Back East

We've covered a lot of ground on our zig-zag back to Richmond, but right now there's less than a week until I'll be back for the winter. After leaving Houston we made a straight shot for New Orleans Saturday and made it there in the early evening. As I would soon find out, there are no alcohol laws in Louisiana. Well there may be some, but most of the normal ones don't really apply. So our "low key night out" turned (after a few drinks called "hand grenades") out less low key than expected. Several jazz clubs, bars, clubs, dance parties, casinos, and impromptu street drinking songs later, I realized it was 6:30AM and I should get back to the van before the sun came up. Having gotten all that out of my system we found some good cajun food (jambalaya and alligator po' boys) and I went for a good long 13mi run in Audobon Park. The parts of the city where tourists end up have pretty well recovered from the Hurricane destruction with almost no trace that a disaster even happened. A lot of other non-tourist laden parts of the city (the 9th Ward most certainly included) are still pretty much in ruins. Abandoned houses with National Guard spray painted "tattoos" still on them are everywhere.

New Orleans is an area that's been hit pretty hard between that and the oil spill, though if you never leave the French Quarter, you'd never know it. We started up the road to Jackson, MS. Mississippi is, in a word, depressing. We spent less than 2 days there, and everyone we met was very friendly, but it doesn't take long in Mississippi to find out almost everyone there is poor, obese, bored, or tired of living there. We got a lot of attention at the Jackson Wal-Mart where we parked our van. Lots of high-school kids, locals, friends of high-school kids who were sent there specifically to see the van. And they all wanted to take a picture of it. They all also wanted to know "why the Hell did you want to come here?" which we answered by telling them we were coming from New Orleans, headed to Memphis. Jackson isn't a very popular tourist destination I guess.

Robert had a college friend in Memphis we stayed with for 2 nights, we went out on Beale Street, hit a couple other local spots and got some good barbeque. Oh, and we went to Graceland. Which, yes, is every bit as tacky as you'd expect it to be, plus a good dose of awesome. Here's a fun fact about Memphis: everyone jaywalks. And not just normal "oh, nobody's coming, how about I cross the street here" kind of jaywalking, more like they jump out in front of your car at night forcing you to slam on the brakes to narrowly avoid hitting them. It's a cultural thing I guess. Memphis, like Mississippi, is also still incredibly segregated. It's not institutional anymore, but it is definitely still there. Besides living in neighborhoods defined basically by race, there seemed to be almost zero social interaction between blacks and whites. Still. In 2010. And this is coming from a suburban white kid raised in Virginia; not exactly the most racially integrated setting either, but it's got nothing on the segregation still in the deep South. It was a whole other level of racial divide I wasn't really expecting. I thought that died out in the 70's sometime. Nope.

Turns out we have a lot of friends in Illinois, most of which we missed on our way out West, eager to get past the Rockies at least. So we took our time thru the Land of Lincoln this time, first stopping for a few days with Caitlin's parents, Bruce and Maryanne, in Carbondale. Southern Illinois reminded me a lot of western Virginia with the hills and leaves changing the weekend we were there. You're still out in the country, but not just in an endless array or cornfields. Driving the Chrismans around in the magical mystery bus, I got some good stories out of them about how they moved from California to Southern Illinois to start a communal farm and drop out of consumer society back in the day. And how Bruce became radicalized by the government's process of trying to undermine his personal beliefs and send him to Vietnam. They liked the idea of our trip; Maryanne thought the van was pretty much a throwback to 40 years ago. This gave me a lot to think about. After a run thru Amish country and a potluck breakfast with some senior citizens, we headed down the road to Bloomington-Normal. It was good to see my friend Mel there, who I hadn't seen since college. I got to introduce her to the van and catch up on old news. That's a really fun part of the trip; you get to see all these people you haven't seen in forever but wouldn't necessarily make a dedicated trip just to visit for a day. Like your own personal disjointed high school / college reuinion except you get to pick the most interesting people. Traveling gives you the excuse to reconnect with people you've lost touch with.

You know that good high school friend you had who moved to Arizona/Oregon/Montana/wherever and you never talk to anymore? You're not going to buy a plane ticket to see them for a weekend (and they might think it a little weird if you did...), but if you call them up and tell them you're driving across the country and just happen to be in their area, chances are they'll jump at the chance to try to meet up.

So then we're up in Central Illinois and we met up with Cy for a couple days. He showed us all around U of I and got us in some interesting places like his graduate lab where he knew most everyone and could show us some of the projects they had going on there. Robert and I both tried controlling his paraglider wing in the wind and then chased him around the cornfields in a truck when he went for a ride with the propellor and motor strapped to his back. Powered paragliding. Looks like a lot of fun, you don't need a license, and in Champaign, he just uses any road around as a runway.

Here we had a few days between central Illinois and Chicago, so we headed up to Madison, Wisconsin to meet up with our friend John we met at Burning Man. He's a character for sure. He's like a 20 year old basically, tho he's a doctor in his mid-forties and has a wife and 2 teenaged sons. He still has a lot of fun. Enough to embarrass the shit out of his teenage sons. John is one of the people I met this summer I know I'll keep in touch with. He took us squirrel hunting near his church and we drove there in a Prius with a bumper sticker in Arabic (he's fluent) on the back. Defying all stereotypes for sure. We went to a Wisconsin fish fry and within 30 seconds John had somehow bypassed the crowd to get fish to go so we could go on a brewery tour and also convinced 2 girls to give me and Robert Polka dance lessons. He's an expert in bullshit. He told us how he took his wife to Haiti for their honeymoon (he flew there himself) and convinced the hotel she was a Duchess so they could get the Presidential Suite at the fanciest hotel there. He's got some stories.

Next, we headed to Chicago for round 2. More on that later.

169 Days
26,635mi
Richmond is in sight...

Life Post-Canadian Rejection

Two events have influenced broadly our experience over the past few weeks: our rejection at the Canadian border and our planned finale in Cincinnati, OH. The former bumped us ahead of schedule by about a week, erasing time we’d planned to spend in Banff and Edmonton. And we’re locked into our weekend finale the weekend before Halloween due to our friends’ schedules. For better and for worse, this has meant we’ve had more time on our hands to cross through TX, New Orleans, up to Memphis, IL, and finally on to Cincinnati.

In response I’ve called on about all friends I could think of for entertainment and to pursue the possibility of visiting. Saw a bunch of people in Austin: Greg Topscher, a high school friend, Matt and Kristine Kilanski, my college and DC friends, as well as Jackie DiBiasie, another college amiga. By visiting with old friends, not only are you able to catch up but you also get a great glimpse into other people’s lives. For example, I enjoyed hanging out with Matt and Kristine and their dogs. On a deeper level, though, I achieved some more perspective on my life through learning about theirs. It’s helpful to witness the paths my peers have chosen, like Matt and Kristine who are newlyweds and have things like a home and concrete goals. By injecting myself into their lives for a day or two, I can reflect on questions such as “What are my friends doing that I wish to incorporate into my life, now that I’ve wiped the slate clean?”

We caught up with the ever-pleasant Riley Barnes in College Station. My Texan advisors were correct that there’s not a whole lot to the college town, which feels as if it’s popped out of the fields over the past decade. Ingeniously, Riley has sidestepped this factor by finding a delightful garage apartment in the country. Driving out there took me back to Lexington, to the house parties at the Dojo, his old country house just outside town. I was pleased to hear he’s leaning toward coming to DC after graduation. More East Coast friends!

One more stop separated us from New Orleans: Houston. No surprises there. The city was as expansive as expected, good and hot with the first signs of humidity I’d felt in a long time. Spent plenty of time on the interstate, first heading into town to check it out, then back west to Katy, where we stayed with a friend of my DC friend David. The friend, Jake, lives in a brand new subdivision on the outskirts in Katy. We had a very pleasant stay in his nice, new home.

New Orleans provided a welcome change of pace. We headed down the highway, over channels and through swamplands and bayous, eventually getting to the lake and downtown. For the next three nights, we made a downtown Wal-Mart parking lot our motel. This Wal-Mart made for a handy home base due to its close proximity to the good stuff: the French Quarter, downtown, the Garden District, Audubon Park, and Tulane’s campus.

With Matt’s GPS in hand we navigated on foot into the French Quarter, down St. Charles Ave. across Canal St. eventually to Bourbon St. Being a Saturday night, things were hopping. Dressy groups of thirty-somethings strolled down the street with gleeful expressions and grenade cocktails in hand. Packs of college students mingled in the bars and on balconies chucking beads and taking test tube shooters. Music streamed out of the bars, where bands were at work entertaining all the partygoers who had one thing in common: a hunger for FUN. We grabbed to-go drinks and pizza slices and hopped from place to place before getting separated. Eventually I ran out of energy and disposable cash and cabbed it back to Wal-Mart and went to sleep. Matt had a lengthier evening which he can tell you about if he wants, haha.

We explored for two more days, trying some of the famous cuisine like gumbo, jambalaya, gator and crawfish sandwiches. Beyond the French Quarter, Audubon Park was another highlight. Along with lots of residents and college students we ran around the path and hung out. I took a great walk through Garden District homes and admired the historic architecture so well preserved. New Orleans came off as an energetic city, with a lot to offer any visitor or resident. Rounding out our cultural experience there, we sat through two sessions of traditional, completely acoustic jazz at the Preservation Hall. Sure, the tickets were expensive and the hall looked a little overly “distressed” to be entirely authentic, but the music was good and the old players put on a fine show.

That day, out of curiosity, I drove through the Ninth Ward to gauge its progress in recovering from Katrina. We found some chilling scenes of vacant homes with rescuers’ scrawl still on the sides. Plenty of other old homes looked to be in decent shape, but these abandoned homes still sit on many blocks. Not knowing the condition of the neighborhood prior to Katrina, I am not one to judge its recovery status. Let’s hope residents, government, private groups, etc. are continuing to pay the city’s neighborhoods the attention they deserve so the residents can rebuild their lives.

During this period, as we were moving along and crossing plans off the list, a troubling feeling began to seep into my days. Fairly often we began finding ourselves with an excess of time on our hands. I found myself daydreaming about the past and the future while letting the present slip by. Doubt and worry crept in and maintained a burdensome presence on my mind. I suppose this is a trend that began at Burning Man, where I spent a lot of time reflecting on my experiences. Five months in I’ve begun to feel a little bit of burn-out, plus a longing to be in a more permanent home closer to more friends and family. So I’ve resolved simply to enjoy our stops for the remainder of the trip, until we get to that final weekend in Cincinnati. Time will move us forward.

Staying Awhile

Note: Here's a bit of a departure from my normal what/where/when style; this is mostly reflection and commentary at the end of the summer. Let me know what you think (whether this is boring or interesting), I'll fill you in on the details of Texas and Louisiana soon!



When I was in school or working I had to plan out my life. Well, it was planned very well for me. Now, there really aren't any milestones on the horizon at all. It's a strange thing to do to your mind, and I've found I can only do it for so long, until I plant a point out there to get to, whether it's being in Louisiana on Saturday or planning a cross-country bike trip next summer. That doesn't mean it's actually going to happen; life is unpredictable, everyone knows that. Trying to plan your future too much is a mistake; even more so when travelling. Most people get used to some uncertainty about the future; you have to. I'm trying to get used to complete uncertainty about the future. Everything becomes exciting when you let go of that security and admit you have no idea what you're going to do and just see what happens. I'm still trying to do that. Trying to stop planning a way to get back to a place I recognize and just completely let go, enjoy the ride, and see where life takes me. It always seems to be somewhere better than I could have planned anyway. I definitely feel a lot less constrained to only a few possibilities for the future. There's the other side of it tho; sometimes it can get pretty overwhelming if you genuinely let all the possibilities in. But those possibilities all actually exist, whether you want to recognize it or not. So, overwhelming as it may be, I'm trying to realize them and stop confining myself to such a narrow future by not adhering to the implied middle-class American constraints of following a definite white-collar career path, settling down, spending money, buying a house with a white picket fence... I could do that, sure, but I'm out for something more interesting, and I hope, more likely to make me happy.



That said, I'm finding I can only live like this for so long, at least in one dose. I'm meeting tons of new people, having ups and downs and all kinds of interesting experiences, but, aside from Robert, nobody can relate to them. My new friends and experiences are spread all over the place, and none of them have any context for who I am either. Even simple things add up, like not having a routine. Maybe I had too much of a routine before, but now I have nothing! I'd like to be able to take a shower when I want to, sleep in a bed where I'm not worried about the police running me off, go to the gym, get back into good running shape, watch TV, have an apartment, meet some friends for dinner, actually have real relationships with people for more than a few days, and do some work and feel productive. I need to take some time and just enjoy being in one place for a while. I'll take some time to reflect and then just decide where I'm going from here; no need to over-think it. More travelling, re-entering the workforce, grad school, or starting something completely new... these are all things I'm interested in, I'm just not sure how much, in what respect, or in what order... One step at a time.

On the practical side of things, Robert has decided to spend the winter in Richmond. He'll be back in late October. I'll get some part-time work over the winter somewhere (either NC or somewhere new depending on how I feel after a good dose of the East Coast). I'm looking forward to staying in one spot for a little while, wherever it is. Generally just being able to appreciate a lot of things that are impossible to do on the road. But then I'm going to wander some more. Not sure where yet, but here are some ideas I have for next year:

- cross-country bicycle ride (maybe I can convince Mikey to go with me)
- hiking the John Muir Trail thru the High Sierra (probably solo, to do some thinking)
- entering Zion in Utah thru the Virgin River Narrows Canyon (some other Jaskots involved?)
- mountain biking tour of the American SW
- driving a slow lap around the Great Lakes (if Canada will let me in...)


"Like the old joke about hitting yourself with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop, so part of the vagabond life is staying somewhere awhile." - Ed Buryn, Vagabonding in America, 1973

152 Days
23,965mi

A Bar in Austin, TX (Guitar Tongue)

We had another free night in Austin and wanted to hear some more live music. The previous night we discovered Sixth St., which is loaded with bars and dives and music halls. So we strolled into a big, open old bar where a band was already at work. The feature that night was the house band plus “friends.” The house band didn’t need the backup; their blues performances would demolish plenty other acts in comparison. Yet, because they’re a few of the flock of talented musicians in Austin, they essentially work for free, presumably out of love either for the act or the music. All the individuals involved added some peculiar character to the band—some more than others.

Mike Milligan, a spry black man, led the band’s first incarnation with a sharp voice and energetic harmonica solos. He bopped around, plugged the band, introduced songs. He sang some fine tunes about the Mississippi and having the blues. The group’s instrumental star, the guitarist, nodded along, looking like a young Robert Plant except with lots of baby fat. He’d step up and wedge solos into the songs, working the solos until the band caught up in intensity and he could explode with musical energy. The younger drummer and the bassist, who looked like he belonged on the Sopranos, kept the rhythms moving with tight precision.

At this point the band pivoted. Things were about to get a little more surreal. Several guys left and others took their places. First, an obese man in a silk kimono shirt (who looked a lot like Barney Frank) took over the guitar and vocals. He sang like he thought he was Roy Orbison, quivering up and down scales while strumming his blues guitar. Barney gave us probably four or five songs. I thought this was the height of live entertainment, but I was wrong. Senator Frank eventually tired and was replaced by an Asian man, dressed in black with a red tie, who’s surely of AARP age.

Like all the others, this guy could kill with his instrument (electric guitar) and was a great singer. He sang slightly dirty R&B with a Stevie Ray Vaughn drawl and cackle. Then he played one of his own compositions with the punchline “Who says a Chinese man can’t play the blues?” “I’ve been living in Texas all my life” he sang, “and people still ask me where I’m from!”

His next move was a shocker, though. He jumped over the stage banister and grabbed a metal chair off the floor. For this solo he balanced the chair in his left hand, using the leg as a slide. It wasn’t bad, either! Instantly the audience were off their feet in his face, smartphones in hand, capturing photos the bizarre scene.

Upping the ante, the Chinese bluesman broke into a guitar solo played with his tongue. It was awkward watching the guy standing with his guitar pressed against his face, playing the solo and holding his picking hand free. I just hope he’s up to date on his tetanus shots. He went in for round two in the next song. Maybe the crowd didn’t react sufficiently. This time he hopped onto the stage railing, flipped his guitar horizontally, stuck his tongue out and slobbered another solo. Remarkably the tongue solos seemed just as good. I laughed when I glanced at a table nearby and a young blonde girl, obviously on a date, cringed in disgust. They fled the scene within minutes.

- September 27, 2010

Wyoming and Trapped Tourists

Yellowstone is weird, we all know that. It's like the surface of the moon with mud and steam and water bubbling up and around everywhere. You should see it, but it's nothing I find overly interesting. It seems unreal, I can't relate to it like a trail or a mountain or a forest. There's no context for me. Plus it's pretty heavy on the tourists. By now, it's mostly retired couples, all the families are gone with their kids back in school, but it's still packed. There are restaurants and lodges where you can eat your ice cream or drink your beer while watching Old Faithful go off, taking a casual interest in one of Nature's weirder phenomena, like watching a TV show in the background. At least that's the attitude most old couples in their home-away-from-home luxury 45-foot-long "wreck-reational" vehicles project... The National Parks are strange that way; they've been set aside as places we should protect for their own sake. There's no question they are places of
beauty that merit a visit, but to lots of people they seem to be like a checklist: how many parks can I visit in my 2 week vacation, rushing along from one to the next like there's nothing in between? Can I collect all 58? I guess I just want to make sure I'm enjoying the places I go for my own sake, not just to check off points on a map. The National Parks are great, but I hardly ever see any retired couples drive their super-RVs to equally amazing places like the woods of southwestern Oregon. "Well, Ethel, there's not a park there, so it's probably not worth seeing..."


I think it's a problem with the way most people look at their time. The tourist industry markets certain "destinations" as places you should spend your vacation. There are expensive rental RVs everywhere I've seen that encourage you to "see America" by renting this giant gashog to cart your kids around major tourist destinations in the US so you can reinforce your preconceptions about America while never leaving the comforts of home. When you do that, tho, you use money to shield you from real experience. You're taking the same exact trip everyone who has rented that RV before you has... Where's the fun in that? If you stop at Subway or Mickey D's for a sandwich every day at lunch you're never going to discover that awesome little taco shop next to the laundromat in Carpinteria. If you stay in a hotel every night, you're not going to have that awkward-at-first-but-later-really-interesting conversation over dinner with that 50 year old hitchhiker you met in Montana, or the old friends who scattered across the country and you almost forgot about. You never find out about the underwater cave in the swimming hole by the side of the road near Missoula, MT. Not using money to travel requires you to depend on people (and actually meet real Americans!), and sometimes it takes a lot of energy, but it's always worth it. You can literally drive all over the country and never see any of it if you stay on interstates, eat fast food, and sleep in Holiday Inns the whole way... Plenty of people do that, and it's also the easiest way to travel because you don't have to open your mind to really anything at all. Luckily for me, I don't have enough money for a big RV or hotels. So enough on my rant about upper-middle-class-pseudo-travellers, here's some on my trip to the Grand Tetons (hey, that's a National Park!)

Grand Tetons means "large breasts" in French. They are made of rock, 7,000 feet tall, and there are 3 of them. Don't ask me... Anyway they are amazing mountains because there are no foothills; just 6,000ft to 13,000ft immediately, and right above Jackson Lake. We got there, and immediately got a permit to go backcountry up to Holly Lake and around Lake Solitude the next day. Once you walked 10 minutes from the road up the trail, the retired RV couples mysteriously disappeared... This was one of the most spectacular hikes I've been on this summer, and the fall colors were just coming out too. I hiked alone with my thoughts, Robert was in front or behind. It was a hike to Lake Solitude after all. That night I slept in my hammock just below 10,000ft, waking up occasionally and checking the time by seeing where the stars had moved to over my head. The hike back down the next day was even better, going over a pass near 11,000ft and back down thru a big U-shaped glacially carved valley.



Wyoming, as I learned from the girls at CarQuest, while changing the van's oil yet again (comes up fast...), is like a hell you can't escape from if you grew up there. That seems about right, except for a small strip on the western edge that makes it into the Rockies. It's a lot like Nebraska, brown, flat, smelly, only somehow, there are even less people in it. I was intrigued at all these endless dirt roads that just seemed to go off in a random direction forever. I never did drive one tho, as we were already close enough to the middle of nowhere. Finally I saw a tree near Colorado. We made it to Ft. Collins. Here I went for a run in the rain followed by some free beer at New Belgium.

22,465mi
143 days

"Being a vagabond means you've already dropped out... You've decided to live your own life story, not the version some dildo businessmen want to lay on you for the sake of their bank-accounts. Sure you'll make your own mistakes, but you'll make your own triumphs too. At least you'll get to feel real." - Ed Buryn, Vagabonding in America, 1973

A Sweet-Ass Double Feature: Glacier Nat’l Park & Missoula, MT!

We are now in Glacier National Park in northern MT. It is spectacular. Fall colors are already surfacing across the meadows and forest, and within weeks the roads will be closed for winter. We’ve seen several glaciers here, and some of the highest peaks have strips of snow that lasted through summer. On the first day Matt and I hiked up to a lake through the woods. A nice little hike off the main road, but nothing life-changing. As we progressed deeper into the park, though, the scenery became far more impressive and extreme. We headed east along the Journey to the Sun Road. Eventually it bypassed lakes and meadows and forests, climbing up to the pass at 6500 feet. From there we were surrounded by northern Rockies, deep valleys, and an occasional glacier. We camped on the eastern edge of the park and had a pleasant evening, grilling burgers and lounging around. The glaciers we saw here were lovely, but they’re mere ugly stepchildren to the hulking iceflows we saw around Canada and Alaska. But hey, this is the lower 48.

The next day we went to the area of the park called Many Glacier. We found a trail leading to Grinnell Glacier, which started in the woods along two large lakes. Within the first half-hour we saw a massive moose across the water, gracefully munching on something. We continued and saw another mother moose, with some calves beyond her, snacking on a bush. The path continued around two lakes then up a steep hillside which led us along some red rock cliffs to the glacial lake and finally Grinnell Glacier. The morning had started completely overcast, but by the time we reached the glacier the clouds were dispersing. We caught some sweeping views of the glacier, which looked smaller up close than far away. Grinnell Glacier is one of the ones the park has been tracking carefully, and they predict it will vanish by 2030. The hike was about 11 miles total and we got back to the starting point at about 6 pm.

We agreed it was time for a little indoor time. After the hike we returned to the first lake, upon which a huge German Alps-style lodge sits. We popped in and discovered its large wooden porch overlooking the water, as well as the plush living room inside where lots of people were relaxing. So we went to the van, changed, and grabbed booze and snacks for some porch time. As the sun continued to set behind the mountains and the temperature dropped, a hardy rain shower began and lasted for an hour or two. We moved inside and sat by the fire, where I read and did some post cards.

The two nights before Glacier Park were a lot of fun. Missoula, MT! I found us a couch-surfing host there; by coincidence she had gone to U of Delaware with Matt. Her name is Lauren and she turned out to be a gem of a host. We got in on a Saturday afternoon and for some reason the Missoulans had stuffed this weekend fill with festivals. Lauren first took us downtown to Hempfest (a brief walk from her house) where we listened to live music and got food. She showed us around the historic buildings, an artist residence, a brewery, bakeries and more. You may be wondering what Hempfest was. “What exactly is this Hempfest,” you say. Well, MT has legalized medicinal marijuana, and the festival basically consisted of music and food and specialty vendors. For example, a doctor’s office handed out half-off coupons for appointments at which you can get a medical card. Other booths sold pipes and clothes, and one booth even had jars of various varieties of weed for sale. Perhaps the oddest aspect was the consistency of the crowd. The standard hippies represented themselves, strolling along with young families, children, white-haired former flower children and other sun-baked geezers.

We also got to meet a bunch of Lauren’s friends in town, who came over for a houseparty after Hempfest music was over. The newly painted van was a big success. We showed it off to our new friends and received many compliments. “Dude, this van is tricked out!” Why, thank you.

The next day was great too. We went to the same downtown park for the day’s Germanfest and farmers’ market and poked around. Yet another festival, a pedestrian festival on the main street, took place simultaneously. After getting some pizza and warming up in the sun, we decided to go to a swimming hole Lauren recommended. It reminded me of Lexington’s Panther Falls, with a hidden cave reached by swimming under the rock. This place was right on the side of the interstate, though, so we and the other swimmers provided some entertainment for honking truckers passing by.

We stayed that night as well, enjoying a live jazz performance at a bar downtown which featured some creative martinis. Lauren and I had a potent thin mint-type creation, and Matt had a jalapeno-onion cocktail. The following morning we left for Glacier Nat’l Park, 2-3 hours to the north.

Burning Man and Montana (inside: why Canada sucks!)

I'm going to try to describe Burning Man, which is going to be impossible. The best I can do is give a good approximation of my experience and I know when I get done writing it there will be a lot of important things I left out or was unable to fully describe. You've probably heard something sometime about Burning Man either from people who have been or think it's a worthwhile thing or from people who don't try to understand it and want it to disappear, or from the news which tends to generally distort most things to be sensational anyway.

Burning Man is essentially about two things. First, it's a social experiment of a community where commerce does not exist, where you try to give unconditional love to strangers; kind of a big commune where everyone looks out for each other. Second, it's a blank canvas for artists and everyone else to basically try whatever they want. People seem to drop the roles they've acquired in "normal life" and take on whatever seems to fit them at the moment. People generally accept you at face value with an open mind, and you are absolutely guaranteed not to be the weirdest kid on the block. It took me a few days to get used to it all. Burning Man has a reputation for drug use but really it's weird enough on its own, no chemical supplements necessary. There's also this omnipresent quasi-dark sense of humor underneath everything; deep down, everything is all an elaborate joke. And there's 50,000+ people there, so almost everything that could be happening is happening somewhere.


There was a giant Mad Max style Thunderdome the audience could climb on top of and watch participants strapped to bungee cords beat on each other with giant foam sticks. There was a giant grilled cheese diner that moved to a new location every night so it was always a surprise. There was a camp that would outfit you with any costume you wanted as long as you walked down the runway and they insulted you after you put it on. There was a phone booth where you could talk to God (he's a lot more reasonable than you'd expect). There was a sarcastic fortune teller in a box who moved around the playa. There was a roller derby on the playa. There were "art cars" driving around the playa at night; everything from flying carpets to flame-throwing pirate ships that you could just hop on and join the moving party (most had a bar, though you had to bring your own cup). There were talks and classes going on and people handing you sake and bacon as you biked down the street. I did a barrel roll in an airplane at 11,000ft. I took a "shower" by running behind a water-spraying truck. I lost my bike one day and following the advice of the advice booth man sitting in the middle of the desert, I wrote "I need a bike, I lost mine" on my chest and had a new one withing a few hours. People are just waiting to bend over backwards for strangers in an environment where it's allowed and encouraged (it also helps that the festival lasts only a week...). You may have seen the van's new paint job. It came from people walking down the street in Black Rock City, I brought paint and told them to paint whatever they wanted, meanwhile serving margaritas out of my solar-powered blender. The last few days there were dust storms so bad you couldn't see 3 feet in front of you and needed a mask and goggles to get around. Your hair turned into a big grey dusty mass. There's still plenty of playa dust in just about everything I own.

So that's what the attitude of the place is like (really that's only a very very small cross-section). I met some amazing people there (one in particular) who I know I'll keep in touch with. It was nice to have friends especially after 4 months of travelling basically alone except for Robert. You make friends fast on the playa and everyone wants to go try everything and just generally hang out and get to know each other. My camp was called Wanderlust, a group of couchsurfers and travelers from everywhere: Wisconsin, Laguna Beach, Nevada, Canada, Germany... Before I went to Burning Man I was losing my wanderlust in favor of a more socially acceptable (but less personally acceptable) and safer stationary and career-oriented life. Long story short, I was re-inspired to do what I want, not what everyone else wants. I saw people there who were just genuinely happy living how they wanted to free of the normal artificial constraints people let others impose on them. Accepting that uncertainty about the future and really opening your mind to enjoy the infinite possibilities available, taking each day as a new exciting adventure, not rushing along hurriedly towards the end, but really enjoying the ride and every step of it for how much more exciting and unexpected it is. It's much more fun that way.


The main event is the burning of the Man. On Saturday night, the 200ft tall wooden Man is packed with explosives and fireworks and is lit on fire. It's the biggest bonfire I've ever seen. I dance around it with Shar after the Man falls down into a large pile and the crowd pushes me towards the fire. In a week, I've experienced a lot and in the end it's all burnt to the ground. Gone. The city starts to disintegrate and people head back towards the "default world". Sunday night the Temple burns. The Temple this year is a collection of wooden "dunes" and people come to write messages and names of those they've lost, of things they've lost, or of things they want to let go of. Then the Temple burns. It's not a party like the burning of the Man. People are quiet, watching the embers fly up into the air, each one an intensely emotionally charged piece of someone being released. I wrote in the Temple. It worked, I let go of the past, I opened myself up to the future. The sense of humor is much darker now when you realize the whole festival is about the temporary nature of everything. It all burns. You leave no trace. I'll be back to Burning Man, I know that.

We took some hitchhiking Canadian girls to San Francisco directly after the Temple burned. I drove all night and ended up on a run with Caitlin. It was weird adjusting so fast to the "real world" (even San Francisco!). We had a nice day in unusually good weather in a park in the city. I slept well that night. After catching up with Peter Felton from High School in Santa Clara and having some good home-cooked meals his mom served us, we headed back East, for the last time this year. We spent a day in Fallon, NV with Shar from our Burning Man camp. Feeding some cows, driving an ATV, exploring a cornfield, and saying goodbye as she headed to Australia and we headed to Montana. After an uneventful stop in Boise, we made it to Missoula, MT where we couchsurfed with Lauren who, it turns out, went to UD and knew some of my friends there. She was a lot of fun and since we happened to be visiting on a weekend full of festivals in Missoula we hit them all. Missoula is like a little hippie town centered around the University there, really fun and unexpected from Montana. You can check out my pictures from Glacier NP on Facebook, I'll put them up soon. But we spent 2 days there and then planned to head to the Canadian side to see Waterton, Banff, and another Burning Man friend from our camp who lives in Edmonton.

We arrived cheerfully at the border crossing at about 10:30AM, knowing that our psychedelic magical mystery van might make us the target of some extra searching or questioning or whatever, but we were not prepared for this. We were told to pull aside, then step out of the vehicle so it could be searched. It was not only searched, everything that could be removed from the van was X-rayed, swabbed, inspected. It was torn apart.

For 2 hours we had at least 4 customs agents dealing only with us. While the van was searched, I was separated from Robert and questioned, starting with the usual: where were you born? what are you going to Canada for? have you ever been arrested? Then getting more obscure and accusatory: have you ever used recreational drugs? who is this friend in Canada and how did you meet him? how long have you owned this vehicle? has anyone in your family ever been involved in a secret government organization? where were your parents born? what is that scary looking piece of electronic equipment in your van? are you SURE you don't have any drugs on you? really? even in THAT van? After assuring the customs agent I was not a drug trafficker, I was just weird, he passed us on to his supervisors. In the end, after collecting information on our previous employment history, verifying the balances on our bank accounts, taking our social security numbers, and just about everything else we could give them, they decided not to let us in because we did not have "enough ties to the US" Ties are defined by the Canadians as A) a wife in the US B) a job in the US or C) a mortgage or rent payment in the US. "But that's the WHOLE POINT! me not having ties..." He advised us to get married, find a job, or buy a house if we ever wanted to return to Canada. We were denied entry to Canada. Seriously. Really, Canada? "Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park" my ass.


After reassembling our van and what was left of our dignity, we headed back to Montana. The real reason we weren't let in was because of the van and the way we travel. We don't fit the mold of normal tourists. We're not going to spend money on lodges and restaurants, we confused them by not having jobs or W2 forms, we intimidated them because they couldn't categorize us into a safe, border-crossing acceptable category like all the older couples driving right thru the gate (equally unattached to the US I'd argue, retired with no job, taking thair wives with them, and having no fixed address aside from the monster fifth-wheel trailer towed behind them). It left me feeling terrible, somewhere between being raped and arrested. But at least those noble customs agents were able to prevent the peace love and happiness bus from threatening the national security of Canada. In contrast with Burning Man, I had the cynical feeling that strangers are suspicious and afraid of you and even hostile to you until you start paying them for something, at which point they become wonderful, loving, caring people, willing to help however they can. I hope I don't actually think of the world like that, but sometimes it seems a close approximation. Those are the situations I need to get out of. Then last night, sleeping in the van, some drunk idiot fiddled with our bikes trying to unlock them from the rack to steal them. I watched him thru the window for a few minutes, contemplating grabbing my 5-iron and jumping outside (I knew there was a reason I brought that) but in the end just looked at him and said "what's up?" "What's up?" he said, then "shit, peace..." and jogged away. People can be real assholes sometimes too. I'm trying not to focus on that though... For the most part everyone loves the new van paint. We get people asking to take pictures, asking questions, waving, and telling us the van just makes them smile. It's difficult to stay disenfranchised with humanity for long when everyone is smiling and waving excited peace signs at you when you drive by... On to Yellowstone, Denver, and Texas!

20,094mi
132 days
18 states
$5000 spent on gas... ugh