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[traipseartist]

July 22nd - 28th - Toronto / ([ˈtɹɒnoʊ]) /Terannō & "The Food City"

When I was a small child, my parents took my sister and I to Niagara Falls. It might be my earliest memory, as my mom claims that I was either just barely or not yet three. I can remember, faintly, the family in ponchos my dad kept in the Astro van's back seat glove (?) compartment from Disney World (which, I think, insinuates that either my Aunt Laura bought us Disney-themed ponchos for a trip to the Great White North, or my family had already spent money to take me to Disney world even though my little play-doh ball of a brain wasn’t in the business of forming lasting memories, yet). I recall my father lifting me up, Simba-on-Pride-Rock Style, and the water from the falls reaching what felt like miles away across the roaring gap and the plexiglass railing to splash me.

I remember in my youth thinking of this memory with a bitter sense of betrayal. Human shield! To keep him dry! But as an adult I find the image in its own way a little funny. I’m sure my jelly-sticky hands were pressed to that plexiglass, watching the water drip down. My sister, tall for seven and a half, probably had her chin on the smooth aluminum of the barrier. I can’t help but think I surely laughed before I cried, as three-year-olds can do in a turn. Joy veering into terror and back into joy again.

Perhaps that’s why I was a little disappointed that Toronto was less… emotional? I suppose I wasn’t looking to be moved by a city truly only just over the border from my home country… but Mexico felt like something distinct despite the southeastern United States also being Mexico for so long. I kept looking for the slight identity of Canada that deviated from the US, something beyond All Dressed Lays chips and the sticker shock of the Canadian Dollar. I wasn’t going to see it with my eyes.

I was going to feel it in their kitchen.

I feel like trying to describe what Toronto the City felt like is going to be like trying to describe a lesser-known band’s sound with other lesser-known band names as descriptors: unhelpful and--even if you did know what I was talking about (because you’re also so cool)--likely pretty reductive. I was there for a week. And working remotely during the day—so I didn’t even get the dopamine hit of trouncing around a novel landscape, free from the binds of my daily grind.

But! I feel confident in describing the food culture of the ~3-mile radius in which we stayed, as I made sure my mother and my sister came with me to hell-and-gone to eat and drink our way around town.

I was told Toronto was a Food City™ which, yeah—ok—what major cultural hub isn’t? NYC is a “Food City.” San Francisco is a “Food City.” New Orleans wouldn’t forgive you if you left it off of the list. Los Angeles would like to have a word. I think I’ve always taken this descriptor to be “you have a lot to choose from.” Living in Pittsburgh (and hearing some people attempt to also describe it as a Food City, which, like, bless you, but you’re wrong) I’ve come to understand the value of this. I really can’t get high-brow Mexican food at the drop of a hat anymore. The sushi of Pittsburgh, PA quivers in the enormous, crushing shadow of the Thai that dots the pizza-slice. I won’t contest that Pittsburgh has good food. Certainly, don’t sleep on Apteka, The Vandal, Morcilla, Pierogi Palace—but you’re not rolling in off of the sidewalk to be wowed by every establishment you hole up in. And frankly, Stinky’s pub doesn’t really need to serve anything more than dumpster nachos to be worth the visit.

But this is not in defense of Pitty! Come to town, I’ll show you around. I know more than enough to make it worth your time. This is intended to do a little bit of smithing on the digram: Food City.

New York has its fair share of junk places. I ran into plenty of grimy, middling donut joints in Los Angeles (whilst searching for the good ones). San Francisco is notoriously hit-or-miss. And Toronto of course has its own spots hamming it up for the occasional tourist. But Toronto’s food scene felt like it had deep heart in ways that the most stunning of establishments in many cities I had visited before in the US had not managed, despite Toronto being, for all intents and purposes, incredibly American (minus the metric system, which… well, I’m coming around but I don’t want to talk about it). The city had captured something from its European predecessors that Americans dropped on the ground when we started outsizing the value of things beyond the dinner table: a way that the feeling of being/eating/drinking in a restaurant was more than the sum of its parts.

I have a thrill in a new city of following an industry-rabbit down a hole: Where does the bartender at this quirky dive get breakfast? Where does the woman putting salsa on my burrito eat lunch when she’s sick of eating burritos? Does the barista putting chocolate milk in my cappuccino have opinions on the neighborhood I’m three blocks over from? In some places, this can be a dead end (especially in places with a troubling wage or class disparity… because it means the people who are serving you don’t eat where they work, sometimes), and you must be a judge of more than just taste when talking to people giving you recommendations—an entirely separate skill I certainly haven’t mastered. But! People who work in the food I like, if they can swing it, are as hooked as I am on the intoxication of a good haunt.

And Toronto is full of them. While many of them came as advertisements from the industry humans that float among them, some of them were so easy to pick out from the street I kept holding my breath waiting to be disappointed by the subtle cues that usually indicate a place is worth eating in: People dwelling at empty tables over an already paid bill. Maybe someone actually thought about the art that’s on the walls. If they gave up on the décor, they’d didn’t chintz on the wine glasses. They have a gin on the shelf I couldn’t find in an airport lounge. Somehow everyone who works there looks like they’ve always worked there.

Even the greasy spoons were not hard to spot, because it felt like the people of Toronto cared about them, too. Every place we ate or drank, we shouldered our way up to bars or were tucked into corners from the traffic of locals and tourists alike. Refreshingly, we had servers unabashedly tell us what to dodge on some menus, what everyone ordered but they didn’t think was very good, what they had a hand in creating, what they kept trying to kick off the menu, but the regulars kept dragging it back in like a dead cat.

Canadians are in some ways, fiercely practical, and unlike some cities in America that feel eager to have immigrants assimilate and adjust their dishes for a more homogenous palate, the places that stuck out were run by very recent immigrants, or immigrants that never saw the value in doing anything but highlighting or reinventing their unique dishes with ingredients they could never get their hands on (or get away with combing) in their countries of origin.

I had crème brulee with caviar dotting the surface and fatty duck salted, cured, and sliced like salami. We tasted ravioli made with tomato puree and spinach puree, separated only by the pasta’s seal and raw cacao nibs were sprinkled over the foam of my mocha to bring a bitter crunch to the usually-too-sweet drink. I had hot. Apple. Pie. With. Gruyere. Grated. Over. The. Top. IN FRONT OF MEEE!

Some of the innovations made me feel stupid. Of course Lillet Blanc made an incredible spritzer with black berries. Yeah, actually, spicy cajun brisket and pickled carrots do go in bahn mi. Why hadn’t I wrapped a whole-ass shrimp in egg-roll skin and deep fried it in one go? Or made “ribs” with corn, elote style?

Maybe we had gotten lucky, perhaps we had chosen well, and not every dish was amazing in every establishment, but every place we managed to stumble into felt like it was working to make more than it had been given. Though Toronto is not the land for street fashion or incredible scenic views, it more than makes up for it with the way they’ll make your plate. I will be delighted when I get to reprise the role of Pac-Man in that city on the lake, some day, soon.

Find all the places we ate here and play along at home.

[traipseartist]

[traipseartist]

July 17-21 - A Week on Trains into, out of, and around New York City.

Your average American has a train deficiency. Exposure is limited, sometimes contrived, and is usually entirely supplemented. Either by watching Buster Keaton films, or going to one of 3.5 Major US cities with functioning intra-regional transit (or any other major city not in this god forsaken car-wasteland).

New York City and the Outlying Territories qualify, but the train experience is a bit like a bullet in a windshield. The center is dense. Dense with humans, dense with train times, dense with platforms and letters and numbers and heat in the melting time of mid-July. As the cracks in the glass spider outward, the routes become more erratic, the landscape less recognizable, hours or days separate one train from the next. Amtrak, Metro North, The Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit, The Metropolitan Transit Authority, whatever the hell is going on with the multibillion dollar monstrosity that is the JFK AirTrain.

I am not new to trains as a concept of commuting--moving to NYC from the anemic public transit system that is MARTA in Atlanta (holding strong on US News's Top 10 Worst Traffic Cities in the US list since the 1996 Olympics) was definitely a shock but I... had ridden a train or two in my time! We would take MARTA to the airport in desperation! If it were the only way!

Needless to say, it took me no time to become the antagonistic New York pedestrian as depicted in any romcom trying to make New York seem like a frantic or chaotic landscape for the soft spoken. Public transit required no allegiance other than to that of speed and assimilation. Why would you drive? Why would you own a car? Where is it, exactly, that you were trying to go more slowly than the third rail could carry you?

When I moved to San Francisco I found that this allegiance was far thinner. Taking BART or Muni seemed sensical in some contexts, but truly insane in others. If you wanted to get beyond the video-game boundary that was Daly City or the Oakland Airport, well--that took a pledge. That took some dedication to the Earth or your wallet but it meant a complete disrespect for your time. My life was ruled by the CalTrain schedule from 2016-2018. My body began to pumpkin as the midnight hour approached on a Saturday night and I had to decide whether I would race sloppily down to the platform at 4th & King to catch the last train for the night or if the $100 Uber from the gin bar in The Castro back to my overpriced apartment in Redwood City was worth it. Couches were offered in pity but it always felt like an embarrassing concession to not having a spaceship-shaped Tesla of my own.

Now-a-days from my new home planet, a train for people is a memory, while trains for things rattle by soccer fields and public parks. Sometimes silently, sometimes in loud mockery of what America used to want.

Trains feel like what America used to want. And New York offers the whole range of that ancient desire.

Some of it is the red-hot impression of our post WWII golden era: knuckles holding onto subway straps and citizens rubbing the sleep from their eyes after nights in piano bars, of living out on the town. This part is rolled into New York's identity, especially. The City that Never Sleeps actually dozes on the A train, and wakes up in Canarsie by accident every now and again. But even when we're sleeping, we are moving, we are vibrating while doors clatter open and we drag air in from the Bronx and exhale it in Brooklyn.

Other parts of the American train system feel like long lost gospels lopped out of the New Testament. Where they fit into what would have been The Narrative is obvious. We live in a very big country, a country once dominated by its industry, its bubbling middle class, its desire to see the Grand Canyon and the contours of Mt Rushmore and Grandma Lola in Omaha. Yet somewhere along the line it feels like someone re-spun the tale with details that served themselves, and the story of the car and the open road sold well enough that the train bit lost bite. Like a pop star that only does well in Japan and other comparably unpredictable markets, we fell in love with the shape of the car, and the rest of the world never tried to trick themselves into believing they could always have ice cream for dinner.

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I sit in the mostly empty dining car of The Pennsylvanian, it's been four hours and I have another five and a half to go. A full-faced conductor sits a few tables down from me. He wears his uniform hat--almost princely--and holds up the walkie-talkie connected to the Train's PA. He instructs us to look to our right out at Horseshoe Curve, an effective hairpin turn on the track completed in 1879 by immigrants working for $0.25 an hour. Work started in 1850 and hands turned from young to old making this grade slightly easier so that trains need not push up over the mountain to make it into Altoona, PA, dumping West Virginia coal and Pittsburgh steel at the feet of a living junction.

An old woman adds three sugars and four creams to her coffee in a paper cup and he stops his history lesson to help her carry the hot cup from the service window to her seat. For a moment I am in my country that never was, still moving across my home rectangle, in a book that got lost in the stacks of the Library of Alexandria.

[traipseartist]

July 4th - 7th - Yokum's Right of Seneca Rocks, West Virginia

I claim to be a Rock Climber™ but the majority of my experience is actually clinging to plastic rocks inside of blissfully air-conditioned warehouses in the part of town that's definitely getting gentrified.

I discovered I liked to climb at a time in my life when I was desperate to find something athletic that didn't make me want to walk into the sea. My body image after high school was in shambles and I developed a certain hatred for treadmills and ellipticals--symbols of punishment for over-indulgence or a demand I adhere to some kind of standard that I never really could buy all the way into. Needless to say, exercise was always a means to an end. If I could have put my brain in a jar and made my legs run the necessary number of miles to make me a size 0, I would have. Gleefully. Surely athleticism was mastering the ability to fully disconnect your body from your brain? Who wanted to be present for the heaving and the sweating and the oh-god-oh-god-this-is-how-I-die feeling that hangs in the balance?

Then I had a long-distance boyfriend who fell headlong into the sport and in my soft loneliness, I connected to him via chalk-coated climbing facilities. We would chatter on the phone about climbing problems, the world of outdoor climbing, competitions, characters at our respective gyms. When his life drifted away from mine, I stayed close to the wall. I felt not just the urge to be stronger and solve more difficult problems, but the desire to start speaking my body's language instead of pulling out the duct tape every time I needed to push through something that felt physically hard.

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So, yes yes, a beautiful back story. An illustrative origin that does nothing to explain why I'm clenching a stubborn half-sapling between my thighs and trying to keep all of my pistachio shells in my hat as I dangle my ankles thousands of feet above the valley floor in Seneca Rocks, West Virginia.

My partner Vincent and I are out with the Explorer's Club of Pittsburgh (some 20+ riotous humans with a distaste for a particular kind of self-preservation) on this fine holiday weekend when we agree to do something relatively stupid and exactly what we came for. We want to stand on the top of the biggest piece of exposed Tuscarora Quartz in the north east and shake in our boots while doing it even though we're mostly little indoor-monkey gym-rats.

Seneca Rocks, West Virginia is not like other climbing destinations. Some crags, especially those on the west coast that attract climbers from around the world, have their own sprawling ecosystems born of their touristic revenue. Joshua Tree has the strangest assortment of desert-proof fast-food establishments. Yosemite and the Sonora Pass have many of the trappings of a mountain get away: Adorable high streets in small boom towns scattered throughout the region, themed restaurants, condos and vacation homes stacked high and wide for visitors and returning locals alike. Something (wineries and theme parks and tucked away spas) for the person who has no desire to really disconnect from society, thank you very much.

Seneca Rocks, West Virginia has:

Yokum's Vacationland - a truly grandiose title for a double-wide cabin that feels like a themed gas station with a root-beer stand tacked on the back and some motel rooms up top. All the same, totally beloved.

Harper's Old Country Store - honestly, much cuter than Yokum's but probably less trafficked unless Yokum's runs out of ice or chocolate milk

Princess Snowbird's Indian Village & Campgrounds - not touching this one. It's been here for a second. It has RV hook-ups and could not be more American in nature.

The Gendarme - your local spot for outdoor guides, good advice, and the climbing gear you forgot.

There are campgrounds (Seneca Shadows) up the hill from Yokum's, and a little science center filled with dusty art-deco furniture across the way. All of this within the cast shade of the mountain you came for, and that is that.

The end.

Yet, despite the almost video game-esque limited nature of this local map, Seneca Rocks is obviously its own ticking entity. There are people who live here. The pepperoni rolls for sale in color coded zip-block bags (RED - Pepperoni and Mozzarella, BLUE - Mozzarella only, GREEN - EXTRA Pepperoni and Mozzarella) deposited in big wicker baskets by the cash register at Yokum's are made by a woman named Betsy. The local guides that cart litters of injured recreationalists down from the mountain are no NPCs.

So when you're teetering on routes with names like "Muscle Beach" and "Ecstasy Jr." that drape the mountain high above our tiny valley below, it's hard to feel that same uncaring maw of the great wilderness that I've felt so many times before when I've been playing with my own safety for fun and un-profit far from the sympathy of other humans.

Still, when a rope strains on a carefully placed nut in the crevices of Whorl's Thicket or you see some cotton slings tangled in the branches of a marooned tree under Traffic Jam, you are reminded that your survival--that any human's survival on this little quartz dinosaur spike--is purely by permission and tolerance only. There is no conquering here; there is only playing on the shoulders of a giant. It's reckless, even though it is surely allowed and time-tested.

I learned very quickly that the people I was climbing amongst, however, did not always have a passion for the reckless nature that is the hobby. Some of them had the exact opposite problem with their bodies and their minds that I found I had. They did not wish to separate their mind from their body so that they could push through the soul-crushing boredom of exerting physical labor without feeling much reward or time passing. Instead, they wished to sever the connection so that they could overcome the crippling fear of hanging on the edge, of being too frightened to progress--something I enjoy playing with, fiercely.

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At the summit of Seneca, there is a small metal lockbox the size you'd see keep cash in a concession stand on the perimeter of a high school Softball field. This box is full of notes, little plastic figurines, found treasure, a cow bell, a whistle. Well wishes, banal little messages for those behind or in front that may find themselves up here soon and again.

At base camp, there is a loose huddle of chairs around a dimming campfire and the air of survival from something we chose. Another day on the rock, another meal to remember the day we didn't fall off of it. Someone mentions a plaque affixed to a large boulder along the path up to the crag, seen just before the turn off to a torturous route upward to some other famous trad classics named "Stairmaster." It's a commemoration to a woman who was part of the Explorer's Club of Pittsburgh. She stepped backwards off of a steep step-around route on the mountain and fell to her death a week before her wedding in the early 2000s.

Someone says they wish they hadn't named her specifically on the plaque--it made the club look careless. Untrained.

There is a long pause before someone else says that her fiance wanted to bury her in her wedding dress. I put my mind back into my body, and my body back into my tent, and I am thankful to sleep on a solid, flat surface yet again.

[traipseartist]

May 2024 - A Reflection on the Ohio Turnpike

As someone who learned to drive very late in life, it continues to surprise me how much a pack of Twizzlers and a playlist I cobbled together for an airplane ride some half-decade ago soothes the typical burn of being hunched over a steering wheel for time unmarked.

This burn is, I think, a rapidly healing one for someone like me compared to other non-professionals. My May feels heavy in the rear view... but not 5000 miles heavy (or, approximately 14% of the total mileage on the Blue Footed Boobie since I purchased her back in February of 2020--my first and only car).

While I traversed many routes in the past month, there are 241 miles that I read front to back more than twice (!) and without interruption: The length of I-80 & I-90 that runs from Petersburg to Edon, Ohio, also known as The Ohio Turnpike.

Ohio has always felt like static in my mind. Even when I had relatives living in Cincinnati, I always associated the state as a weird, astronaut-bearing wasteland; a purgatorial intermediary between where I came from and where I'm going. Despite repeated and recent exposure to parts of Ohio that were not trash on the side of the highway (the cozy hills of Wayne National Forest) or another soggy state motto (Akron's incredible Stan Hywet) I still find that image unchanging, and I can't help but wonder why. Well, the dull ligature of the Ohio Turnpike is why.

I grip novelty pretty tightly in my heart. I always seek to feel the new, especially as it is tidily propped up against the old in every experience that requires my presence--and I am passionate about being present...

But sometimes I feel like I live in a country that begs you not just to release novelty, but also to make peace with an endless drill of repetition. I can't say if I went to the same two plazas all five times I slithered through this turnpike, or if I've in fact seen them all. If there are five dragon arches filled with flashing lights, scanning an RFID reader taped to my windshield, or a hundred. There are slots to play and lotto tickets for sale in all of the service plazas. All of the tap-to-pay terminals at every gas pump seem to be as defunct as if they never worked. They put salads in the fridge next to the Gatorade and gallons of Arizona Iced Tea as if for decoration.

My eyes drift, and they drift forever, and I must put in the energy to keep myself on planet earth while also keeping myself on the road.

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It's 2019. I am riding on a high speed train from Firenze to Roma. I can't wear my noise cancelling headphones because going through mountains at 100s of kilometers an hour creates an uncomfortable pressure between my ears. I scan the cabin while I press my fingers into the peeling vinyl cushions of the seat beneath me. A snack cart rattles by. I see someone kicking their leg anxiously while writing on a legal pad in the neighboring bank of seats, as if this train is yet another hastened commute. When we emerge into the temporary glimpse of the Italian country side, she takes the pen out of her mouth and stares agape for a moment at the telephone poles dancing across the sash of the train's window in the distance.

[traipseartist]

May 14th & 15th - South Bend and Beyond

The final two days of the trip are condensed into one blur because visiting my family in South Bend, Indiana was in the middle. The McMillen clan likes late nights, cards, wine, and Oingo Boingo, so it's hard to say where Tuesday stopped and Wednesday began.

Lewis and I packed out of Pike Lake early, deciding not to swim at the Milwaukee metropolitan area's finest open-to-the-public swimming lake in the 55°F morning temps, alas. Since we'd been dragging our feet on early mornings this whole trip, we decided to set out before 10am and plodded around Chicago in slow but probably still record time.

We decided to detour out of Milwaukee before heading down to Illinois as a sort-of salute to my original plan and so that I could relive the glory of this city as my 15 year-old self remembers it. I was also on the hunt for some New Glarus Spotted Cow, one of my favorite easy-drinking beers that you cannot nab beyond Wisconsin state lines. We search for beer and liquor stores (uncannily all open at 9am or earlier) and come up short for the kind of craft selection we know must be lurking here somewhere. After browsing past Bacardi Whipped Cream Vodkas and Colt 45s I give up and resort to Reddit which points us to... a local grocery store? named Woodman's. Lewis remarks upon my uneasy disposition that Woodmen gave us good luck in Omaha and perhaps they'd have more than your domestic spread.

Oh. So, did they have more than Corona and Bud? This was no grocery store. Woodman's is a beer SUPERSTORE that happens to sell bread and laundry detergent out the back. We lollygag in the aisles of just Wisconsin local craft beer for about half an hour, overwhelmed with the selection and exasperated that we cannot buy it all (Bad Farm Pilsner? Ma'am this is a Wendy's Summer Sour? Billy Rae Citrus IPA? Get! in! my! cart!). We buy my New Glarus, a Hazy called THE NEEDLER (depicting a pine tree with a Snake-esque head scarf tied around it's erm... tip? running recklessly and dual wielding those weird alien guns from Halo 2), and a dark beer as requested for Elaina who would touch base with Lewis at his final destination in DC.

We got settled in Stacey once more, but after 9 full nights together, we were beginning to feel the fatigue of travel, shared space, and the unwavering rhythm of Stacey over rough pavement. It seemed that all of what was left of Wisconsin and Illinois smelled like sulfur, we surmised, because of swamp gas or the like. The dense cloud cover and less-than-warm conditions began to invite a sort of listlessness amongst us.

We changed and got cleaned up at a gas station before finding breakfast--today we were aiming for Culver, my military(ish?) boarding high school in the middle of rural Indiana, then finally my Uncle Joe and Aunt Wendy in South Bend about an hour's north for dinner and some familiar (to me) faces.

We stopped at Pancake Point in Gurnee, Illinois for brunch and an attempt at clearer heads only to be immediately endeared to a character of a waitress who swore Lewis was her son's friend--but not. When we told her of our journey, she chittered anxiously about a road trip she'd just made to Colorado to visit her son and how all of the McDonald's looked the same(!) after a while. Lewis and I had to restrain ourselves from asking if this tiny, maraca of a woman was available for adoption and instead ate GIANT bowls of hash browns piled high with eggs, peppers, beans, chorizo, and the tastiest homemade pico. I nibbled at a pancake while we tried to shake our funk and hype ourselves up for the next four hours of driving into the cornfields of my past.

Fortunately, it was Alumni Week at Culver when we rolled in, so two strangers wandering the campus did not make us extra-out-of-place to the teenagers plodding about the quadrangle in their regulation recreation attire. I took Lewis to my favorite pockets of my adolescent years and gawped unattractively at all of the buildings they've since demolished and all of the buildings they've since built as is my job as a graduate.

I felt sheepish as I continued to run into faculty that remembered my face (especially those responsible for... disciplinary action) and fought my impulse to revert to my younger self (it's 4pm on a Tuesday... I should be at Speech practice right now!) but a small part of me was overjoyed to find the place still felt like home some 13 years later. Also wow... what a fucking ingrate I was for not truly appreciating the endless resources available to me as a bratty little teen (Horses! A photography lab?! A library and academic buildings peppered with ancient art??? A FULL SIZE THEATER FOR PERFORMANCE AND TECH!?) Lewis asks if this ruined it for me--college and the great beyond. I mused on the question. I never thought that any place should be like Culver... it is its own animal, its blessings almost inseparably tied to its curses. But no doubt, it changed everything in me as much as I want to temporally separate myself from this tiny cornfield bubble with time and distance.

After doing a small circle (the campus is enormous, acres and acres, it's hard to relay without a map and a meter stick) around the heart of the main quad, we boarded Stacey once more and rode the hour north to South Bend to meet with Joe, Wendy, and their children Jacob and Rachel at their home in Granger, IN.

By the time we were back on the main highway going north, the sulfuric smell was absolutely overwhelming in Stacey's cabin and I began to suspect that it was not the Midwest that was the stinky culprit. An hour later, after parked in a beautiful suburban neighborhood, thankful and light headed upon arrival, we pop the hood in front of Joe and Wendy's beautiful darkly wooded, 1970's style single family home to be greeted by a weak fountain of acid seeping down the side of Stacey's main battery. Oops.

While Lewis phoned AAA, I greeted the family. The kids were bumming it for the week at home because Rachel was graduating this weekend and was prepping by being hung-over by day, and partying by night (and some day, too) with her classmates on campus. Jacob was lassoed into redoing the front deck for her ensuing graduation party the coming weekend. Jean, Wendy's mother, was also there to set us straight with her sharp strategy in a few rounds of 3-13 we'd have later into the night.

Lewis and I were happy to be surrounded by some other humans for a bit, to eat veggie pizza (and share with the winded AAA guy swapping out Stacey's innards) and pet a dog or two. We slept hard and fast in a spare bedroom, anxiously awaiting tomorrow to race home and meet my Mom and Grandfather at Pittsburgh International before flopping down in a place familiar to us both.

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I anticipated we would scuttle home in a boring and direct fashion along the Ohio turnpike because time was of the essence and Lewis and I had not been historically early risers for this trip. Mom & Pop were to touch down at 5pm and it's a tight 6 hours back home from the outskirts of South Bend.

Unfortunately for them, and maybe fortunately for our timetable, their Southwest flight was delayed a full five hours due to weather surging up through the Columbus, Ohio region that was dramatically disrupting air traffic.

Amazingly, after replacing Stacey's battery, she no longer needed the precious white glove service of hand-jumping and we took it as a sign of renewal in its own way, waving good-bye to relatives I'd see again in 48 hours time for a graduation ceremony, we hit the road for the final lap.

It didn't take but two hours before Lewis and I decided to deviate from the sling-shot trajectory we had up until this point mostly avoided taking as a matter of principle. We slid up to the coast of Lake Erie to visit the Port Clinton lighthouse and eat a few french fries while looking directly at a giant body of water for a bit. Port Clinton appeared to be preparing for the Walleye Festival (???) that would arrive the coming weekend and so the town felt a lot less sleepy than was surely normal, despite being adorned in adorable maritime statues and public parklets that betrayed the slow plod of this place otherwise.

We poked around the promised light house, the chilly shore of Erie, a store for the supernatural (I bought a new pair of sunglasses to replace a pair I had gifted to a nail salon back in Minneapolis). We ate french fries while listening to the bartendress relay her morning struggle of finding someone to cover her shift while she took her son to the doctor for a surprise broken arm. We stared hard into the distance, still processing all that had gone and all that was yet to come, and rolled into Stacey for the last time. Pittsburgh bound, at last.

I read an experimental piece Lewis is working on from his bestickered laptop from the passenger's seat. We listen to the end of a playlist all about lyrics, and when we start to recognize bridges and tunnels, we breathe a sigh of relief. I play 31 by Ceann and sing the words at the tippy top of my lungs when we pull into my driveway at the tippy top of Stanton Heights:

"Soon we'll be home In the places I know Where the boys say "Yinz" And the girls say "Ope" 31 miles east of Ohio(oooo) Where Iron still flows In watering holes We'll go where the Monongahela goes To the city that was built from underground For Pittsburgh I am bound!"

[traipseartist]

May 13th - YESconsin

We reluctantly bade Henrietta and Lucas's farewell after luxuriating in a bed that wasn't an egg crate or owned by a multi-million dollar corporation. We stuffed our things back into Stacey's innards, propped Zolpa back up on the bike rack, and decided to head towards Wisconsin for the day.

When I was in high school, I had a photography teacher bravely ship his 101 class in a mini-bus from Culver, Indiana to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to culture us. He brought us to the Art Museum there, and though I was fifteen and didn't know that Milwaukee was not a glorious land full of sharp edges and thoughtful photography exhibits, I'd been fantasizing about a return ever since. So when Lewis's friend Ellery in Chicago unfortunately caught COVID a few days before our planned arrival, I quietly rejoiced in the possible pivot (Sorry Ellery, feel better!).

...howwwever upon crossing state lines my Googling revealed that the museum in question was closed Mondays and Tuesdays to visitors and we were smack dab in those dreaded early work-week hours. Exasperated I called upon my resources, and Henrietta eagerly pointed us to Frank Lloyd Wright's estate, Taliesin, off in the Wisconsin nowheres. Elaina chipped in with some very solid directives for Madison, which was only 60 miles on, and we cobbled together this Wisconsin plane as we were flying it.

The wildfire smoke trickling in from Canada cloaked much of the landscape as we wiggled out of Minnesota and into, what I was informed by Sue, (the kind lass in the Frank Lloyd Wright Trail Gift Shop) the edge of America's great inland sea. You see, the reason why Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and the like are so flat is because once upon a time when dinosaurs bonked their heads on chandeliers and door frames everywhere (nay, nay, even earlier!) North America had a huge inner ocean and as this water found its way into the sky, the ground, and local rivers, it left behind a flat, silty landscape rich with minerals and good for farming now known as America's heartland, the Midwest. However, Wisconsin was not invited to the big-inland-sea party and maintained it's beautiful, sloping, Appalachian-like curves as sweet revenge.

Despite the heavy smoke cloak, I felt most at home in Wisconsin's rippling green blanket of hills and moody cows. Lakes and swamps and rivers threaded the landscape and just as we began to seek out ice cream we found ourselves wading into Westby, Wisconsin. After we realized literally every sign and lamp post was adorned in Norwegian, we found ourselves unable to resist the allure of the local cheese shop, manned by a kind Richard who had left Madison to study the quiet and odd Norwegian lineage of Westby. This only took Richard a few years though, and now he's moved on to life's next greatest endeavor--selling ice cream and Amish goods and ungodly amounts of cottage cheese to passing-through tourists such as ourselves.

Lewis and I dawdled a bit around tired old Westby, amused at the Norwegian themed everything and dismayed we were to miss out on Syttende Mai, or Norway's independence day festival, celebrated, as it is says on the tin, on the 17th of May. Distracted only for a moment, I slurped my cookies n' cream, took up leading Stacey ever onward, and we slithered through ancient hills towards Frank Lloyd Wright's childhood farmland and early home.

The name "Wisconsin" is actually the French's fault. The Miami--an American Indian tribe found all throughout the midwest--named the land known for angry Green Bay Packers fans and rivers of beer "Meskonsang." When transcribed by French Lewis & Clark: Marquette & Joliet, they apparently got a little too relaxed with the cursive and their successor Rene Robert Cavalier read that big loopy "M-e" as "O-u-i" and thus Ouisconsin (and its current pronunciation) was born. Oui! Yesconsin had much to offer--but I did not know one of the most prolific American architects of all time cut his teeth on this pillowish, farmy landscape. Lewis and I sheared the timing too close pointing at Norwegian antiques in a dusty shop window, so we missed the last tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright estate, but those hanging around the ticket office waiting for closing directed us to a small family chapel on the edge of the property that the tour itself doesn't normally visit--a chapel that "the young architect" designed the inside of at the wee age of 15.

Lewis and I shuffled through the wooded edge of the premises (never had I heard anyone rejoice upon seeing mosquitoes again, but Idaho has really done a number on our boy, Lewis) out towards the freestanding chapel and discussed the concept of idolization. Thematically, the thought of glorifying perfectly complex human beings had been on our minds since the beginning on the trip--our voyage dotted with homages and altars to long dead, famous men with matching Wikipedia articles of similar exultation. Why do we press to promote people beyond their own humanity?

I chewed on the thought, slapped angry blood suckers of every variety from my inviting skin, and we crawled out of the over-grown miniature trail to be dumped on the side of the road across from a small outbuilding with a cemetery already threatening to outdo the building's square footage.

The chapel was also closed for renovations, but a barefoot Randy--a contractor who'd been working on the estate long enough to be blasè about tearing up the blueprint work of our generation's architectural genius--let us gawk at the very simple but signature design of the small, two-room church house. I asked of Randy's joys and pains handling the first fabergè egg of many he worked on around here and he gave us a sweet, watery-eyed ode to peeling up the foundation of this building only to find wood so far gone he had nicknamed the action of clearing it out to replace with new joists "scooping up floor-pudding."

Lewis and I paced the little graveyard looking at the shapes and edges of the Lloyd Wrights, including Frank himself. Here he was, buried next to his very first, as was only (W)right.

We jogged back along the path that cut away from the road, back between two deciduous trees, and into the parking lot to dust off clinging ticks and make our way towards a place with food, beer, and a few less dead people in Madison, WI.

I had been to Madison when Elaina was living here, working and saving money for grad school, and the weather could not have been more pamphlet-perfect to welcome me back. We parked right in front of "The Old Fashioned" and had the Midwest dinner of our lives. Cheese Curds and beer, at least one namesaked Brandy Old-Fashioned, and a LAZY SUSAN of central Europe's greatest hits, America edition.

Lewis and I argued about debated the meaning of certain clues in our latest Cryptic lineup until the sun dipped and we realized we'd need to scramble to the campsite to see our hand a foot in front of our face before long, let alone unwieldy tent poles. We thanked Brooke the bartender who advised on sauces for cheese curds and pushed Stacey up to Pike Lake to set up camp and plead with the fireflies to reconsider their strike in the late Wisconsin Spring darkness.

[traipseartist]

May 12 - I Was a Falls, I am Become Rapids

For the sake of our sanity, Lewis and I planned this trip with only one day of "rest" from the road--and since he had visited the town of Minneapolis, Minnesota last fall on his way out to school, he had strong and fuzzy feelings around returning.

This was the first stop where I was on ground I had traipsed before--I had come to Minneapolis in February of 2016 for a work trip to visit a glamorous financial institution in a very tall building in a very cold season and was... unimpressed... with the experience. Lewis was set on changing my disposition.

With Henrietta's suggestions in hand, we walked down to Black Walnut Bakery, which frankly ran like an absolute machine on the brunchiest day of the year: Mother's Day. Lewis and I had a small agony over what pastries to choose and gawked at the most beautiful cakes in the pastry case.

We munched on banana walnut bread and kougin amann while we went to purchase sunblock for my origami paper skin and navigated back to Henri's to get ourselves situated for a bike-a-ganza.

Lewis had brought his bike, Zolpa (don't kill me Lewis, I don't know how this could possibly be spelled otherwise) on Stacey's back from Boise and with a pretty comprehensive system of Lime rental bikes scattered around down town, I was set to tag along on my own set of wheels. We took to the streets! We scooted down to a sculpture garden on the grounds of the Walker Art Center which was hosting a massive art fair with 100+ tents and kiosks. Local artists were selling paintings, photos, sculptures, furniture, ceramics, air plant holders, tiny sweaters for tiny stuffed animals, jewelry, beer, jewelry for you beer, and much art in between. We chatted up some very friendly Midwestern artists (we bought several prints from a woman who told us that she couldn't hear the long "ay" in her pronunciation when she asked us if we wanted a bayeg for our purchased goods.) and people-watched over good beer in the still shade. The tents nestled among and around sculptures brought its own touch of other-worldliness to the vibe, and we walked the grounds unencumbered with art peddlers when satisfied with our survey of the fair.

Now, time to go explore! We pedaled through downtown and down to the river to take a look at the Mighty Mississip'. Old industry buildings towering along the edge and the roar of the dammed water spraying us on a bridge-crossing between the twins added to the flavor. Maybe I was starting to like Minneapolis after all.

From there we beelined for another brewery in hopes of finding food but instead found... even more good beer. A cryptic later, a liiiittle drunk and a prevailing hour in a separate space (I really, really needed a pedicure) meant our afternoon trickled away easily. When I met Lewis at a rooftop bar down in Lynnwood, I could tell spontaneity was already afoot.

The bartender, a sweet, sympathetic person named Johnny, was filling Lewis in on the details of the evening--it's a Saturday in Minnie, we have to do something!--and mentioned that the Violent Femmes were in town and playing across the water in St. Paul this very eve. Lewis, who had been listening to a Violent Femmes greatest hits CD in his car since people listened to CDs in their car clicked his heels at the news. Snapping up two floor tickets with a little strategy, we finished eating a shared veggie burger and headed home to shower and put on our aging-punk clothing.

The Palace in St. Paul is an old-school spot that had likely been repurposed many times as a formal theater before it became a venue where people spilled locally brewed beer on the floor and squeezed up the (probably, once) red-carpeted stairs to the gauchely painted mezzanine. Bless Marcello for his gift of ear plugs back in Salt Lake City (Marcello's plot is gloriously one jersey barrier attempt at sound dampening away from the freeway behind his chicken coop in his backyard) because I did love this crusty punk music but I wanted my eardrums for tomorrow. They played things I knew, things I didn't, and Lewis happily but cautiously headbanged from the back of the tightly packed crowd

Tired and high on the energy of a room full of people singing till their voices wouldn't. The band played two solid hours with xylophones, conch shells, bassoons, and bath robes to the crowd's delight. As they rolled gently off stage, we all filed into the night, aiming for the hangover cures that would meet us on the other side of the sunrise.

[traipseartist]

May 11th - Onto the big Minnie

With sunshine and an available shower (!), Lewis and I jump at the chance to actually run around outside for the first time since we left Salt Lake City. We suit up, split up, and cover ground before check out; trying to drink up the last of Omaha before climbing back into Stacey for another of the many long days putzing ahead. There's even more of downtown in the daylight, standing parks holding even more expressive statues and rolling greens, and old buildings from Omaha's high life.

Once we re-unite in the hotel room, check eachother for city ticks, and shower, we set out to get some proper coffee, breakfast, and a waltz around downtown. The farmers' market was small and overrun, so after a breakfast at a bar that spent a pretty penny branding itself in the early 90s we duck into a bookshop recommended by a native Nebraskan friend of Lewis's and get lost in the smell of pages for a minute or two.

Lewis treats me to a teaching copy of Candide and buys a biography on Meriwether Lewis (of Lewisandclark fame) before we dally on down to some neighboring antique and thrift shops for lazy perusal. Pittsburgh calls our names from the dust every now and again.

Reluctantly we gather our things and roll right back on into Stacey (who jumps without a blink this morning!) and leave the wide avenues of Omaha behind on our road to Minneapolis.

To get to Minnesota, we must first trod through Iowa--and, no offense to Iowa, but after two hours in the Hawkeye state, skating endlessly through the corn belt, Lewis and I began to feel mortality racing ever closer to us. In times like this, we've searched for ice cream (the getting is usually good in the land of cows) and in a lazy Google search I find a traditional soda fountain AND an ice cream shop none too far from the main highway in a town called Clear Lake.

Expecting just to stop for some sugar and be on our way, we found that we couldn't just leave Clear Lake, Iowa on a day like today. The weather was beautiful, and all throughout our travels the subtle joy of graduation and the late coming of spring was permeating the Midwest. If Iowa had anything to offer, why not take the (dairy) gold from its outstretched palm?

Lewis muses on life in a town like this. Of maybe being friends with a boy who had family here, assuredly, and feeling sorely out of place spending the summer in some fictional plane. But somehow we find a place for our feet on the streets of Clear Lake, and we let the sun trace a line in the sky, finishing our day-long tenure at a local brewery to see if we needed to buy a little something to drink on our arrival to Minneapolis.

After walking the town to come down from our little beer buzz, we lurch back into Stacey's cockpit and bump into Minneapolis by the light of the waxing moon. Tomorrow is our only day on the road where we do not attempt to leave town, and Lewis has quite the itinerary planned. Till then, we unlock the front door to my dear friend Henrietta's abode, find sweetly written notes from a good hostess, and tuck ourselves into the guest bed for retrieval tomorrow.

[traipseartist]

May 10th - Omaha

After snoozing in a tent till the sun had other plans, we packed up and Lewis made cowboy coffee while I puttered about the virtual reality map in the early morning light. We had finally reached a balmy 50+ degree morning and were upbeat about seeing the sun upon waking for the first time in what felt like a while.

We walked a little of the lake's perimeter and found a nice swinging bench to sit in. Staring at water is a good human pass time.

Finally we resigned to cutting from one end of Nebraska to the other in one day and fired Stacey up, agreeing to find a coffee shop and do a little work somewhere in the giant square we were to plot across for the day.

After passing up many, many drive through cafes (why are there so many out here??) we finally found a little espresso shop in South Platte, NE which also seemed to be the center of the local universe. Lewis and I click-clacked away on our technology while an older woman braided her mother's hair and two people read the same newspaper side by side. Kate, the barista who served us coffee struck up conversation and gave us many recommendations for Omaha, readjusting her head scarf and her round glasses while gesticulating about art cinemas and Little Bohemia in the city.

When satisfied with our work, we crawled over to Sinclair #4 on our journey (the dinosaur logo feels a little too on the nose) and discovered that the portable battery Lewis uses to regularly jump Stacey (she needs a new starter but Lewis is convinced that the labor of popping her hood nigh every time she turns off is no skin off of his back) was not charged enough to get her motor humming.

While waiting for the battery to charge, we re-pack the car, wait twenty minutes, and discover in exasperation that the battery, charging in the service station on a counter, has only climbed a single percent. In a bit of desperation we ask a kind local pulling a trailer if he can jump Ms. Abrams back online and, Brett (we drink to Brett!) whips out jumper cables and doesn't hesitate to give us the boost we need.

We bless South Platte, try to get Stacey to charge her own lighter by plugging the external battery into the console, and pray we get enough juice or have enough gas by Omaha. Not even stopping for the legendary Kearney Arch--a museum that resides directly OVER the highway, regaling the voyage west by early pioneers.

We bump along across the Husker state, and come to Lincoln City before long, driving around downtown but too nervous to shut Stacey off to stop, and then barrel into Omaha some 65 miles later to check into the Magnolia Hotel by sunset. We made it!

After hucking our bags in our room, showering off the soot of campfire, and stretching our backs on a real bed, we dress for dinner and troop out to see downtown Omaha.

I personally was expecting very little from Omaha, Nebraska. I figured it would be a very industrial city surrounded by the flat of middle-country. I did not expect an INSANE SCULPTURE GARDEN! Right in the middle of downtown!! The Riverfront park system opened in unity sometime late last year, but the park was alive with art, buskers, giddy locals, roller skaters, and dogs dogs dogs everywhere. Omaha was alive, and it was easy to feel the hum of the city from where we stood.

After catching a beerish night cap, we rolled back to the Magnolia, and fell down into clean sheets. Nebraska's in the books. Tomorrow, Minneapolis!

[traipseartist]

May 9th - The Voyage to Ogallala

Eyes open and more snow! Ugh, groans Lewis, who claims he has not seen the sun in a week. I, too, am feeling a little pallid, having spent more time in my jean jacket and sweats than originally scheduled.

Still, we rub our eyes and pack up the Indian Paintbrush suite and lumber out of Centennial for the hopes of breakfast after I take a few work calls and sort out some of life's paperwork.

Before we head out of town we visit a graveyard for old machinery on the edge of the city line and monkey around, trying to get the blood going in our veins before being folded back into Stacey for many hours once more.

We track for Scott's Bluff, hoping to be charmed along the way by something with perhaps a little fiber or even a vegetable in it (sorry Wyoming... I know the soil's really only good for cattle but...) and we find a sushi restaurant in a weird, little shopping mall in Cheyenne. My Pittsburgh knowledge has told me that, when it comes to the interior, sushi places in shopping malls are better bets than you'd know and Wasabi did not disappoint.

While Lewis and I munched on tempura'd zucchini and destroyed another cryptic, we attempted to access his student reviews only to be rebuffed by the Boise State document distribution system, so we closed out and touched road with eyes forward. Laramie and Cheyenne both did not offer much to look back for... except for the occasionally confusing public campaign?

Our wiggle into Nebraska was tumultuous. Snow and rain alternated, and Stacey had an opinion at about 50 mph on a small two lane highway just before the state line, which involved dying with a heavy sigh and Lewis and I wringing our wrists about rebooting her in a ditch on the side of the road.

But we needn't be afraid, she jumped back to life after a five minute constitution and we skittered along to the boundary between Wyoming and Nebraska.

Scott's Bluff, tucked behind flyover suburbia, was worth departing the final langour of Wyoming's eastern corner. We spiraled up what felt like a southwestern sandcastle, with tunnels so smooth I was ready to learn they were cake. We learned the Bluff was named after an "unfortunate death of a fur trader" at the base of the mountain and felt there was some scoop or plot the National Parks service wasn't quite letting us in on. Still we observed the way the wind carried away the rock and how Nebraska may conspiratorially be hiding it's more unique topography from the coastal tourist. The bluff looked like an ice cream scoop out of a mountain in the rear view, and we wished we had arrived a bit earlier to explore the pathways that wound around the National Monument.

From there, Ogallala wasn't far. Just a zip past Chimney Rock--a tall limestone stalagmite that looks to be reaching for God just beyond the highway, so enrapturing, that the plaques at Scott's bluff regale covered-wagon pioneers writing about it in their diaries as I am in mine--and we were on our way. Nebraska is a muted hum from here. The warm, red mesa-like mountains rolling into farm land and delivering us past the larger and more popular McConaughy Lake and onto what I can only regale as a virtual simulation of a camp ground.

The rich green of Ogallala, the quiet solitude, the glittering lake, the lowing of cows in the distance all felt a little too perfect. Like we might truly be sitting in someone's living room wearing a Quest in northern New Jersey instead of gathering kindling dry enough to catch but not so dry as to threaten natural disaster. The sun had emerged finally, the soil soft and the temperature climbing to a comfortable 55, we unpacked our tent, busted out a box of Mac n Cheese we swiped from a gas station on the way in, and enjoyed the way the wind bent the grass. Embers glow, stars emerge, and camp makes us existential as it feels is human tradition. We settle in our tent, listen to the wind and the occasional semi float over the highway up the berm, and wait for the morning light.

[traipseartist]

May 8th - To Medicine Bow we Go

The morning in Jackson was fruitful upon our waking. I had told Lewis I wanted boots, blades, and breakfast before 10am and I intended to get them. We walked around the small town square and I was drawn to things that were not on my target, but I gleefully retail therapy'd anyway. We ate burritos from a kiosk that called itself D.O.G. and we decided it was better if we didn't know what it stood for.

Jackson was sleepy but more receptive to the morning tourist, the snow had leveled off and the sun had even threatened to make an appearance.

Despite its oddities though, we had no problem snaking our way through Mountain Man toys and grabbing coffee before sliding back into Stacey and pointing westward towards Medicine Bow in Southeast Wyoming. Jackson surprised us on the way out with moose, bounding deer, herds of bison, and a never ending bike path.

The snow did not stay its hand, and as we putted on through the last of the Tetons and Shoshone National Forest, we found ourselves and thousands of trees coated in the fluffy sugar, bowing under the weight. We braced ourselves for another white out and found the whimsical path give way to even more rolling hills. When was Wyoming supposed to get boring and flat, again?

However, the highlight of the day was yet to come. As we plowed on across the innards of the WY state, we found ourselves far away from the burrito in our bellies and in need of a beer and a thought. Picking a middle point that sounded interesting, we stopped at the only bar between us and our next major way-point: The Split Rock Bar and Cafe (and Gas).

Jeffrey City's sign claimed a population of 50 but the barkeep's husband and the owner of Jeffrey City Gas (the gas station...er... two pumps attached to the cafe), a man named Dusty, claimed that the town used to be home to thousands who worked in the uranium mines on the edge of the incorporation. Dusty was a font of knowledge. He explained the long lines of wooden slat pallets propped up along the sides of the Wyoming highways (snow deflectors), the namesake of the place (a mountain down the road with a "gun notch" at the top and a crack that runs itself right down to the ground), and the reason Google Maps wouldn't direct us through the heart of Medicine Bow (the pass was usually snowed in till June). He wore a jacket I'm sure had never seen a detergent in its decades in existence and his wife Isebela paced back and forth behind the bar with her white, fluffy mutt in tow, keeping busy and tending to some French travelers at the end of the counter sipping Lipton tea in quaint ceramic cups and looking bewildered. She didn't even blink when Lewis and I nearly shouted "That one!" when she had said "New Belgium" after listing six other disappointing domestic brews and one Mexican one.

With Dusty's good advice we struck out for our home for the night: The Mountain View Historic Hotel in Centennial just on the other side of the pass, and found ourselves petting Stacey's tender dash while we traversed gravel roads. The land was so flat and the light so stark on these back tracks we could not help but stop and put our feet on the dusty soil, investigating some trees that had taken root oddly in the distance.

It seems they were growing right out of the creek! The wind blew solemnly over the plains, rattling their not-yet-budding branches. Spring was still to come to this valley.

We wound our way finally into Centennial, a town of 200 at the foot of Sugar Loaf Mountain and ate a frozen pizza fresh from Friendly's bar--the only establishment open after 8pm on Wednesday in the township.

After more cryptics and beer and talk with listless locals and visitors alike, we laid our heads down in a small suite above a local cafe, and dreamed of tomorrow's Nebraska.

[traipseartist]

May 7th - Salt Lake City to Jackson Hole

My dear friend Lewis finds himself in a pickle. He has driven his Honda Civic, Stacey, all the way to Boise State for his first year of his MFA and now it is May! School is out! And home in DC is calling.

The practical and heartless could drive relentlessly from Boise to our Nation's capital, on-the-run-from-the-law style, in probably two days time. Three if it's more of a misdemeanor. However, there's a lot of America in the in between, and this seemed like a good excuse to taste that dust instead of just kicking it up.

Lewis saved me the pain of a very erratic layover schedule by meeting me in Salt Lake City, and picked me up at 12:30am in the spooky spaceship that is the new Salt Lake City Airport after I crossed a few moving-sidewalk switchbacks and crested baggage claim.

After a gentle snooze at Lewis's high school friend, Marcello's house in Layton, Utah--we deflated Stacey's tires a bit, carried a futon I slept on four doors down back to Marcello's father-in-law's porch, and I snapped a pic from Marcello's doorstep before we saddled in. Destination: Jackson Hole.

Weaving our way through the last of northern Utah, we tracked along the Wasatch range to avoid the boring void of the main highway.

Intending to visit a creamery Marcello claimed was worth the detour, we instead caught up on life and paid no mind to the ticking of the mile markers. I'm sure at some point we were meant to turn, but by the time we realized, we had come upon Cache Meadow Creamery off an Idaho road that jogged us into the state just before we were to enter Wyoming. Cache Meadow Creamery is in fact just an out-building with a locker to shove cash into--an honor system to indulge in $5 robin's blue chicken eggs, rolled butter, and home made ice cream.

One half pint of honor-system ice cream later, we scrabbled up, up, up the mountains.

We pointed wildly at icey-capped hills, signs for The Oregon Trail, The Pony Express, Pete's Pond and Recreational Facility. We stopped in Soda Springs to watch the local geyser spew sulfuric, carbonated water high into the air and let a loping Union Pacific train passing by hold us up for a while longer.

A good intermission for us to switch, complain about the cold, (It's May! And Snowing!) and truck upwards again. Jackson Hole lay only a little bit further on, and it was everything you'd expect a skiing town to be: sleepy locals glad another season has passed, art galleries with driftwood sculpted moose in full lope, a sickening fascination with antlers.

Perhaps The Silver Dollar Bar, an establishment in the basement of the Wort--a historical hotel--was the kind of honest retro joint you'd hope for in a sea of classic mountain resort town choreography. Big silver dollars embedded in polymer make for the counter that snake the corners of the dining room. Magenta light throws you in a 80s roller skating rink or a 50s drive-in tizzy even though you know from the menu this place was founded many decades before.

Lewis explains the science of the cryptic puzzle format and I eat a BLAT with cheese on it. We walk to the edge of town to obtain liquor as the bars, out of season, begin to shutter at 9pm. Snow pours and Lewis declares that it is December, as this is less upsetting a thought, and asks me about my Christmas shopping. We sleep to wake another day with an asphalt carpet lain before us--Medicine Bow awaits.

[traipseartist]

May 9, 2024 - Inaugural post! & a Wee Intro

I am one of those people in denial that I leave home too often. Is it traveling if you can get there by car? Is it really exploration if you've been in the city before? But whether I like it or not, I often feel like a stranger in a strange land. I can't shake a scouring eye even in places I've been a thousand times... and then I have thoughts. And we all know these thoughts need to go somewhere (is there an equivalent of the bends for writers?)

This blog will consist both of current dialogue I'm having with my yappy-ass inner life as I traverse a new place, and the occasional (read: regular) re-visitation of an old memory or an older world. I'll do my best to date things accurately, and in the process likely date myself.

The 2024 travel schedule (and things that will likely surface here now, or later, or in retrospect) includes: - Washington DC - South Florida - The Yucatàn Peninsula - The San Josè Bay Area (😉) - An exploration of America's upper Interior (You are Here ⭐️) - A closer look at the Giant Eagle down on Center - London-town - Upstate New York - A masturbatory post about PNC Park - Downstate Virginia - Atlanta, Where the Players Play Amongst other dwindling thoughts of the way things were. I anticipate I will enjoy shouting into the void with you. Until then! - Marisa