another tale from the road

The place: Vancouver. Just to refresh your memory, we had blown a tire on our drive there from Seattle. So our morning was going pretty well. We spent a couple of hours wandering Granville Market and eating a bunch of food (like that's a surprise), then unfortunately had to leave when our parking meter ran out. We were walking back to the parking garage and neither of us could find the car keys. This had become kind of a running joke by then, or if not a joke then just a thing, that neither of us ever thought we had the car keys but that the other person had them. So I said I didn't have them, Alfred checked his pockets but didn't have them, so I started checking my purse. Couldn't find them. Checked my pockets. Not there. Alfred checked again. Totally not in his pockets. By this time we were back at the car, so I started searching through my purse again. The purse I had on the trip was pretty tiny, so it's not like there was a lot to look through, but still. Not there. Somehow, maybe in setting my purse on top of the car to look through it again, I noticed the keys: right on the roof of the car, where I had apparently left them when we parked. It's a good thing Canadians are honest (or just unobservant). Also, just as a side note, Vancouver taught me that I don't hate Canada. Just Ontario.

more tales from the road

Alfred said he liked my post last week about our trip, so here's another one for him. I think some of you may have already heard this story.

The place: Seattle. It was hot. Seattle in general, and Mike's apartment in particular, is not air conditioned. Mike had graciously offered us his bed, but we declined, saying that the couch and air mattress would be just fine for us. Turns out that was a mistake. His bedroom was somehow a lot cooler than the living room, for one thing, and Alfred managed to deflate the air mattress during the night. He has a talent for that. I fared better on the couch, though since I was kind of sweaty I kept sticking to the couch and had to peel myself off of it whenever I rolled over. I tried to keep myself wrapped in the sheet to prevent this, but then the whole hotter-than-hell thing kicked back in. And it wasn't just the heat. Since it was so warm, we kept the windows open at night to try to get some cooler air inside. Mike's apartment was about, oh, 20 feet from 2 major interstates.

You could probably literally get a running start and jump onto I5. So it was loud. And hot. And Alfred somehow deflated the air mattress. The second night, he and I switched sleeping surfaces. I was fine on the air mattress, but he of course was unhappy on the couch. And Mike and I had to listen to him whine all day about being tired. So Mike got proactive. He asked me (via text, with Alfred in the same room as us, if I recall correctly) if it was ok if he crushed up some sleeping pills and put them in Alfred's drink. I said sure. So Mike very generously offered to get us all drinks. He was even nice enough to give Alfred the frozen mug. After awhile, Mike took our glasses back to the kitchen (he had noticed some floaters in Alfred's glass and didn't want Alfred to see them) and soon after that we went to bed. And our dear friend Alfred slept like a baby. Success! He's so much happier with a good night's sleep. Now, just so you don't worry that Alfred's seeing this for the first time right now, Mike did tell him about this the next day. And when we finally left Seattle, we had a few doses of sleeping pills in hand, in case of future emergencies. Thanks, Mike.

tales from the road

As you may have guessed, there was plenty that happened on our trip that didn't make it into our travel blog in much detail. The other day, Alfred and I were talking about one evening that was sort of glossed over at the time, mainly because we didn't want to worry our mothers. The particular night we were remembering the other day was the night we spent in the Grand Tetons. We had arrived in the park and attempted to find a campsite (such a common theme of our trip). Since the official park guide paper said that at least 2 of the campgrounds rarely filled up, we were rather shocked and dismayed to find that there were no spots left anywhere. At that point, I had a bit of a breakdown. I was done. Just done with camping, driving, the trip, everything. I don't even remember if Alfred had a breakdown, I just remember being on the verge of tears and hating everything. I believe the two of us exchanged some heated words.

Eventually we agreed to drive down a dirt road into the forest to try to find a place in the national forest to camp. The road wound up a hill and ended up overlooking the valley and mountain range in the distance. It was perfect, except for one slight little tiny thing: there may have been a homicidal maniac camping nearby. You see, we had driven past a rather suspicious looking van and campsite parked in the middle of the woods. Just beyond that was a clearing with an abandoned looking tent (it had blown upside down), another tent with no one there, and a broken down looking camper. Clearly, we assumed that the owner(s) of the van were murderers who had already killed the occupants of at least one other campsite. Plus, this was still bear country. But despite the potential killers, both human and mammal, we decided to set up camp.

After dinner we came back to our tent and were somewhat relieved to see signs of habitation at the camper near our site. By this time a storm was rolling in: there were masses of dark clouds, lightening, and reports of hail from what internet we could get on our phones. So in an effort to take our minds off of the violent-looking weather, impending bear attack, and van-dwelling murderers, we decided to watch a couple episodes of Weeds. We shared my earphones so that no one outside could hear it. And yeah, we spent close to an hour watching TV in a tent on top of a cliff next to a mountain range. Looking back, it was actually kind of awesome.

my visor

Our whole trip, all I wanted was a visor. We borrowed one for me from Ellery, but it was too big for me, so I decided I was going to buy one from somewhere as a souvenir. Everywhere we went, I looked for a visor. I was hopeful about buying one at an In-N-Out Burger in Las Vegas that had a hard core gift shop next door, but Alfred wouldn't let me. Nice, huh. I finally found the visor of my dreams in Ithaca. It's blue and says Cornell in red letters. I love it. I wore it on the rest of my trip whenever it didn't clash too horribly with my outfit. It was especially good for days when we didn't get to shower, it kept the little hairs on the sides of my head from sticking up too much. Also, it gives me special powers. It's like an amulet. Let me give you some examples. Here my visor has stopped a bus in its tracks, saving my life:

Here my visor is giving me the power to command the ocean:

Today it gave me the power to jog in September in Florida at 6:30pm. It's still really hot and humid in September in Florida at 6:30pm. But with the protection of my visor, I could do it. It wasn't even sunny out, but when I tried taking it off I just felt so naked. I needed it. And it helped me jog for (almost) half an hour tonight. And so, I love it. The end.

getting back into the swing of things

So we've been home and back at work for a couple of weeks now. It still kind of sucks. I keep waiting to settle back in and for everything to get back to normal, but it's not quite happening. We were gone for so long that it's been really hard to go back to everyday life. At the same time, it's like the trip never happened, like someone else just told us about it. For 6 weeks we were constantly on the move, seeing new things, always doing or planning something exciting, lots of adrenaline and stress. Now we're back to grocery shopping, cleaning, going to work every day, and sitting at home watching TV every night. We've both been kind of depressed, which is apparently a fairly common thing after a vacation. We also unfortunately gained a few pounds on the trip, so it sucks having to go back to exercising and watching what we eat after, well, not for so long. It's really just no fun overall. In addition to all that, we've had to back out of going to our friend Katie's wedding in Germany next month. Between money (or more accurately, lack of it), Alfred's passport being about to expire, and my bosses not being too thrilled about me taking another week or so off of work so soon, it's just not going to happen. So not only can we not go, I also feel rotten for having to miss the wedding. Ugh. No, we're not happy to be home, in case that hasn't come through clearly enough. At least we have lots of good pictures to look at.

who's that girl

Yes, I'm going to resume this blog. It's just been kind of nice not having to worry about posting the last several days. Plus I've experienced a sharp decline of blog material in my life over the past week. Luckily I should have pictures to post for a long time, whenever I don't have anything else to use I can just put up pictures from our trip! Like I said in one of my wrap up posts over there, we took almost 6500 pictures on our trip, and only shared a tiny fraction of that on the blog. Like these gems. I was waiting for Alfred to set up the tripod and lighting. These were taken in Sunset Crater Park, with the painted desert in the distance behind me. Hard to believe we were there over 6 weeks ago. Our trip already feels like we just imagined it, or like someone else went on a trip and told us all about it. Good thing we have our blog and so many pictures! By the way, Alfred fixed the map over there. I don't know if anyone noticed, but there was a gap in our drive from Ithaca to Vermont. Alfred thinks it happened because he waited too long to upload the file from the GPS. Anyway, just wanted to check in here, I hope no one has given up on me yet! And if you need something else to read, go check out Mike's blog. I'm such an inspiration.

see ya in 6 weeks

Well, we're on the road. We left just a bit later than expected. We had a lot of stops to make. Anyway, we should be in New Orleans a little after 11 tonight. I sort of need to get working on finding a place to stay tonight. Man, having a computer in the car is awesome!

I just wanted to officially state that I will probably not be posting much here during our trip. First because it's going to take a lot of time to keep the other blog updated, and I'd probably just be writing the same thing in both places anyway. So, I may post here once in awhile, but for the most part it will be at the other one. So come visit us there!

packing

Holy cow, do we have a lot of stuff. We have to fit a tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag, pillows, a sheet and blanket, a sleeping pad, a camping grill, and our bags into my little Hyundai Elantra. And not only does it need to fit, but we need to have space left over to pick up Doug in Washington DC (that's the plan, anyway). Uh, sure. Luckily we're starting on it today so we have a couple of days to get it all to work. I pack the bags, Alfred packs the car. We stick with what we're good at.


In other news, I finished the last of the Twilight series today. Thank God, now I can get on with my life.

Oh, and the fourth of July! We were supposed to be hosting a party with Phil and Lucy at our house, but it ended up getting moved to their neighbors' house, so we spent the day there instead. We met some new people, got to know other people better, ate some good food, drank a bunch, played some flip cup. It was a lot of fun. Waking up the next morning to go to work was not as fun, but that's ok. Here's Alfred in the midst of a round of flip cup. His team won that round. I played a little, my team won 2 of the 3 rounds I played. And we ate watermelon spiked with vodka. Awesome.

I can't believe I haven't mentioned this yet!

We're going on a road trip! I know I've told most of you this already, but we're going on a 5 or 6 week long road trip this summer. We have a new blog going for the trip, it's at www.getawaygolocal.com. I don't want to make that a link, because we have that thing that shows where people came to the site from, and I don't want people to be able to find this blog from there. The tentative plan is to leave next Saturday. If I ever get my vacation approved from work. Yeah, minor detail. So go check out the new blog! There's only one post so far, I need to get on that this weekend.

Also, Alfred has apparently fallen in love with a woman who writes a blog about food and photography.