An overdue update

Location: Billings, MT
Local time: 7:11 pm

I left Vermont on June 22 and headed back to Rochester for the last hurrah in Upstate New York. After spending some time with family I headed to Marcellus, and then to Ithaca on June 25 for a good friend’s quasi wedding. Instead of getting married, he and his partner had a commitment ceremony that incorporated a lot of elements from various traditions. Their reasoning was that as long as gays are not allowed to marry, they wouldn’t either. I think that’s a pretty awesome stance to take. After camping in Ithaca that night I returned to Marcellus on the 26th to pick up Arrow and leave New York. Between the time I left Vermont and when I was ready to leave Marcellus I clocked another 485 miles.

On the night of the 26th I stayed in Manassas, Virginia, again. This time I stayed only one night and didn’t do any sightseeing. I did score myself a free copy of Dan Fisk’s new album though. It’s good to be the king. On the 27th I got to Cleveland, Ohio, and stayed there for a couple nights. Marcellus to Cleveland added another 794 miles to the odometer.

I went from Cleveland to Lexington, Kentucky, to stay with my mom for a bit. I ended up staying in Kentucky until July 5. Add 343 more miles to the tally.

My plan when I left Kentucky was to go as far as Columbia, Missouri, and stay the night there. I found myself in Columbia around 3 pm and with no success finding a place to stay so I decided to just keep going and see where I ended up. I planned to keep going west until Kansas City, and then take 29 north to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I’d turn west again to go to Montana. It turned out that a stretch of 29 was closed because of flooding so after some twists and turns through rural Missouri and Iowa I called it a day when I got to Council Bluffs, Iowa. I was exhausted from driving and the thought of sleeping in a bed was too tempting. That’s how I ended up staying the night at the Motel 6. I have never smelled meth before, but I imagine it smells like that Motel 6. I was tired enough that I just crashed and got a good night’s sleep in spite of the questionable odors.

The next day, July 6, brought me to Sundance, Wyoming. Instead of going north on 29 I decided to cut across Nebraska. I looked at the map a bit and ended up taking 275 northwest through Nebraska until I got to 83 which took me north into South Dakota. I have seen some storms in my day, and rain strong enough to nearly bring traffic to a halt, but I have never driven through a storm like the one that hit me on 83 in South Dakota. The wind and rain were unreal. It was nearly impossible to see anything, and I thought the car might get blown and/or washed off the road. I pulled into the parking lot of some sketchy little casino in the middle of nowhere and waited out the rest of the storm. After that it was smooth sailing on 90 to Sundance.

I stayed the night with friends in Sundance and then went to Devils Tower on the morning of July 7. I have wanted to see Devils Tower for a while, and I was not disappointed. The only negative part of it was that I couldn’t hike up to the base because they don’t allow dogs on the trails. We were able to get close enough, though, so I was happy with the stop. From there I drove to Billings, Montana. The whole Lexington to Billings trip was 1,760 miles.



We walked around downtown Billings a little bit and I was not very impressed. It seems like a nice enough town but I wouldn’t want to live here. I am looking forward to Missoula tomorrow. After a couple days in Missoula we will go to Bozeman for a night or so, and then it will be time to head back to Denver. There are definitely other parts of the country I would still like to see, and some I have seen that I’d love to spend more time in, but I am getting tired of all the driving. Also I have figured out a plan for how I want to move forward with working, and I’m kind of excited to get that in motion. I am of course nervous about finding a job when I get back to Denver, but I don’t want to worry about that too much now. I am going to enjoy these last handful of days and then get to the next step in the process. I don’t intend this to be the last road trip I ever take, so the other places I still want to see will just have to wait.


This was in the campground we stayed at outside of Billings.

Total miles to date: 6,955.1 (Something seems fishy about this total. I will need to go through and double-check everything at some point.)

Jingle bells

For a while now I've thought about how jingle bells seem to make such a good, and unlikely, contribution to hip hop songs. Some examples:


Fun fact: Both of those songs sample Average White Band's "Schoolboy Crush."




Good stuff. Real talk.

Vermont

Location: Green Mountain National Forest, Vermont (N 43° 15.302' W 072° 53.703' elevation: 1,659 feet)
Local time: 7 pm

Today's drive took me west through northern New Hampshire and into Vermont. From what I've seen, Vermont and New Hampshire are beautiful. Once in Vermont I went south along the border and then turned west again into Rutland. I stopped in Rutland for a bit to get something to eat and find an internet connection. The visit to Rutland was a success on both accounts. Maybe it was just luck or some different attitude on my part, but I found the people I came across in Rutland to be very friendly. Naturally Arrow attracted the most attention.



I've gotten a lot of reading done in the last couple days. I'm now more than halfway through Game of Thrones. I also listened to all the Joe Rogan podcasts I had stored. Even though Brian Redban is annoying the podcasts were pretty good overall. When you get right down to it, though, it's just some guys getting together and talking. Many times I found myself thinking, “hey, I wouldn't mind doing one of my own.” Something to marinate on.

June 21 miles: 204

Total miles to date: 3,573.1

Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Location: White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire (N 44° 20.009' W 071° 13.024' elevation: 1,305 feet)
Local time: 7:15 pm

I traveled from Newburyport, MA, today and will be spending the next couple nights here camping with Arrow. I stayed in Newburyport this weekend with a good friend from college and his wife (and their dog). Newburyport is a picture-perfect New England town, and it was a good weekend. Driving up here there were a lot of bikers going south from some kind of bike rally in New Hampshire (I think the name of the town is Laconia or something like that). I would Google it but the White Mountain National Forest is sorely lacking in the wireless internet department. The next couple days here will hopefully be relaxing and give me plenty of time to catch up on reading.

Miles traveled while in Upstate New York, and to Newburyport: 894
June 19 miles: 129

Total miles to date: 3,369.1

The 'chester

Location: Rochester, New York
Local time: 12:00 am

Back in Upstate New York. While I'm up here I'll see some friends and family, and that's about the extent of my plans at this point. One of the first things I've done is visit one of my undergraduate professors. Before becoming a professor he was a lawyer, and aside from wanting to catch up with him in general I wanted to talk to him about how he decided to be a professor coming from being a lawyer. I got some great advice from him. Two main points stuck out (I'm paraphrasing here):

1. Think about what you want your day to be like. This seems to me to be a good way to look at the big question from a practical perspective. Do I want to spend my days in an office or outdoors or some combination of the two? Do I want to spend my days working alone? I think answering these questions will help me analyze things from the bottom up.

2. Figure out what specific characteristics of a job I want, and those I don't want. This is another way of looking at the big question from a different perspective. I had been asking myself what jobs or career I might prefer, which now seems to me to skip over an important step in the analysis: what are the specific characteristics I like and do not like. After figure those out I can move on to looking for what has the characteristics I like.

I still don't have any answers, but I think I now have a better means of figuring them out.

June 4 miles: 335

Total miles to date: 2,346.1

New York City part 2

Location: Manhattan, New York
Local time: 4:30 pm

Today I finally made it to The Cloisters (my enemy, the subway system, having prevented me from getting there on my first attempt). I expected this to be an interesting place so I made sure to bring my camera. Despite this shocking feat of planning and foresight, I managed to forget the memory card for said camera.


This is where I'd show pictures of my favorite things I saw there, knowing that pictures could do a better job than me trying to describe the things. My favorite parts of the collection were the illuminated manuscripts, most of which were over 500 years old. Marinate on that.

The other highlight of this little field trip out to the country (read: 190th Street) was Fort Tryon Park. The weather today was absolutely perfect, and the park was not even close to crowded. It was like something from a Norman Rockwell painting. I half expected to see kids playing marbles and rolling one of those hoops down the street with a stick. After some excellent soft serve ice cream, though, it was back to "where all the lights are bright": downtown.

New York City

Location: Manhattan, New York
Local time: 1:10 pm

I noticed I forgot to mention the distance traveled from Lexington, KY, to Manassas, VA. That leg of the trip was 531 miles, and brought the running total up to 1,747.1.



I have been in New York City since Sunday, May 8. I haven't done a lot of touristy stuff here, instead I've spent my time primarily hanging out with friends and taking it easy. Pretty soon after I arrived we went up to Foxwoods to see Jerry Seinfeld live. He's no Louis CK, but it was still great to see him live finally.

On Wednesday, May 18, I went to the True Chip Till Death awards to see Shrimps performing throughout the evening. Here they are with Bud Melvin giving the night a happy ending:



It feels like it's been raining here non-stop since I arrived, so once a nice day finally came we went to Central Park for a bit.




This past weekend saw more chip music action at Blip Festival and a show on Sunday featuring the one and only Brady Leo. Also I unwittingly donated $20 to some kind of Brooklyn animal shelter. The less said about that the better.

Yesterday I went down to the World Trade Center site. This is the first view I got when I came out of the subway station:



That's One World Trade Center under construction. More pictures of it and the construction:






There is also a memorial but the line to get in was out the door and I didn't feel like standing around in a line for hours. I did get a good look at this outside though:



I'm not sure how much longer I want to stay in New York City. Though I love to walk around and people-watch, it's a bit overwhelming at times because there is no escaping people. Sometimes I don't want to be around crowds and have to dodge people left and right when walking down the sidewalk. I find myself wanting to stay in sometimes just to get some (relative) peace and quiet. The question is not if I'm leaving here, but when.


May 8 miles: 264

Total miles to date: 2,011.1

DC

From Lexington, KY, I headed to Manassas, VA, to hang out with the one and only Dan Fisk. I got there the evening of Friday, May 6. Saturday we went to do some sightseeing stuff. Our first stop was the NRA museum in Fairfax, VA.

Even though I took a lot of pictures at the NRA museum, I could have easily taken three times as many. There was just so much interesting history and craftsmanship on display. It was a bit overwhelming.

Hermann Göring's shotgun:



Yikes.

There was a glass-top table full of weird little things. It was like a steampunk's wet dream.




The weird thing labeled 23 was apparently used to test the strength of powder.


The thing in the middle of this photo was used to light tinder, if I recall correctly. Note the combination brass knuckles/dagger/gun to the left. Awesome.


Here is my favorite of these oddities. You set a "timer" using a sundial, and at the specified time the magnifying glass focused the sun's rays on the powder, setting off the gun. Do want.


One of my favorite parts of the NRA museum, and something I was hoping they'd have, the T48!


Check out this engraving work. Amazing.


I have many more pictures from the NRA museum. If I get ambitious enough to go through them at some point I'll post more. These should be enough for now.

From the NRA museum we went into DC and got something to eat, then our next stop was the National Cathedral. I'm not into the whole religion thing, but it's an impressive building. The gargoyles and grotesques are particularly interesting, but many were hard to see. I wished I had binoculars with me.








Me, on the 7th floor:

Dan:

View from the 7th floor. You can see the Capitol, Washington Monument, and Jefferson Memorial.

Here you can see some of the gargoyles and grotesques from the 7th floor.



Next stop: New York City!

The ponies

This morning I went with my Mom to Keeneland to watch the racehorses do their morning workouts. They're impressive to see up close.



It's a beautiful place.

















Equally impressive was how those little jockeys are able to control the horses, particularly when the two aren't quite agreeing on what to do next.

Days 2&3

Location: Lexington, KY
Local time: 1:06 pm

I left Lawrence around 7 am on May 2nd and headed east to my Mom's place in Lexington, Kentucky. The drive through Missouri was uneventful, but soon after I crossed into Illinois it started raining and didn't stop for the rest of the drive. Parts of Illinois were flooded nearly up to the level of the highway surface. I saw a lot of fresh roadkill in Indiana. My guess is they were driven to find higher ground by all the water. But then again I'm just an unemployed bum so what do I know.

I made it to Lexington around 7 pm yesterday and will be here until Friday. One thing I noticed (too late in the process, unfortunately) when I was packing up the car in Denver was that I have way too much stuff to bring in the car. One of my projects while I'm here in Lexington will be to whittle down my stuff and leave the excess here. The primary target is my clothes. I want to cut the amount I have with me in half.

Another lesson I've learned the hard way is that the roof cargo carrier on my car is not totally waterproof. Considering the amount of rain and road spray I drove through yesterday I have to say it did well. Nothing in it was soaked, and I have time here to dry things off. No permanent damage was done. I'll just make sure to wrap stuff in garbage bags or the like before loading it in there.

I'm going to use this blog for more than just an account of where I've been and what I'm doing. I'd also like to write about some of the things I'm thinking about, whatever they may be. Hopefully I'll have a chance to do a bit of that while I'm here. It's not like I have a job to go to.

May 2 miles: 640
May 3 miles: 0

Total miles to date: 1,216.1

Beginning

Location: Lawrence, KS
Local time: 8:05 pm

Despite my best intentions to get out of Denver on April 30th I grossly underestimated the amount of time it would take to pack everything up, move it to storage, and pack up the car. I left Denver this morning at about 7:15 Denver time. It was an easy and relatively uneventful day of driving.

I'm staying in Lawrence, Kansas, tonight. I'm exhausted from all the packing and moving, much of which I scrambled to do on Saturday after partying pretty hard the night before. It was an amazing night...definitely one I'll remember for a long time. I can't think of a better way to leave Denver (even if it didn't end up being my last night in Denver after all). Now I need some rest.

Miles today: 576.1