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Wednesday, 12 July
This trip is amazing. Soooo much has happened. It seems like it's been an eternity since we left Reno last Thursday morning. I almost cried as I got on I-80 East instead of West toward Santa Cruz. but now I can't imagine getting on a freeway going west. I'm set on east and am enjoying it.
Anyway.
I woke up this morning at 7 and got stuff packed into the car and made breakfast and woke up Emily and we were back on I-90 East by 9:30. We drove to Mitchell, South Dakota, and saw the corn palace. It's a giant concrete building in South Dakota, covered top to bottom with fucking corn. Colored corn, arranged so that there are pictures on the side of the building, in a theme. They change the corn every year.
After a brief stint in the corn palace--where I bought a corn snowman Christmas ornament--we drove on to Sioux Falls, where we stopped to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It was nice to get out of the car for a while. Funny movie but not spectacular.
We got pizza in Sioux Falls and then got back on the road for the last time and drove here, to a KOA in Jackson, Minnesota. It's a nice campground.
We'd been reading Ella Enchanted out loud to each other and today we finished it.
I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Ann tonight. It was good to talk to her again (not drunk like I was Monday, when I drunk-dialed both Ann and Alica). I miss my wench.
I want to climb Devil's Tower.
I started collecting shot glasses, I decided.
Grah. I don't think I'll be able to fill this journal by Saturday (the 15th--our planned arrival date in New Haven) without babbling on quite a bit. It's now 1:18 am Minnesota time (11:18 pm Santa Cruz time, 2:18 am New Haven time) on Thursday morning. I'm sooo tired.
So maybe I'll write tomorrow while Emily drives. If I can think of things to say. My brain is sort of overwhelmed and silent these days, except to do long division in my head to calculate mileage.
21-29 mpg.
Thursday, 13 July
We're in Wisconsin now. Emily is driving and I thought I'd take the opportunity to write. It may be really late when we stop to camp, so I don't know if I'll have time to write then.
We got up this morning around 9 and left the campground at about 10. We struck out with the intent of a day of marathon driving, and we've done pretty well.
We stopped to see a 60' tall Jolly Green Giant. We also stopped to see the Spam Museum in... um... somewhere. Minnesota. It was a pretty funny place. We bought a bunch of spam stuff. I got a shot glass and a pair of boxers, plus a onesie for Elena. I also bought a little thing of spam. I mean, you can't go to the spam museum and not buy spam. Unless you're Emily.
Since then it's just been driving. We crossed the Mississippi River and have been in Wisconsin for a while. We're on our way to another KOA campground; this one is just outside chicago in Illinois. Hopefully we'll get there tonight and set up camp and get to bed all fairly early. From Chicago, it's still about 900 miles to Connecticut. And we're trying to get there by Saturday, the 15th, so we need to cover a big chunk of that tomorrow.
Well, I guess we're in Illinois now. Never been here before either. Two new states in one day! Woo!
anyway. So far I haven't been terribly impressed with the USA. It seems mostly to be a large flat expanse of stupid people, punctuated by fairly short bursts of mountains, which are also filled with stupid people. Who marry their cousins, have bad teeth, are fat, and don't know what molecular biology is. Why did I leave California?
I'm hoping that the East Coast will be a lot like the West Coast, in that there will be cell phone reception, large cities close together, lots of good universities, and large populations of intelligent people. People intelligent enough to NOT live in the midwest. And I still don't get why they think they're the West.
There's a lot of corn in America. I miss artichoke fields. I miss Neal. Damn my stupid heart, for figuring itself out so slowly! I wanted to leave fully satisfied, feeling done with Santa cruz, feeling like I had truly lived there, truly experienced it. But instead I realized how little I knew of Santa Cruz and its occupants. And how little I know of myself.
We're near our KOA now. So maybe I'll write more later. Peace out.
Friday, 14 July
Bastille Day!
We made it to the KOA all right, got checked in and whatnot, and discovered...
FIREFLIES!
Fireflies are pretty cool. I last saw them in Ohio when I was seven. They're like little flecks of gold glitter all over everything.
It started raining in the middle of the night. We got wet.
This morning we packed up the car and started out again.
We drove through Chicago--which took forever--into Indiana. It rained in Indiana. We got lost on a state highway but made it back to I-90/80 eventually. In the meantime, we passed through Amish country and saw some Amish people. There are a lot of Amish people in the United States!
It rained.
We got to Ohio and it rained. Then it rained some more. Visibility was nil, most of the Ohio drivers hadn't turned on their headlights, and it fucking rained. It was hot. We drove.
We got to Pennsylvania eventually and the rain stopped for about 90 minutes. Just as we parked at our hotel here in Clearfield (Clearwater? Clearsomething), the rain began again. Fucking rain.
So I guess tonight is my last night before my Yale/New Haven experience officially begins. I feel like I should have something momentous to say, but I'm exhausted and can't think of anything. I can't even think of what sort of thing to say.
I'm growing up? I'm leaving? I know how to drive a stick shift? I hate most of America? I miss my life and my friends?
It was hard leaving Pryce St. I'd lived at 158 Pryce for so long, and had gone through so much there. I hope I have the same kinds of good experiences at 96 York Sq #4 in New Haven. I'm anxious to get there and to see what waits for me. How big is the apartment? How big are the rooms? What are the kitchen and bathroom like? Where do I park my car?
And there are so many other things to worry about, too. I need to set up the internet, buy a TV set and set up cable, transfer my bank account and my driver's license and my registration to Connecticut, find a dentist and get my cavities filled, buy a bed and a desk, locate the best grocery stores, find the local laundromat, etc. There's so much to be done and I'm so nervous. Here I go, there's no stopping me now. I'm one day away from living in Connecticut. I made a decision in March and now I have to live it through. I hope nothing is ever this scary again. But then, life seems to be a series of things that get harder and harder. So I just have to keep fighting harder.
Saturday, 15 July
Today dawned wet and grey. We stayed at a Days Inn last night instead of camping, which turned out to be a good idea. It must have rained all night, and it was raining when we woke up at 8:30. Damn Pennsylvania. Damn the rain.
We got up, packed, breakfasted, and headed out. About 20 miles down the road we decided to stop for gas. I started to pull off towards the exit, and POP! thudthudthudthudthudthud"Isthatus?"thudthudthudthdu"FUCK!"thudthudthud"Pullover!"thud thud thud ...thud ...thud... thud.
The right rear tire was very neatly punctured. And very very very flat. So, despite being half a mile from the gas station, we called the Ford Roadside Assistance hotline. Without any issues, a guy was dispatched to our location and arrived in a little less than 45 minutes. He changed the tire (we had unloaded the whole back of the car so we could get at the spare tire) and told us where to go to buy a new tire.
So we gassed up in Kylertown, then drove the forty-odd miles to State College. Fucking Pennsylvania. It sucks to drive 40 miles on a 50mph tire.
We found a PepBoys, and miraculously they were super nice and really quick. We were out of there, new tire and repacked hatch and all, in less than an hour.
So finally we actually set out. We made good time through Pennsylvania and New York. Connecticut was a bit slower, but we still did okay. We arrived in New Haven around 7. I picked up my keys from the law school, and we found our way to my street. We tried the wrong building first--we went into 94 York Sq instead of 96 York Sq--but we eventually found the right apartment.
It's hot. It's 10:30 at night, and I'm sweating. First order of business tomorrow is to buy fans. Big fans. Second order of business is floor lamps. I have no lights. Third order is a bed....
Anyway. The apartment.
It's the fourth floor of a town house. It has five rooms--a main room or living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and two other rooms. I'm lying on the floor in the one that will be my bedroom. The other one will be an office or spare room or something. The apartment is actually really nice. It's hot and dingy and at the top of a million stairs, but it's really a steal. And the location is pretty sweet too. I'm next door to the gym and a block away from Toad's Place and the Yale bookstore. The Hall of Graduate Studies, the Sterling Memorial Library, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library are all about two blocks away. So my world is about to narrow to this two-block radius.
We unpacked most of the car today I still need to figure out where I'm allowed to park it, and unload it here before I move it.
Emily took me out for dinner. We went to Yorkside Pizza, which I had been to on the prospective weekend. They have pretty fantastic pizza. We drank Sam Adams beer.
My stuff is sprawled across the floor of the living room. Once I get some furniture, it will be a little easier to get stuff out of the way. In the meantime, so much for filling this journal before I got to New Haven. I'm exhausted, as usual, and I'm not going to fill any more pages tonight.
Goodnight and good luck.
This trip is amazing. Soooo much has happened. It seems like it's been an eternity since we left Reno last Thursday morning. I almost cried as I got on I-80 East instead of West toward Santa Cruz. but now I can't imagine getting on a freeway going west. I'm set on east and am enjoying it.
Anyway.
I woke up this morning at 7 and got stuff packed into the car and made breakfast and woke up Emily and we were back on I-90 East by 9:30. We drove to Mitchell, South Dakota, and saw the corn palace. It's a giant concrete building in South Dakota, covered top to bottom with fucking corn. Colored corn, arranged so that there are pictures on the side of the building, in a theme. They change the corn every year.
After a brief stint in the corn palace--where I bought a corn snowman Christmas ornament--we drove on to Sioux Falls, where we stopped to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It was nice to get out of the car for a while. Funny movie but not spectacular.
We got pizza in Sioux Falls and then got back on the road for the last time and drove here, to a KOA in Jackson, Minnesota. It's a nice campground.
We'd been reading Ella Enchanted out loud to each other and today we finished it.
I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Ann tonight. It was good to talk to her again (not drunk like I was Monday, when I drunk-dialed both Ann and Alica). I miss my wench.
I want to climb Devil's Tower.
I started collecting shot glasses, I decided.
Grah. I don't think I'll be able to fill this journal by Saturday (the 15th--our planned arrival date in New Haven) without babbling on quite a bit. It's now 1:18 am Minnesota time (11:18 pm Santa Cruz time, 2:18 am New Haven time) on Thursday morning. I'm sooo tired.
So maybe I'll write tomorrow while Emily drives. If I can think of things to say. My brain is sort of overwhelmed and silent these days, except to do long division in my head to calculate mileage.
21-29 mpg.
Thursday, 13 July
We're in Wisconsin now. Emily is driving and I thought I'd take the opportunity to write. It may be really late when we stop to camp, so I don't know if I'll have time to write then.
We got up this morning around 9 and left the campground at about 10. We struck out with the intent of a day of marathon driving, and we've done pretty well.
We stopped to see a 60' tall Jolly Green Giant. We also stopped to see the Spam Museum in... um... somewhere. Minnesota. It was a pretty funny place. We bought a bunch of spam stuff. I got a shot glass and a pair of boxers, plus a onesie for Elena. I also bought a little thing of spam. I mean, you can't go to the spam museum and not buy spam. Unless you're Emily.
Since then it's just been driving. We crossed the Mississippi River and have been in Wisconsin for a while. We're on our way to another KOA campground; this one is just outside chicago in Illinois. Hopefully we'll get there tonight and set up camp and get to bed all fairly early. From Chicago, it's still about 900 miles to Connecticut. And we're trying to get there by Saturday, the 15th, so we need to cover a big chunk of that tomorrow.
Well, I guess we're in Illinois now. Never been here before either. Two new states in one day! Woo!
anyway. So far I haven't been terribly impressed with the USA. It seems mostly to be a large flat expanse of stupid people, punctuated by fairly short bursts of mountains, which are also filled with stupid people. Who marry their cousins, have bad teeth, are fat, and don't know what molecular biology is. Why did I leave California?
I'm hoping that the East Coast will be a lot like the West Coast, in that there will be cell phone reception, large cities close together, lots of good universities, and large populations of intelligent people. People intelligent enough to NOT live in the midwest. And I still don't get why they think they're the West.
There's a lot of corn in America. I miss artichoke fields. I miss Neal. Damn my stupid heart, for figuring itself out so slowly! I wanted to leave fully satisfied, feeling done with Santa cruz, feeling like I had truly lived there, truly experienced it. But instead I realized how little I knew of Santa Cruz and its occupants. And how little I know of myself.
We're near our KOA now. So maybe I'll write more later. Peace out.
Friday, 14 July
Bastille Day!
We made it to the KOA all right, got checked in and whatnot, and discovered...
FIREFLIES!
Fireflies are pretty cool. I last saw them in Ohio when I was seven. They're like little flecks of gold glitter all over everything.
It started raining in the middle of the night. We got wet.
This morning we packed up the car and started out again.
We drove through Chicago--which took forever--into Indiana. It rained in Indiana. We got lost on a state highway but made it back to I-90/80 eventually. In the meantime, we passed through Amish country and saw some Amish people. There are a lot of Amish people in the United States!
It rained.
We got to Ohio and it rained. Then it rained some more. Visibility was nil, most of the Ohio drivers hadn't turned on their headlights, and it fucking rained. It was hot. We drove.
We got to Pennsylvania eventually and the rain stopped for about 90 minutes. Just as we parked at our hotel here in Clearfield (Clearwater? Clearsomething), the rain began again. Fucking rain.
So I guess tonight is my last night before my Yale/New Haven experience officially begins. I feel like I should have something momentous to say, but I'm exhausted and can't think of anything. I can't even think of what sort of thing to say.
I'm growing up? I'm leaving? I know how to drive a stick shift? I hate most of America? I miss my life and my friends?
It was hard leaving Pryce St. I'd lived at 158 Pryce for so long, and had gone through so much there. I hope I have the same kinds of good experiences at 96 York Sq #4 in New Haven. I'm anxious to get there and to see what waits for me. How big is the apartment? How big are the rooms? What are the kitchen and bathroom like? Where do I park my car?
And there are so many other things to worry about, too. I need to set up the internet, buy a TV set and set up cable, transfer my bank account and my driver's license and my registration to Connecticut, find a dentist and get my cavities filled, buy a bed and a desk, locate the best grocery stores, find the local laundromat, etc. There's so much to be done and I'm so nervous. Here I go, there's no stopping me now. I'm one day away from living in Connecticut. I made a decision in March and now I have to live it through. I hope nothing is ever this scary again. But then, life seems to be a series of things that get harder and harder. So I just have to keep fighting harder.
Saturday, 15 July
Today dawned wet and grey. We stayed at a Days Inn last night instead of camping, which turned out to be a good idea. It must have rained all night, and it was raining when we woke up at 8:30. Damn Pennsylvania. Damn the rain.
We got up, packed, breakfasted, and headed out. About 20 miles down the road we decided to stop for gas. I started to pull off towards the exit, and POP! thudthudthudthudthudthud"Isthatus?"thudthudthudthdu"FUCK!"thudthudthud"Pullover!"thud thud thud ...thud ...thud... thud.
The right rear tire was very neatly punctured. And very very very flat. So, despite being half a mile from the gas station, we called the Ford Roadside Assistance hotline. Without any issues, a guy was dispatched to our location and arrived in a little less than 45 minutes. He changed the tire (we had unloaded the whole back of the car so we could get at the spare tire) and told us where to go to buy a new tire.
So we gassed up in Kylertown, then drove the forty-odd miles to State College. Fucking Pennsylvania. It sucks to drive 40 miles on a 50mph tire.
We found a PepBoys, and miraculously they were super nice and really quick. We were out of there, new tire and repacked hatch and all, in less than an hour.
So finally we actually set out. We made good time through Pennsylvania and New York. Connecticut was a bit slower, but we still did okay. We arrived in New Haven around 7. I picked up my keys from the law school, and we found our way to my street. We tried the wrong building first--we went into 94 York Sq instead of 96 York Sq--but we eventually found the right apartment.
It's hot. It's 10:30 at night, and I'm sweating. First order of business tomorrow is to buy fans. Big fans. Second order of business is floor lamps. I have no lights. Third order is a bed....
Anyway. The apartment.
It's the fourth floor of a town house. It has five rooms--a main room or living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and two other rooms. I'm lying on the floor in the one that will be my bedroom. The other one will be an office or spare room or something. The apartment is actually really nice. It's hot and dingy and at the top of a million stairs, but it's really a steal. And the location is pretty sweet too. I'm next door to the gym and a block away from Toad's Place and the Yale bookstore. The Hall of Graduate Studies, the Sterling Memorial Library, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library are all about two blocks away. So my world is about to narrow to this two-block radius.
We unpacked most of the car today I still need to figure out where I'm allowed to park it, and unload it here before I move it.
Emily took me out for dinner. We went to Yorkside Pizza, which I had been to on the prospective weekend. They have pretty fantastic pizza. We drank Sam Adams beer.
My stuff is sprawled across the floor of the living room. Once I get some furniture, it will be a little easier to get stuff out of the way. In the meantime, so much for filling this journal before I got to New Haven. I'm exhausted, as usual, and I'm not going to fill any more pages tonight.
Goodnight and good luck.
