el fin

the road trip has come to a close. it's a bittersweet moment. i still feel like the CRV is a kind of home, and yet at the same time i can't wait to have a reliable bed to sleep in (hopefully with memory foam) and i also really want to clean that car and get all the bugs off the windshield.

but it's been a good trip. i've learned a lot. i learned that the middle part of the country is not all bad, and parts of it are prettier than i expected. i learned that i don't always mind 90 degree weather, that beaches on lakes can be as nice as beaches on oceans, that 75 mph speed limits are god's gift to drivers in the dakotas, but that 65 mph speed limits should be obeyed just to avoid all the hassle. i know a little more about what i want to do in a few years, or where i wouldn't mind going. not so much what i want to do as what options i want to keep open, what kind of life i want to live. and i learned that traveling is easier and cheaper than you expect, and it's something you should do just to avoid being complacent. i have a thirst for it now. i guess most simply and most importantly, i've learned that across the country, people are the same and they are different. dan mocked me when i said that the other day, but it's entirely true. wisconsin, new orleans, south dakota, texas - the people in these places live somewhat drastically different lives from the one i live in california, and yet people are the same everywhere. the context and the setting change - the way people interact with that setting is universal. and that's an encouraging thought.

with these closing notes of course, i figured you deserved some very unscientific statistics and some very unscientific and probably incomplete thanks.

number of days spent tripping (SF to SF): 36
number of states visited/driven through: 21 (ca, nv, ut, az, nm, tx, la, ms, tn, ky, oh, in, il, wi, mn, sd, wy, mt, id, wa, or)
number of miles driven: approximately 9500
number of car chargers: 4
number of parking tickets: 4
number of speeding tickets: 2
number of pictures taken: 1141
number of "that's what she said" jokes made: approximately 1000
number of "that's what she said" jokes regretted: approximately 999
number of times dan mumbled something, i said "what?" and he said "nevermind": millions
number of bugs killed on windshield: billions
number of times emily talked on the phone and dan mocked her for it: countless

thanks to all the many people who made this trip possible:
-my dad, for the CRV (a road warrior itself) and for alllll that gas money.
-the casas del awesome, mercado/ortiz, wood, syme, weekly, schamburek, anthony, grandma anthony, sigma chi, erica, and hoover, for putting us up and for putting up with us
-our friends and erstwhile tour guides, sara, matt, bergy, arielle, miguel, and beth (and orges, because you were there, even though you were as new to the citay as we were)
-all the people who put up with our erratic and unreliable contact all summer
-the academy
-the LA city bus driver, for taking a chance on an unknown kid
-and all the readers of this little blog, for giving us as much of an excuse as we needed to talk to ourselves on the internet

no thanks to the following people:
the cops in new mexico and texas, judge marie rucker of swisher county court, and the towing companies in madison, wisconsin