poison apple // roadtrip

Totally deep, man.

I feel like this entry should be epic. We are back in Iowa City and the void of road-trip-less-ness is huge. It’s weird not to be spending kilowatts of brain energy figuring out where north/the nearest coffee shop is, weird not to ever motor over 75 mph with a Sony boombox on my lap, weird not to wake up to Carolyn’s sweet little sleep-deprived face in the morning, weird not to be constantly figuring out what happens next.
But it might not be an epic entry. It’s hard to sum up this trip in any sort of a final blog way, as I am still ingesting all the new thoughts I had about the Pacific Ocean and about meeting new people and about corndogs and about best friends and about my life up until this point. Our last few days of tripping involved at least 10 hour stretches of driving across the flat (and snowy!) plains of Wyoming and Montana and North Dakota– an activity that lends itself to thinkingthinkingthinking. And those thoughts still need to be processedprocessedprocessed.

One thing I can talk about from this trip is how much tougher it has made me. This is about to be an odd admission from someone who agreed to go on a month-long cross-country trip, but before this I wasn’t a very good traveler, and I knew it. Um, sorry I didn’t tell you before we left, Lady Smarmalade. I like(d?) being around my own familiar things, and knowing I wouldn’t have my own private space to go back to at the end of the day made me super uncomfortable. Carolyn says my voice was higher pitched for the first week plus of the trip and I kept overusing pet names like honeybunch and sweetie pie– sure signs that I was kind of nervous/uncomfortable and dealing with it. By the end, though, I was a thick-skinned, wise-cracking road WARRIOR, totally comfortable sleeping on a random bunk bed and sharing all facilities with like a million other people. Totally comfortable with being damn brave and taking on obstacles and [insert other college application-worthy statements here]. So, yeah. Positive stronger-human-being-type change, check. Awesome stories, check. Totally in love with CMA still, double check.

And despite the earlier claim of weird feelings, somehow being back in Iowa City also feels incredibly normal and comfortable and right, although the sudden lack of direction (literally and figuratively) has thrown me. It’s like, “Whoa, I can do whatever and go wherever I want today OR not do anything or go anywhere.” Which is nice for now, although my sneaking suspicion is that it will get old quick. I definitely have to get a job and some cool projects to work on post haste. And I am still staying at my dad’s house, so I have to keep trying to carve out my own space there. And um, what else… I don’t know, if you’re in Iowa City CALL ME, cause I really wanna hang out. But I might invite Carolyn and insist we drive around in a crunchy gold Volvo, or I might wear the same tee shirt I’ve been wearing for days and have a sudden hankering for gas station “cappuccino” – cause that’s just kinda my thing now.

nello

Eastward Ho(me) + DONUTSDONUTSDONUTS!!!!

First off, sorry for falling off the face of the earth. Yes, our trip has concluded; yes we are back in town; YES I WANNA HANG OUT!

Staying with my family in Coos Bay was wonderful and a much needed rest as I was able to regain my health, spend time with my Uncle and Cousin and also meet my Uncles’ lovely lovely girlfriend Angie and her kids Audrey and Grant. Really, your hospitality was so overwhelming, it is hard to find the words to express how grateful and happy I am for that time. I got to watch Grant’s soccer team totally skewer their competition (16-0!) and we spent some good time exploring the forest, cliffs and beaches, beatboxing, eating DONUTS, watching Iron Man, and sleeping off our collective sickness.

On to Portland! Overcast skies, Voodoo DONUT, a Japanese Garden, tons of thrift and the largest bookstore in the country. Also friendly people. Basically anything I could ever ask of a city. We didn’t know our last day in Portland was going to be our last day in the Westerly West, but by the evening Nelle and I decided to save Seattle for our next trip.

Our next stop was to be Bozeman, Montana…or so we thought. The GB thought otherwise. We were almost out of Washington (our route was a little weird, okay?) when one of the front tires decided to peel itself off and hang out in the middle of the road. No big deal, I’ve changed a tire or two in my day; we pulled over (really, the luckiest place we could’ve gotten a flat because we weren’t in the mountains or on some craggy death peak, just flat, wide open, rolling hills with wiiiiiiiiide shoulders on both sides of the road), unloaded our trunk, got out the spare, positioned the jack, grabbed the…

Oh right. The tire iron. Apparently did not come included with the spare that the guy who sold me the car raved on and on about. My bad, I should have double checked. 20 minutes and a good Samaritan later, we were rolling on a sweet little DONUT that says it will last us 50 miles as long as we don’t go over 50 mph. We drove about 60 miles to Spokane doing 55, found a motel, tied one on with the hotel bar staff and a couple of 80 year olds, got the tires fixed in the morning (by the same guy that stopped to help us! small world – thanks again dude…also thanks for the DONUTS Les Schwab. Cinnamon Sugar=highly rec’d), decided to skip Bozeman, drove through whiteout blizzard conditions, stopped again in Buffalo WY, sang Christmas songs and pop tunes when the boombox (briefly) died, turned into zombies (braaaaaains!) and arrived in Iowa City in the dead of night two days after we left the Northwest, blasting our beloved reggae tape and dragging my muffler behind us. Success!

So really, it’s good to be back. We’ll keep you posted on the next iteration of PAT. Uh, and, I guess that’s it for now! THANKS!! (more specific thanks to come)! See you soon!

LOVE CARE

Stop and smell the (city of) roses

Our stop in Coos Bay was relaxing and invigorating and beachy and yummy and filled with family. (Also filled with sticky sea creature that were see-through and jelly-textured and named interesting things like “Scoopy” and “Deady,” but I’ll let CMA’s upcoming beach pix tell you more about that.) Even though I had never met any of Carolyn’s extended family, they were warm and welcoming and generous. Thank you so much!

We stayed through the weekend, and then this morning took off for…

Portland, baby! City of roses! Although we had extreme navigation/starvation/caffeine deprivation/pouring rain difficulties for the first hour+ of our Portland experience, we are determined to love it here. And so far, that is not hard to do. Carolyn wrote HAWTHORNE down on her forearm after her uncle told her it was a supercool area, and we followed that appendage directive straight to the street itself. There is a funky & cozy lookin’ hostel down here, but it was all booked up so we headed down the street to look for 1) sustenance 2) warmth 3) wireless to aid our search for lodging. We didn’t get any 3 at first, but after a delicious slice of pizza took care of 1 and 2 we were ready to look for it. We entered cute coffee-shop heaven a little further down the street and now – success!!

To make a long story short…

We’re really getting hang of this on the road thing. Six hours of driving feels like a breeze, our pouring-coffee-while-changing-cassettes-and-adjusting-the-rearview-mirror technique is totally refined, and we think nothing of navigating through dense and ultra-complicated cities or through unmarked little roadside groupings of gas stations and dilapidated homes. Things have gotten faster, easier, and much less stressful. It’s nice that this is happening now, just as the third leg of our trip commences. (the first = the southwest, the second = the big metropolises of Cali)
We are headed north still, weaving the gold beast between redwoods and fog to Carolyn’s uncle’s home in Coos Bay, where we hope to take a couple relaxing days to regain our health. Helped, of course, by the $37 of cold medicine and orange juice we just bought at Walgreens.
We were in San Francisco the last few days, staying first at a hostel in the Golden Gate Park and then at the beautiful apartment of some friends Carolyn’s stayed with on her last SF trip. That city is amazing– quirky and fun and rich and colorful. It’s sort of like New York plus the touristy and ocean-centric outer banks of North Carolina. People seem to wear costumes all the time, which I obviously love, being a huge proponent of the themed outfit myself. We went up to Berkley to set up shop (thanks, Phoebe, for your help with directions/location!)and although we initially got lots of support from the street vendors on Telegraph Ave, we were soon kicked out by the “chair of the street vendor’s committee.” Uh huh. Oh well. I discovered a GREAT shoe store, and CMA got a chance to get some work done.
Later that afternoon we drove up to Sacramento, where we stayed with Andrea Hindes (my long-ago babysitter and long-time family friend), eating great thai food, drinking chais, and getting shamelessly hit on. You know… the usual. Last night was camping with the redwoods.
Okay, computer power’s used up and coffee’s gone– on to Coos Bay!

-Nellernater

From a golden gate to the Golden Gate; the Gold Beast joins in on the character building + my descent into madness:

After painting Wes’ Aunt’s fence door to match the GB, we took off for San Francisco. Nelle drove through some pretty thick fog before we decided to camp for the night.

The next day it was still foggy along the Pacific Coast Highway but cleared off a bit and by the time we reached Big Sur it had lifted enough for us to see that it was FALL! Kept trekking on and by nightfall we were in lovely SF at a hostel on the Marin Headlands just over the GGB.

After a morning photo shoot by the bridge we went into the city & did some exploring/park napping/permit getting (we are registered to sell stuff in the State of California until October 31st! Woohoo!). Later we met up with Nick for some more exploration of the city. Thanks Nick, Bret and Chris for letting us crash.

The next day we had a grand plan of camping in one of SF’s National Parks but after a $70 dollar parking ticket and an unsuccessful first few attempts at camping we decided we’d had enough city/city/city and headed to the capital of California - Sacramento! to stay with Nelle’s lovely friend Andrea. The next day we headed West again in search of the Redwoods. Got some free firewood in Wildwood cut for us by an 80 year old Grizzly Adams character who just happened to have a chainsaw with him at the gas station/general store we stopped at.

Some beautiful scenes on our way and camped in some GIANT redwoods! Unfortunately I woke up this morning with some sort of flu/cold thing happening to my face/sinus/ears/chest/head/arms/legs. It has also somewhat impaired my driving judgment, as evidenced by me ramming the back of my car into a small (large) stump and then tearing part of my bumper off. Luckily I have my best friend here to shield my eyes, tell me it’s not that bad, then make me laugh like the insane sick person that I am.

Going to Coos Bay and I couldn’t be more excited, even if I was 100% healthy. Hopefully my Walgreens remedy does the trick. Lost my camera cord but pictures + pictures soon.

Lubb Carolyn.

Living off the land(scape)

Ever since my mom and sister and I started about 8 years ago, I have loved camping. Now, sure, my kind of camping tends to include sleeping in a tent right next to the car and the bathrooms and the showers and the little store that sells firewood and postcards and snickers bars, but still… I love stumbling around in the dark with a flashlight and eating turkey sandwiches and things half-warm from the car or the campfire, and I love going to bed snuggled up in a mess of blankets with a slightly damp pillow and hearing the sound of RV motors running and fellow night-owl campers sitting by campfires laughing and getting drunk and talking talking talking, and I love waking up outside in the morning, chilly and fresh and slightly gritty.
So those things have happened, kind of, with the camping CMA and I have done on this trip, but there have also been some snafus. First of all, we are constantly freezing, as we brought only one blanket and a pillow each, and we are sleeping on top of weird things like bath towels and a yoga mat to protect us from the earth. And we never get to the site before it’s dark. But, DAMN, are we building character!
Last night we camped out on the way from L.A. to San Francisco sort of on the fly. It was evening and we were on this tiny, twisty highway up the side of a mountain, barely aware of the horrifying ocean cliff just past the shoulder of the road because a Harry Potter-esque fog obliterated everything in the entire world beyond a 30 ft. radius. So there we are, driving along at like 10 mph, and we see a road sign that says some horrible town name like Sharp Craggy Death Village or something. Fail.
So, to make a long story short (well, sort of short), we camped. We got like 5 freezing cold hours of sleep but we snuck out early without paying, so ha ha ha. Until CMA gets sent some huge fine or something, I guess.

–ShaNelleNelle