that night!

Finally, we were in. We watched Dave Matthews. Or she did, and I watched the people. I have never seen so many people stoned at one time, and I’ve been to many shows. And in keeping with her request/threat, I remained completely unaltered. The entire time.

After the show, we did manage to find our way back to the car. I told Stephanie I was going to get us out of there, no matter what. I had a plan that mostly involved brute force, and it worked.

Chico is not an offroad vehicle, and even a Jeep would’ve been hard-pressed in that environment. We made it out to the road, and another trooper stopped us. He said, ‘You know you’ve got something dragging up here?’ Apparently a piece underneath the bumper had dropped down. He said it didn’t look like it would cause any damage, so we headed back to the hotel for the night.

Saturday morning, I got up way too early, as usual. I drove over to Starbucks, got gas, stopped at CVS to pick up the razor I had forgotten to bring (got forbid one be hairy at a hippie-overrun music festival), fruit, and duct tape. The girl at CVS told me she was from Manchester, and that this was the best-organized event to date. I almost fell over. I brought Stephanie back breakfast, and set to work duct-taping my vehicle. A big piece of plastic under the front of the engine had broken off and was hanging down. I taped the shit out of it and we were off.

We got to Bonnaroo at 10:30, well before the shows started. We had no trouble getting into day parking, as all the campers had finally settled. I wish I could adequately represent what the camping looked like: huge open fields full of tents, as far as one could see. It was pretty awesome. And a complete mess. People were walking down the road to bathe in the dirty creek. The whole place already smelled like garbage. We, however, were clean.

I strapped on the Camelbak and we waded through the sea of contraband to the entrance. We spend some time wandering around Centeroo and figuring out where all the stages were, as they all had immensely useless names such as What Stage, Which State, That Tent, This Tent, etc. We checked out the food, and I was thrilled: there were a few full-on vegetarian booths, and even a vegan one. It figured with the audience, but sometimes I’m surprised. I bought a pretzel and we went to grab spots close to the stage in That Tent for Kings of Leon, the original reason I wanted to go to the festival in the first place.

The show was so great. I loved it. We were up close enough to see everything, and they rocked hard in that Tennessee way. They had crazy hillbilly hair and the tightest jeans ever seen on human beings. During the show, which was under a big tent, it started pouring outside, and everybody cheered and ran out into the rain.

After the show, we wandered around and saw some other bands. Gomez was awesome live. There was a huge crowd listening on the lawn. We saw most of that show, then I went to hear Rachael Yamagata in a little tent hidden in the back. I fell in love. She’ll be here in Minneapolis this month in a tiny little room at the Quest, and I will be there.

We saw Del McCoury and My Morning Jacket, and spent some time laying in the sun listening to whatever band was nearby. I ate a hummus wrap and immediately felt sick because of the heat. It was better to not eat at all, and drink water whenever necessary, but not too much, as we had a very good reason: avoiding the port-a-potties again. Word was getting around about how bad they were already, and there was no way I’d go willingly. So we devised a carefully-executed technique we termed ‘controlled dehydration’: drink enough to stay conscious, but not enough to have to pee. And it worked!

As it got later, we decided to head out before the Grateful Dead. The idea of hanging around for that was just depressing. So we got back to the car easily, just as it got really dark and the wind picked up. Tents were billowing, and garbage was flying everywhere. Within ten minutes of leaving, the downpour began. We were so glad to not be at the festival for that.

It took us too long to get to the hotel in the rain. I showered the sweat and fifteen layers of sunscreen off me. The sunscreen seemed to be doing no good at all. The news on TV said that two people had already died at Bonnaroo due to multiple drugs and heat and dehydration. We drove back up to Nashville for dinner, as Stephanie was insistent about eating at Wildhorse again. I worried about getting in due to the CMA festivities, but figured we’d find something else if the club was closed.

We found the exact same parking spot as the day before, and cheered. As I started off down the street and looked back over my shoulder, and noticed something I didn’t want to see: the front tire was flat. I had one of those split-second gaps in reasoning that really makes me question how I think sometimes: I thought, ‘Eh, leave it for later.’ I almost walked away. But then I snapped back to reality, and I was pissed.

We were parked on a downward slope, so I pulled up the parking brake hard, ripped all the tools out of the trunk, and set to work. See, I’ve changed flats on this car so many times that I could qualify for the Saab racing pit crew. Not that that makes me any calmer about it when it happens; in fact, each time it gets worse.

I was parked close enough to the curb that getting the tire iron in to loosen the nuts was highly inconvenient. It took forever to crank up the jack. At least they didn’t use a torque wrench the last time around, so I didn’t have to jump on it to loosen them. As usual, I got the nuts out and then couldn’t get the tire off the hub. It likes to rust in place. I jacked it up further, yanked on it some more, then planted my ass on the curb, put my feet on the tire and kicked it over and over, cursing loudly the whole time.

At that moment, I heard women talking behind me. A couple of ladies had meandered up the hill and taken up a spot on the ledge behind us as my audience. They were lamenting to themselves, then to us, the fact that no men were coming by to help. They tried to flag one down, but he rushed off with a painfully lame excuse. And part of me was pissed that nobody offered to help, especially in a place like the south. On the other hand, I’d probably have refused it unless I couldn’t have done it myself.

So I continued kicking and yanking and swearing (a little more quietly, considering the southern belles nearby), and they expounded on their theory about why no men were there to help. They said it was to do with the fact that they were all off at war dying. Therefore, nobody to help me change my tire.

Um, right.

I finally got the tire off, then put it all put back together, tossed everything as hard as I could into the trunk, and we headed off to dinner. Me with completely black hands.

As expected, Wildhorse turned us away. They were having a CMA party with the stars of NBC daytime TV. Yeah, we seriously regretted missing that. We headed to a restaurant nearby and I had… caesar salad and diet Coke, after scrubbing my hands in the bathroom for 10 minutes straight. We drove back to the hotel at a much slower speed on the infamous red donut tire, but you know. At least we were alive. All the men, they were dead.

I woke up Sunday terrified that I would find no one in the wilds of Tennessee who would sell me a new tire on a Sunday. I paged through the phonebook, calling tire repair numbers randomly. A sleepy-sounding guy answered, and I asked him if they were open today to fix a flat. He asked, ‘On a semi?’ I said no. He said, ‘Call Wal-Mart,’ and hung up.

It took me about two seconds to abandon my principles, and go to a company I’ve refused to patronize for quite a long time. Yes, I suck.

They had the tire fixed within 20 minutes. I’ve never, ever had the luck to blow a tire and have it be repairable, so I was shocked. I paid $7.14 in cash, and we were on the road by 9:30am. We got coffee, then headed to Jack Daniels. I was hoping Goose would be there to give us a tour. He was working, but had just taken a group out and wouldn’t be back for a couple hours. We didn’t have the time to wait, so we checked out the visitor’s center, did some souvenir shopping in Lynchburg, and then headed back to Manchester.

On the way back into the festival, we saw cars leaving covered in mud. Not just smeared with it, but like balls of mud had been flung at them. The day parking was terrible, and it took us a while to find a spot where we could turn without danger of getting stuck. As I backed into a spot, a girl was standing across the way pointing and grimacing at the front of my car. I nodded, because I knew… Chico was falling apart again.

The duct tape had come loose, and the entire piece was folded forward and attached only by a bolt in the center. I tried cracking the plastic, and it wouldn’t let go. I yanked on it, I twisted it, I stomped on it. I pinned one end to the ground and bounced on the other. I’m sure it was a great show. Finally, I twisted it enough that it snapped. I left it on the ground next to the car, and we went back into the festival. Did I mention my car sucks? It does.

My Camelbak was really heavy, so I dumped out half the water. It was easy to find water anywhere inside, so I didn’t need it, and the straps were hurting my sunburn. It was overcast, but still in the upper 90s and unbearably humid. We got to the gates and people were wading ankle-deep in mud to get in. We had to pick our way very slowly along the edges to avoid drowning.

It took a good 15 minutes to cross the muddy expanse between the main stage and Centeroo. You would find a safe little dryish island in the middle of the mess and have to stand there, planning the next part of the route. People were barefoot and covered in mud, but I was hoping to avoid that. The staff drove ATVs, which would go rushing by, splashing muddy water all over the place. About half the grounds were wet, so people were clustered in all the dry spots. It was a mess.

We wanted to see moe, but that would have required wading again, so we just listened. We heard some of Burning Spear, Marc Ribot, Marc Broussard, Taj Mahal, and Cracker as we walked around. I got a falafel sammich and met some awesome people from Louisiana who talked about their camping nightmare, and how they were prepared to run as fast as possible after the last show that night. We weren’t even waiting around for that, we were leaving after Maroon 5. None of that 9 hour shit again, thank you.

Stephanie went off in search of water, and quickly discovered the vendors were out. I regretted emptying any of it out of my pack. We managed to find pop, and went to hang out for a while, listening to the Bad Plus and waiting for Guster to begin. I laid on the ground and listened to these southern girls talking about how they couldn’t wait to get married so they wouldn’t have to support their own lazy asses anymore. I wanted to smack them, but it would’ve hurt my sunburn.

We got up to pack into a tent for Guster. A cute boy complimented my dirty kitty shoes and offered me his pipe; I declined. I hope Stephanie appreciates my restraint. Guster was OK live, but not great. The crowd was really fun, though. The second the show was over, I pushed my way near the front, as instructed by my sister, who was desperate to see Maroon 5 up close and personal. We congratulated ourselves on being maybe 20 feet from the stage before the rumors started circulating: they had cancelled. The singer had blown out his voice. I felt really bad for her.

We headed out, and I told her she was definitely going to get dinner at the hick dance club, as if that would make up for it. We stopped at the hotel so she could shower. I went for coffee, and found a lone guitarist with three teenage fans playing at Starbucks. In between songs, he worked the crowd. He asked the kids if they were friends of his sister, and they said yeah, they were in her church group. A couple of them taught Sunday school. Now, ain’t that the cutest thing?

We went back to Wildhorse and the bouncer let us in free. We ate and watched the line-dancing lessons; even though I had done them before, I just wasn’t up for a dance called ‘the Rebel Strut’. Shiver. They danced to a song called ‘Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy’. It was great.

We rushed back to the hotel without the huge donut-tire hindrance, and crashed hard.

I was awakened at 5:30am, which was bad because then I spent the morning pacing, waiting for Stephanie to get ready. We were on the road just in time for rush hour traffic in Nashville. The troopers were pulling over all the single-drivers in the HOV lane, and there were a ton of them. We escaped Tennessee, then Kentucky, then reached the hated wasteland of Illinois. It wasn’t actually that bad for me, because Stephanie took over driving and I zoned out. I putzed with the CDs, I cleaned the car, I didn’t sleep, but I pretended to in hopes I could even convince myself. On my shifts, I averaged between 80-85, and kept bumping up my time estimates; I had planned on getting home by midnight at the earliest. We managed to hardly stop at all, and were back in Minnesota by 9:30pm.

I stopped to drop her off at the parents’ house, and intended to run back out the door and home. But there was my mom, shoving food in my hands again. I can’t get away! I ended up coming home with protein chips, oranges, and a banana. Just in case I got hungry on the 10 miles to my house, I guess.

I picked Heather up from work around 4pm Wednesday afternoon, and we headed out of town. The plan was to drive overnight to Atlanta, in order to maximize our time spent on the coast over the weekend. It was a good plan, if better in theory than execution, but we’ve done this sort of stupid thing before.

The trip was uneventful through Minnesota and Wisconsin. By Madison, I was on my 9th shot of espresso for the day, so things were looking up. Having just seen Radiohead a few weeks ago near Madison, we decided to start a Radiohead retrospective. We argued for a while about whether OK Computer came before or after Kid A. We argued about the meaning of ‘Creep’. (I say it’s about your average self-hating, insecure loner, she says it’s about a creepy stalker. I know I’m right.) We had to listen to ‘Lurgee’ twice while I tried to pin down what exactly I was crying about that time I was driving around my old neighborhood in Chicago late at night, listening to that song. By Rockford, we had made it to The Bends, and had to listen to Thom Yorke singing, “She looks like the real thing; she tastes like the real thing,” two or three times before agreeing that it might be the best song ever, then moving on.

Around 10pm, a little ways south of Rockford, I got out my travel journal and started jotting observations about Illinois. First of all, their towns seem to use some kind of buddy system, as if they were scared to be out there in the middle of nowhere all alone. There’s Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, Rock Island-Moline. Also, once you get past Rockford, you enter what is more appropriately the south than the midwest. Long ago, we had decided that Chicago was technically not part of Illinois, and that the rest of the state was actually part of Kentucky.

If you don’t mind, I’ve taken the liberty of redrawing the map in accordance with my theory. So, you’ll see that the large tangerine-colored state is the territory now known as Kentuckinois. The salmon-colored state near the top remains as a tiny remnant of the original Illinois, and contains mostly Rockford and various tollbooths along the interstate. The lime-colored state along Lake Michigan encompasses what is now officially named Chicagoland. All other midwestern states remain as is (for now). I think you will all agree that this is a great improvement on United States cartography.

Somewhere further south in Kentuckinois, I decided to write a new website. I have ‘humpregistry.com’ written in my notebook, but on second thought, it’s not such a great idea. After that, I decided to write a book. Then I wrote down two other undoubtedly excellent ideas, but I managed to write one on top of the other (it was dark!), so they are unfortunately lost forever. Around 1am, I told Heather, “Father Hennepin gets me hot.” She replied, “Yeah. I know.” We decided maybe it was time to stop and take a break.

We pulled off the freeway at (Champaign-)Urbana, and found a 24-hour grocery store called Schnucks. As we were crossing the front of the store with that funny quick!-where-are-the-bathrooms? walk, this guy stopped us:

UrbanaBoy: Hey, did you girls just get back from that show?
Me: What show? (Taking a full 10 minutes to realize he’s referring to my Realistics tshirt) Oh, no. We’re just driving through.
UrbanaBoy: Where are you from?
Me: Minneapolis. We’re headed to Nashville. And Savannah.
UrbanaBoy: What do you think of Illinois?
Me: Um. Are you from here?
Heather: It sucks!

We peed, then went in search of snacks. We were not disappointed, as Schnucks is apparently the store for stoners. There were six or seven aisles of snack food. I didn’t get a store map, but if I remember it correctly, it went:

Aisle 1: Produce.
Aisle 2: Chips. Nuts.
Aisle 3: Candy. Cookies.
Aisle 4: Canned Goods.
Aisle 5: More Chips! Pretzels!
Aisle 6: Pop (they call it ‘Soda’. Ha.)
Aisle 7: Munchies! Even More Cookies! Want Some Peanuts?
Aisle 8: Toilet Paper.
Aisle 9: Holy Crap, DORITOS!

And so on. By the time we got to the register, we were in barely-restrained hysterics. Then, standing in line, surrounded by a bunch of just-a-little-off people, we both had that moment where you think, ‘there is something very very wrong here, and I need to escape.’ So we did. With our snacks, of course.

Back on the road, it was my shift. I’m really terrible driving at night, something about being sleepy and not seeing very well that makes for a surreal, video-gamelike experience rather than safe, defensive driving. But I was doing fine, and Heather dozed off for a couple hours. I woke her up to see the giant roadside cross in Effingham, which is lit well enough to be seen from outer space, so that even alien life can come to find the one true path. I listened to Amnesiac twice, because I felt bad waking her up again to switch CDs. Finally, round about 4:15am, we crossed into Kentucky, and decided it was time to stop for a meal, and what better place to do it than Paducah?

We pulled off at the first exit, figuring there’d be about a million roadside diners open in the middle of the night. We were wrong. Heather experienced the thrill of victory when she sighted a Bob Evans, then felt the bitter agony of defeat when she realized it was closed. Still hopeful, we got back on the highway and headed to the next exit (because, yes, Paducah is so large a metropolis, it has itself three whole exits on the interstate). This exit had a couple truck stops, a closed McDonald’s, and a Waffle House. There was no question about it: Waffle House.

Now, I have to admit, I have a thing for Waffle House. No, I had never been there in my entire life. They don’t even have Waffle House in Minnesota (this is pancake country). But every time I see a Waffle House, I have to point it out. And in the south, that’s at almost every exit. See, the thing about Waffle House is the logo. Tell me it’s not great. It’s like the ugliest logo ever designed, and it would make for the best tshirt ever.

Also, their restaurants look like see-through trailers. What’s not to love?

So, we went inside. We got some funny looks, but I’d have been mad if we hadn’t. The cook and the waitress were standing behind the counter, just waiting for new victims customers, because it was 4:30am and they were chatty and sick to death of each other. There were a couple other trucker-types sitting at the counter, shoveling eggs and toast into their mouths silently. I picked a booth right in the middle of all the action, so we could get the full experience. We giggled at the placemat menus. We thanked the waitress, who gushed about our hairstyles for far too long. Heather showed me the bottle of salsa, labeled ‘Casa De Waffle.’ I told her to steal it, but she wouldn’t. That girl has scruples, or something. I ordered the only thing on the menu I could eat, and even that was a stretch: grilled cheese. Then I saw that they had cheese grits, and how could I resist? Cheese grits + Waffle House + Paducah + 4:30am. You understand. Heather got the All-Star Special ($4.99): 2 eggs, grits, toast, jelly, waffle, and bacon.

As he finished each item, the cook guy would yell, “Eggs over easy! Order up! Take me out back and shoot me!” or “Grilled cheese! Order up! Take me out back and shoot me!” I dumped the quarters from my wallet onto the table and headed to the jukebox. What I found there was almost too wonderful to relate, but I’ll try: the first twenty or so selections were all songs

about the Waffle House.

I am not joking, even though you suspect it is too good to be true. Since you obviously require proof, I have done some investigation, and am beyond ecstatic to be able to offer you the following: Jukebox Favorites and It’s a Waffle House Christmas. And now you know what you’re getting for the holidays.

I treated the lucky customers of the Waffle House to ‘844,739 Ways to Eat a Hamburger (At the Waffle House)’ by Billy Dee Cox, because I had been staring at the sign on the wall with the same message on it, trying to figure out if there was real math involved, or if they had just made that shit up. My food arrived while I was typing in my next selections, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, followed by ‘Stand By Your Man’, and then ‘My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.’ It was a southern triple-play par excellence. I returned to the booth to find Heather rolling her eyes, and a bowl of grits with an unmeltable slice of american cheese on top. I ate it anyway.

I never wanted to leave the Waffle House, because it was the most perfect place on earth, at least for that moment. But we had places to go, and a state line or two to cross before we reached our destination.

So we got back on the road. It was Heather’s turn again, so I pulled the pillow out of the back and managed to fall asleep pretty quickly. I awoke an hour or so later in rush-hour traffic outside Nashville, and was so sick to my stomach I wanted to die. Heather said she felt exactly the same way. We cursed the Waffle House for leading us astray.

It was around 7am, still to early for much of anything to be open, so we decided to find coffee. We were tired and punchy and nauseated. We found our way around the maze of university campuses to Bongo Java, and barely even noticed the Nun Bun as we ordered as much caffeine as possible. We sat out on the deck, squinting at the morning sun. I paged through the paper, providing insightful commentary which Heather skillfully ignored. We debated about whether it was acceptable for stores to not open until 10am in the civilized world. We made fun of the workmen across the street. Finally, we dragged our asses off the deck and back to the car, and drove into downtown Nashville.

We walked up and down Broadway, stopping into the horrible tacky souvenir shop we always stop into when we’re in town, even though half their merchandise is emblazoned with the rebel flag, and it never fails to piss me off. Then we went to see if the Charlie Daniels Museum was open. Unfortunately, it was not. By that time, our real destination, Hatch Show Print, was open, conveniently allowing us to spend our money and move on.

After that, there was more driving, which is all now a blur. We arrived in Lynchburg after a while, because Heather wanted to pick up some souvenirs in the cute little downtown. I wanted to stop in and say hi to Goose. So we ran into the distillery, and asked the woman at the counter (the very same woman who had been sitting there 6 months before, when we expressed our vast enthusiasm for Goose the first time) if he was working that day. She told me, with poorly-concealed pleasure, that he was not.

Sigh.

We drove some more, along these tiny winding roads through idyllic Tennessee backcountry. It was actually really pretty, and just added to my warm feelings towards that state (excepting the depressing shithole that is Chattanooga). We had been hoping to find lunch in Lynchburg, but the three restaurants there proudly featured 100% meat in all their dishes. On the way back to I-24, we went through the town of Cowan. As I drove past the mini-mainstreet, I saw the word ‘gourmet’ on the front of a building, and swung around the block to investigate.

The cafe was called the Goat Track Gourmet, and it was awesome. The woman who owned the place was working behind the counter, and she said they had been open for three months. They had plate lunches, which Heather and I were unaware of until we drove through the south: you pick an entree, then two sides from a wide and exciting array of options. I had spinach bread pudding with smoked gouda grits and sesame green beans. Everything was so good, we thought about maybe staying there forever, because what are the chances we’ll ever get back to Cowan, Tennessee?

We got back to I-24, and headed towards Atlanta. I was starting to fall asleep behind the wheel, resorting to slapping myself on the legs to stay awake. I pulled off at a rest area outside Chattanooga so we could switch. We staggered into the bathroom, and were sitting in stalls next to each other, in silent hysterics. I don’t even know why, other than that we were so exhausted we couldn’t stop laughing. Heather pretended she was crying, just to upset the other people in the bathroom. She was text messaging me from her phone; I had tears running down my face, and hearing her trying to not laugh out loud was just making me laugh even harder. I can’t imagine what the other women in that restroom were thinking.

Heather managed the rest of the drive, which is good, because I wouldn’t have made it. We were both so tired we wanted to vomit. Or maybe that was Waffle House. We got stuck in traffic for an hour outside Atlanta. I probably dozed off, woke up, promised myself not to doze off again, then dozed off twenty times or so. We got to the hotel around 5pm, and as fast as we possibly could, we jumped into bed and passed out.

I woke at 8pm, and got dressed so we could go out for dinner. Room service had nothing to offer me but grilled cheese, and after Waffle House, the thought of it made me want to cry. We did some quick investigation and decided to try and find our way to Buckhead, which I had heard had good restaurants. We found it easily, and decided on the Raja Indian restaurant. It wasn’t the best Indian food, but it was good, and prominently featured naan and paneer. We were happy.

We awoke at 9am and happily realized that neither of us felt sick to our stomachs anymore. On the way out of town, we stopped for coffee; all the Starbucks baristas were singing along with that Natalie Merchant song about getting older, and complaining about their pathetic barista lives. We took a detour to the town of Juliette, home of the Whistle Stop Cafe (of Fried Green Tomatoes fame). The residents are totally working it as far as the tourist trade goes, which is kind of amusing. All the shopkeepers are chatty and eccentric and cute. We considered maybe eating at the cafe, so went in to look at the menu. I looked down and saw a tableful of deep-fried food and I knew it wasn’t going to happen. So we continued on to Macon, Georgia, the location of our originally-planned lunch spot: Len Berg’s.

(And, yes, since you asked, we are the type of people who could consider Macon a destination.)

Len Berg’s is a bizarre little place. It’s in a small building in the alley behind the courthouse, and has been doing its thing for almost 50 years. It’s all about down-home cookin’, and it’s incredible.

We had discovered it in the AAA guide the last time we were in Georgia, and Heather has had recurring fantasies involving their biscuits and sweet tea ever since. They’re only open for ‘luncheon’ during the week. The kitchen is in the middle of the little building, with a lunch counter facing it. There’s a hallway on either side, and then dining rooms that branch out from there. The rooms are small and connect together like a maze. One of them has a large table with eight seats around it; another has two huge old creaking booths and nothing else. The seating is á la VFW post, cheap veneer tables and vinyl chairs. The waitress brought us the bread, which is amazing: buttermilk biscuits and little corn bread sticks. I asked her where the restrooms were located, and she gestured off towards the distance somewhere, saying, “through that door, you take a right and a right and a left and a left.”

The restaurant features classic southern cooking that you pick from a printed-daily menu. You can choose ‘lunch priced with two vegetables’; Heather ordered the baked stuffed pork chop (W) with fried fresh corn (Y) and country cole slaw (Z). I picked the vegetable plate, and selected my four vegetables: fried fresh corn (Y), country cole slaw (Z), tossed salad (S) with homemade bleu cheese dressing, and broccoli casserole (L). Worth noting: macaroni and cheese (M) is one of the vegetable options. I love the south.

The fried corn is sort of liked creamed corn, only with no cream. The bleu cheese dressing was the color of thousand island, but it was good anyway. My diet coke came in a tiny glass bottle. It was perfect.

Well, actually, the broccoli made me puke, but that was more my issue than theirs. Have I mentioned I’m fun to go out with? Yeah. Anyway, while I was in the bathroom, I could overhear the conversation in the eight-person room (which was a little disturbing, but still). There were a bunch of guys in there who obviously worked over at the courthouse, probably lawyers or judges. One of them was telling the others that for the last year, he had been exercising every day and trying to eat right and lose weight (what Len Berg’s had to do with eating right, I don’t know), because he had the new pacemaker. It occurred to me that everyone has their own personal struggle that nobody else knows about until they hear that person’s story. I mean, I know that should be obvious, but you don’t think about it. You go around thinking that your own life is this intense, gut-wrenching drama, and you envy other people’s simple, happy lives. And it’s not like that at all.

Back at the table, Heather was picking apart her peach cobbler and smiling about the people at the table behind her. It was a group in town for a conference, something about the needs of the blind. The women had the most stunning southern accents, stereotypically polite and genteel. One of the guys at the table was talking about how he helped set up a blind baseball league for kids in his county, and it was fascinating: he talked about the effect that success in sports had on the kids’ self-esteem and ability to function normally in school. Across the way, there was another old couple who had obviously been married since the beginning of time. They had ordered the exact same thing and were eating in silence. When the waitress visited their table, the woman would hold very lively conversations with her, then go back to dead silence when she left. Len Berg’s rules.

Leaving the restaurant, I again felt like crap, so Heather got to drive. I passed out for half an hour in the passenger seat, then felt like returning to the living. She informed me that I had missed the bamboo farm that I was intentionally looking out for, and then pointed out the hurricane evacuation crossovers that allow people to drive on both sides of the freeway while running for their lives. We figured those would probably be in use before long, since Hurricane Isabel was headed that way. At 2:50, I sighted my first seagull. We were getting near the ocean.

By 5pm, I was laying on the beach. I checked into the hotel and was instantly in love, once again, with Savannah. Or in this case, Tybee Island, but close enough. (Tybee island is on the Atlantic, 20 miles east of Savannah, across a series of bridges and causeways, and past miles of seagrass, turtle crossings, and palm trees.) The girl at the counter called me honey and sweetie and told me I was very striking. I swooned.

Our room was on the 4th floor overlooking the beach. We ran in, dumped all our stuff in the room, changed, smeared suntan lotion all over our pasty northern-european flesh, and went out to the beach. Heather went for a swim, which mostly meant standing about 10 feet into the water and getting knocked around by waves. I spread the blanket on the beach and laid down, meaning to read, as usual, but getting stuck just laying there instead. I pulled out the camera and took a picture of my viewpoint from the blanket. I called the parents to let them know we had arrived safely. They couldn’t believe how quickly we had gotten there, and I could hear my dad silently calculating driving times and speeds in his head, as usual. He highly disapproved of the fact that we had driven all night as well, of course. I told them about Atlanta and Macon and our early-morning visit to the Waffle House. Then my mom told me Johnny Cash had just died. That kind of dampened my enthusiasm for the beach.

I watched Heather’s head slowly bobbing south, and considered calling Alex in Miami to tell him to be on the lookout. I watched kids paragliding, and was a little jealous. Heather showed up after an hour or so, and we decided to go to dinner before we got sunburnt, then go back to the beach later.

We drove up to the other end of the beach, by the lighthouse, to a place we had eaten at on our last trips, the North Beach Grill. We had agreed it was one of those perfect moments: the ocean, the salt in the air, the wind, dinner on the beach. We sat out on the deck and ordered fried plantains with salsa. The Flying Sheephead Band was just warming up, a bluegrass trio with banjo, upright bass, and guitar. I ordered the veggie plate, which ended up being two black bean cakes, pineapple salsa, sweet potatoes (I can’t even describe how they were prepared, but they were the best thing I’d ever eaten in my life), and sugar snap peas. The band dedicated their set to the memory of Johnny Cash. The food was excellent and the weather was perfect. It was beautiful.

After dinner, we drove through the little neighborhood of bed & breakfasts and vacation rentals. Passing the pond in Jaycees Park, we saw a funny-looking duck standing there, so we got out to take a look. It turned out that she had a crowd of ducklings, and they all came dashing towards us as we approached. We resolved to come back the next day with something to feed them. I also noticed as we were leaving that the cicadas there near the ocean are unbelievably loud. When I’m walking at Lake Harriet, talking on the phone, and a plane passes overhead, I have to stop talking for a minute because of the noise; it’s kind of the same thing with the cicadas there. Crazy.

We drove back to the other end of the strip, and decided to go all the way to the south end to see what was there. Tybee Island is the typical beach resort town, although it’s still fairly unspoiled: there are a few tacky beach shops and convenience stores, and the obligatory motels and little cafes. But it’s no Virginia Beach; it’s uncrowded and friendly and nice.

We drove three blocks past our hotel and found the end of Highway 80, and a block and a half of little shops and restaurants. We went into a couple stores, which had everything on end-of-season clearance. Heather saw Ben & Jerry’s, so we stopped in, and discovered that their flavor of the month was sugar-free blueberry. Yay!

On the way back to the car, we saw an old guy come out of his shop, lean over and hock a huge gob of spit on the curb, then go back inside. Apart from that, the night was beautiful. We took our ice cream back to the hotel and sat out on our balcony, staring at the ocean. Then we went back downstairs and walked down to the pier. Apart from the wind, the weather was perfect, and we could see a million stars. There were probably 20 guys out there fishing in the dark. We went back down to the beach, took off our shoes, and walked all the way down to the south end, where it was pitch black and signs were warning us not to do something, but we couldn’t read them. There were kids scrambling around the beach catching crabs, and people strolling slowly, being in love. The tide was coming in, and we waded in the surf, my pants legs getting soaked for the second time that day. When we got back to our room, the moon had just come up. I watched Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash playing ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ on VH1. We decided to sleep with the patio door open so we could hear the sound of the ocean.

I woke at 7am to the pinkish glow of the sunrise on the wall. I sat up on my elbow and watched seagulls and pelicans flying past the balcony. I realized that I was hearing almost the same sound I hear at home when we have the window open, only at home, it’s traffic on Crosstown, not the ocean. Sigh.

We drove into Savannah and parked near the City Market. We found a little breakfast place called the Express Cafe, which had a million tasty-looking pastries and espresso. I got oatmeal with apples and cinnamon, and the world’s largest iced americano. From there, we walked down to the riverfront along the Factors’ Walk. It’s a level down from the rest of the downtown, with cobblestone streets built with the ballast from ships coming from England. The shops there are all pretty cheesy/touristy, and we stopped into one for postcards. One of the women who worked there came running at me from across the store, raving about my hair. And, yes, I had to admit, my hair was perfect. We had named it ‘ocean hair’, because of the effect of the humidity. It was really curly, but not at all frizzy. I hardly had to do anything to it in the morning, just poke it around a little and spray it. It was magical. I wanted ocean hair to come home with me, but that was not to be.

We walked down to see the waving girl statue [OK, I found this link about the Waving Girl, and I order you all to complete the Suggested Activities, and get back to me with your very own monument design], then went back up to the main part of town. We wandered amongst the huge trees draped with spanish moss, through squares with statues, and past beautiful old homes. Around 11am, just as we were arguing about whether the south understood decent coffee or not (Heather’s standpoint being that there’s nothing in between Minneapolis and New Orleans; I hold out that there are little enclaves of espresso-consciousness), we happened across a cute little coffeeshop right on the corner near SCAD*.

*Heather also has a deep and burning fascination with SCAD, since she works for MCAD, and there’s some kind of art college rivalry, or something. Don’t ask me.

Anyway, the cafe doubled as a little shop, and at least 99% of what they were selling was cute. Our experience there might have been ideal, had it not been for the women. OK, back up a bit. At our hotel, there were all these people who were in town for a wedding. Seemingly everyone there but us. Which was fine. But, then, at this coffeeshop, all of the women there were in town for a wedding as well. We were starting to get the sense that, in fact, everyone was in town for this wedding, to which we were not invited. And I’m perhaps just a little miffed by that. Yes, I said miffed.

So, I kind of hated these women. They were so very Ivy-League-Sex-And-The-City-South-Beach-Diet-Ann-Taylor. They talked about their sorority reunions and their babies and their socially clueless lawyer husbands. But the way I see it, it was good to spend some time in close proximity with those girls. It was a reminder of exactly what I hope to never be. Hopefully it’s not contagious.

We left the shop and did some more walking. We wandered into a little gay gift shop (Yes! There are gay people in Georgia! Outside Atlanta, even!) with a supercute puppy by the door. Heather stayed outside and got chewed on, and I went in and wandered around. I ended up talking to one of the owners, who used to work for Norwest Bank, so he spent much of his time in Minneapolis. He missed the winter mornings where he’d walk outside and the air was so cold it cleared his sinuses instantly. I told him he was crazy.

We eventually ended up back near the City Market, and decided to try our luck with lunch there. The City Market is this little pedestrian mall about three blocks long with shops and cafes. When we first went to Savannah, I was excited about going to the market, because I thought it would be all cart vendors and local crafts and food and such. I was wrong, but that market does actually exist in Charleston, so I got my wish later. Anyway, we went to shops and looked at menus and didn’t find much promising, but by then it was about a hundred thousand degrees (in the shade), and humid, so we finally settled on the City Market Cafe.

After lunch, we went back to the car, which had been sitting in the sun all morning and had warmed up to the internal temperature of a combustion engine. Heather got in, because she is a trooper, or possibly a masochist, while I stood outside and danced the there’s-no-way-i’m-getting-in-there dance, until a car pulled up wanting my parking spot and I felt stupid. So we were off. We drove around and explored some more, ending up at Colonial Cemetery, which was really cool, and almost as good as those in New Orleans.

There was a mix of above-ground brick vaults and regular graves and some random headstones affixed to the wall. Some of them were ancient, cracked and barely readable. I liked the font, or whatever it was called before there were fonts. Typeface? On a gravestone? I’m not sure. Many of the headstones were worn down almost to little nubs, which made me wonder. Why were those so much more eroded than the others? Crazy wind patterns? Poor choice of materials? People rubbing them for good luck? Hmm. Also, the walkways were made of oyster shells. Neat.

We went past Mercer House again (you know, because of that book), took photos, mailed some postcards even though the folks back home wouldn’t get them until long after we were back in Minneapolis, and headed back to Tybee Island.

On the way to the hotel, we stopped again at Jaycees Park to see if our ducks were still around. Heather found a gigantic, cranky blue heron, various other waterfowl, tiny fish, and finally, the ducks. This time, we came armed with some styro-corn chips from Schnucks, so they were happy. We met a guy out walking his dog, Lucy. He called her a hound dog and said, “Y’all have a good night,” and I was charmed by his Georgia-ness. We stopped at our hotel, changed, and went back to the beach.

Heather swam again, and since there were more people around to notice if she started drowning, I told her I was going to take a walk on the beach. I left my shoes on the blanket and set off, heading north, walking at the edge of the water. Now, the problem with me is that I’m not good at stopping. If you set me walking in a straight line, I’ll keep going until I run into something, or collapse. In this case, I ran into the huge rocks at the north end of the beach, by the lighthouse and the place we had dinner. It was where all the huge cargo ships came out of the Savannah harbor, and headed off into the great unknown.

So I stood there for a minute, looked at all the funny people and the ships, then turned around and headed back. I had no idea how long I’d been walking, but it felt like a lot. A woman pointed out a stingray that had beached itself, wondering out loud as she picked it up by the ‘wings’ if it was going to sting her. It didn’t, and seemed a little stunned to find itself back in the ocean. I started to notice jellyfish on the beach, which I knew had definitely not been there the first time around. They were those perfectly transparent blobs, and they were hard to see on the sand. I started seeing more and more of them, and realized I was walking through a jellyfish minefield. Also, my feet were hurting, and I could feel blisters starting to form on the bottom of my left foot and heel. I thought walking on the beach would be all soft and comfy. I was so wrong.

About the time I was beginning to wonder whether I was going to make it back alive, I spotted the pier. My feet were killing me, and my injured hip was aching. I had the choice between walking on the wet sand or in the water, which was causing blisters, or walking on the dry sand, which was hot and slowed me down. In the distance, I saw Heather on the blanket, and figured she was probably wondering where the hell I had disappeared to. I laid down, and we shared a protein bar and figured out that I had been walking for two hours. It hurt.

We went back to the hotel room so Heather could shower. I considered changing, since my pants were wet and would be all salt-stained when they dried, but I figured it was the right thing to do, wearing ocean-wet pants to a restaurant on the beach. Because, yes, we were going back to the North Beach Grill. It’s that good.

The exact same band was there again, playing the exact same set. We had plantains yet again, and watched the people around us. They were weirder than the previous night, so it was good entertainment. After that, we stopped in at Ben and Jerry’s again, and were back to the hotel by 9pm, sitting on the balcony and watching the tide come in.

We woke up at 7am to some horrifying talk radio station. We got up and fed the seagulls our remaining pretzels from the hotel balcony, then checked out. We were on our way to Charleston, via Starbucks.

I was cranky as hell, as I usually am in the morning. It seemed to take an extra long time to get there, which we finally did around 11:30. Heather wanted to do some present shopping at the Old City Market (on eBay Street!), I wanted to pee. We drove around and around looking for parking, but the place was mobbed. Finally, I told her to go shop and I’d keep looking for parking, and call her when I found it. I never did. Around 12:30, about to pee my pants, I called her and told her we had to switch so I could go to the bathroom, so we did that. Then she went back in for more, and I circled until she was ready to go. Charleston is an incredibly beautiful city, but when you don’t have time to enjoy it, what’s the point?

We got back on the road. I was still crabby, since we had over 1300 miles to drive and were making hardly any progress. We stopped in Columbia, South Carolina for gas and food. We wanted to eat in the car, and since fast food is almost never an option for me, we picked a grocery store, Bi-Lo, instead. I emerged with a protein bar, 2 bananas, and grapes. Heather got a sub sandwich she told me she had ordered because it had “salami and salami and salami and salami and cheese”

We drove and drove and had nonsensical conversations about pretzel dessicants and giant cicadas taking the place of the headrest in your car. Sample conversation*:

Me: PARDON ME, THERE’S A CICADA BEHIND YOU!
H: WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU! I HAVE A CICADA FOR A HEADREST!

*This conversation is best when screamed at the top of your lungs.

It kept us awake, even if we barely managed to stay on the road because we were laughing so hard. We drove through the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina, then the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. By 6:30pm, we were in Knoxville. I had decided that I really, really wanted to write a book, and had the outline written in my head. Heather was loudly voicing her opinion of each and every other driver on the road. We stopped at a gas station to pee, and Heather had a fight with the slush puppy machine. I decided that ‘Easy On, Easy Off’ was the new title of my autobiography (which gets a new title almost every single day).

At 7:30pm, we were passing the town of Corbin at an alarming speed, and both saw a sign that could possibly change our lives, so we exited. Because, my friends, Corbin, Kentucky is the birthplace of KFC, and the home to the Colonel Sanders museum.

We went into the Sanders Cafe, which is a functioning KFC attached to the original restaurant. There are some statues and displays honoring the (fake) colonel, which were reminiscent of the Sam Walton shrine in Arkansas. They had original menus and photos and even a Colonel Sanders halloween mask, which was both unsettling and erotic. They have the original kitchen and dining room, the (fake) colonel’s office, and a motel room. That’s because the (fake) colonel also ran a chain of motels in the area, and in order to advertise their swankiness, he built a replica in his restaurant. Weird.

Speaking of Sam Walton, on the way back to the interstate, we encountered this:

How often do you see an abandoned Wal-Mart?? It was a good feeling, until I realized that it was because they had just built a brand new Wal-Mart Supercenter down the road. Fuckers.

At 8:15pm, we decided to stop for dinner. That was because Heather’s dream had finally been realized: we found a Bob Evans in Richmond, Kentucky. I don’t know why she likes that place so much; we had stopped at one once because it was the only thing in the entire state of Missouri that was open on New Year’s. Something about biscuits. Anyway, we stopped. In the lobby, they had an American flag hanging on the wall, with a marker for pledging your allegiance, or something. So I did, because there never was a truer patriot than me. We got seated, and I went to use the restroom. On the way back, I passed three waitresses (I know, I usually refer to them as ‘servers’, but this was the kind of place where the girls all worked out front, and the boys all worked in the kitchen), and none of them would make eye contact. Maybe it was my ‘THUG’ tshirt? They all had poorly-conceived face paintings on their cheeks. In an orgasmic frenzy, Heather ordered the Homestead Breakfast with sixteen types of meat, and three pounds of starch. (She wishes for me to mention that she did not, in fact, eat it all. Not even close.)

I ordered a salad and a grilled cheese, which at least was digestable this time around. From our booth, I could see all the behind-the-counter antics, and watched with fascination. The waitresses compared tips; ours counted her cash and had a total of $35. Now, I’m just making assumptions, but I’m pretty sure she must have worked the dinner rush, since they were only open til 10. Sunday dinner, and only $35 in tips? Kentucky sucks.

Carl, the manager, was one of those guys who’s married, in his mid-30s, and likes to refer to the staff as his ‘girls’. He was flirty and condescending. He liked to throw his substantial weight around. He was sure that he was well-liked by all, and he was seriously mistaken. He probably touched a little too often, too. At one point, our server called him over to see if she was making a side salad correctly. He counted the croutons, then removed some. I wanted to cry, because somewhere, a really bad country-western song had been written about this man.

Our bill was $15, and it was disturbing to realize that my $4 tip would make up a full 10% of her take for the night. We got back on the road to get in a few more hours of driving that night. I didn’t see much of Kentucky, but Louisville struck me as kind of cool. From there, we crossed into Indiana, and were safely ensconced once again in NASCAR country. It was raining and we were tired, so we finally pulled off at the Mariann Motel in Scottsburg, one of the three listed in the hotel guide we picked up at a rest area. We each took a bed and collapsed for the night.

I woke up to a horrible, horrible country song and knew I had to get out of Indiana. It was foggy and cold as we got on the road. Somewhere in central Indiana, I pulled out my notebook and occupied myself with making a list of the top ten places I’d ever had sex (which, in Illinois, Heather followed up with facial hair, gay bar, or sex position?). In Indianapolis, Heather called a Starbucks for directions and the girl hung up on her. We found one anyway.

Outside Chicago, we gained an hour, and got into town around 11am. I was moaning about the huge distance we still had to go, and told Heather to expect I’d be crying by the time we got to Wisconsin. She launched into an elaborate word problem involving highway-distance math, something like (A – B) < (C – D) where A = Chicago, B = Frankfort, Indiana, C = Minneapolis, and D = Madison. It still seemed like a lot to me.

We did the usual thing, which was to stop at IKEA for lunch. We shopped a little, then went to the cafe. As always, I had the vegetarian plate (pytt i panna), which has been on catalog special since the beginning of time for $2.49. You can’t go wrong.

I drove out of Chicagoland, through the newly-altered state of Illinois, and got us safely to Starbucks in Madison. I promised Heather again that I would cry before the day was through, so she took over driving; she almost always gets the Madison – Minneapolis shift, because it’s the most painful.

I spent the rest of the afternoon sewing in the passenger seat (it’s a long story, but will someday be a creamedpeas episode). Because I wasn’t paying attention, she ended up listening to entire CDs over and over. Wisconsin was all about road construction, as always. A couple times, we blew past state troopers sitting in the median. Heather would slam on the brakes, slow down to less than the speed limit, and pull into the right lane. Once, she and the trooper even smiled at each other. I told her she couldn’t possibly be less subtle, but we’re lucky. We entertained ourselves once again with cicada jokes, and eventually made it home. And I didn’t cry once.

I left Minneapolis at 8am with the car neatly organized, clutching a huge iced coffee. The drive out of Minneapolis was uneventful until I hit Moorhead, where I lost half an hour in a traffic jam. Who waits in traffic to get to Fargo? Besides me, I mean.

North Dakota was completely flat for 100 miles, but it’s all on this slight uphill grade. I crossed the continental divide, which I was pretty sure was in Montana, but who knows? The terrain in mid-North Dakota is hilly and open, like Kansas, only the billboards are less about god and more about the many benefits of ethanol. I stopped in Jamestown about 1:30 to see the world’s largest buffalo, not to mention the world’s largest buffalo balls, which were majestic and alarming at the same time.

I drove through downtown Jamestown and found nothing but scary bars, so I picked a mexican place by the mall for lunch. It sucked, but I was drinking coffee, and that’s all that mattered.

Making good time through North Dakota, I decided to pull off to see what the ‘Enchanted Highway’ signs were all about. I drove for a few miles and saw nothing of interest. As I made a u-turn in the middle of a tiny little highway, I noticed that it was really, really hard to turn the wheel. I freaked.

(Some background: I have intense car-trouble paranoia, which is not completely unsubstantiated. [Evidence: exhibit 1, exhibit 2] I occasionally have this sense that my finely-engineered Swedish automobile is nothing more than a jumble of parts held together with scotch tape and twine, and it’s just waiting for the exact worst moment to fall apart in a million pieces around me. And, really, as far as worst moments go, this was close: I was in the middle of nowhere – or at least I thought I was, until I discovered Montana, I was alone, I had no cell signal, and I was on the very first day of a trip of undetermined length.)

I pulled over and quickly realized that the car was still running fine, but the power steering had gone out. I asked myself, ‘Can I take this trip through the mountains with no power steering?’ Um, no. So I got back on the interstate and exited at the next town: Dickinson, North Dakota, the last glimmer of civilization for 400 miles. I stopped at T-Rex Conoco (right past the T-Rex Mall!), pulled out my manual, popped the hood, and located the power steering fluid reservoir. I opened the cap and a wisp of smoke rose from the empty tank. I went into the gas station. I grabbed a bottle of power steering fluid and went up to the counter to ask the mechanic for his advice. Is this the right fluid? Was this normal? No, there must be a leak. Try filling the reservoir and see if it leaks out again. He explained how to get the fluid back in the system: turn the steering wheel all the way to the right, and all the way to the left.

I bought two bottles to be on the safe side, went to the car, and emptied one into the reservoir. I got in the car and did exactly like he said. The power steering came back right away, but it was loud and whiny. I drove into a nearby neighborhood and turned donuts in the middle of intersections, hoping it was working. It seemed to be driving fine, so I decided to get back on the interstate and exit at the next gas station, to check the level again. 18 miles down the road, I discovered that the reservoir was once again completely empty. I drove to another little service station and asked the guy for help. He apologized and said he was about to close, still had work to do, and doubted he could get the parts for a foreign car anyway. My best bet was to go back to Dickinson. I wanted to cry, but decided that this was all part of the adventure, and if I had to spend a night waiting in North Dakota, I could handle it. I emptied the other bottle of fluid into my car and headed back to Dickinson.

When I got there, I stopped at Conoco again, and checked the reservoir. This time, it had stayed at the right level, and it wasn’t making the whining noise anymore. I went in and talked to the same guy, asking him if he thought it had just taken that much fluid to fill it up, so now it would be fine. He said that was probably the case, but wanted to take a look anyway. He came outside with me and inspected the whole engine, checking for leaks while I turned the wheels back and forth. He said everything looked fine, and that Saab had probably forgotten to fill the reservoir when they had replaced the hoses in January. I told him that I was headed into Montana, and was really scared to leave civilization with a potential car issue. He laughed, and said that his advice was to get on the road and head to Billings, 430 miles away. They had a Saab dealership. If I could get that far, there’d be no problem getting parts for the car. He told me to be brave. I wanted to hug him for being so awesome, but I controlled myself. I got the crappiest iced coffee of my life at the Java Hut (by the T-Rex Mall!) and got back on the road. 60 miles and three quick stops-to-check-the-steering-fluid later, I was in Montana.

The second you cross the border into Montana, you become very aware of the fact that you have entered the middle of nowhere. You think you’ve been in remote places before. You’ve witnessed the emptiness of Nebraska and Oklahoma, but you’ve never seen anything like this. And it makes you very nervous, because you have a car in questionably-functional condition, your cellphone is useless, and you’re alone. But a North Dakota mechanic has ordered you to be brave, so you have no choice but to comply.

I stopped at the travel center in Montana, and was a little weirded out by the fact that mine was the only car in the lot, apart from a broken-down pickup that looked to have been there for some time. I went inside and was relieved to find a woman working there. I told her I was headed to Glacier, and wanted to know the best route. She unfolded a giant map (Montana is so huge that it requires a map at least twice the normal size) and showed me how the route via the interstate was 750 miles at 75mph, and the Highway 2 route was 500 miles at 70mph. Taking Highway 2 required a hundred-mile detour through the heart of Absolutely Nothing, but it meant I’d still get to Glacier a lot quicker. Also, Highway 2 (known as the Great Northern Route, because of the railroad) is one of the trips featured in my travel bible, Road Trip U.S.A., so it held a certain appeal.

At that point, I had to decide: take the long route, which was also the path to safety because it was the way to the Saab dealership in Billings, or take my chances with the short route. After checking the steering fluid again, I decided to take my chances.

I stopped for gas and dinner in Glendive, the last city on I-94 before the exit for the Highway 2 route. I called Heather from a payphone at the gas station, figuring it might be my last brush with modern technology that evening. Then I went to find dinner. I decided it would be really funny to eat at one of the many, many casinos in town (in Montana, everything is a casino). I walked in and got a glimpse of the pile of meat on the buffet.

Me: Can I ask? I’m vegetarian. Is there anything I can eat here?
Waitress: (grimacing) Um… well, there’s the salad bar.
Me: OK. Do you know if there are any sit-down type places in town where I’d find something?
Waitress: (calling other waitress over) Do you know if Pizza Hut has a vegetable–
Me: Uh, I can’t eat Pizza Hut. Like, any regular restaurants?
Waitress: There’s CC’s. Or the Chinese place. No, that’s closed Mondays.
Me: And CC’s is, like, what kind of food?
Waitress: Oh, you know. You order off the menu.

I drove over to CC’s, and quickly realized it was the place where the locals hung out. Breakfast all day, sandwiches, liver and onions. The only things on the menu I could eat were a salad and cottage cheese and fruit. I ordered both. They had no light dressing. An old waitress leaned over the counter and raved about my hair color. The slutty-looking bleached-blonde chick in the corner was staring at me every time I looked up. I covered the table with my huge Montana map, AAA travel guide, and travel diary, and crammed fruit in my mouth while scribbling furiously: everyone here is either old or fat or both. awesome!

I was back on the road just as it was getting dark. The landscape in eastern Montana is beautiful, kind of scrubby and hilly, and completely desolate. I came over a rise and saw the most incredible sky I’d ever seen (OK, it’s goofy, but now I understand why it’s called ‘big sky country’. It’s completely true). There were low-hanging, dark clouds, and I could see rain off in the distance. The setting sun was vibrant fuchsia on the horizon, filtering through the rain. I saw huge lightning strikes off to the west. I hoped I wasn’t driving into a storm. By the time I got to Highway 2, it was raining a little, but not much. It was windy, with a sort of unsettled feeling in the air. I got out at a gas station to buy sunflower seeds (my new favorite roadtrip snack: 1) they’re low-calorie, 2) they’ve got lots of protein, 3) they come in many flavors, and 4) they keep you awake), and everyone inside was talking about how badly they needed rain.

I got back in the car and headed off along Highway 2. My plan for the night was to drive as far as I could, then pull off at a rest stop and sleep in the backseat. After a hundred miles or so, it became clear that there were no rest stops. In fact, there was nothing at all. No buildings, no signs, no crossroads that I could see, no lights. A car would pass me going the other direction every 15 or 20 minutes. If I could have seen well enough what was near the road, I would’ve been happy to just pull off and rest. But I couldn’t see anything, and was convinced if I did that, I’d wake up in the middle of a horror-movie scene. So I kept going.

Around midnight, I arrived at the town of Glasgow. There was one larger combination casino/motel, and four or five smaller motels. I was prepared to take anything, but all the little motels had ‘no vacancy’ signs out front. I turned around and went back to the Cottonwood Inn (don’t let ‘casino’ conjure images of Vegas or anything – this was essentially a Best Western with a cowboy theme and some slot machines off the lobby). I ran inside and asked the woman at the counter how much a single room was. She told me $63. I balked. She said, “You’re welcome to try the next town. It’s 70 miles down the road.” I took the room.

As I went back out to get my bags from the car, I was happy to have stopped. I had driven 770 miles, and had dealt with car trouble, too. The wind outside had picked up and was whipping garbage around the parking lot. I dashed inside and locked myself in my room. As I unpacked to take a shower, I suddenly became aware of the quiet. It was the first night of the first trip I’d ever taken by myself. I felt very alone.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

yo la tengo is the perfect music for western north dakota. it’s like the badlands, only grassier. half the exits say ‘no services’.

things what suck: not having anyone to talk to. no signal. not sharing the experiences. i’ll never be able to say, ‘remember what the sky looked like that first night in montana?’

good things: i can drive a ton on my own. super-nice and quirky people everywhere i go. the way the crappiest food tastes good when you’re on the road and hungry. dill-flavored sunflower seeds!

i miss heather a lot tonight.

– – – – –

On day two of my trip, I began what would be an ongoing contest with myself: to see how quickly I could get out of bed and on the road in the morning. The night before leaving a town, I would pack everything up (the little I had allowed myself to unpack in the first place; if I was just staying somewhere for one night, I didn’t even bring my suitcase in, I just dug clothes and underwear out and shoved them into my shoulder bag – and it’s funny the kind of fashion decisions one makes while rooting through the trunk in the dark at midnight), and everything else I needed to use in the morning would be laid out neatly and deposited back in my bag as soon as it was used. This orderliness was due to two factors: first, I am incredibly, ridiculously impatient. The faster I could get through the formalities of hair and clothes in the morning and get on the road, the better. Second, having everything in order was a way of maintaining sanity. As my friends know well, you can always tell my mental state by my surroundings.

Anyway, I was back on Highway 2 by 7am. I finally got a glimpse of all the nothingness I could only imagine the night before, and it was even less spectacular than I thought. Whereas eastern Montana was all hills and scenic vistas, central Montana is rolling grasslands as far as you can see. (Do you remember that scene in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert when they come up over a rise in the Winnebago and see the Outback laid out before them for miles and miles, going on forever? I had that exact same moment leaving the town of Glasgow.) At this point, I realized that I was relating whatever landscape I was seeing to something else I had seen before, e.g. ‘Central Montana is just like Colorado, only less arid.’ This developed into a game: ‘Kansas with a hint of southern Oklahoma.’ ‘Iowa without the Iowans.’ ‘If Pennsylvania and Missouri had a baby, only Kentucky was the real father, and he was abusive.’

I wondered what I was going to be like after a few more days spent alone. I started to worry.

Left: There’s a ton of road construction on Highway 2. It’s often down to one lane for traffic going both directions, so you have to sit and wait for the Pilot Car to lead you to safety. Right: Cut Bank, Montana, the coldest spot in the nation.

Another thing about Montana: you know those little markers you sometimes see on the side of the road where someone was killed in an accident? Generally a cross and flowers? (Speaking of which, the creepiest one we ever saw was on the Deep South Roadtrip: three crosses on the side of the interstate. One said ‘Jennifer’, one said ‘Jason’, and we didn’t catch the name on the last one. That’s probably for the best, because I’m sure it said ‘Heather’. Since we didn’t see it, we were safe.) In Montana, those crosses are an organized effort. Everywhere someone has died on the road, they put up a little white cross. Often, you see clusters of crosses. I saw way more dead people than living people on Highway 2.

Road Trip U.S.A. told me never to pass a gas station in Montana with less than a quarter-tank of gas, so I obeyed. I was stopping often to pee and get beverages, which is also a good way to stay awake when you’re driving in less-than-interesting territory. I reached Shelby around 10am and drove into town, having seen a billboard with the magic word on it: espresso. I found the little ice cream shop, and ended up with not only a really good iced latte, but a scoop of sugar-free raspberry gelato. I sat there and wrote postcards, then scribbled in my travel journal: i’ve been asked four times if i won this car on ‘the price is right’. I’ve had these license plates for a year and a half now, and no one has ever asked me that before. Bizarre.

I reached the St. Mary entrance on the east side of Glacier National Park at 2pm. According to a sign on the highway, I was 30 miles from the Canadian border, and Canada closes at 11pm. I was a little nervous about driving through the Rockies with my potential power steering issue, not to mention the fact that my brakes were in bad shape when I left home. I had been meaning to have our friend, Nathan, replace them, but hadn’t had the time. Also, I had never driven through the mountains before. Not mountains like these, at least.

I stopped quickly at the visitors center to get maps of the hiking trails. At the gate, I decided to spring for the $50 annual national parks pass, which ended up being worth the price. I drove a few miles into the park, then stopped and took a short, steep hike to see a waterfall.

On the way back up, I encountered a group of four Amish people, two men and two women. The men asked me about the hike. Why was I so amused to find Amish people hiking in our National Parks? I think it was the idea of the women sporting hiking boots under those heavy, impractical dresses.

I got back in the car and drove up and up, pulling off the road to take a million pictures. I reached Logan Pass, the continental divide, at 6600 feet elevation. The visitor center was mobbed. I followed the signs to the hiking trail, which led to an overlook point a mile and a half away. I got a few hundred feet up the path before noticing that it disappeared into a snow hill. I climbed over it and saw that the whole side of the mountain was covered in snow. The pathway peeked out in a few places. There were people all over the place, so I decided to climb up there anyway. I was worried about being cold in my tshirt and capris, but hardly anyone was wearing a jacket, and it was warm and sunny. In fact, it was so sunny that I had given in and put suntan lotion all over, even on my face, knowing that I was going to get zits because of it (skin cancer is worse than zits, apparently).

The snow was starting to melt a little in the sun, especially near the path. I quickly discovered that the best way to climb through it was to run in the looser stuff away from the path, rather than where it was hard-packed and slippery. So I kind of leapt and bounded my way up the hill, taking some pleasure in passing everyone, including the snowboarders. I jumped past a guy who gasped, “I can’t do this, I live at sea level!” I was unused to the altitude, so I was out of breath immediately, but didn’t feel tired at all. About two-thirds of the way up, there was a tiny, narrow trail along the edge of a steep hill. All of a sudden, I was terrified. I was wearing slippery running shoes. I have the worst balance ever. (No, really. I have trouble walking in a straight line. Something about the inner ear infections I had constantly as a kid.) Luckily, there was a long line of people creeping slowly along the edge, so I was forced to take my time. I tried not to think about the climb back down. By the time I got near the top, my shoes were soaked, and there was snow creeping down my ankles and into my socks. The ground was muddy, and we had to pick our way through streams by balancing on rocks. At the overlook, there was a crown of people lounging in the sun, eating protein bars and drinking gatorade. We took each other’s pictures and enjoyed the view. I tried hard not to think about how I was more likely to make it down the mountain inside a giant snowball than on my own feet.

I was starting the downhill trek when I heard a noise to my right. Just as I turned to look, a mountain goat went barreling past me. Then two more came down the hill, all of them making this loud bleating noise that sounded exactly like ‘mom!’ And they were actually yelling for their mom, who appeared on the other side of the slope, surrounded by hikers with cameras. Now, I’m the first to admit that I’m completely unprepared for any sort of wilderness adventure, because I find myself asking questions like, ‘Can mountain goats hurt me? Should I be standing this close?’ (I’m the same girl who’s impressed with the preparedness of the other snow-climbers just because they’re wearing hiking boots and carrying walking sticks.)

Once I got back to the snow-covered part of the hill, I discovered that it was easier to run downhill as well, as long as it wasn’t so steep that I couldn’t stop. The snow seemed about ten times more slippery, but I managed to stay on my feet. When I got back to the narrow trail, I stopped, scared to go any further. To whoever was listening, I said, “I’m really afraid of dying on this mountain right now.” The woman ahead of me turned and said, “SHHH!” Very slowly, we crept along the trail, teetering on the far edge whenever people had to pass going the other direction. A few times, I started to panic and had to just stop and stand there, up to my calves in snow. But I made it through, and ran the rest of the way down the hill. By the time I got to my car, my feet were numb from the cold, and I was starving.

I drove down the long descent from Logan Pass, noticing that my brakes were squealing. Another mountain goat wandered into the road and up to my car. I got an impromptu car wash at the Weeping Wall. I spent a few contemplative minutes on the stone beach at Lake McDonald. I stopped at the west entrance visitor center to write postcards, and I was on my way.

I got back on Highway 2 and started looking for a place to spend the night. I almost peed my pants with excitement when my cell service returned in Kalispell, Montana. I drove around to five or six hotels, running in to ask about their rates. Half of them were already booked up, and they were all ridiculously expensive. Exhausted and irritated, I dragged out my AAA guide and found a listing for the Glacier Gateway Motel. The woman behind the counter was the owner, and she obviously took a lot of pride in taking care of the rooms. It was perfect: a tiny little cubicle with a twin bed and shower stall, very clean, and $40. It might as well have been the Ritz, as happy as I was to be staying there. I dumped my stuff in the room, grabbed the local newspaper, and quickly found an ad for a restaurant with the other magic word: vegetarian. I ate dinner on the patio at the Knead Cafe, digging through a stack of travel brochures I’d picked up at the motel. On my way out, they give me a huge loaf of rosemary-tomato bread, because they had leftovers. I went back to the hotel happy, took a long shower, examined my hard-earned, glowing sunburn, and made a bunch of phone calls just for the sheer novelty of having a signal again. By 11pm, I was asleep.

I woke up at 7:30, having slept really hard in my little cubicle of a room. I drove around Kalispell, and stopped at a cute bread shop for coffee and a bagel. I would have shopped in town, but it was 8am and nothing was open (a trend I noticed along the way: the further west you go, the later people seem to get going in the morning). I got back on the road, heading towards Idaho. Western Montana is beautiful: hills, rivers, and pine forests. Except where they’re being chopped down, that is. I pulled off at a poorly-marked rest area that Road Trip USA said was a worthwile stop, and set off on the half-mile hike to the Kootenai River. (I’m aware of the stupidity of hiking alone in the middle of nowhere, by the way. It was a conscious decision.)

I walked up to the falls first, laid down on a huge, flat rock, and enjoyed the sun and the complete silence. Then I hiked the other direction, to the swinging bridge. On the way there, I started to feel a little bit fuzzy, and had to walk slower. By the time I got to the bridge, I was feeling like crap. My blood sugar had dropped, and I was tired, dizzy, and sick to my stomach. So I did the most logical thing, which was to cross the bridge. It bounced and swayed in the wind, which was fun for about 15 seconds, and then just made me sicker. I clung to the rope and took pictures to distract myself.

Then I wobbled back to the platform and sat down with my head against the railing. Part of me wished that someone would come along and reassure me that I was not going to die alone in the wilderness, but the other part of me realized that wasn’t a great idea, in case they decided I was in really bad shape and called for an ambulance. No insurance. I sat for about twenty minutes and convinced myself I was starting to feel better. I got up and started hiking back up the hill. I was shaky and having trouble seeing, but I pushed as hard as I could, knowing that adrenaline would help get me back to normal. By the time I got back to my car, I felt a little better, and resolved not to tell Heather, since she would yell at me for getting sick in the middle of nowhere.

I crossed into Idaho mid-morning, and the speed limit on Highway 2 dropped to 60mph. Everyone in Idaho drives a pickup truck and wears big mirrored sunglasses. Their license plates read, ‘Famous Potatoes’. Ha. I stopped in Sandpoint for lunch. It’s a cute little resort town that seems to be centered around a big Coldwater Creek store. I parked on the main street and wandered around, looking for lunch. I expected to have no trouble finding decent vegetarian food in that kind of town, but was quickly proven wrong. Half the restaurants were already closed for the 4th of July (does it make sense to shut down a resort town over a national holiday?), and the other half seemed to value meat pretty highly. I finally found a really cute Italian restaurant with good veggie lasagna and better espresso, and sat out on the patio and wrote postcards from Idaho.

At some point after lunch, I got to Washington. I had expected to go through Coeur d’Alene and join up with I-90, but I was wrong. I was on the outskirts of Spokane at a gas station before I realized that I had left Idaho, and was probably in the Pacific time zone. I drove into Spokane and called Heather. It was 3pm, and I had made better time than I had expected, so I figured if she could find me a cheap hotel in Seattle, I’d drive the rest of the way there and have an extra day in town. She called back with the address of the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue, a whole $35 a night on Priceline. (Have I mentioned yet that I love Priceline? I do. Despite Shatner, even.) I was thrilled.

I stopped to see Riverfront Park, mainly because Road Trip USA told me they had a giant Radio Flyer. It was indeed giant, and I was a little jealous of the kids climbing on it. Riverfront Park was nice, the kind of place I’d spend a lot of time walking around if I lived there, but Spokane in general was just kind of… um… exactly like you’d expect Spokane, Washington to be like, I guess. Lots of strip malls, kind of industrial. I was in a hurry to get to Seattle. Before I left Spokane, though, I took this very patriotic picture out my sunroof. It’s at a Perkins. Doesn’t it make you proud to be an American? Yeah. Me too.

I got on I-90 and set the cruise for a speed somewhere between legal and breaking the sound barrier. Then I got on the phone to kill time, as I still had 300 miles to go. (I know there are many, many of you who hate people like me for just that reason, but I’m not apologizing. I’m just as reckless off the phone as on it. In my defense, however: I’ve been driving for 15 years, and never been in an accident, or gotten a single speeding ticket. So shut up.) I was surprised at the terrain in Washington; I had expected all hills and pine trees, but the central part of the state is pretty flat and arid (Colorado with a splash of Oklahoma). I crossed the Columbia River, and stopped briefly at the overlook.

After crossing the river, it was pretty much all mountain pass the rest of the way. I had to turn off the air conditioning. I was sick to death of listening to the same dance CD over and over, but driving through mountains at 85mph takes full concentration, so I couldn’t change it. The mountains (Cascade? I should use the internet to verify this, but I’m lazy.) end about 20 miles outside Seattle. I switched to the radio and laughed really hard because the first song I heard on the rock station was by Alice in Chains. I found my hotel easily, parked underground, and hauled out my giant duffel bag. This was a novelty, as I’d been digging clothes out of it so far. The hotel was super nice, and I was on the 21st floor, one of the extra-swank rooms. I’m pretty sure I was the only non-Japanese tourist in the place. I set up my laptop and got my email, which was not as big a thrill as I expected; I’m pretty good with traveling sans internet. I was too tired to even think about going to find dinner, so I opted for room service: red lentil chili and tortilla chips (280 calories, the menu proudly informed me) and a Starbucks latte (more exciting than it probably should have been, but, you know. It’s Seattle. Starbucks from room service! It’s the right thing to do!)

While I was waiting for my food, I called Heather. She had moved into Daniel’s place, as far as I could tell, which made me feel better about leaving her at home alone. I called my mom to tell her I was alive, and both her and my dad got on the phone for the update. The parents are so cute. I called Ryan and made plans to meet for breakfast the next morning. I decided to see Seattle on the 3rd and then drive to Vancouver on the 4th because:

• Canadians don’t care about our holidays, so stuff would be open
• I could also go see Mount Rainier, which would probably also be open on the 4th
• Going to Canada to celebrate the 4th just seemed like the right thing to do.

I’m a planner. Also, I was really excited to see Seattle. I grimaced at myself in the mirror, realizing I looked like crap, took a shower, made a nest of the four pillows in my giant bed, and passed out.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

montana is all about cool road signs: ‘range cattle’, ‘rough break’ (what does that even mean?), ‘chain-up area’.

stopped at a dumb gift shop in troy (mt) and the woman behind the counter told me she had moved there from minneapolis 6 years ago. she said it was like stepping back in time. she couldn’t even get a cell phone, there’s no coverage there. she was so excited to talk to someone from home, i felt bad leaving after 20 minutes.

i fucking hate logging trucks. if i die on this trip, it’s going to be because of them.

idaho: i’m so glad to be back in the land of coffee. there’s even a starbucks here!

what time zone am i in???

my back and neck are killing me from my white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel driving through the mountains.

jesus, i look terrible. dark circles under my eyes. messy hair. sunburnt nose. zits from putting suntan lotion on my face. i look really tired. and i smell. i am hardcore.

photos: my passenger seat. bug holocaust (montana).

– – – – –

I got up at 7am and headed into downtown Seattle. I was surprised to find myself in love almost instantly. I walked around the Pike Place Market just as the stands were starting to open. The fresh produce and flowers were incredible. I saw so much that we’d have to hunt down in specialty markets in Minneapolis.

I walked down to the universe’s very first Starbucks and got myself an iced coffee. They also hooked me up with the extra-special Starbucks card that can only be purchased at that very store. I went across the street and sat on a wall overlooking Puget Sound and wrote postcards. Ryan called to say he’d be there in half an hour. I wandered some more and shopped for cheesy souvenirs, and whereas Montana was completely lacking in tacky gifts, Seattle was the motherlode.

Ryan picked me up and we drove over to his neighborhood for breakfast. Afterwards, we stopped to see his apartment, and I reminded him that I had a picture of his bed on my website. We drove to the bluehouse (which is grey) to get a tour of their current projects for Burning Man. They were making three giant geodesic domes and a gyrosphere. The house was littered with plans, schematics, and models. The basement was a full-scale metal shop, medieval-looking and incredible. There were fiberglass pieces being constructed in the backyard. We stood around and talked to Ryan’s friends for a while. One of them gave me passes to his favorite club in Vancouver, and invited me to their 4th of July party. Another guy wandered up and said, “Hey, I heard you’re from Minneapolis. I went to Concordia!” He had graduated from college a year ago, went to Burning Man, met these guys, and decided to move to Seattle. They were awesome.

We drove over to Gasworks Park for a good view of the city. They were setting up for the 4th of July festivities, but seemed amenable to tourists barging in to take photos. Then Ryan took me to see the troll under the bridge (you can’t see it in the picture, but he’s holding a real VW Beetle in his left hand), and the statue of Lenin in Fremont.

I freaked when I saw that Seattle has a Scandinavian neighborhood. Just like home; there was even a lutefisk shop. We spent a long time shopping at Archie McPhee, where many more goofy souvenirs were to be found. Driving around, I got the impression that Seattle was all about coffee, good food, and the music scene. And not just that grunge crap, either.

Ryan dropped me off at Westlake Center, so I could take the monorail over to the Space Needle. On the way there, I got a good view of the Experience Music Project, which he was absolutely right about: it’s butt-ugly. I went up in the Space Needle, took photos of Seattle from every possible angle, exchanged picture-taking opportunities with other tourists, and then went to the gift shop. If I didn’t give you a little metal Space Needle replica, I’m very sorry. I bought one for everyone I could think of, so I guess I just don’t like you all that much.

I monorailed back to downtown, and walked back to Pike Place. On my way, I saw a million street performers and musicians (at least half of them mariachis), vendors selling tshirts and light-up jesus artwork and beaded necklaces, two protests, and a bunch of overly-smiley guys giving out gum samples. And that was in the space of two blocks. I found a Turkish restaurant and got a spinach-and-feta pie and Turkish coffee for lunch, and briefly considered just spending the rest of my trip in Seattle. Then I remembered California, and decided to press on.

After lunch, I wandered back through the market, because all the craft vendors were now open, and the place was packed. I went downstairs and found an awesome store selling old movie posters. I went back up and bought blackberries, prunes, and an apple as large as my head. Then I wandered past an ice-cream place and saw that they had sugar-free vanilla-fudge ice cream, and once again thought maybe I should stay in Seattle. I walked back to the car, eating my ice cream and smiling like an idiot.

It took me about 15 minutes in the Escher-esque ramp to locate my car. I got on I-5 and headed south. Traffic between Seattle and its lesser-understood sister city, Tacoma, was horrific. I exited at the marked route for Mount Rainier, and began to understand why, even though the map said it was only 110 miles, the travel guide told me it was a three-hour drive. I stopped and got gas and a car wash. As was the case during most of my trip, I had a frantically-compiled mental to-do list at every stop: get gas. get carwash. dump trash. buy water. buy pop. buy seeds. get cash. look at map. Sometimes, during particularly rushed moments, I would get flustered. I’d start to panic. It’s hard to keep everything straight when you’re used to having people around to remind you to do things. So, when I left the gas station, I left a little piece of myself behind. Or, to be more specific, a piece of my car: the gas cap.

I drove many isolated and winding roads to get to Mount Rainier. It’s monstrous; you can see it all the way from Seattle. I took the road to Sunrise Lodge, which was super-narrow and winding, way more than anything I had driven in Glacier, but there was hardly any traffic. I got near the top to Sunrise Point, and stopped at the overlook. I jumped out of the car and, impatient as always, decided to hop over the wall rather than walk the extra 50 feet to the crosswalk. I stepped up, and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back on the other side of the wall. It was almost like waking up and not knowing where you’ve been. I scrambled to my feet, shaky and dizzy. My left hand was scraped and already starting to bruise, and I had bumped my left hip (the one without the injury, of course). The altitude affected me way more than I had expected. There was going to be no hiking for me that day.

I drove the rest of the way up to the lodge, stopped at the store, and looked at the huge selection of trail mix and protein bars, finally understanding why they were such a big deal up there on in the mountains. I was still feeling sore and wobbly, so I just took a few pictures, went to the bathroom, and got back in the car to head back to Seattle. The drive down sucked, but I had figured out effective downshifting, which also helped minimize the noise my brakes were making: at this point, the squealing was hard to ignore.

I took a different, equally-slow route back to Seattle. An angry biker gave me the finger for some reason I was unsure of. Perhaps he knew about my lack of gas cap? Even I was unaware at that point, until a short while later, when my car made its happy ‘ping’ noise and popped up a message on the display: TIGHTEN FUEL FILLER CAP. I flashed back to the gas station, replaying the getting-gas-getting-carwash episode, and realized the scene where I put the gas cap back on and closed the little door was missing. Replayed it again, still missing. Again. Missing.

Dammit.

I decided to find dinner in Capitol Hill. I parked and wandered down Broadway Avenue, peering in the cute shops and stopping to examine every restaurant’s menu. A few blocks down, I found Julia’s, which was the same place we had breakfast, but a different location. I was happy with their vegetarian breakfast options, so it was decided. The food was great, but it was so dark that I had to hunch over my tiny little bar table and squint to see what I was scribbling in my journal. This trip had not been great for my posture.

After dinner, I walked back down Broadway. Ryan had told me that Seattle had lots of cute little neighborhoods, but you would cross the street from one and find yourself in a really seedy area. That was exactly the case when I crossed Olive Street. All of a sudden, there were street people everywhere. I saw a guy in a wheelchair and a guy covered with huge, open lesions rolling a joint. I dashed into a dirty convenience store to buy… um, never mind. I went to my car and drove back to my swanky hotel, where I carefully reconstructed my pillow nest before collapsing into it.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

how long can you go without a gas cap?? i have no idea.

– – – – –

I left the hotel about 8am and headed north, coffee in hand. The drive was uneventful and slow, due to the high concentration of Washington state troopers out celebrating the holiday in the best way they knew how: penalizing drivers. I pulled off at the last exit before Canada to get gas, then went into the store to ask for the bathroom key. The guy behind the counter stared at me in confusion for a long time, then turned to ask the woman who had just walked in. I wondered what he was doing at the register, since he obviously didn’t work there. The woman pointed at the key hanging on a post. I grabbed it and ran behind the building. It didn’t work in the lock, and when I looked at it, I realized it was for the men’s room.

Just then, a busload of Japanese tourists was unloading in the parking lot, and lines were forming at by the bathrooms. I went over and opened the door to the men’s room, and turned to smile at the group of men, who were exclaiming in dismay. On the way out, I handed the key to the first guy in line, who was clearly upset.

I tried to get back on the highway, but there was no northbound entrance. I had to drive south for five miles, then turn around. Note to self: don’t leave the interstate if you have time goals in mind. I got to the border around 10:30am, and waited in line. There’s a big park there, where people get out of their cars and wander around, celebrating international peace and understanding, or something.

It took about 20 minutes to get across the border. The woman in the booth asked rapidfire questions: Where was I from? (I answered, ‘Minnesota’, which struck me as strange, since I always say ‘Minneapolis’.) Was I meeting anyone in Canada? Why was I visiting? What did I do ‘there in Minnesota’? Did I have any guns or weapons, eh? I stopped at the visitor center just inside the border and got brochures and huge postcards of the Canadian flag. At the information desk, I talked to the Friendliest Woman Alive^TM, and tried not to giggle at her accent. I headed off towards Vancouver, which was 30 miles from the border. Since I am very easily amused, I was excited to be driving 100km/h. You may not know it, but the metric system is funny. Almost, but not quite, as funny as Canadians.

I make the mistake of following the signs pointing to downtown Vancouver and end up in local traffic for an hour. Vancouver has a huge Asian population, and the downtown looks more Japanese than western. There’s every kind of Asian food imaginable. I was hungry and in need of non-Starbucks coffee (the bluehouse guys had informed me that Vancouver had the best coffee in the universe). I finally found parking and wandered into Gastown. It’s the old part of the city, all cobblestones and restored storefronts. Too touristy, though; most of the shops are selling everything you could ever want, as long as what you want is emblazoned with a maple leaf.

I stopped at the Luna Cafe for a veggie sandwich and coffee. I peered at my friendly Canadian map, and decided to go see Chinatown. Within about five blocks, I crossed from cute, touristy area to crappy, dirty area with used condoms in the gutter, to Chinatown. It was not as exciting as I had expected, for a city with such a large Asian population; I was hoping for something on the order of New York. I decided to stop and see the the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, which came highly recommended by my friendly Canada brochure.

The gardens were beautiful, and it was the perfect day outside. The gift shop was even more perfect, and I bought a ton of souvenirs. I walked from Chinatown over to Harbour Center to go up to the lookout. It’s just like the Space Needle, only indoors, and Canadian.

I went up and peered at Vancouver from above. It’s a big city. It’s proud to be hosting the Olympics. There were cruise ships in the harbor, probably destined for Alaska. There was a floating Chevron station. I was pretty sure I was the only person in the lookout tower who spoke English, which was kind of cool. Apart from the super-nice girls at the coffee bar. I was starting to sense a trend: everyone there was incredibly nice. Like, too nice. But when you passed them on the street, they didn’t even make eye contact. Coming from what I figured was the least-outgoing place on earth, this was a surprise. People more reticent than Minnesotans? It was hard to believe.

I walked up Granville Street to Robson, and wandered around the swanky shopping area. There were great little boutiques, and good fashion. There’s a huge nouveau-punk scene in Vancouver. Also, people were dressed up to shop, which was a big surprise after the ultracasualness of Seattle (where they still take ‘grunge’ literally). There were a few places on my trip where I felt completely, glaringly out-of-place, and Vancouver was one of them. I cringed when I saw a group of American tourists walking around with flag tshirts on. I walked back to my car and drove over to Stanley Park, which was across the harbor from downtown. I took pictures and giggled at the lawn bowling club. Then I drove across the bridge into Kitsitano Beach, aka ‘Kits’, the trendy shopping/dining area. I was following my friendly Canadian restaurant guide to a vegetarian place called The Naam. I got the special, pea and paneer curry with mango chutney, and a protein shake. At that moment, I was pretty damn happy with Canada.

Back in the car post-dinner, I finally acknowledged that my brakes were completely shot, and in need of replacing. Not only was my car a safety hazard, it had become an embarrassment, squealing loudly every time I slowed down. I resolved to call the Saab dealership in Bellevue the next morning, and get the brakes done before I headed to Portland, even though I was worried that they’d tell me the entire car was about to fall apart, and needed 100% replacement. But I knew it had to be done. By 7pm, I was waiting in line to get back into America. The line was longer to return, and moved slower. My car was a perpetual noise machine, even though I tried really, really hard to ignore it.

I saw several people walking across the border. At first, I thought they were just going to pre-check their stuff through customs, but then I realized they were actually walking across. To where? There’s nothing on the other side. Just a whole lot of empty Washington. Very strange.

There was a guy walking up and down the line of cars with an ice cream cart. I was bored to death waiting, so I sat and messaged Heather, which was probably costing a ton. I propped my journal up on the steering wheel and wrote, slowly squealing my way towards the US. Finally, I got to the crossing. The guard asked me a few questions and peered at my license. He ended with, “Got any meat? Transporting mad cow disease or anything?” I replied, “I’m vegetarian!” He let me go. I drove like hell back to Seattle, getting back to my hotel just as I started to see fireworks on the horizon. I decided to skip the party at the bluehouse, since I was exhausted. I went up to my room, opened the curtains, and sat with my feet up on the windowsill, calling the parents while watching fireworks. They were going off in a hundred different locations along the mountains in the horizon. After I got off the phone, I started hearing huge explosions nearby, and seeing flashing from behind the building. I pulled on my jeans, grabbed my key, and went out into the hall, barefoot and braless (if I were to publish this as a book, I’d call it ‘Braless in Seattle’). At the end of the hall, there was a Japanese tourist couple and another guy who gave me his spot so he could go upstairs to watch. They were shooting fireworks from the roof of the mall across the street. It was incredible; I’d never seen fireworks up that close, or the actual process of firing them. The show went on for a long time, rattling windows and setting off car alarms. After a while, the couple went back to their room and I was left alone. I sat and pressed my back against the glass so I could feel the explosions. I could still see a bunch of other displays off in the distance, including Lake Washington and Puget Sound. They all seemed to reach their finales at once, so I got to witness this huge fireworks orgy over Seattle. It was kind of amazing.

I went back to my room, packed quickly, looked up the number for Saab, and went to sleep.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

i’ve seen two celine dion lookalikes so far.

what’s with the blinking green semaphore?? so confused.

hey, canadians seem to be proud of their country, too. weird.

i like how they can slap a maple leaf on anything and make it canadian. sears! only canadian! ha.

did i get sunburnt today? my neck hurts. is it that obvious i’m american? apart from my accent?

ok, server boy is super cute and making much eye contact. he makes up for the other shy canadians. i’m going to leave him the rest of my canadian cash and head back to my country, which is busy celebrating itself today.

on the street downtown today, i heard someone behind me yelling my name. i almost turned and looked, then realized that no one could possibly know me here. it was such a strange sensation, knowing that i was 2000 miles from home, and absolutely anonymous. it made me sad to be so alone in a city in another country, for god’s sake.

heather just messaged that barry white died. holy shit, i’m never leaving america again if this is what happens. wait, shouldn’t those flags be at half-mast?

i almost freaked leaving vancouver when i saw a sign reading ‘seattle: 222’. then i realized that was km. ha. i’m bad with converting the metric. i bought a tshirt for $22 canadian. what’s that, like $15? when i bought postcards at the visitor center, i gave her $10 us and got $10+ canadian in change.

seattle radio, which comes in in vancouver as well: nirvana (1), alice in chains (2). stuck in the 90s.

man, it’s cool that there’s a turnaround in case you change your mind and decide to return to canada. i’m not. i’ve had enough ‘aboot’ for one day.

– – – – –

I woke up at 7am to the sound of Creed. I heard three Creed songs in a row on the radio, or at least it seemed like it, and that was enough to scare me out of bed. I got dressed and tried to call Saab at 8am, but their message told me they opened at 9. The website had lied to me, and I wasn’t happy about it. Impatient, I decided to wait until San Francisco to take the car in. I rushed to check out and get on the road. The route to the 405 was under construction, and there were weird detours all over the place. The traffic lights weren’t working, and I realized that much of the power was out in the area because of the fireworks the night before. I finally found the entrance ramp, which was all torn up from the road work. I turned, heard a loud bang, and felt the front tire go flat.

At that point, I paused to consider my options. Ritual suicide was topping the list. If I had been driving in the mountains right then, I would have simply driven off a ledge, ending both my and the car’s misery. But such was not the case; I was in Bellevue, Washington, and I wasn’t even in a position to be able to drive home. So I went into disaster mode, employing one of the tactics at which I excel: not thinking. Just doing.

I pulled into the parking lot of a hotel across the street, popped the trunk, and unloaded everything into the back seat. I had to jump on the tire iron to get the bolts to loosen, and it took forever to jack the car up. Then I couldn’t get the wheel off the hub. We had had this problem before, and two girls and two state troopers were unable to budge it; it finally took a mechanic. I was pissed. I yanked and tugged and pushed and swore. I sat down on the ground and yanked some more, but it wouldn’t move. I was covered in dirt and grease. I got out my cellphone to call AAA, knowing I’d be waiting at least half an hour for the tow truck, and angry at myself for not being self-sufficient. I dialed the number, then hung up right away. I sat back down, leaned back on my hands, and kicked the hell out of the tire, over and over, with my heels. It was great stress relief, and finally, I felt it budge. I kicked some more until it was wobbling, and then I pulled it off and put on the spare.

I drove around to the front of the hotel and went into the lobby, sweaty and covered in dirt. I asked to borrow their phonebook, and looked up the address of Barrier Saab. I handed the girl back the phonebook, covered in dirty fingerprints, and ran out. It took me 15 minutes to find the place. When I got there, a salesguy came out and told me that it was now a Porsche dealership, and gave me directions to Saab. By the time I got there, the service department had just opened. I pulled in and told the guy that it was possibly the worst day of my life, and then ran down the whole drama for him. He struck me as kind of car-salesman-slimy, so I was immediately nervous. He looked at my tire and brakes and said, “Well, you’ve got some money to spend here.” I was freaked. I had to wait while he helped some other people who were there first. I was getting more and more upset by the minute. I went to the bathroom and scrubbed the grime off my hands, then stood around. I stared at my car and started crying. I was convinced it was going to cost a ton of money to fix, and I was going to have to turn right around and drive home.

He looked at the car again and said he’d try to find some used tires for me, so it wouldn’t be quite as expensive. He had the car brought into the garage so they could let me know what the brakes would cost. I called Heather and sobbed while the Audi salesmen stood nearby, politely pretending not to notice. The really nice girl at the front desk got me coffee. After ten minutes or so, the guy came and got me to show me the car. First, he pointed out a set of almost-new tires they had taken off another car and were unable to resell, so they were giving them to me for free. He and the technician both seemed really happy about their find. He said that the front pads and rotors were shot, which I had assumed. The total cost would be $560. He apologized that it probably wouldn’t be ready until noon. I was so happy, I wanted to hug them both.

He pointed me in the direction of breakfast, and I headed off. I walked all over looking for a place to eat. It was all fast food, IHOP, and Denny’s. I stopped at Starbucks, got coffee, and asked about food. I finally settled on Coco’s Bakery – total Baker’s Square action, but I could sit for a while and write, and hopefully find something vegetarian. Wrong! OK, the only thing I could eat on the breakfast-only menu was the oatmeal. I ordered it without brown sugar, cinnamon apples (they had sugar on them), or milk, which left me with raisins. I added a couple packets of Equal, and it was exactly the kind of comfort food I was craving, anyway. I sat there and watched the dynamics of the staff. All the servers disliked the manager in an extreme way. In fact, I overheard one of them whispering to another, God, I hate him! He walked by my table and was angry that there were two glasses of water sitting there, when there was only one of me. I was happy that my life was not so petty.

I still had time to kill, so I went over to Starbucks, got coffee, and had a long talk with the barista about car repair and road trips. I sat outside and called Heidi to tell her I’d be getting into Portland later than I expected. We made plans to meet for dinner. Then I decided to head back to Saab. On the way there, I walked past two people with sandwich boards advertising a mattress place. The woman (Marilyn) smiled as I walked past and said, “Pretty hair!” The guy said hi and asked me how I was. I was instantly happy. Sometimes, people surprise me.

As I got back, they were just finishing up with my car. They had checked all the fluids and hoses for me, too, since I had mentioned my power steering issue. Everything checked out fine. I paid, thanked him about ten times for the tires, and I was once again on my way.

The traffic leaving Seattle sucked. It was 150 miles to Portland, which took just under 3 hours. I drove into downtown with no idea about where I was going. At a stoplight, a car pulled up next to me and the girl in the passenger seat yelled, “Did you win your car on the Price is Right?” I parked and called Heidi to find out where we were meeting. She told me to find the Starbucks at Pioneer Courthouse Square, otherwise known as ‘Portland’s living room’. I had driven by it, so I found it easily, and sat down on the steps to write and look at the map. The farther I was getting into my trip, the less I had planned. Before I left, I had researched North Dakota and Montana, but that was about it. I figured I’d have time to read the travel guides as I went. That was proving incorrect, as I barely even had time to think. By the time I was getting back to my hotels at night, it was all I could do to stay awake long enough to shower.

The weather was perfect in Portland, sunny and cool. I sat there and watched the people in the square. The presence of hackeysack players was the biggest indicator that I was in the Pacific Northwest. I considered walking down to the riverfront while I waited, but forced myself to be patient for once, and just sit.

At 3:45, I wandered over to Starbucks, got coffee, and sat out in front to wait for Heidi and her husband, Dan. We were going to meet and wander around Portland, then get dinner. They arrived shortly thereafter, and we set off towards the open-air market. Feeling slightly out-of-touch with people who knew me, I’m pretty sure I was jabbering constantly. At the market, I saw more tie-dye than I’d ever seen in my life, lots of cool crafts, state-fair-esque food, and some really awesome tattoos and piercings. After that, we walked up to Powell’s. It’s no joke, it’s the IKEA of used books. It looks so small and unassuming on the outside, but inside you can’t get around without a map. Incredible. It was funny, we hadn’t been together that long, but I felt like we had already talked a ton. Heidi and Dan are such a great couple: they have all the inside jokes and goofiness just like me and Heather, so I was instantly comfortable. We walked to their car and drove to a nice little Mexican place for dinner. I was so hungry, I ate a bunch of chips, then ordered a black bean tamale and ate it all. I drank a ton of pop and had to go pee twice. The second time I went to the bathroom, I had one of those moments of total disorientation: what day is it? where the hell am i? I could’ve walked out of the restroom and not been surprised to find myself anywhere.

We drove back into town, past the jazz festival on the waterfront. They dropped me off at my car, and I thanked them for dinner and a great time. It was so nice to hang out with people I knew, even if technically I hadn’t met them before.

I got on I-5 and headed south, having decided to go as far as I could that night, hopefully all the way to California. I called Ryan. I called Heather and gabbed for an hour. I called my parents. I was out of it and overfull from dinner, already tired from driving. I considered driving over to the coast to see the sunset, but it was 9pm by the time I got to Eugene, and it would have been another 60 miles to the coast from there. I still hadn’t seen the Pacific Ocean, but I decided to wait until I got to California. I drove around Eugene, looking for coffee and/or food to keep me awake. I found a Starbucks, but it had closed at 9pm. What the hell? Eugene was an odd little town in general. Everyone was on bikes. I couldn’t find the downtown. I drove around for a long time, then gave up and stopped at a crappy little grocery. No protein bars, no Red Bull. I got two bottles of pop, a banana, and a bag of pretzels: $4.14. Awesome.

Worn out, I got back on the interstate. There were no lights and my contacts were dry, so I was having trouble seeing. I decided I needed to stop and find a shower and bed. At midnight, I exited at Roseburg, Oregon, and pulled into the Econolodge, because their billboard said $39 a night. The two guys behind the counter were punchy and giggling.

Me: Do you have a single room? For $39?
Oregon Boy #1: Sure. Just fill out this form.
Oregon Boy #2: Dude. You’re not supposed to just give out that rate.
Oregon Boy #1: Dude! It’s midnight! She’s tired!
Me: This form is confusing me.

I put my head down on the counter, unable to figure out the difference between ‘driver’s license’ and ‘car license’. Oregon Boy #2 continued their previous conversation as Oregon Boy #1 ran my credit card. #2 made some joke about redheads.

Me: Hey!
Oregon Boy #1: Dude! She’s a redhead. But she’s OK, it’s obviously dyed.
Me: You’re not supposed to point that out.

He gave me the key and I was halfway through the lobby before I stopped, confused. I turned and asked, “Don’t you want me to pay or anything?” Oregon Boy #1 waved the credit card receipt at me and said, “You are tired. Go to bed!”

I ran up to my room, took the fastest shower ever, ripped the beds apart and made my pillow nest, stared at the road atlas long enough to decide I was taking the 101 down the California coast, and fell into bed.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

portland cop to a kid in the square: “no, i haven’t reloaded since last parade day.”

i can’t wait to get the hell out of oregon. eugene freaked my shit out.

– – – – –

I got up at 6:15 and practically ran out of the Econolodge. Oregon Boy #1 was still at the front desk when I checked out. I said, “Hey! You’re still here.” He said, “Hey! So are you.” I replied, “Not for long!” He told the whole red-hair story to the girl at the counter. They directed me to a drive-up coffee cabana, where I scored a triple-shot americano for $1.50. Shit is cheap in Oregon, my friends.

I got back on the 5 and headed south to Highway 199, which cuts across to the coast. 60 miles later, I found myself in California. Never having been before, it was a big moment for me. Some guy in a truck with Oregon plates seemed to think he was off on the trip of a lifetime, but I had him beat. I was hoping for the California border produce shakedown, but I guess they only do that on the interstate. I was a little disappointed, but pressed on.

I drove through Redwoods National Forest, which was beautiful. I was really glad to have a sunroof. Furthermore, I was extra glad I had had the brakes done in Seattle, because I would have been miserable driving through the hills to the coast. As I got nearer, I started to notice weird clouds in the sky to the west. It took me forever to realize that it was the mist from the ocean. I had never seen anything like it before.

I arrived in Crescent City around 11am, and got my very first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. It was less spectacular than I expected; not that it was the ocean’s fault, but it was about 50 degrees and overcast, and Crescent City seemed deserted. I walked out on the pier, took photos, and talked to some kids who were netting crabs.

I got back in the car and headed south, finally on the 101. It was a little disconcerting to see mile markers in the 900s, and realizing I was probably going to be driving every one of those miles. The fog was incredible. It hung over the road, and occasionally the sun filtered through and made rainbows. I wished it was sunny, because I wanted to stop and sit on the beach, but the cool weather was a nice change. I stopped a ways down the road at a black-sand beach and got out to see the ocean. The beach was covered in driftwood, oysters, and crab shells. I climbed amongst the rocks, looking at the seaweed and above-water anemonies. The rocks were slippery, and I decided to leave before breaking my bones.

I drove past Trees of Mystery and saw the statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Until recently, I wasn’t aware that Paul Bunyan was a big deal anywhere outside Minnesota. It made me a little homesick. Then I saw some elk, and many, many redwood trees. At that point, I was 280 miles north of San Francisco, and wasn’t planning on getting there until the next day. That meant I could take my time along the coast.

Based on advice from Road Trip USA, I stopped in Arcata for lunch. The book said the Utne Reader (also a Minnesota original) described it as ‘the most progressive tiny town in the US.’ It was really cute, with a town square surrounded by little shops and restaurants, and totally hippie; all the girls were wearing peasant shirts and sarongs, with their long hair up in ponytails, and the guys had dreads and wore cutoff shorts. Also, almost everyone I saw was college-age. I felt old.

I stopped at the Big Blue Cafe and ate a tofu burger. While I was sitting there drinking my cappuccino, a couple of college kids came in for lunch. They turned down the first table they were offered because it had bad feng shui. The second table was acceptable. I half-listened to their conversation as I wrote. The boy was babbling about Echelon, which I found interesting because I thought that kind of government-conspiracy paranoia was exclusive to the right wing. He went on and on until my hands started to twitch, wanting to wrap themselves around his throat. The conversation eventually drifted to living in Arcata. The girl said she liked living there now, but wouldn’t want to raise kids there, because they’d end up as drug dealers. The boy said, “Well, that would be OK, as long as it wasn’t crack or heroin or meth or something.” At that point, I knew I had to leave, or I’d soon be overturning tables in a rage.

I wandered around town for a bit, getting a really weird vibe. There were a bunch of drunk guys laying on the sidewalk outside a bar, and in the town square. I went into a cute glass shop and talked to the guy there for a long time about the weather in northern California, and the possibility of tsunamis, which I somehow found really amusing. He seemed starved for human contact. I stopped at the natural foods store and stocked up on protein bars and produce. Then I drove to Eureka, which was a super-cute, artsy little town. I got coffee at the bakery and shopped at a few galleries. Once again, the place was almost deserted. One of the women working there said that you could never predict when it would be crowded. It was kind of cold and overcast, but it was still a holiday weekend. I stopped and talked to all the people working in the stores, and everyone was really friendly. One girl I met said that it was hardly ever sunny there, but you could go 15 miles inland and it would be 100 degrees.

I went into a shop (OBJX) that I could have spent hours and all my money in. It was like a museum, with bizarre junk from everywhere. My favorites were brooches made of ear bones, bingo cards from a mental hospital, and the hundreds of glass slides from medical schools and colleges. I bought three slides of patients with facial deformities to bring to Jay. They totally creeped me out.

I got back on the 101, then exited at Ferndale. It’s the kind of town my mom would love: all victorians. The cemetery was amazing; it reminded me of New Orleans. It wasn’t a port like the towns north of there – at least, there was no huge waterfront. Lots of beef and dairy farms. A lot like Wisconsin, actually.

I was a little tired of driving, and considered whether to take the 101 (faster), or Highway 1, where it began further south. I figured if it stayed foggy and cold, I’d stick to the 101. All of a sudden, it was sunny and beautiful, and my decision was made. I must have been far enough inland, because it went from 60 to 80 degrees. I opened the sunroof and windows, even though I was going 70. It was so perfect. I exited at the famed Avenue of the Giants, a 35-mile route that parallels the 101 through the redwood forest. I stopped and saw the Immortal Tree with a bunch of Japanese and Indian tourists. It probably goes without saying, but I love that there’s this entire route devoted to giant trees. It’s kind of amusing. I mean, people like giant things. Biggie fries, SUVs, redwoods. Put them all together, and you’ve got yourself a party. Unfortunately, this time it was just me and the trees. I drove on, and finally, I stopped for the big event: the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree. I pulled up to the booth and the little old man inside asked, “Just one?” I said, “Yep, just me for the drive-thru tree today!” He laughed and asked where I was from, and commented that I was far from home. I considered telling him that I had driven all that way just to drive through his tree, but I couldn’t lie to a cute old man in a booth. He gave me a coupon for a FREE postcard at the gift shop. $1.50 for the drive-thru tree and a free postcard. How could I go wrong?

I sat and waited for the dumb woman with 15,000 kids in an SUV (and probably some biggie fries) to nudge her way into the tree in her gigantic vehicle. It was 7’x7′ clearance, and she barely made it. They had to fold in the mirrors and everything. It took forever. Finally, it was my turn. Chico fit easily, of course. I took a picture looking up out the sunroof through the hollow tree, then pulled up so I had enough room to get out and take a photo of the car inside the tree. I was pretty damn happy with myself, and thankfully no one was watching.

I went into the gift shop to claim my FREE postcard. There were two old women sitting in there. One of them said, “Girl, you got such purty hair!” I thanked her and ran away as fast as I could. This wasn’t the first evidence I had that northern California was actually part of the South.

I got back on the 101, laughing to myself. I decided that I was indeed going to take the 1, because it was beautiful outside. I exited and immediately, it became a tiny, twisting mountain road. At that point, I was positive that blowing a tire was a message from the god I don’t believe in to get the brakes done right away. I would have hated myself otherwise. There was no way I’d have made it to San Francisco, or at least I’d have had to stick to the interstate, and missed the whole coast.

Highway 1 wound up and down for 40+ miles. I had to keep putting on and taking off my sunglasses; one moment, I was blinded by the sun, the next it was dark from the overhanging trees. The temperature dropped 20 degrees in 20 minutes. I had to use 2nd gear most of the way down. With all the sharp turns, it was like slaloming, which was fun for a while, but quickly started to wear me out. With all the mountain driving, my arms and shoulders were killing me.

Half an hour later, I drove up another big hill and came around a curve that finally had no trees. The sun was glaring. I got to the top and started to round the curve, and my jaw dropped. It was the Pacific Ocean – the rocky, rugged coastline I kept hearing about but didn’t really believe existed. The water was perfectly blue. I pulled off at the overlook and started crying. I couldn’t believe how incredible it was. It was perfect.

I took about a million pictures at six overlooks. I thought about stopping at the beach, but it was getting late. The road began to straighten out at various points along the coast, so I drove as fast as I could, feeling my stomach drop as I went speeding up and down hills. I was the only one on the road for miles. I drove through Fort Bragg, then decided to stop in Mendocino for dinner around 8pm. It was a cute, tiny little town (Road Trip USA told me it was the idyllic scene for many movies and TV shows, including ‘Murder, She Wrote’). I decided against trying to get into Cafe Beaujolais dressed the way I was, so I picked a place next door: the creatively-named 955 Ukiah Street Restaurant. The servers there were kind of snooty, but nice. They put me upstairs in the very back corner. I ordered a salad and cappuccino, and got out my notebook. A short while later, they seated a couple of women at the table right next to me, even though the upstairs was almost completely empty. The next time the server came back, they quietly asked to be moved. I laughed. Was it me? I hoped so.

I still had no idea where I was spending the night. Based on my book, I was hoping to reach Gualala, because it was one of the few places along the coast with relatively inexpensive lodging. I was amazed at how remote some of the coast was. The towns were few and far between, and the fact that I could drive 40mph at the most on Highway 1 made everything seem even farther apart.

It was getting dark by the time I left Mendocino, and Gualala was seeming really far away. I had gotten used to the fact that it was light until after 10pm in the Pacific Northwest. The fog made it seem a lot darker, too, and I was feeling like I was really out in the middle of nowhere, completely alone. I drove and drove, looking for a motel. Finding nothing for miles, I decided to just camp in my car, because there were numerous state-run campsites all along the beaches. So then, my goal became to find a payphone so I could call home and reassure them that I was alive. I had been out of contact for over 24 hours, and the last anyone knew, I was in Portland. Also, I had forgotten the two-hour time difference, which made it after 11:30 in Minneapolis.

I finally arrived in Elk, California. It struck me as a nice coincidence, as I had just read an article in a travel magazine at my mom’s house about this tiny little town called Elk that no one knew about, but which was worth the trip. It was about 10 buildings in total, and even though there were cars and lights at the resort, it seemed deserted. Not even a gas station. I ran into the post office, looking for a phone. Finally, I saw the glowing green PacBell phonebooth at the side of the road, looking ominous. I rushed to call Heather. She yelled at me that mom my was in a panic, and wanted to call the highway patrol. I have to admit I loved the idea of Eric Estrada coming to my rescue, but she wasn’t so amused. I was in a hurry to find somewhere to sleep, and it was getting later and later. She agreed to call my mom, and I ran back to the car. A hitchhiker carrying more than his own weight in packs came staggering up just as I started the engine, and scared the hell out of me. My car went screeching back onto the highway.

I headed south again and finally saw a camping sign about 10 miles down the road. I couldn’t find the state beach, but there was a KOA. I pulled in ten minutes before the office closed. The woman at the counter was super nice, like a mom. She put me in a campsite near the bathroom, and told me that she’d let the security guard know I was there, so he could keep an eye out for me. Not that they ever had any problems, but I was a woman on my own, sleeping in my car. I found my site, parked, and hauled my sleeping bag and blankets out of the trunk, setting up a semblance of a bed in the backseat. I ran to the bathroom and washed up. The restrooms there were way nicer than I expected: private, and really clean. If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have showered.

Sleeping in the car wasn’t as bad as I expected. It would have been pretty comfortable if I hadn’t been so sore from mountain driving and falling down. I had the sleeping bag on the seat, my big pillow against the door, and three blankets. I woke up and flipped around a lot, but otherwise I slept well, and I knew that the next night I’d get to sleep in a real bed.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

i’m dressed like crap and i look like i’ve been beat up, but i totally fit in here anyway.

there’s no cell phone reception up here. isolated in california? go figure.

omg. he just said, ‘the way of the tao’. why do i hate them so very very much? and why do they serve so much meat here?

is it weird to have all this redwood stuff for sale in the redwood forest? i mean, aren’t we celebrating the majesty of the living trees?

holy shit, gas is expensive in california.

further evidence that norcal is part of the south: i’ve had no signal all day. i’m within 150 miles of sf! wtf?? i feel like i’m in montana. although i suspect calling people and raving about how unbelievable the ocean is might be unpopular anyway. man, i’m totally going to have to find a payphone.

– – – – –

I got up at 7:30 and dragged my clothes down to the laundry. If I arranged my laptop just right, I could pick up a few weak wireless signals from neighboring buildings. They were intermittent, but faster than dialup. Occasionally, I had to open the window and balance my laptop on the windowsill to get a consistent signal. Jay came home and we discussed what I should see in San Francisco. It was very strange to not have any idea, since I usually plan vacations obsessively. I paged through my road trip book. The AAA guide had a walking tour, which I’d had good luck with in other cities, so I decided on that. I had spent so much time driving, all I wanted to do was be outside and get some exercise. I finished my laundry, talked to Heather, did some actual work for my old company, and then headed out.

Halfway between Jay’s and Starbucks, I found Royal Gourmet Coffee. I quickly realized that I had stumbled upon the Holy Grail of the espresso-based beverage: Caffe Extreme. It was like a gigantic cappuccino, only better: 3 shots of espresso, a tiny bit of milk, and the rest regular coffee. It’s like this drink had been engineered especially for me.

I walked down to catch the cable car on California. I could probably have walked to Chinatown quicker (especially after figuring out that it’s much, much easier to just run down the hills in SF than walk them), but riding the cable car at least once in one’s life is obligatory. There was a little Asian man collecting fares from passengers. I heard him instructing a tourist couple not to stand in the 1′ x 1′ yellow square on the floor. They looked down at it suspiciously and the woman asked, “Why? What is it?” He replied, “That’s my office!”

I dismounted the cablecar and headed to Starbucks. To pee. You see, one thing you get good at detecting when you travel as much as I do is good bathrooms. When you find them, you stick with them. It’s restroom loyalty. In exchange for their good bathroom standards, the business gets your patronage. So: Starbucks almost always has good, clean bathrooms (except in NYC); and even though I’d already had enough caffeine to kill the weak or elderly, I got another coffee. I felt obligated.

I folded my walking map, ripped out of the AAA guide, into a tiny square and set off on my tour. I saw the swanky shopping (I was unimpressed, as I live in the land of malls), then the financial district, and ended up back in Chinatown. I resisted shopping there, since I didn’t want to haul crappy souvenirs around all day. I walked down the main street, then turned and went down a smaller street that was more real Chinatown and less touristy. Jay was correct in that I was the tallest person there by at least half a foot. The slow, meandering tourists annoyed me, but, luckily, I’m not afraid to elbow people in the kidneys whenever necessary. I turned down the half-block-long Jack Kerouac Alley and saw the home of the Beat. Then I found myself in North Beach, the Italian neighborhood. I stopped at a place called Cafe Delucci (Corso Cristoforo Columbo and Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd!) and ate the best salad of my entire life. After that, I stopped at Cafe Trieste, the first espresso shop in the country, to get myself a cappuccino. I’m not sure why I hadn’t stroked out at that point, but I was fine.

Heading off towards Coit Tower, I walked up some really steep hills, then climbed stairs. The caffeine must have been helping. I bought my ticket and took the elevator to the top to get my view of San Francisco.

On the way back down the stairs, I brushed the back of my hand against the rough concrete wall and scraped the hell out of it. My knuckles and wrist started bleeding. I subtly tried not to drip blood in the elevator, and went to the bathroom to wash my hand. It was bleeding a lot and I didn’t have anything to wrap it in, so I sat near the base of the tower for 20 minutes, waiting for it to stop. It looked pretty gory.

Finally, I got up and headed back down Lombard, then turned towards Fisherman’s Wharf. I walked past the cablecar turnaround, which was exciting in its oldschoolness. A family from Italy had just disembarked from a cable car, and I marveled that all five of them were dressed completely in denim. Were they fashion-forward or on the Levi’s payroll?

Fisherman’s Wharf didn’t thrill me. It was chock full of tourists and smelled fishy. I know, but still. I pushed my way through the crowds for a while, stopped into a couple crappy stores, and got the obligatory souvenirs. I walked down the Hyde Street Pier, which had a good view of the city and Alcatraz. I listened to a bitchy fashion photographer being a complete asshole to his models. Then I went over the Ghirardelli Square to see what the big deal was. It seemed kind of lame to me, but maybe that’s because I don’t eat chocolate. I started the long climb up Russian Hill. Yes, I could have just taken the cable car, but I felt like I had to do it, because it was ridiculous. At every corner, groups of people stood gasping and leaning against trees. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, not thinking about it. Near the top, I stopped and took pictures of the other end of Lombard Street, ‘the windiest street in America!’ I didn’t feel much like going down and then back up the stairs, so I just stood and watched cars inching their way along it. My walking tour looped back to Chinatown at that point, so I headed off in the direction of Jay’s apartment instead. I called him to see which way to go, and he told me to walk down Polk, because it had good shops. I was walking and talking on the phone as I passed Good Vibrations. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, turned around, and went in. Not only was it the famous Good Vibrations, it was the antique vibrator museum. I saw a bunch of menacing-looking devices, and was grateful for modern technology. I bought many souvenirs, including giant vibrator postcards for all the folks back home.

We went to Whole Foods, then to dinner at The Window down the block right by my new favorite coffeeshop in the entire universe, Royal Gourmet Coffee. I was worn out; apart from lunch in North Beach, I had been walking all day long. I went to bed around midnight, and decided to leave the blinds open. Around 12:30, I saw the fog rolling in, slowly creeping down the street. At 1am, the moon came up. It was unbelievable and perfect.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

man. if i didn’t drink so much coffee, i wouldn’t have this constant need to pee. i am not smart.

what would my roadtrip be without injuries? i’m all bloody. really awesome.

on the way back here, i got whistled at by the same construction workers who whistled at me this morning. or maybe it’s the second shift? do they trade off whistling?

i have bright red abrasions on my right hand to match the big blue bruise on my left. badge of honor! it’s proof that i did more than ride a tour bus around all day. man, i totally left dna evidence all over that tower, though.

– – – – –

I woke up at 6am because it was too bright to sleep. I got up and stretched and was cranky. I worked on Jay’s computer for a long time, and had to reboot about 50 times. I emailed Heather and went for coffee. When I got back, Jay was home, so I complained for a while, and then decided to walk around SF and shop. He gave me directions, and I set out.

I walked through Japantown, but didn’t shop, since it was near his house and I could go back later. On the way to the Haight, I passed my car and verified that it was still there and intact. Haight Street had all the hippie stuff I expected: souvenir shops with tie-die, sarongs, glass pipes, and trippy artwork. Also, it had a ton of little galleries, clothing stores, and restaurants. I bought myself a few things, and got souvenirs for the folks back home. I almost freaked at Kid Robot, which had pretty much every goofy toy I’ve ever wanted to buy, including those I didn’t know existed. (Seriously, check out the robot I bought.) I congratulated myself on not spending too much money; I count this among one of my most important achievements. I walked down Haight to Hippie Hill (!), then turned around and walked back. There was good shopping in Upper Haight, then a nice residential area with lots of Victorians, then more shopping and restaurants. I stopped at a cafe where they made my iced latte with coffee ice cubes, probably the best idea I’d ever heard. I ate half of a monstrous Mediterranean sampler, then stopped at the natural foods market for water. The guy behind the counter pretended to be scared of my obviously fight-induced injuries. I decided that from then on, I was telling people it was from a fistfight.

I headed down to the Castro, and enjoyed the shopping and many friendly dykes. I walked past the Mission Dolorosa, thus beginning my California mission adventure. After that, I found my way to Valencia, looking for Dave Egger’s shop, because if there’s one thing I love, it’s pirates. Ahoy!

Visiting 826 Valencia was a pilgrimage of sorts. I snickered my way around the pirate store, and bought a tshirt and a signed copy of You Shall Know Our Velocity, which Amazon had still failed to make magically appear in my mailbox.

I walked up to the Mission and was unimpressed. It was dirty and there were prostitutes everywhere; maybe I was in the wrong place? I headed up Mission, looking for a street I recognized. I found Gough and followed that. I crossed Market, then noticed Flax Art and Design on the corner behind me, so I went back. On the way out, I took Gough Street again, then all of a sudden it was Olivia, then Haight, and I was lost. I knew I was tired because I couldn’t read the map anymore. I finally stopped into a coffeeshop and asked the guy behind the counter how to get back to Gough. He pointed me in one direction, then thought for a minute and pointed me in another. I felt a little relieved knowing that even someone who lived there was sometimes confused about directions.

I found Gough again, and was less than thrilled to encounter a giant hill a few blocks up the street. By the time I had dragged my ass back to Jay’s, I knew I was done walking for a while. I laid down and took a nap.

That night, we went to Millennium for dinner. I had bbq tempeh and polenta. The food was incredible. Afterwards, I went to bed exhausted again. I intended to go to SFMOMA the next morning; since it didn’t open until 10am, it was a good excuse to sleep in.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

apparently, i look like less of a tourist than i suspect, because people keep asking me directions.

i have the stupidest sunglasses tan/burn ever.

– – – – –

I got up early again, contrary to my intentions. I got dressed and worked on the computer, which was the worst possible way to occupy myself that morning. I spent two hours on the phone with tech support, getting more and more angry. I didn’t realize it at that moment, but I was in the grips of the worst PMS ever*.

* [If you pay any attention to Sex Week on the Discovery Channel, you know the wide-ranging control of female hormones upon the fate of humanity. Now, Heather’s hormones in particular have been known to affect international warfare, the tides, and sometimes even the rotation of the earth. 2,000 miles away from her influence, I found myself completely at the whim of my own usually fair-tempered hormones. Things got ugly.]

Jay came home for a while and somehow, miraculously, survived. When he left for work, I was still hunched irritably over the machine. Sometime around 2pm, I gave up and went out. I had walked past several restaurants on Gough Street the day before, so I headed back down the giant hill in search of food. Since it was between lunch and dinner, several of the restaurants were closed. I examined the menus of the other half, and couldn’t find anything I could eat.

I kept going. At one point, I was crying and walking. Otherwise, just walking. I found myself back in the Castro, and wandered into a little coffeeshop. I got a roasted mushroom sandwich and coffee, and sat out back on the patio in the sun. Of course, I had run out without bringing anything to do, not even my travel journal, so I read People from front to back, and chatted with the guy at the counter for a while, which cheered me up a little.

After lunch, I felt much better, realizing that half my problem was that my blood sugar was so low. I stopped into a few galleries and shopped, then wandered back in the direction I had come from. Without realizing it, I had walked a lot farther than I had intended. But walking is good therapy, so I was glad.

I went to Japantown, and found my way into the mall. I was in heaven. I liked the bookstore the most, and had to resist buying all the crazy magazines and the translated-from-english novels (Stephen King! In Japanese!). I bought a Hello Kitty magazine, and the First Book of Sushi for Heather:

Miso in my sippy cup,
tofu in my bowl.
Crab and avocado
fill my California roll.

At a china shop, I bought about ten different netsuke, because each one I found was cuter than the last. The only thing that kept me from spending a ton of money there was that everything was as expensive as if it had been Japan. I sat in the plaza by the fountain and checked in with the parents. Then I went to the grocery store and bought grapes and raisin rolls. When I’m in Japantown, I know how to party.

I walked back to Jay’s, dropped off my new acquisitions, and headed down to Starbucks, where the same guy behind the counter begged me to sell him my superspecial card, and I once again dashed his hopes and dreams. I sat there for an hour and scrawled in my journal, which was quickly devolving from a travelogue into a preteen girl’s diary (see below). Such is PMS.

I went back to Jay’s after 6 and finally, finally got the computer running. I still wasn’t feeling great, but they convinced me to go to dinner. The tradition known as fratboy pizza wasn’t happening that night, so we ended up at an Indian-Pakistani restaurant nearby. It had weird clientele, good food, and awesome service, and sort of reminded me of our last night in New Orleans at the happiest Indian restaurant on earth.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

holy crap. japantown has a denny’s. that’s even better than the chinese starbucks in dc.

it’s hard to be enthusiastic about seeing things when i feel like crap.

___ is making me insane. they’re technically clueless and defensive, which is the worst possible combination. ____ called me this morning. it was so hard not to yell.

being away this long is disorienting. i know where i am, but it’s not real to me at all. i think it’s the lack of short-term memory. according to my amnesia, i now live in san francisco, which could be any city, really. i forget about my daily routine. i suspect i’m doing something horribly wrong, which will likely ruin my life. i think i have cancer. all i know how to do is walk and eat and run away when i get stressed. i’ve realized how incredibly bad my decision-making skills are when i’m pressured. i hate that feeling of panic. i’ve become ok with crying in public and stopping dead for a minute or two to collect my thoughts. i don’t bother putting on a contented look when i don’t feel that way. it’s almost easier to be a stranger, completely anonymous. but i still rely on contact with people i know. like, still having that connection to the world i actually belong in.

i can understand how sometimes people wander off and are never heard from again. however, i’m not that person. i need to feel like i belong somewhere. i need a long rope attached to something stable.

i also realize that i crave this sense of displacement and surreality. it’s like testing how much i can handle. it’s why i keep up the frantic pace, too. if i stay in one place too long, it’ll start feeling real to me. i’ve been here four days now, which is a lot. i know i’m in sf, but it’s meaningless to me. i have to keep reminding myself: california. pacific ocean. it could be anywhere; i know it as well as i know any other place except home.

other tourists are happy to take pictures and buy postcards. i do those things, and i also rush around with a blank stare, wondering where the hell i am half the time. i think this is why so many people are medicated: to stop questioning.

i’ve started to hate the question, ‘what are you going to do about it?’ because i so rarely have the answer anymore. or i know the answer is ‘nothing.’

man, this is not a travel journal anymore. it’s a paranoid’s diary. i’m a freak. i’m going to stare at californians now and wonder what’s going on tonight.

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