Final Countdown

My last few moments as a free woman. Today I didn't go see the black sheep and alpaca, which was my original plan for the day, but I did spend some quality time in the kitchen, which is always fun to do on those 98 degree days. I wanted to make bread one last time before I no longer had 5 hours of uninterrupted baking time, so I very lazily made some challah.

That and a couple of phone calls pretty much made up the day. Connecting with Colin and Josie made the day worthwhile, so it didn't really matter what else I did.

A few notes: so far I've gone swimming twice in snowmelt water up in the rivers around here. I feel very proud of myself for getting out to the rivers, and even prouder for going in. It's not like Florida, I'll tell you that!

I didn't get to listen to the lectures, but a) I'm about to go into high-gear lecture listening mode, and b) I did get to watch the Green Butchers last night. Green Butchers was really fun; stomach turning, visually playful, and stocked with an acute sense of weirdness. I especially liked the ending, which seems like the perfect Hollywood ending gone absolutely stupidly out of whack. I would highly recommend it if you, like me, enjoy strange Scandanavian films.

Oh, and I wanted to say, thanks to everyone who has commented as yet. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to/want to comment back, but I guess I'll know eventually. Chef Yang disappeared because I thought he was spam - he was too witty for me. So, dear readers, keep up the good work and perhaps someday I'll get bold enough to engage in a dialoge, rather than just my current pleasant noncommittal yammerings.

Well, I'm off to bed to fitfully toss and turn in anticipation for my big day tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Waiting, Anticipating

It's time to play the waiting game, and so that's what I'm doing. Everything for the past two days has seemed so geared towards Monday and beyond. I cleaned the kitchen at the house, got that P.O. Box and figured out tuition, and ordered a whole bunch of books.

In that shopping mindset, I got excited about replacing my broken cameras with a new digital. I did a ton of research (aka read a lot of customer reviews on Amazon) and I've got a front runner, the Canon PowerShot SD600 6MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom. It seems to have all the capabilities I would likely need through a couple of years of grad school, including some manual abilities, plus it's lightweight and portable enough to just take along on fun trips, plus it's not too super expensive. This is a big decision for me, but also a fun way to while away a day...

Which didn't really need whiling. I did a sprint workout in the middle of the day, after making some split pea soup. The workout was great, mostly since I could see how after three weeks of working out I would be in very good shape. That's a big motivator for me. Also, I have found a workout partner who will definitely challenge me. She's a physical therapist, so she seems to know every possible variation on each exercise, which adds flair and adventure to something otherwise potentially dull and painfull. After the workout, I headed to the market on the bike that I've started to fix up.

So, all in all it was a productive day, but really, what it comes down to is sort of a holding pattern. I'm avoiding resume tweaking (the architecture students I hung out with tonight said that they couldn't remember anyone working during the first summer), trying to decide whether to play in the summer league, and opening a new bank account.

Here's the exciting thing though: soon I'll be writing about real thoughts and ideas, rather than giving a list of what I did in my day. I know you'll miss knowing about how much fun it was to darn my socks, but you'll be oh so intrigued to hear what I really think of Loos' voyeuristic designs. Perhaps this weekend I'll get a chance to listen to the Shiguru Ban keynote address from the HOPES conference and respond. That would be nice.

Also, one last tidbit. Tonight I got invited to a salad party. This is a party in which the host, who is probably a gardener, supplies the greens, and the guests each bring a favorite salad topping to share. What a lovely idea - everyone should have one!

Where is that large automobile? This is not my beautiful house!

Sometimes things don't work out the way you hoped they would. Like yesterday, for example. Erik and I met at the house, looked around, and asked for the application. The landlord suggested that we think another second, since we had asked about him reducing the rent. So we thought for a second, looked for another second, and by the time that we got his attention again, the landlord had given a young, soon to be married couple an application. He refused to give us an application, and we were tossed to the street, out on the apartment hunt again. After a while of driving around we looked on Craigslist, where we saw one good spot, but when we visited, we realized the place was really more for a family, and we gave up on the idea of living together, at least for now.

So I drove to the furthest west house I had looked at, then drove back to the furthest east house I had looked at. I called my mom to help me make the decision of which house to live in, and since I was tired of sitting in my car all the time, I drove up to Hendricks Park, which is right next to the eastern house, parked and sat on a picnic table about 100 feet from the car.

Five or six minutes into our conversation, I hear a car alarm go off. I think it's pretty rude. Then I think maybe it's mine - I could have hit the button when I sat down. So I turn around and walk to the car. Then I see that there's broken glass at my car.

Evidently a pair of young guys busted my little back window to try to get to my stuff. When the alarm went off, they peeled out of the parking lot, and as far as I can tell, they didn't get anything. So that hurried along my decision making process, and I picked a house right away. I called the house to make sure it was still available, then called my dad to tell him what had happened, then called the police. With all those calls done, I drove down the hill and immediately started to unload the stuff from my car into my new house.

It wasn't exactly the way I had imagined things happening, to say the least. But, the house is nice, and the housemate is a frisbee player named Adam. By this point today I've got my room pretty well set up, my clothes all clean, the window of my car fixed, and I'm feeling pretty well oriented to town. So I'm off to the University to figure out how to pay tuition and to set up a P.O. Box so that I have a stable address for everyone to send me care packages!

Our house, in the middle of the block

Finally, a free moment. I arrived in Eugene on Thursday afternoon, and immediately hopped into action. Since then I've had nary a moment to myself, and especially one long enough and internet accessed enough to post. But here I go; are you ready for the saga?

Thursday I drove into town and arrived at Shady Pines, a potential house, with the big drawback that it wouldn't be available 'til July 1. Still, I met Jacob, with whom I'd already had a couple of fun phone conversations and saw the house. Great house, six housemates, three chickens, space for concerts and bike fixing and art making and gardening, and a table with 45's under glass. Lots of fun details, lots to look at. Jacob and I chatted for a while, then he hooked me up with a bike from his friends' house, where there were also rentable spaces, but a two-person and a three-person spot, so I filed away the info and thought little of it (insert foreshadowing here). I got to ride a very small road bike around for the next several hours before the bike parade (!) that Jacob invited me to, so I hopped on and headed to the university to look around. Not much doing in Lawrence, the architecture building, so I decided to time a 10 minute ride south and mark it on my map, then a ten minute ride east, and mark that on my map. That gave me a very rough approximation of where I ought to look for housing, which turned out to be pretty much anywhere in the city of Eugene.

There weren't many For Rent signs up, except on the exceedingly ugly apartment buildings, so my plan wasn't working. I wound up at a bike shop and started my job search, but pretty much everywhere I asked required a resume, which means I have to find a printer, rather than having some sort of application. Good to know, and when I get housing figured out, I'll move on to tweaking my resume for non-office work. Before I went back to Jacob's house, I found a coffee shop with free wireless and hatched a plan to get up early in the morning to get back on Craigslist for a serious round of research and cold calls.

Off to the Bike Parade I went, along the way getting decked out in light pink spandex tights, a bright pink full length princess gown, and a matching visor, which I wore upright as a tiara. Little did I know, but I was underdressed for the occasion - the best costume, in my humble, was a full body yellow spandex unitard that actually went over the wearer's head, to which was attached a yellow balloon. Bikes were also decked out, and as we rode to the sounds of our boombox, we received hearty cheers from all directions. In several locations, we stopped to get off and dance. I felt a bit out of place, what with being entirely sober, but it certainly was a full-immersion introduction to the town.

I stayed the weekend, including Thursday night, with some of Eugene's solid frisbee supporters, who were very kind in opening up their house to me. It was great to have such flexibility, since I knew that my car would be safe parked there, and that I was welcome to go in and out of the house as I needed. Friday morning I did indeed get out early and get to work on my housing research. I found that many of the houses were recently occupied, which greatly shortened my list of possibilities. To put it in a positive light, I figured that it was making my choice easier. I checked out the first place; it was a mess, but livable.

Thus started my day of looking at uninspiring housing and sitting in my car between appointments wondering what I had gotten myself into. Why hadn't I applied to more than one school? Why hadn't I visited? Why was I doing this all anyway? Out of the corner of my eye I saw a for rent sign, pulled into the driveway of a large house, and wrote down the number. A guy about my age was coming across the adjoining parking lot and sat on the front stoop on his cell phone; he motioned for me to join him on the stoop. When he got off the phone, he told me that he had just talked to the landlord who was sending over the handyman to show him the house, and I could join in the tour if I'd like. How convenient! I said yes, but as we went through the house, I quickly realized it wasn't ideal. It was a 10-person boarding house, with a few nice features, but nothing that would make me actually want to live there, including the price of rent. I invited my fellow house-seeker, Erik, to go get coffee.

It turned out that Erik was also a new Option III M.Arch student, currently living in Portland and down for the day frantically trying to find a house amongst the uninspiring offerings. It also turned out that he had worked with Tina, my co-captain for the Manti, at the Green Roundtable in Boston. We chatted and agreed to go look at the two-person house I had written off on Thursday when I picked up the bike for the bike parade.

We searched through town using my vague recollection of its approximate location and found the spot as one of the people living in the next house (also for rent by the same landlord) got home. The two-person house is in the center of the block, surrounded by houses on three sides and a fence to give privacy from the alleyway/parking lot on the fourth side. We walked around, but all the blinds were closed and no one was home, so we knocked on the door of the adjacent house and asked the girl there what she knew about the house. During her positive report, the girl living in the house came home. After much convincing, she showed us the house, which, though small, was well kept and good-looking. We finally got in touch with the landlord, who was at the beach for the weekend, and scheduled to look at the house officially on Monday.

Erik and I talked a while longer and agreed that we were serious about the little house. We'd sleep on it and we had a lot of details to work out, but I left feeling pretty confident.

***

Saturday morning, I headed to the frisbee fields for Solstice, Eugene's home tournament. It was two days of a lot of sun and a lot of new people. I saw Q, a nice familiar face, and also it turns out that Sadie, a former Mantis that I also met last year at Potlatch, is a Eugene local, so I had an immediate connection on the team. I played horribly to start on Saturday - the long car ride had done my game no good - but I quickly warmed back up to the game and by the middle of the day I felt almost normal again. The women were all very nice and explained the various city leagues and teams to me as we played. We went 1-3 on Saturday and 1-2 on Sunday, but had a fun time as we did it. It seems like it's difficult to play mid-level on the West coast because good players go to the major population centers, leaving the smaller, far-apart towns with few great players.

The tourney party was at a bowling alley, which was awesome since it meant free beer for three hours, free snack food, and free games. Unfortunately the approach was a bit shorter than regulation, and since it was a party atmosphere, the lanes were covered in enough gunk and moisture that it was impossible to slide. Still, after the party died down, I bowled a 151, tying a new friend. Also, now I know that I'll try to find another alley for league play, if I can fit it into my schedule.

So, now I'm staying at the house of one of the lovely ladies from my team this weekend, where I crashed last night after the exhausting weekend (I also got home at 1:51 on Saturday night after winning the party). In a few minutes I'm headed out the door to my appointment for the house with Erik. I woke up to thoughts of furniture painting and thrift-store hunting. So hopefully my next post will be of how I have a new Eugene house and am no longer living out of my car in this petty-theft plagued city!

Oregon: the final frontier

I've made it to the last state of my trip! Woo Hoo! 15 states and 22 days, and it's not quite done, but I'm on the last leg. I'm hanging out in Portland with my cousins, Herman and Ruth (they are once removed I think - they're old enough that their children are married). I've been welcomed into their beautiful house, from which I will soon head out to explore the town, but I wanted to put down a few thoughts first.

I dropped off Jake last night. We became much closer over the course of the trip, and it didn't really seem like a goodbye, since I couldn't imagine that I won't see him again. Don't know what else to say about him right now, other than that he was an excellent companion and I couldn't have made the trip without him. Thanks, Jake.

In some ways, this does seem like the final destination of the trip: tomorrow, when I get to Eugene, I'll no longer be on the trip, I'll be starting the new life. Tomorrow is not a destination, it's a beginning. Boy, does that sound sappy.

Since I'm feeling super distracted, I'll keep this one short, although I'd like to take a minute to go through the trip, or at least the last few days, and pick out some highlights. It seems likely to me that I won't do it when I get to Eugene, either, which is too bad. But, get ready for lots of new and exciting news about house and job hunting, dealing with university bureaucracy, and setting up new bank accounts! It's bound to be loads of fun!

Change of plans

We got rained out from Glacier, so we came to Seattle instead. Last time I posted, I wrote about shower day in Yellowstone - little did I know of the downpour we were headed into. At that point I was sitting in an internet cafe in Butte, MT, on the way up to Glacier, and I probably should have written a little post then so that this one wouldn't be quite so long, but alas, I did not. Butte really appealed to me as a town. In fact, as much as I liked Wyoming, I think I liked Montana even more. Butte is full of great brick Victorian buildings and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing the mansions and the bordellos and eating our fried pork sandwiches.

From Butte we headed up 89 through some 7 or 8 wilderness areas in the space of two hours, which made for a very scenic drive. We stayed at a campground called Lake Alva, which we practically had to ourselves, and I finished my book down at the lakeside. It looked just like some of the most lovely lakes in Maine, and that familiarity made me feel very much at home despite the fact that I was nowhere near home. The next morning we were again on our way, through Kalispell, where we got the biggest ever cinnamon roll and I got fancy new sunglasses with exchangeable lenses, and into Glacier itself, the supposed pinnacle of the trip.

Right outside the park we stopped to get some Bison jerky from this roadside huckster with a handlebar mustache. He was also selling nudie pinup girl lighters, rattlesnake eggs, and hand-rolled cigars, but we stuck to the jerky, which is amazingly tasty and filling.

Once we made it to the park, we registered for an overnight back-country hike up to Cracker Lake. The woman told us that very close to the lake, at the end of the hike, there were a few snowfields to cross, but they shouldn't be too bad. She said if we lodgepoled, it was only one to three feet of snow to climb out of. She also told us that there were reports of salt-craving marmots at the camp, marmots that had eaten the armpits out of shirts that were left to dry outside of camper's tents. Sounded like fun!

Up the Going to the Sun Road, I walked along the Trail of the Cedars, which is a small patch of old growth cedars, bisected by a roaring little river. Jake and I agreed partway into the mile-long trail that it could be alone time. So I walked by myself amongst the huge old trees, which was important, since I couldn't imagine saying anything in their presence. I thought of Stephan and wished that he could see the trees, some of which had huge dbh's (I think one of the signs said 4-7 ft, which is really impressive for a softwood, although nothing close to a redwood from what I understand). I loved the cottonwood trees, too, which had bark the size of my forearm, a comparison the implications of which I couldn't really comprehend.

Back we went along the lake, all the while oohing and ahhing at the scenic peaks, and we drove around to the east side of the park to the Cut Bank primitive camping site. We made dinner early, and then got in our tents early as it started to rain.

It rained all night long, and in the morning, it was clear that raining was the single-minded persuit of the weather. The ranger came by our tent, told us that the local radio station was out, that the creek was the highest he'd ever seen, and that there was snow in the forcast for Cracker lake. Jake and I looked at each other, and at the soggy tent, which was starting to leak a bit, and at the mountains, which we couldn't actually see for all the clouds, and we got out the atlas. It was a tough decision, since we'd been looking forward to being at Glacier since before we got on the road, and since we'd modified some of our plans in order to spend more time there, but we both agreed it would be better to come back at some point when we could fully appreciate the place and to head somewhere that we wouldn't have to stay in a waterlogged tent overnight.

So we came to Seattle instead, shooting across the remaining milage until we were in view of the coast. Arriving, it felt like we had come to the future. This place has trees on the highway overpasses; the lights in the tunnel zoomed past; we relized that there were more people in the buildings that we could see than we had seen in the last couple of thousands of miles.

Since we've been here, we've seen four of the world cup games, which is an unforseen benefit of missing out on the whole wildlife/mountain scene. Seattle is surrounded by mountains, though, and last night we went out for an evening walk that was about four miles and had pretty decent elevation change. We went to the REI store yesterday and didn't even make it all the way through the first floor because we were poking around at all the exciting things to see. I'll definately have to come up and visit here. There seem to be more small, independent businesses in this town than in any other town I've ever been in. It makes me excited to be living in the Pacific Northwest.

So, now that I've yammered on for a good long time, I'll try to bring this post to a close. We're heading to Portland tomorrow, where I'll stay with my cousins and say goodbye to Jake. He's going on to San Fran, and he's worked out his ride, a housesitting gig, and some sort of work to be doing for a while. From there, I'll go down to Eugene, and the trip will officially be finished. It seems a little unreal to be heading back into a "stable" lifestyle, one where we don't have to get up and drive seven hundred miles every other day.

I have a hopeful lead on a house in Eugene, a team to play with for the tournament this weekend, and a lot of plans on where to look for a job. It'll be good to settle down, but I'll miss the road.

Shower the people you love

Today’s theme: Shower Day. For two reasons – the first being that I hadn’t showered since Friday, before Frisbee on Saturday and adventuring since Sunday, and the second being because we’re now experiencing showers. When we returned to camp today, the rain gave way to ice and then marble-sized hail, which was quite unexpected. As I write, it seems to be raining again, and thundering and lighting, but at least it’s all liquid. Before these storms rolled in, it was a beautiful day, though, and we spent 6 hours of it driving to and from Teton, and about 4 hours of it hiking around in Teton, which was very pleasurable. We saw a lot of Marmots there, and on the drive back, we say a coyote trotting down the road. What can I say about the Tetons, other than that they are magnificent from afar, dauntingly steep from close in, and covered in snow?

To go back a few days, we left the Badlands Monday morning. So far, the Badlands are still my favorite place we have seen, because the biodiversity there is astounding, the subtle oranges, reds, and yellows of the sand enchant you with their shifting tones, and the place just seems impossible. We took a short morning hike, came across birds in little mud houses that they built under cliff ledges, saw more grasses than I think I have seen heretofore in my life, and got a view over the lower plains. Afterward, we drove through the park to Wall.

Wall was the beginning of the downward slope of the hill for me. I walked around, but knew in short order that I really had no use for the place. I picked up overpriced bug spray and a camera, and went outside to write postcards. No luck finding the brown leather cowgirl had of my dreams, the one to match my boots, and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less.

On from Wall, we went to the Black Hills, which I really did not enjoy. It felt cramped, we missed going to Rushmore and everything cost lots of money and was far away by winding roads. South Dakota suffers from a glut of billboards, obstructing the views to what might otherwise be a savagely beautiful landscape (see Wyoming). Wall Drug and the Black Hills are pretty much the cause of all the fuss, so I blame them in part for making South Dakota really unlikable. I ended up just sleeping through a significant portion of the Hills and perking up once we got to Wyoming.

Wyoming is savagely beautiful. As soon as we got into the state, we saw a sign for the Vore Buffalo jump, and turned off the highway to find out what it could be. Evidently, according to the rancher whose family had owned the land since about 1880 and who had deeded the land to a land trust to make it a national historic place after trying to deed it to the University and having them use it and abuse it for their own purposes, the Vore Buffalo jump was a natural sinkhole that several Indian tribes used to lure herds of bison into in order to then kill them for their meat and hides. Unfortunately, it was closed for winter, opening about a week from when we showed up. Nonetheless, it seemed pretty cool, although as we kept driving, I wondered why they would use that particular spot instead of any one of the other canyons and crevices that dotted the landscape. Perhaps it was because that one was round, and therefore had wall on all sides, whereas the other canyons and crevices around were not totally enclosed.

From the Buffalo jump we headed north to Devil’s Tower, which was well worth the drive. While there, I felt like I had a magnet attached to my forehead that was being pulled very strongly to the top of the tower. We bought postcards with the Works Progress Administration drawing, and hopped back to the car to try to get to the Bighorns before nightfall. We succeeded, just barely, and set up our first backcountry camp. By dinner’s end, we were bathed in moonlight, and there really were moonshadows everywhere.

We were out early the next morning, and rode through the rest of the Big Horn forest, and across the Wyoming plains. By the time we hit Cody, where we stopped for an oil change at the Wal-Mart, I was in a pretty rotten mood. My camera would cost about $170 to repair, so I don’t think it’s worth it, plus we were in a Wal-Mart, which is never very pleasant. But we made it out and up to Yellowstone, where we were delayed for half an hour for road construction, but eventually got up to a campsite and set up camp and finally had lunch, at maybe 3:45. I felt a lot better after that!

We went back out and explored Yellowstone, stopping at paint pots, fumeroles, geysers, and hot springs, driving through river canyons and across plains dotted with Buffalo, and of course, making the final stop at Old Faithful. Which we just missed by moments at about 7:30. So we stayed, listened to a Ranger give a talk, bought some potable water (another cause of my horrible mood was dehydration, since the water we had picked up in South Dakota tasted absolutely horrendous), and waited for the 9:00 showing. We were not disappointed as we got to see the geyser erupt against the setting sun, which was picturesque in a way that hopefully will come through on my flashless disposable camera.

So, theme of Monday and Tuesday was seeing things from a distance, what with looking at things across the plains, spotting Devil’s tower from afar, missing Mount Rushmore and only seeing it from the road, not paying the $25 to see Crazy Horse from up close, and staying at a safe distance from all of the thermal activity and wildlife of Yellowstone. Except, as we drove back from Old Faithful, late at night, we turned a corner and there were two Buffalo crossing the road, one right in front of our car, and one directly (like 5 feet) to the right. We slipped right between them, and as we did I said to Jake “go fast” because the first one started galloping next to us, and it turns out that Bison weigh 2000 pounds, can charge at 30 mph, and can jump about 6 feet high.

Anyway, we’re safe and sound, uneaten by bears, unmauled by buffalo, and ready for bed, then Montana in the morning.

It's been a long day

We live in a huge fucking country. Today, Jake and I woke up at five, and stole out of the Chicago apartment that has treated us so well. We realized as soon as we woke up that in our hurry to buy groceries before the store closed last night we forgot to pick up a gift for our generous hosts. Hopefully they’ll come and visit us and we can return their generosity at some point. On the road by 5:40 and into Wisconsin just past seven, the early start was the right choice. We flew through Chicago, and in the early morning sunlight it truly looked like a dream city.

Starting in Wisconsin we played My Cow for quite a while, until I got up to about 1045 cows, and Jake was trailing at about 594 cows. Neither of us could quite fathom the idea of our cow armies actually killing each other, and in Wisconsin there isn’t a lot of ammo to pick up anyway, so I took a nap, which essentially brought the game to a close.

Basically, the theme today was just straight up driving. On the way from Great Barrington to Oberlin the theme was school busses – we inexplicably saw about 15 school busses on the highway that day. From Oberlin to Chicago the theme was that all of the towns in Ohio have the same name as other places, such as Milan, Russia, and Peru to name a few. But today, it was just driving through the fairly flat lands of Wisconsin (which has mounds and is actually quite beautiful), Minnesota (most of which I slept through), and South Dakota (which is overwhelmingly long). We did have a few high points. We crossed the Mississippi, the Missouri, and into the Mountain time zone. Also, we stopped at the inevitable Corn Palace, which was less exciting than I had hoped it would be. Nonetheless, the pictures of the old corn palaces, from when the buildings were made mostly of corn are really neat. Plus we picked up postcards and I can now say I’ve been there.

And then, the Badlands. I’m writing in my tent in the Badlands state park. It turns out the Badlands are so called because the French settlers thought they were la terre mauvais traville, aka lands that were hard to travel through. I bet they were right – we’ll find out tomorrow, since we’re going to do a short hike in the morning. It’s comforting to know that nobody actually thought these were an evil place, just hard to get your horse to clomp through. I think this place is beautiful, and it’s such a welcome sight after miles of billboards for Wall drug and 1880 Town and the Mount Rushmore movie and Pro Life/Anti Choice propaganda. I’m looking forward to exploring more tomorrow morning, although I’m sad not to have a camera yet.

A few last Chicago bits before I forget. We did a drive by look at the Robie House, which looked way too clean to me, on our way up to visit with Melissa again. When we got to Mel’s house, she said she had a surprise and walked us to this place called Lula’s Café. There, we had fantastic food and drinks, and I copped the most expensive blueberry lemonade I think I’ll ever have. They gave us a shot of chilled spring garlic and herbed new potato soup, which was super tasty, and I had some sort of pasta dish with fresh homemade ricotta, oyster mushrooms, and olives that I polished off. All around the outdoor sitting area were fans of this death metal band that were waiting for the show next door to start and providing constant amusement for us onlookers. When we mentioned Lula’s to Colin, Jason, and Lyrica, they all knew it and how tasty it was, so I felt like we found a true Chicago treat.

Oh, there’s always more to report than I can possibly put down. It’s great to be writing (almost) every day, it’s very meditative and reflective. But now I want to get to sleep to be ready for tomorrow’s exploration of the Badlands and Black Hills.

Bam Bam Bam Chicago!....

I've got a lot of thoughts floating around like the ubiquitous dandelion fluff that's all over this town, and I'm hoping that they'll coalesce a bit as I write. We're coming to the end of our Chicago visit, I think (although it's tempting to stay here), and I would like to see everyone in one room again. It's been great - we went to quarter beers at a bar with Joe, Claire, Lyrica, and Tiger on Tuesday night, after an hour and a half trek on the public transportation. The night ended with homemade brownies and vanilla ice cream at Joe's house. We went to Melissa's house for dinner Wednesday night, and invited Joe, and ended up staying over after a tasty lentil salad/green salad/nachos meal. Last night I went to a frisbee cookout for the current U of Chicago team, then we went to an MFA student's final art show, on the way back from which we caught a few minutes of the Rocky Horror Picture show, and after which Lyrica and I went back out and did a late night workout. Days were full of poking around the city, mostly Millennium Park and eventually the Art Institute, which is where we should have gone first and probably could have stayed the whole time. But a moment to pause and ponder the art show. The girl, Sara Black, had two(ish) pieces. The central piece was a platform upon which she walked, bent at the waist, pushing a long pole attached to a reciprocating pair of keystone shaped blocks set into a square holder. The motion was transferred somehow, although we couldn't figure out how even crouched on the ground looking at the inner workings under the platform, into energy, enough to light a single incandescent bulb in the next partitioned space over.

The second piece was a small portable hut that turned out to be something like a sauna, with a hotbox, a swinging bench, cedar walls, and a copper floor. At the bottom of the funnel-like copper floor there was a hole, and through that hole Sara inserted copper wire wicks, which gathered her sweat as she sat in the hut. The companion piece to the hut itself was an array of the sweat wicks, which were bluish crystal formations of salt.

Both pieces had a beautiful simplicity to them, and a nice consistency of aesthetic. They also spoke to a deep thought process, not only of how to create the physical objects, which clearly took a lot of planning and hard work, but also of what the objects meant and why those two objects were appropriate to create. I thought they were great reminders of the vast amount of energy that goes into the simplest things we take for granted, and intended to make one reconsider the necessity of artificial light and added salt. There's more, but I'm not done thinking about this show - I just wanted to capture it and hold it here for a moment, so that it can gather a few more thoughts.

BTW, it's dangerous to buy cookie dough. Since grabbing some Tuesday night when we came into town late and needed something to be dinner, I've been having constant cravings. Yesterday when we returned to the apartment, the package was missing, and though I had intended to share it, I had been looking forward to my next fix since lunchtime on Wednesday. It was rough not to find it waiting for me.

Anywhoo, Chicago has been lovely, a very slow blur. It's been hard to motivate in the morning, nicer instead just to sleep in, read my novel, wonder why I haven't been reading novels, and then poke around other folks apartments. Public transportation here could be significantly better, but other than that, the city gets my approval for its very concerted, well advertised efforts to become the greenest city around, and plus for its general niceness.

A few more thoughts: my novel is A Million Pieces, which I think I mentioned, and it's great. I know why I wasn't reading novels, it was all that freakin non-fiction for Sunday nights, both assigned and in hopes of creating a presentation, plus being fairly well occupied with the rest of life. But I think I'm remembering now how much better I feel when I've got a story in my life.

And, Irony. I haven't been a coke drinker since maybe ninth or tenth grade, when I quit because I realized that I was addicted, that it wasn't good for me as an athlete, and that the whole thing was a giant sugar scam that represented a lot of evil that I could easily excise from my life. So Wednesday as we're wondering around in the Loop, the Dr. Pepper folks are handing out this new berries and cream flavor, and Jake takes one, and one for me even though I say I won't drink it. We keep exploring, and at lunch he cracks his open and has it, which kind of saves our bitter veggie juices that were part of the lunch deal we found at this wacky downtown health food store cafe. I insist that he put the other in my bag, rather than carrying it around in the pocket of his coat that he's got tied around his waist.

Thursday morning, when we finally get out of the house around noon, I put on my bag and think there's something wrong. Down to the car we go, when we notice that I'm dripping. So it wasn't just the voices in my head telling me that my butt was getting wet. Open the bag and all seems fine, except that at the bottom of the bag is a punctured can of Dr. Pepper Berries and Cream and my Cannon Rebel G camera. Making love. Their sweet juices mingling. Or rather, the Dr. Pepper has assaulted my Cannon Rebel G, because there's no way that under normal circumstances my camera would have anything to do with the Dr.

So, bottom line, after much wiping, we've deposited the camera at Chicago's Central Camera, and will get an estimate, for which I paid $15, on Tuesday. That's what I get for not drinking coke, for offering to be kind and carry someone else's drink, and in the end, probably for being clumsy/careless enough to let a can of coke puncture in the bag where I was carting around my camera. Low point.

Now I'll leave you on that low point. Coming up, the great-unplanned adventure continues without reservations for campgrounds in the coming week! Oh, and I've added the second day of travels to my map. I will soon find a way to make said map more interesting, although I guess it won't be with all the fantastic pictures I'm taking.