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August 26, 2008 | 3 Comments

Hunting without a license

It’s funny what comes to mind when one says they used to live in Washington, DC, to someone who has never lived there. They tell me, almost like a reflex, that it’s the murder capitol of the country. I think the PR folks for Mayor Fenty need to get off their asses and come up with something, anything, else to replace this perception. Possible new mottos could be:

DC: 50,000 Lawyers Couldn’t Be Wrong — except, I guess, most folks don’t know that there are 50,000 lawyers working in the city. So maybe that one is out.

City of Monuments

Come for the Cherry Blossoms, Stay for the Slowly Flooding Metro

Okay, okay, so maybe “murder capitol” rolls off the tongue better than any of those. But hey, there was that recent Supreme Court decision to overturn the city’s ban on handguns, so perhaps a new campaign could focus on the pro-gun tourist. 

“Show the Murder Capitol Who’s Who!”

Or maybe not.

So I’ve started trying to figure out how to respond to these accusations that DC would have eventually killed me, either by terrorist attack, nuclear bomb, random violence, shock of the cost of living, or terrible traffic. And while many of those things could happen, that’s like chastising someone who lives in Florida as waiting around to die in a hurricane. Instead I think most initial responses are something like, “wow, do you miss the sun?”

Florida people, correct me if I’m wrong.

I’ve tried to tell people that the violence isn’t that bad, all told, that it’s pretty, has a lot of free museums and other cultural attractions, etc. And then they lean in, lower their voice so as to avoid Big Brother’s invisible gaze, and say, “and there are a lot of POLITICAL people out there.”

This is where I gasp and looked shocked.

“Political people, are you sure?” I’ve sometimes put my hand over my heart in an ironic pledge position, but really to suggest that my pulse may quit at any second. And then they of course realize I’m kidding.

This conversation, had about half a dozen times since moving, has been interesting and mildly amusing. But I didn’t expect to have it while trying to buy two new cell phones from my carrier this morning. I even got to see a permit to carry a concealed weapon (which frankly, I could have made myself with some plastic laminating sheets and my old Royal typewriter that I used to bang out bad short stories when I was a kid.

“Bet you won’t see this in DC, mister.”

He had me there. His point was that there would be many fewer violent attacks there if you weren’t sure if your intended victim was packing or not. I did not care to debate this with him, wanting only the nice shiny LG phones that would make it easier to text, and bring Susanne finally into the 21st century. Or even 1995, for that matter, since the woman has eschewed mobile devices until now. I just told him that I took care to stay in safe neighborhoods and not do anything stupid. Like pull a gun out of my pants to thwart some would-be mugger, only to have him wrest it from me and shoot me in the face. Because that would be my life if I had a gun. Or rather, the end of my life.

Nice to know, though, that certain people are carrying out here. They’re indebted to this Wild West thing. All I really want is a job.

August 25, 2008 | 0 Comments

East side, west side

Let’s just say the two sides are pretty close. It’s bigger than it lets on, but it’s pretty small nonetheless. I’ve taken barely any photos since I’ve been trying to get the house in order, which is coming along, finally. We may have turned a corner. Tomorrow I’ll be heading to Seattle for a few days and I’ll get to spend quality time with an old friend, so I’m really looking forward to that!

Backstage Bistro in Walla2

Backstage Bistro in Walla2

 

 

I’m here at Verve, a “coffee and art house,” which is currently hosting about 5 moms and their kids for a mid-morning get-together. It’s not exactly the hip quiet I was looking for in which to write, but it’s nice that nobody here is frowning on them, either. That’s something to like about this place. I’ve started a list, I suppose, since I just adore lists. So far, on it are the following:

Walla Walla Wheatbrew, a local heffeweisen that is pretty enjoyable with lemon or orange.

The desserts at the Colville St. Patisserie, which nearly makes all of last week’s awfulness bearable.

The slower pace, as referred to earlier, though I’m still on my DC gear so I haven’t noticed it much yet.

Speaking of gears, there is also this:

 

Outside a transmission shop, Walla Walla

Outside a transmission shop, Walla Walla

I’m at a loss for words, I think. But I see a new LJ icon in my future.

It’s a bit rainy today, which is fine because it keeps things cooler around here. It’s not just an abstraction of desert, it was 111F earlier last week. Thank goodness we missed that day. We’re about halfway unpacked, I’d say. Once the pictures all go up we can cover up a bunch of the wall dings, so it’ll look a lot better. It just doesn’t seem like good business practice to me to never inspect one’s investment properties and just wait for shit to break. What’s a $1,000 roof repair today will be a $20,000 roof replacement later, right? But hey, I don’t run the place. I don’t even work here!

So Walla Walla, also called Wallyworld, which I find funny because of Vacation, is kind of cute, kind of hot, kind of small, kind of interesting. I have to hit the pavement for real and get a job. That perhaps deserves its own blog. Kidding.

 

Stone Soup in Walla Walla

Stone Soup in Walla Walla

So Walla Walla is from one of the native American tribes around here, meaning “water water.” It’s right upon the Columbia river and is a big part of the burgeoning wine industry in Washington State. It’s pretty isolated, about 40 miles from the first thing you could call a “big” town, and about two hours south of Spokane. There’s a westerner-easterner of Washington rift here that I’d never thought about but that is reminiscent of the North VA vs rest of the state infighting that folks in the DC area know all too well.

Politics is a little different out here. The WA governer, Chirs Gregoire, came out here last week to give a stump speech on the campaign trail, since she’s up for re-election. About 100 people showed up at this very coffeehouse to hear her speak, and they clapped and had occasional standing ovations. It all ended with chants of “four more years!” Interesting to see their fervor, after I’d gone to Clinton’s concession speech, which looked more like this:

 

Clinton concession speech

Clinton concession speech

I’m not saying one is better or worse than the other, just that there are some different expectations about what government means, how it runs, what politicians can really offer their constituents, and whether political change comes from within or outside the system. I feel very tentative about engaging in any political discussion in a way I didn’t hesitate back in DC, because I knew the grounds for conversation. I have to suss them out here. It’s one more adjustment to make, I suppose.

Okay, on to the researching part of my day. I’ll have lots more photos of Washington soon.

August 24, 2008 | 0 Comments

more photos from our trip

Here are some more photos of Lang on my Flickr account:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/evmaroon/sets/72157606911832888/

And here are some shots driving through Montana:

 

Montana mountains

Montana mountains

I’ve only seen things like that in photos on well meaning but irritating motivational posters. Quite another thing to see them in real life, I can attest.

 

Prairie and clouds

Prairie and clouds

Again, even though the prairie got somewhat monotonous, it was still incredible and all that sky!

 

Montana as a storm rolls in

Montana as a storm rolls in

This was the start of a storm that I mentioned in a previous post. We got to see quite a light show up in the Rocky Mountains at real western saloon place named Trixie’s, where Susanne used the one and only outhouse we saw on our trip. I asked how it was and she rolled her eyes at me, because isn’t that OBVIOUS. Well, yes, it is. But as I wasn’t going to use it myself — I think I’d rather die of a bladder explosion — I only had her eyewitness testimony to describe it for me. So I’ll just go on my possibly condescending, limited stereotypes of outhouses to imagine the experience. Thanks a lot, Susanne. 😉

Now then, we left the picturesque West for entry into our new abode, which is best summed up thusly:

 

Our new toilet

Our new toilet

Let’s just say we’re cleaning and unpacking and it’s a bit overwhelming but we’re getting there. Baby steps, people, baby steps. Will post more later about a few things we’ve done since showing up in this town.

Next up: Walla Walla farmer’s market, our first trip to Sonic, and a speech by Chris Gregoire.

August 22, 2008 | 1 Comment

Four frat brothers walked into a bar…

Okay, I’m trying to make it sound like a joke because I deal in humor, and jokers are wild, and uh, well, it’s babystepping in terms of progress of our move in. Why babysteps, you wonder? I usually blast through the unpacking stage–turn on some Groove Armada, break out the boxes, a place for everything and everything in its place. Not this time. This time we go to the office to sign the lease and the woman in charge looks at us in wonder. We explain who we are. She looks as blank as one of the 39,867 cows we’ve just passed on our trip. Susanne gives her the address, explains we’re moving in TODAY. Good thing we got here early enough that she’s still in the office, because the back up key pick-up location, the security office, was so not going to be helpful. I say this in hindsight, of course.

“Oh,” she says, “I’m not sure if we’ve cleaned that property yet or not. You can just give Scott a call if you need anything.” She says this like Scott’s generally a helpful fellow. Rest assured, Scott is far, far from being anything close to intrepid, thorough, genuine, or even not completely lazy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I take Scott’s card, which is worth more as the 1/200th of a penny value of the paper it’s printed on than as a conduit to a resource. We sign the lease, which she is now getting around to printing, pay  the prorated rent plus another grand or so in fees and etc. we didn’t know we’d have to pay, and take possession of the keys.

The house looks so cute on the outside. It’s a little Cape Codder of a building, nestled between some house under renovation and the school’s recycling center. Yes, recycling center. Where people can drop off their cans, bottles, and other sundry renewable items at any time of the day or night. Great. It’s also across from the student health clinic and counseling center, so that in case we have to send any stalker students to counseling, they can conveniently stop by our house on their way to counseling. Also great!

We walk in the back way of the house because that’s where we parked, just outside the garage, where I see about 5 or 6 bees flying into the garage rafters. Oh dear, I think, as one deathly allergic to bees, hopefully we can get the hive, if one is there, destroyed quickly so I don’t have to worry every time I walk into the back yard. We unlock the back door, and walk into the kitchen.

Kitchen! Yay! Kitchen! NO! The floor is streaked with something, there’s schmutz on the stove, and a lot of cobwebs. I suppose the admin assistant was right — this place hasn’t been cleaned yet. Closer inspection — well, not too close — reveals a very dirty toilet in the “quarter  bath” downstairs, which is my new term for it, more dirty floors in the front foyer, and the distinctive and unmistakable odor of cat urine, throughout the house. To say we were disappointed would be an understatement. I have taken to calling the house, so cute on the outside, the “Liar House,” because it is so unacceptable in the interior. We walked through the house, finding dinged up walls, many many chips in the trim paint, holes in the wall (Scott later explained he doesn’t care about any hole that is smaller than the size of a human fist — good to know, so I can run around and put a bunch of quarter-sized holes in the wall when we leave), broken fireplace tiles, and on and on. The only house I have ever moved into that was in worse condition than this one was in 1992, when I moved into a place previously inhabited by four fraternity brothers. But other than that, this was disgusting. The mildew in the uncaulked tub alone was enough to call in a professional cleaning service, which I presumed the college has for these FACULTY house rentals.

Nope. We gave the building manager a call, and he explained that he sometimes uses a couple of “girls” he knows through some painters he’s worked with, but that’s it. The only cleaning that is done is done by the exiting tenant. I have never heard such horseshit in my life. I got him to agree to come over to look at the place with us. He was Mr. Excuses — he didn’t know when we were coming, turned into he doesn’t want to inconvenience us with little things like painting, morphed into he knows it needs work and he’ll do it — once we leave next summer. He looked at us like we were a couple of undergrads who don’t know any better. I was pretty furious, but I felt like I couldn’t give him a hard time before Susanne even gets to teaching, and I realize this guy could potentially make my life miserable if I get on his bad side.

Let me make this clear: it’s not like one generally gets good service on things like housing maintenance in DC. Far from it. Everything is a negotiation, a lot of cajoling needs to happen, probably a $20 bill now and again. But you know up front it’s going to be shit, you’re going to deal with BS artists, and you know what to expect. This guy, and as far as I can tell, other folks in this town act like they’re doing you a favor not doing anything for you. He’s telling us we should be grateful we have new windows and an air conditioning unit from 1957. I’ll tell you what inconvenient is, mister jackass. Inconvenient is driving 3,550 miles across the ever-loving country, to come into a disgusting pig sty, needing to turn around, drive another 80 miles round trip to go to a place to load up on cleaning supplies, come back, clean the entire house, and THEN unpack. Inconvenient is not having to step around a painter while he redoes the beat-up trim.

Michael suggested we not rate our Walla Walla experience on the one day. He is right. But I do not see why I should have to put forth a tremendous amount of effort to make things go my way because other people are not doing their jobs. That is not acceptable. And to have this really sweet road trip end in a miserable situation–which could so easily have not had to happen–that is sad. So I am sad. And I will take it one step at a time, and try to find some semblance of home here because I keep hearing Tim Gunn in my head, saying, “Make it work.” Maybe I should email Tim Gunn.

Dear Mr. Gunn, may I call you Tim. Thanks so much for being an inspiration. This town I’ve just moved to seems to really suck, but I know you would tell me to get in there, designers, and make it work. I can really appreciate your positive attitude right now. You’re an inspiration!

Holla at cha boy,

Everett

August 22, 2008 | 1 Comment

The loooong state of Montana

Eastern Montana and Western Montana are like old friends who don’t get together so much anymore. As we drove past a 60-mile long Indian reservation (and wow, the US Government really did give them some of the worst, most untenable land in the country), there were a lot of flats and a few rolling hills, the sky reaching down all the way to the horizon. I noticed that a funny thing happens when it does this. It seems to change color, kin of in a hazy way, kind of dusty, kind of purple, kind of Photoshopped. Fascinating to someone who’s only seen sky, buildings, and ground.

Eastern Montana gradually gives way to what can only be described as the Old West, in what eventually comes across as the west’s version of people who still want to live in the old Confederacy. At least they echo each other to me. We saw more mountainous terrain, the CR-V climbing up some 4,000 feet of elevation, and the towns became more frequent and more populated. I also started to see a preponderance of Lounge/Casino/Restaurant establishments, sometimes three or four to a town that had only one general store or grocery. As we made our way west, we started hitting the Rocky Mountains which, shockingly, have a lot of rocks. I’d actually never thought about that! We drove through a mountain pass on our way to Missoula, which was something like you’d see in a spy flick: curvy two-lane mountain road, mountain on one side, balance-beam-wide road (which are 4 inches across, by the way), and cliff. Don’t these people believe in guard rails? Holy shit, we could drive right off into the river below, people! Where is the local chapter of MADD?

(Editor’s note: pictures of all of this are on Susanne’s camera, so when we have a chance we’ll edit this post.)

Missoula was nestled in some of the mountains, down in the valley. Were this California or anywhere on the East Coast, there would be tons of houses up in the hills as well, but the people out west here have a shitload of space, and they’re not anywhere near to using it up yet. And it’s kind of in clumps that are like mercury droplets that haven’t merged together yet — town droplet, space space space, town droplet, etc. We saw as we were driving down, a huge thunderstorm several miles away. The only time I’ve ever seen a storm and not been it it is from the window of a plain, so again, the sky is huge out here. We drove down to our hotel after 10 hours of driving through Montana, only to find that their power had been out for two hours. We gave my friend Anna a call and met up with her for dinner at a local restaurant, and chatted about grad school and crazy people. Ah, it almost felt like home!

The next day we drove through the rest of Montana — how could there be more? — and through Idaho into Washington State. More scrubland, more wheat fields, the start of long lines of wind energy mills, along the tops of the hills. They almost look over you as you go by, far away automatons that could someday descend into town and chop us all into little pieces. So be nice to your neighborhood wind mill, people!

The drive on the last day was only about 6 hours, which for us is a breeze now. The last leg into Walla Walla takes us by a paper mill on the Columbia river which I swear is manufacturing spoiled broccoli, because that’s what it smells like. not spoiled spinach or spoiled anything else green vegetable. Or even spoiled artichoke, which I have personally drunk in the awful form of Cynar, an Italian liquor to avoid AT ALL COSTS. Definitely broccoli.

We rolled into town and showed up at the college to collect the keys to the house and sign the lease. And here is where things went more than a bit downhill. Next post for those details, because I really have to include pictures with that.

But hey, we made it! Final mileage count, 3,550. 27.2 miles per gallon, so we bought 130 gallons of gas, and at an average cost of $4.80 per gallon, that comes out to $625 in gas. We saved a bunch on hotel costs, though, spending three nights for free at various relatives’ homes, and only spent an average of $120 on hotels the other nights. The best shower was at the casino in Niagara Falls, which was a dream. The worst was the little motel in Saskatchewan, but even that was preferable to the disgusting cavern called a shower in our present house. Let’s just say we spent $150 yesterday at Target buying cleaning supplies…

August 21, 2008 | 1 Comment

Back online for the moment…

A raging thunderstorm in Missoula took out the Internet connection of our hotel, and we haven’t had Internet here in Walla Walla until we had the chance to stop by a Web cafe today, so this is my first chance to update the blog. I’ll start back at Lang, Saskatchewan, where my Mom grew up. (Please note that WordPress won’t let me rotate vertically-shot photos! I don’t know why…) It’s as small a town as she suggested. Here are some shots:

 

Grainary

Grainary

 

Train driving through Lang

Train driving through Lang

 

 

 

Grain storage in Lang

Grain storage in Lang

 

 

United Church of Canada

United Church of Canada

It was a lot dustier than I’d imagined, though just about as flat as Mom had told me. Emphasis on “flat.”

We barely made it through immigration the evening before, the Canadian officer asking us “Why Lang,” as if to say, okay, I’ll bite, this ought to be good. Susanne did all the talking. We made it through, thinking crap, we shouldn’t have gotten rid of all that wine (each person can only take two bottles across) because three times through, nobody looked at anything other than our ID. But four times is the charm, as I’ll mention later.

The towns were very small in the flats of Saskatchewan, but none smaller than tiny Ralph, which apparently consisted of one house. One. Probably Ralph. I had this image of a stubborn farmer who went to the provincial monthly hearing insisting he get his own town name, and 30 years later, he had a sign on Highway 39. That persistent Ralph! Wish we’d taken a picture.

 

Grain silo in SK

Grain silo in SK

So the plains were interesting, lots of farms, steer, farms, steer, farms, steer . . . and by the 14th hour it was much less interesting. I suppose people are born there and live their whole lives there. Every so often we’d pass a graveyard right next to the state highway, in North Dakota, Saskatchewan, or eastern Montana, marked only by a wrought iron gate with the name of the cemetery. For being such an Easterner, it seemed very lonely to me out there, in the same way that being used to lots of green suburban lawns made me find Phoenix, with its miles and miles of desert dirt, seem unfinished.

I wonder how long it will take to adjust.

We spent about twenty minutes driving through Lang, where we didn’t see another person, but they must have seen us. I can only imagine what a big guy and little lady in a car from Washington DC who kept getting out and taking photos of random things looked like to the townsfolk. We’d have gone into the local grocery but it wasn’t open for the day at that point.

We turned around and headed back down Hwy 6 into the very eastern corner of Montana, and alas, they pretty much looked through the car, checking the amount of wine we had and calling out Chuck, their agriculture “specialist” to read the label on our cherries that we’d bought back home.

Chuck: Where’d you get these?

Us: In the states. At Costco.

Chuck: Where?

Me: The Pentagon City Costco, in Arlington, Virginia.

Chuck: Oh.

Other Customs Guy: Do you believe them?

Chuck: Oh, I believe them.

Me: That’s also American ice in that cooler.

At that point I felt Susanne’s virtual foot kicking me in my virtual shin. So I shut up. They let us into the US, cherries, wine, and all. I think after telling them about how we got married, they thought we were on the stupidest honeymoon they’d ever heard of. If only they’d seen us on the Maid of the Mist!

We pulled into Montana and my camera battery gave out. Susanne’s got some photos on her camera, so hopefully I’ll upload those soon.

Meanwhile, another list of animals we saw from SK through Missoula, Montana:

porcupine (combing his hair like a narcissist)

several elk

many, many cows

young buck deer and female deer following him

crows

two prairie dogs on separate occasions

donkeys

horses

bison (! amazing !)

Miles traveled by the time we pulled into Missoula: 3,140.

Next up: driving through Montana, the state with no fixed identity, and Trixie’s restaurant at the top of the storm, Missoula and late dinner with Anna, driving across Idaho

August 19, 2008 | 2 Comments

I don’t understand the behavior of cows

This was Susanne’s favorite quote from today. I of course am the utterer.  I was noticing how the cows out west here seem to all clump together in one part of the field, having no sense of personal space whatsoever. The New York cows, I noted, on the other hand, seem to have cliques. Susanne asked, seemingly genuinely, why I thought that was, to which I shrugged, giving the above response. We had other memorable lines today, including:

1. Looking at the following on the way to Weyburn, SK, we saw this:

 

Chieftan Motel

Chieftan Motel

Susanne: The funniest thing about it is why is he giving a Hitler salute?

2. Everett: You are the queen of the missed photo. This was said when we were driving past four semis, each carrying one propellor blade of a new windmill going up west of Minneapolis. She did not, however, find this humorous.

3. Susanne: You are the king of the missed photo. This in response to her needing to drive around the block so that I could get the picture for item #1.

Other stats from today:

Our total miles so far are 2420.

We’ve killed about 20 butterflies and thousands of other insects, mostly on the windshield. Oh, and one of those creepy orange millipedes, which apparently stowed away and made the poor decision to crawl across Susanne’s legs. He now lives no more.

We’ve driven past roughly 30,000 bales of hay. (Haaay, Jesse!) Here is proof.

 

Hay bales

Hay bales

If we drove past 30,000 bales of hay, we must have driven past 1 million sunflowers, all groomed nicely in fields in North Dakota. I suppose that’s where we get our sunflower oil.

We also saw this:

 

Canada Pacific rail

Canada Pacific rail

Awesome. I’ll try to get pictures of the ginormous granaries tomorrow, where the trains pull in and get tons of grain dumped into each car. After miles and miles of farmland, and possibly some missile silos, it’s been a bit monotonous. Today Susanne and I drove more in silence than any of our other days. I still feel like it’s all one grand adventure, which is good, but it’s starting to sink in that I don’t exactly have a home at the moment, even though I know I’ll make one. It’s exciting, this endless possibilities thing. Kind of like how the telephone lines in Saskatchewan go on and on forever. Susanne captured it in a shot.

 

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

We drive into Lang tomorrow morning. I’ll take lots of pictures and see if I can find Mom’s old farm, or at least the farm plot. I’m sure there’s more to say, but it’s time to turn in.

August 18, 2008 | 1 Comment

Cows across America

 

me and cake

me and cake

We got up at the crack of dawn today–I actually saw the sunrise at Susanne’s parents’ house, which was gorgeous. As I am unable, I didn’t run down the stairs to grab my camera, but it was red and full over the tree line, and from the top of the hill where the house sits, it cast a pale ochre gleam across a half-sky of puffy clouds, battling the bright blue of the sky of the retreating night sky.

Okay, enough of that. We hit the road at 7:30 am and motored our way through to Kalamazoo and then the Michigan-Indiana state line. It was at this point that I realized that though there still are jerky drivers in the Midwest, they don’t come as fast and furious as they do in DC. It’s kind of like the easiest level of Frogger versus the later levels when the logs are all short and the otters are out in force. 

The drive was pretty uneventful; we stopped for gas a couple of times, and I saw a strange sight next to the station, a big pink elephant. Like the kind you’re supposed to see when you’ve kicked back a few too many.

 

Pink elephant statue in Elgin, IN

Pink elephant statue in Elgin, IN

We also saw that it was on a small road called “Elephant Trail,” which confusingly ended in a field (the field you see behind it). Trying to Google it I see there’s a large elephant monument in Elgin, Ontario, so I wonder if this has anything to do with that. Not too sure, since I’m now out of my neck of the country.

We had lunch in Illinois, in some random suburb of Chicago, in a building that looked like the bastard child of Denny’s and your friendly neighborhood orthodontist’s office. Denny’s in layout and menu, and Dr. Elkin in decoration and color choices. Hey, Dr. Elkin was my orthodontist at the Brace Place in New Jersey, and it looked just the same, okay? One buffalo chicken sandwich and California chicken croissant (which means it had two slabs of avocado on it) later, we were back on the road.

We entered Wisconsin and were suddenly confronted with billboard after billboard hocking cheese curds. No similar signs for whey, nor any mention of the availability of tuffets. I really think the tuffet lobbyists and marketers need to get off their lazy asses and stop the monopoly of ottomans. Further, descendants of the Ottoman empire who are out there reading this, how are you possibly okay with people thinking your greatest achievement is the footrest? That’s not the lasting legacy I’d be interested in, is all I’m saying.

So yes, cheese curds. We drove by cow herd after cow herd, standing, sitting, basking as it were, in their glory of cud chewing expertise. Brown Jersey cows, black and white cows, we’ve seen cows from New York through Wisconsin, but we hadn’t seen the barrage of “Lindsey’s cheese curds,” “Blue Hen cheese curds,” “Black Jack’s cheese curds,” all a mere highway exit away. It reminded me of driving through South Carolina seeing the plethora of signs for fireworks. Or Indiana, for that matter. I had no idea Indiana was the South Carolina of the Midwest, but there you have it.

As if the pressure to procure cheese curds wasn’t enough, I also noticed something strange. Somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin all the people of color suddenly disappeared. Now they were just abstract concepts; a legend that humans come in more than pasty white and ruddy white. Even stranger, the white people themselves started to look different. Men were no longer avoidant of mustaches, or plaid pants. Women’s hair fashions got bigger and bigger, almost in some kind of direct correlation with the size of their sunglasses. I started to feel alienated, and it slowly dawned on me: these are not my people. I can only hope that these folks–and I’m sure they’re all LOVELY people–are not like the ones I’ll meet in Walla Walla. Please, God.

We left the rural highway and made our way past Eau Claire and into Minneapolis/St. Paul, where we had a lively dinner with Susanne’s former coworkers at our hotel restaurant. We managed 750 miles today! We’ll head out early again tomorrow to go into Saskatchewan where I shall attempt to track down my mother’s farm, where she grew up. Presumably it has not moved in the last 50 years, so if it’s still standing, I can catch it. I’ll be sure to post pictures. Speaking of pictures, I’ll end with these from the wilds of Wisconsin:

 

Wisconsin field

Wisconsin field

 

Welcome to Wisconsin sign

Welcome to Wisconsin sign

August 18, 2008 | 0 Comments

catching up in pictures

Photos and videos from Friday:

I can’t seem to get an .AVI file on WordPress, so until I find a solution, please go here to see the video:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/evmaroon/2772075679/

August 17, 2008 | 0 Comments

Over the bridge and to the woods…

to grandmother’s house in rural Michigan we go! And so we arrived last night, Susanne tired from driving all day (yes, we’re splitting the driving duties), and me still not feeling like I’d really left home. Most of where we’ve gone I’ve been before, save the remarkable pit stop in Niagara. I wonder if the rest of the drive is going to feel different for me. Whenever I’ve made a transition of any kind, I’ve always had to look back to note when something significant shifted or when I started a new chapter, I never seem to capture the change mid-stream or as it happens. I wonder if that’s perhaps part of what transition is all about: you can know a change is coming, but in the midst of it, you’re too close to actually experience it, and it’s only after it’s over that you can contemplate what is now different in your life.
Susanne’s mom and dad threw us a very lovely wedding reception party for all of the Michigan folks who couldn’t make it out to the wedding last month (a mere 4 weeks ago, I’ll note). We had another very nice cake in our colors–light blue and chocolate brown–though I’m sad to say that the top of our actual wedding cake suffered a very sad fate in the car on the first few days of our trip. The ice we put in the cooler melted, of course, and the cake that I thought was wedged nicely in the cooler defrosted a bit, softened, and slid down to sit in the cold water. Totally ruined, unfortunately. So I’ll never get to actually eat the non-chocolate portion of the very lovely confection. It just wasn’t meant to be. I’ll have to order another one sometime when we’re in Baltimore!
We received some lovely cards from people today, and one hysterically funny present: two obnoxiously bright orange Almont Raiders t-shirts from the local high school. How wonderful that neon orange looks so flattering on us! Oh, wait.
I may take a bath in the jacuzzi tub here, and it occurs to me that we should have done a “hot tubs across America” theme. Maybe for our next trip.
Tomorrow we leave very early for a 12-hour stretch from Detroit to Minneapolis, then to a late supper with Susanne’s old St. Paul crew. I’ll have pictures of the past couple days when I update tomorrow night.

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