post script

tonight i had dinner with dan and cristina and we drove up to SF afterwards. what we did was not important (although actually, i DO consider the r. kelly "opera" VERY important, especially with lyrics such as "bitch, say no more")... well, it kind of is. meaning, we finally took off the horns. i knew we needed to eventually just so we could get the car washed. but we also had to parallel park in tiny spots in nob hill. so the horns came off in a sort of anticlimactic moment.

what WASN'T an anticlimactic moment was the laguna beach season 2 premiere, specifically the scene where steven and lauren are listening to journey's "don't stop believing" in the car. this song has long been significant in my life, meaning that i sing it loudly in cars and on karaoke night and on DGSC night. so tonight after enjoying it on the show (and by enjoying i mean cringing slightly), i was even more thrilled to hear it come up randomly on my ipod on the drive home. i called the apartment to share in the moment and in a total pun-not-intended moment, i told dan, "i just wanted to share the journey with you."

oh SNAP. road trip puns.

also - oddly, the stars at stanford tonight are the brightest and prettiest i've seen in a while. even on the road trip, because usually the stars were only out and pretty when we were driving and couldn't see them.

announcement

DAN IS A BLOG SLACKER

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

on the road home

yesterday, after leaving our comfortable holiday inn, we headed for widmer brewery for lunch/breakfast. what i mean by breakfast is, we had beer (at least dan and i did) and a pretzel and some brie dip for appetizers and finished off the meal with lunch of sandwiches. everything was supertasty, especially the beer. our waiter was this pseudo hip guy, who i decided drove an acura, possibly with LED lighting on his car, and so we asked him for advice about where to go in portland to just wander around and possibly go to "some funky shops." he responded, "what, you mean like head shops?"

we didn't know we looked like that kind of person, but apparently we do.

ignoring our waiter, we headed for the hawthorne district in eastern portland where i got sucked into buying a lamp that looks like a turtle. it's kind of awesome. we checked out other stores, including a store dedicated entirely to cats, a fun vintage store, and the non-profit women's bookstore which featured (well-written and well-read i'm sure) books about how to learn to telepathically communicate with animals.

after our shopping spree, we decided we wanted diet pepsi slurpees. we went to the 7-11 on hawthorne. they didn't have the diet pepsi kind. disappointed, we moved on and ran some errands (hopefully i never have to think about judge marie rucker in texas ever again), and then went looking for mount tabor park, which is basically an extinct volcano within the portland city limits. we found the park, but then couldn't find the plaque or monument to the volcano itself, even after we wandered/half-hiked around for a while. finally we found it about 25 feet from the parking lot in the opposite direction.

this frustration made us even more determined to find diet-pepsi slurpees so we looked up in a phone book and found one on SE stark in the 16000 block. we were on stark in the 400 block.

but we were determined and we drove there. we found no diet pepsi. on the way back, we found two more 7-11s (that weren't in the phone book, i swear) which also lacked the (artificially) sweet sizzurp.

temporarily giving up, we went to this bizarre thai place for dinner. portland sure has its share of impressively weird restaurants. this one was run by a very happy thai man who asked for our names when we ordered and REMEMBERED them even at the end of the dinner. we got free, refillable thai iced tea, free appetizers and free dessert, and as the owner danced around and sang along to the music, he told us that "the entertainment is free too."

needless to say it was an awesome dining experience.

after dinner we went down to corvallis, native town of beth hoover our awesome oregonion host. on the way there we had to stop by the 7-11 in albany which beth knew had the diet pepsi. we went in there and sure enough, there it was, spinning around. but it didn't look ready - it was still dark brown and not icy. we stood there and glared at it for a while, while dan helped himself to sugary slurpees. then the 7-11 woman came over and told us all we had to do was try it a couple times. she did that, and told us to wait. then we waited. then we tried it - and nothing came out. the 7-11 woman had to force the slurpee to start slurping out - and a piece of ice came out of the thing and the slurpee exploded. it was quite an adventure i have to say, but we eventually got our diet pepsi.

after reattaching the horns and eating yummy oregon watermelon and blueberries with beth's mom (and talking to arielle on the phone), we headed for beth's favorite coffeeshop, the beanery, where beth and i got "pooh's picnic" - hot chocolate with the best whipped cream i've ever had and four teddy grahams on the top.

there was a massive dry lightning storm going on, so we drove out to a field/hill/park thing and walked out a little ways to watch it. dan said it was like fireworks, celebrating the last night of the road trip. it was really nice - peaceful.

this morning we left oregon at 9. aside from a very weird dining experience in medford, oregon for lunch (a "deli" where you had to be 21 because they have keno machines, and which reeked of cigarette smoke), and my minor freak-out when we drove through redding (which is like a boring maze of mini-malls), the drive has been uneventful - and currently it's 6:30 and we're 27 miles from san francisco.

it is good to be coming home, but it's also very strange. the life that we've been living for the month has been wholly real, sometimes routine, and very material. and as we drive back along the freeway, i realize that the life i'm about to start living is still sort of dreamlike and unrealized. but i know that in a week, it will also be a new routine (not in a bad way) and a new way of living, and this trip will seem like something that hardly happened, or like a dream i had sometime between graduation and now. that's what's weird (and what's good) about a road trip - you always come home at the end of it.

mount shasta... last picture of the trip!!

triumphant! we found the volcano!

tree

this makes the beers look a lot bigger than they really were

world's longest drive to oregon and world's smallest park

i think montana is pretty, but i really have no idea.

yesterday morning, we woke up in rapid city and took off for mount rushmore. we didn't feel like paying for parking or dealing with the millions of patriotic tourists, so we drove by it. it's smaller than i thought it was. also there was a sign that said "north by northwest movie filmed in this area." can you imagine if they did that anywhere else? that's just cause it's the only movie filmed in south dakota, ever.

after mt rushmore, we got lunch in a little place called "the hop" in newcastle, WY. so weird! it was literally run by one woman, who called us and women older than she was (she was about 45) sweetie. she took orders, made the food and beverages, delivered the food and took the checks. there was one busboy who was about 50 but i think i saw him clear off one table out of about 10, while i saw the woman clear off at least three of them. meanwhile she still had the time to take a cigarette break while STANDING AT THE COUNTER and putting together place settings. we got malts and the best burger i have had in forever. the whole restaurant was decked out with sort of pseudo-50s diner crap and coca-cola memorabilia (although it served only pepsi products, which i thought was funny). also it was filled with locals, who all knew the waitress and were ridiculous people. i.e. more trucker hats and plaid shirts. i think it was a mining town of some kind. right before we left, this cowboy-type dude came in. i mean, literally a cowboy. he took off his hat and tossed it on the counter (NOT where he was sitting) and put his feet (clad in boots of course) up on a chair. he was dusty and heavily suntanned and he had an accent. in wyoming, people kind of talk like they are from texas - must be a ranch thing. he hit on the waitress sort of and chatted with everyone there, including us. kind of out of control.

we drove off, heading for yellowstone. it was far away and we had a long way to go. we originally planned on driving to it via montana, via the little bighorn monument, etc. but we soon realized that we didn't really have the time. instead we decided to cut through the mountains directly for yellowstone, hoping to get there before sunset. the mountains were gorgeous and random - looking a lot like utah, which i have to say totally validates my entire theory about utah and wyoming. they sometimes looked like bryce, sometimes like zion. sometimes even like parts of arizona and the painted desert. we came out of the mountains ages later (after being stuck behind the worst driver ever who i honestly think was drunk, they were driving like 25 mph and weaving into the opposite lane) into a giant plain. again, random. more driving, we hit cody, WY, which is kind of the gateway to yellowstone.

as we drove out of cody, however, about 50 miles away from yellowstone, we saw a sign that said that the east entrances were closed at 8pm. it was 7:45.

so needless to say, we didn't see yellowstone. we're too alternative for that.

instead, we drove north, up towards montana, changing our whole route to oregon. we happened to drive through the most gorgeous little area ever - lots of mountains and the prettiest sunset i think i've ever seen. the whole sky was pink, even the side OPPOSITE of where the sun was setting. i really haven't ever seen that. i couldn't stop talking about it and dan wanted to kill me.

our plan was to drive through all of montana, idaho, washington and oregon to portland. in one night. without stopping. we are road warriors.

so hence not seeing montana. i think it was pretty - in the dark while i was driving, i could vaguely see white mountains and lots of trees and some river, but i really have no idea. the only thing i know about montana is that i saw two hitchhikers (the first on our trip), one of which was wearing a poncho and walking along the highway at 1 am, and that i was vaguely hit on by an old creepy gas station attendant who apparently was from whittier/socal. it was kind of bizarre.

dan and i switched driving again a few miles from the idaho (idaho? no, udaho) border and when i woke up from my nap, the sun was rising and we were in washington... in the flattest, yellowest fields ever. like what you imagine south dakota is (although SD is actually greener because of all the farms).

we drove and drove, eventually crossing into oregon and driving along the columbia river which is really awesome. at first it's kind of arid looking, but as you drive further west it gets greener and greener and more forested.

we arrived in portland at 10 am ( almost 24 hours of straight driving, not counting breaks for food and gas). i was pretty much fading, but we couldn't check into our hotel until 3, so we headed for downtown. we went to powell's bookstore, which i am OBSESSED with (so many books) and which i spent a little too much money in (on a very eclectic selection of books i have to say), although the no sales tax thing in oregon is pretty much the best thing ever. after bookshopping we had vietnamese food for lunch and eventually made our way back to the hotel. i napped for HOURS, only waking up when beth called us from downstairs around 7:15.

we finally made it out of the hotel room and to our restaurant around 8:30. we went to this place called mirage, which serves cajun food in a chic place underneath a bridge. beth said it was funky, so i expected it to be sort of like the magnolia cafe in austin, or like a non-chain version of TGIF that sold cajun food. instead, it was a really pretty and classy inside, but just with a funky twist. (incidentally, that seems to be the norm in portland, hipster heaven. i really like this city, it's got a totally unique feeling.) there was a cubist version of the last supper up on the wall, in a gold-painted macaroni frame, in which jesus was picking up the check. and all the waiters and waitresses, when you get something in a doggy bag, wrap your food up in unique shapes like a rose and a bird.

oregon is far from california in spirit. it's funkier, more independent, less commercial, less corporate. beth wanted to take us to the 24-hour (but "usually open from 5-11") "church of elvis" which has apparently closed down but used to be a woman's house with elvis memorabilia, an elvis impersonator who would come in once an hour, drink a beer and watch tv, and 25 dollar weddings performed by the owner and consummated by a ride on a wheeled couch around the house. unfortunately we couldn't go there since it went out of business. damn.

instead, we went tonight to the world's smallest park - about 20x20 inches. it's got a great story - http://www.parks.ci.portland.or.us/Parks/MillEnds.htm - and apparently changes appearance pretty often, because i expected a couple of flowers, but instead when we got there we found a little cactus in a planter of sad-looking dirt. i wasn't disappointed - i just had that kind of feeling you get when you go to a pound and want to take home all the kittens, or when you have to box up your stuffed animals and start to feel sorry for them because you aren't treating them well anymore. i want to adopt the world's smallest park and have it for my own and put leprechaun ferris wheels and fairy flowers in it, and hold little miniature pipe-playing concerts.

i'm weird, i know.

last note of the day before i go to bed - sadly, the horns are looking kind of done for. as we drove to the restaurant tonight, we noticed them bobbing up and down, not pointing steadily ahead as usual. in the parking lot we checked, and sure enough, they had been cut. for some reason someone clipped the tape/rope that was holding them up on the front grate, but didn't clip the bottom rope, and so we still have the horns, they are just loose. we're going to fix them tomorrow and ride the rest of the trip out in style. road warriors, you know.

mills end - worlds smallest park. it's wee.

the horns are falling 

portland punks... cut the tape on the horns 

"for a second there i almost DID smell flowers!" 

what's crazy is, those are actually our leftovers from dinner 

"do you feel it? yet? yet? yet? yeaaah." 

sunrise in eastern washington

blurry, but pretty

opposite side of the sky from the sun - STILL PINK

NOT yellowstone

more mtns

little bighorn mountains, from the road

sheep (wyoming)

drive-by mount rushmore

do they ever call anything the goodlands?

last night we drove into rapid city, SD around midnight (mountain time - we're definitely coming back west). it was totally dark except for a tiny bit of moonlight, so as a result i totally missed all of the badlands. the most interesting thing that happened on the road was that i almost ran over a fox, but did not. otherwise it was totally eventless. at one point i was literally the only car on the road in sight.

despite the lack of any real happenings in SD, i have to say that it's not as bad as i thought. it's really gorgeous - the eastern part is all cornfields and farms and haybales, and the western part (as far as i could tell in the dark) is exactly the same except with no farms or cornfields. slightly boring but really pretty in its own way - the sky looks huge.

of course, i'm biased towards SD - when we drove by a sign explaining the exit for de smet, home of laura ingalls wilder (the "little town on the prairie") i pretty much flipped my shit. unfortunately it was way out of the way otherwise there is a very good chance i would have dragged dan there. i am seriously enjoying the traveling out west because it's so reminiscent in a weird way of all the books i read when i was a kid. i kind of want to start in wisconsin and drive to de smet, replicating the ingalls wagon trail. not kidding.

yesterday morning of course we had quite a scare - we woke up at the frat house (wow i really never wanted to say that sentence in my life) and intended to leave around 9:15. as dan and i walked outside, i said, "i sure hope the car isn't towed." (we had sort of parked it blocking a mini-underground parking lot belonging to the sigma chi house.) dan said, "would you be surprised?" i thought about it, and said, "yes." then we got outside and there was no car.

three hours later after i panicked a LOT and after a lot of calls to the police and various towing companies, during which we filed a stolen car report and everything, we found the car. it had been towed about an hour after we'd parked it at 3 am (random) and it had been legally parked on a street about a mile and a half away. i was never so happy to see that car in my life - and the best part is that the horns are still on it. lessons learned: park legally, madison police department does not have lojack capabilities, and when you park anywhere, take your computer OUT of the car in case it disappears forever with your entire life. that was a little scary for a while.

anyway, today we head for mount rushmore, little bighorn, and yellowstone. this morning as we ate our breakfast in the hotel, we got approximately the weirdest cross section of humanity i could possibly imagine. the women next to us were talking about red and blue states in the most hushed voices i had ever heard, and weren't saying anything interesting. it all seemed to be some kind of conspiracy to them. this of course turned pretty much insane when they started talking about splenda. yes, the sweetener. one woman started talking about how she had done her own tests and been her own guinea pig and how as soon as she drank any splenda she has memory problems. it was obviously not scientific and the other two women just ate it up. oh, south dakota.

i love haybales

clouds - minnesota (or maybe south dakota, not sure anymore)

city life

i was awoken this morning by a small dog barking at my face and by two very cute children (dan's cousins) staring at me and asking dan "why isn't your friend waking up?"

after breakfast (DIRT cheap) at the camp and a shower in the camp bathroom (very much reminiscent of hostels), we took off for brunch at the seven seas restaurant in waukesha, wisconsin, for dan's graduation. lots of family that i didn't exactly meet, but the food was good and plentiful. they like to serve you meat for breakfast in wisconsin - pork ribs, ham, sausage, brats, bacon, AND baked chicken. miguel and i spent a lot of time discussing my ineptitude with money and how i should have (apparently) refinanced my student loan sometime in june. good to know.

we spent the rest of the day at dan's aunt's house, chatting and reading harry potter. we were in large part stalling for orges to arrive in chicago, which he did today in the late afternoon. after finally getting ahold of him we agreed to meet at harry caray's at 9, where we had a late pseudo-dinner and some beers (for some reason mine was larger than everyone else's, which i don't understand). the waiter asked me if i was going to eliminate one of the three men i was on a pseudo date with. too bad we had no tv cameras. i liked that joke. afterwards we walked through chicago. it's still weird to think that orges is LIVING there now. to think that every day you could wake up and walk to work or to lunch or shopping through giant skyscrapers. that's still weird for me. i definitely have to live in a city sometime, just to avoid being overly provincial. orges is calm as a cucumber about moving to one of the biggest cities in the us, and i'm still one of those people who looks up at all the buildings while i walk through the place.

we had another drink at some "irish pub" which really became a lot more irish when last call turned out to be at 11pm and we left by 11:15 to walk around some more. we didn't really have anything to do, but we wanted to hang out with orges. it was good to see him, no matter how much extra driving we did to get there. it was also kind of surreal (surreal, but nice) because of the fact that he is now LIVING there. indefinitely. the way i'm living in palo alto, but like i said, in a place where you walk through a forest of skyscrapers to get to work.

the drive back to madison was peaceful, partly because i slept through it. tomorrow, it's all about the long push to south dakota... the life of a road tripper.

chicaaago

reading buddies

self explanatory

mad, mad madison

yesterday we woke up late and drove to madison, meeting miguel on state street (kind of like the 6th street of madison) around 3pm with teddywedgers (like cornish pasties) and listening to some odd folk band (a couple and another woman, and the couple had their kids there but kept singing about cigarettes and booze). we walked down the street, which was having a big annual sale thing where almost everything was like 50% off. i got some new clothes to add to my very paltry selection of warm-weather clothes (i wear the same 3 things every day - two bermuda shorts and a skirt). miguel and dan were very patient.

we wanted to experience wisconsin as miguel, which meant cheap beer, sub sandwiches and sleeping in the sigma chi house. he's living there over the summer with his best friend from home, who is pretty much the Man at his frat. i really never planned on going inside a sigma chi house - i never did it at stanford and i planned on avoiding it forever, but oh well. we bought pbr light (ONLY in wisconsin) and ordered jimmy john's sub sandwiches which apparently miguel does every day. they got there in ten minutes (bike couriers!) and were delicious (mine was especially good because i added peanut butter to my blt). after that, a couple sake bombs and several rounds of this weird hand-shocking game that dan was obsessed with, we were out for the night. we played darts - my new favorite game, which i only moderately suck at. yay wisconsin!

bed that night for me was in the rooms of one of the guys who lives there during the year but who isn't there (or at least wasn't there this past week). seriously, i slept with a sigma chi flag above my head. madison was truly an experience.

madison is weird, because it's totally white. i haven't seen an asian person in days, i don't think hispanics live in this part of the country and black people are few and far between, to be honest. and all the people in madison are fratboys or sorority girls (sorostitutes as miguel calls them). so bizarre and so unlike stanford. but at the same time, state street was really cool - active and quirky, like a real college town.

the next morning we woke up and after waiting for miguel forever (he went to the farmer's market) while we watched scrubs on dvd, we took off for a bookstore for the next harry potter book. very important. dan pretty much wanted to kill us but we knew that it was necessary.

we dropped miguel off at the sigma chi house and took off for chicago again to meet arielle in belmont. unfortunately the drive and the El ride and the bus ride (and waiting for the train and bus) took forever and we only got to see her for a half an hour (and a little more shoe shopping) before turning around again and driving back to madison. we picked up miguel and headed down to dan's grandma's camper, currently inhabited by his cousin erica, who is hilarious and welcomed us with brats and the offer to let us drive around the camp on a golf cart (it's a sort of strange camp with a yogi bear theme and a minigolf court and crafts on sundays and hayrides). unfortunately we got here too late to really take advantage of it, and miguel and i are too obsessed with harry potter to want to be outside by the campfire with the mosquitoes.

sunset in wisconsin

'arry potta