Firstly, I have a horrible cold with a hacking congested wheezing sort of cough that I really wish would go away. Anyway...
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Here is where we may be living until February!
The Farmhouse doesn't actually look like that anymore: Many plants are gone for the winter, and the grass/concrete sidewalk business has been replaced with an INFINITE AMOUNT OF WOOD CHIPS. Excess wood chips are still chilling out in the backyard. They are also just starting up their blog; you can tell from the single entry.
The Farmhouse consists of Sara, Ander, Dan, and now Patrick, Tomko, myself, and soon another person named Willow that no one has ever met before. The collective house has existed for five years or more. "We are here to garden this fucking place, not destroy it," a sign in the kitchen says. We make mostly-vegetarian/vegan meals, as much out of the garden as we can muster at this late stage. We're going to be putting winter seedlings out into the greenhouse soon. I've been painting and cleaning out the shed. Maybe we will make wine in the basement over the winter. We could do all sorts of things.
Our future plan, which doesn't have much solidity at this point, involves Mary Tully leaving Baltimore in February, Patience's poor little engine being rebuilt this winter, and Latin America. In preparation for this plan, Tomko and I are trying to find jobs in Vancouver to make some money over the winter. Tomorrow, everyone has the day off except Patrick and the household is going on an adventure to Pender Island to pick up Byzantium and hang out on the ferries.
Showing posts with label things: byzantium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label things: byzantium. Show all posts
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Pender Island
We woke up in Courtenay, after I stayed up past 3am sending out messages to new WWOOF hosts. Later, when I thought about the fact that no one checks their e-mail and responds to it early in the morning before check-out at the hostel (10:30), so I set Tomko to making phone calls to some other host listings while I took a shower.
Shower was a general fiasco (dropping my magic soap in the hallway, spending a lot of time diluting it enough to mop it up) and the manager just said to shove our key under the office door and make sure the main door was locked on our way out. Thanks, awesome manager boy! Their British WWOOFer hostel-monkeys were also very nice. A++, Cona.
When I arrived from the shower, Tomko had two sort-of successes: A woman from Pender Island and a man from Quadra Island had both said, "Maybe, I need to check my computer to see what other WWOOFers are coming by." When Tomko named the farm that the man came from, I recognized it on two counts: (1) they're friends of the Parkers (from Refuge Cove) and (2) their profile says no smoking on the property. (Most profiles pick the "on the property but not in house" option.) I did not think that option appealed to Tomko, so I called the other person.
Ellen said that it would be fine, but she had two WWOOFers already... oh, and a third one just walked into the door. Paul, who we met later, had just landed on Pender Island the day before, bought a Westphalia, logged onto the internet from the library a mile from Ellen's house, saw her profile, drove up to her gate and called to see if she wanted extra WWOOFers. Sure, why not!
So we packed up from the hostel and headed south for our next ferry from Sidney.
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I indulged in sushi to improve our day, and we made it to the ferry with two hours to spare. I spent those two hours sitting in the ferry lane, pulling everything out of Byzantium and re-packing, since things had become pretty discombobulated with all our moving around and I hadn't re-packed properly since crossing the border. Now everything has a place and is where it goes.
Once off the ferry, Ellen's house was just as easy to find as she said it was. We pulled up to the gate around dusk and I called the house, where Ellen's partner, Rob, explained how to open the gate. He called it a cougar gate. Apparently there are cougars around these parts. (We had been warned of cougars before. If you see one, look big, spread out your jacket, and don't make direct eye contact, they say.)
Ellen and Rob had a couple over as guests for dinner, in addition to the rest of the WWOOFers--Paul, who I mentioned before; Remy, a boy from France, and a Quebecouis girl whose name I haven't quite figured out. Frank, who lives a 20-minute walk down the road, arrived during dinner preparations and displayed a newly-acquired black widow bite. "Did you go to a doctor?" "No?" Well, uh, okay dude, but that looks pretty unpleasant.
Dinner was amazingly delicious, conversation was nice, and everyone seemed pretty fabulous. Frank showed us the caravan where we are staying--small room with electricity, lights, and a space heater that only kind of works, but about twice as good as sleeping in a tent. (We may be sleeping in a tent later when more WWOOFers show up, since they pre-arranged and therefore "called" it... although maybe Paul will let us sleep in his Westy? Endless possibilities I am sure.)
In the morning, we learned the morning feeding routine for the animals: half a bale of hay and two buckets of barley with added minerals for the goats (about 15-20), half a Folger's can of Llama Tex for the llama, more barley for the sheep (5 of them), water and chicken feed for the laying chickens (about 80), special baby chicken food for the three-week old chicklets (swarming everywhere in their heated coop, numbers unknown). Eggs are collected and washed.
Then our activity for the day was getting two large Douglas fir trees worth of logs from where they had been cut down to the wood shed where Remy could split them with the gasoline-powered splitting machine. This involved getting into the goat/sheep/llama pen (which covers enough area that I can't see far enough to tell you how big it is), throwing them down the hill until they hit the fence (or careen off and roll somewhere further down the hill where you don't want them to be, dammit), then unhooking part of the fence that connected to the garden, pushing them through one-by-one, and then walking backwards to roll them carefully down the garden path without smashing the tomatoes. There are many tomatoes.
We were amazing and then had lunch followed by delicious baked apples with walnuts and vanilla ice cream. Mmmmm yeah.
Shower was a general fiasco (dropping my magic soap in the hallway, spending a lot of time diluting it enough to mop it up) and the manager just said to shove our key under the office door and make sure the main door was locked on our way out. Thanks, awesome manager boy! Their British WWOOFer hostel-monkeys were also very nice. A++, Cona.
When I arrived from the shower, Tomko had two sort-of successes: A woman from Pender Island and a man from Quadra Island had both said, "Maybe, I need to check my computer to see what other WWOOFers are coming by." When Tomko named the farm that the man came from, I recognized it on two counts: (1) they're friends of the Parkers (from Refuge Cove) and (2) their profile says no smoking on the property. (Most profiles pick the "on the property but not in house" option.) I did not think that option appealed to Tomko, so I called the other person.
Ellen said that it would be fine, but she had two WWOOFers already... oh, and a third one just walked into the door. Paul, who we met later, had just landed on Pender Island the day before, bought a Westphalia, logged onto the internet from the library a mile from Ellen's house, saw her profile, drove up to her gate and called to see if she wanted extra WWOOFers. Sure, why not!
So we packed up from the hostel and headed south for our next ferry from Sidney.
View Larger Map
I indulged in sushi to improve our day, and we made it to the ferry with two hours to spare. I spent those two hours sitting in the ferry lane, pulling everything out of Byzantium and re-packing, since things had become pretty discombobulated with all our moving around and I hadn't re-packed properly since crossing the border. Now everything has a place and is where it goes.
Once off the ferry, Ellen's house was just as easy to find as she said it was. We pulled up to the gate around dusk and I called the house, where Ellen's partner, Rob, explained how to open the gate. He called it a cougar gate. Apparently there are cougars around these parts. (We had been warned of cougars before. If you see one, look big, spread out your jacket, and don't make direct eye contact, they say.)
Ellen and Rob had a couple over as guests for dinner, in addition to the rest of the WWOOFers--Paul, who I mentioned before; Remy, a boy from France, and a Quebecouis girl whose name I haven't quite figured out. Frank, who lives a 20-minute walk down the road, arrived during dinner preparations and displayed a newly-acquired black widow bite. "Did you go to a doctor?" "No?" Well, uh, okay dude, but that looks pretty unpleasant.
Dinner was amazingly delicious, conversation was nice, and everyone seemed pretty fabulous. Frank showed us the caravan where we are staying--small room with electricity, lights, and a space heater that only kind of works, but about twice as good as sleeping in a tent. (We may be sleeping in a tent later when more WWOOFers show up, since they pre-arranged and therefore "called" it... although maybe Paul will let us sleep in his Westy? Endless possibilities I am sure.)
In the morning, we learned the morning feeding routine for the animals: half a bale of hay and two buckets of barley with added minerals for the goats (about 15-20), half a Folger's can of Llama Tex for the llama, more barley for the sheep (5 of them), water and chicken feed for the laying chickens (about 80), special baby chicken food for the three-week old chicklets (swarming everywhere in their heated coop, numbers unknown). Eggs are collected and washed.
Then our activity for the day was getting two large Douglas fir trees worth of logs from where they had been cut down to the wood shed where Remy could split them with the gasoline-powered splitting machine. This involved getting into the goat/sheep/llama pen (which covers enough area that I can't see far enough to tell you how big it is), throwing them down the hill until they hit the fence (or careen off and roll somewhere further down the hill where you don't want them to be, dammit), then unhooking part of the fence that connected to the garden, pushing them through one-by-one, and then walking backwards to roll them carefully down the garden path without smashing the tomatoes. There are many tomatoes.
We were amazing and then had lunch followed by delicious baked apples with walnuts and vanilla ice cream. Mmmmm yeah.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Olympia to Herbwise Farm means a ferry!
I make plans to do things early in the morning but lately that hasn't been working out. My phone alarms went off at 7:15am, 7:17am and 7:18am, and then every five minutes after that until I managed to become conscious enough to disable all three of them. By then, it was about 8:20am. Alarms are worthless.
Furthermore, I was planning on picking Tomko up from Fort Zarpaws around 10am, but that wasn't really happening either. Mish ended up bringing him over to the Nuthouse sometime before noon. I packed things, lost things, found things, ate breakfast, jumped on Brian's bed with Davi, and tetrised Byzantium into some semblance of order. We left Olympia by one in the afternoon.
We drove up the Olympia Peninsula towards Port Angeles. Here are some things you may or may not know: The Olympia Peninsula is formed by Puget Sound, which is a body of water that Seattle is on the east side of. On the west, we drove up a main highway that did not seem to enjoy this status (signs warned that "back-ups of more than five cars are ILLEGAL" and gave copious turn-arounds in an attempt to make us speed up).
This is also where the Twilight books take place. The main character lives in Forks, but the nearest real town is Port Angeles. Port Angeles seems to enjoy this status. We saw a store called "Dazzled by Twilight" that appeared to have nothing but Twilight-themed knickknacks.
We wandered Port Angeles because it did not occur to us that ferries fill up. When we arrived, the sign said "5:15 FULL, tickets available for 9:15." So we went to watch a movie across from the Twilight store. We could have gone to see TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE, but instead we saw Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (?). It started out like it would have made sense, but by the end I think everyone was just staring at the screen in confusion. And by everyone, I mean all six people that were going to see this movie at 5pm on a Monday in Port Angeles.
After the movie, we were bored, cold, and had three more hours to kill. I had been trying to call Herbwise Farm, but both numbers I had weren't working. I called up a friend and had her log into my e-mail, in which Karla had e-mailed us to say that her phone wasn't working, and my friend e-mailed her back saying that we were going to be later than expected, sorry. Then Tomko and I went into the building on the water that was some sort of visitor's center/art gallery/ferry routing/bathrooms collection and went to the restaurant on the second floor, ordered a pitcher of beer, and drank it. By the time we were done, it was 8:30pm and reasonable to go back to our car in anticipation of ferrying.
I have never seen or ridden on a ferry before.
When we bought our ticket, we drove through this little... drive-through place, paid $70, and then were told to park our car in Lane 11 and return before 9pm, when they load the ferry. So we came back and sat around in our car for about half an hour, while other people returned to their cars. We were all immobilized by the other cars around us, waiting for the cars ahead of us to go so that we might one day. Some guy came around and collected tickets from each of the cars. There were signs telling us not to bring gasoline onto the ferry. Eventually, the cars in front of us started moving and we followed them. Dudes with flags directed us to park in a certain area. I got out and looked around: We were at the bottom of a ship. It was like a parking garage, except that instead of doors there were hatches to escape. Ferries are kind of cute. We left the car as directed and went up. There was an area of chairs, an area of benches and tables against the walls, an area where food existed, and we could go outside but who would want to? It is cold outside. We went out and watched Port Angeles lights receeding and the water churning out from behind the ferry, then hustled back inside, where we pulled out
our laptop and watched an episode of True Blood.
We didn't get to finish the episode when an announcement came on telling us to go back to our car. Then we waited for a long while until eventually our line of cars drove away. The "customs checkpoint" was a little toll booth, except instead of making us pay a toll they looked at our passports and then asked us a few questions and waved us through. Now we are in Canada!
The ferry drops us in a city called Victoria, which is a very cute city, but Herbwise Farm is about 50 miles north of it, so we didn't stop anywhere and headed off. We didn't have any difficulty finding the farm and luckily I remembered the street number because it wasn't labelled with its name.
We parked in a gravel driveway among some other cars, all which were from "Beautiful British Columbia" according to their license plates. Then we looked around. There was a light on in a window, and some other mysterious buildings in the dark. We walked toward the window, and a very bright security light came on. Some guy appeared in the window.
Me: "Hi, I'm Kylara?"
Tomko: "Is this Herbwise Farm?"
Scott: "Yeah. Do you sleep in your truck or do you need a place?"
Me: "Uhmm, we could pitch a tent?"
Scott: "I'll be down."
We waited for ten minutes or so. Scott had a flashlight and told us to grab our sleeping bags and things, and led us along a path, around a pile of gravel and tractor, through some trees and to a little cottage. It had an adorable porch and electric lights, which we turned on. It also had a bed and two little tables. It's like a real place.
Scott waved his flashlight further down the path and said that's the outhouse, then left. I checked out the outhouse: A very traditional-type outhouse, with a half-moon on the door, a handle made out of the jawbone of some animal (the teeth wiggle a little like they want to come out when you grab it), and latches made out of sticks that rotate to block the door.
I made the bed and then went to sleep, for it was late.
Furthermore, I was planning on picking Tomko up from Fort Zarpaws around 10am, but that wasn't really happening either. Mish ended up bringing him over to the Nuthouse sometime before noon. I packed things, lost things, found things, ate breakfast, jumped on Brian's bed with Davi, and tetrised Byzantium into some semblance of order. We left Olympia by one in the afternoon.
We drove up the Olympia Peninsula towards Port Angeles. Here are some things you may or may not know: The Olympia Peninsula is formed by Puget Sound, which is a body of water that Seattle is on the east side of. On the west, we drove up a main highway that did not seem to enjoy this status (signs warned that "back-ups of more than five cars are ILLEGAL" and gave copious turn-arounds in an attempt to make us speed up).
This is also where the Twilight books take place. The main character lives in Forks, but the nearest real town is Port Angeles. Port Angeles seems to enjoy this status. We saw a store called "Dazzled by Twilight" that appeared to have nothing but Twilight-themed knickknacks.
We wandered Port Angeles because it did not occur to us that ferries fill up. When we arrived, the sign said "5:15 FULL, tickets available for 9:15." So we went to watch a movie across from the Twilight store. We could have gone to see TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE, but instead we saw Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (?). It started out like it would have made sense, but by the end I think everyone was just staring at the screen in confusion. And by everyone, I mean all six people that were going to see this movie at 5pm on a Monday in Port Angeles.
After the movie, we were bored, cold, and had three more hours to kill. I had been trying to call Herbwise Farm, but both numbers I had weren't working. I called up a friend and had her log into my e-mail, in which Karla had e-mailed us to say that her phone wasn't working, and my friend e-mailed her back saying that we were going to be later than expected, sorry. Then Tomko and I went into the building on the water that was some sort of visitor's center/art gallery/ferry routing/bathrooms collection and went to the restaurant on the second floor, ordered a pitcher of beer, and drank it. By the time we were done, it was 8:30pm and reasonable to go back to our car in anticipation of ferrying.
I have never seen or ridden on a ferry before.
When we bought our ticket, we drove through this little... drive-through place, paid $70, and then were told to park our car in Lane 11 and return before 9pm, when they load the ferry. So we came back and sat around in our car for about half an hour, while other people returned to their cars. We were all immobilized by the other cars around us, waiting for the cars ahead of us to go so that we might one day. Some guy came around and collected tickets from each of the cars. There were signs telling us not to bring gasoline onto the ferry. Eventually, the cars in front of us started moving and we followed them. Dudes with flags directed us to park in a certain area. I got out and looked around: We were at the bottom of a ship. It was like a parking garage, except that instead of doors there were hatches to escape. Ferries are kind of cute. We left the car as directed and went up. There was an area of chairs, an area of benches and tables against the walls, an area where food existed, and we could go outside but who would want to? It is cold outside. We went out and watched Port Angeles lights receeding and the water churning out from behind the ferry, then hustled back inside, where we pulled out
our laptop and watched an episode of True Blood.
We didn't get to finish the episode when an announcement came on telling us to go back to our car. Then we waited for a long while until eventually our line of cars drove away. The "customs checkpoint" was a little toll booth, except instead of making us pay a toll they looked at our passports and then asked us a few questions and waved us through. Now we are in Canada!
The ferry drops us in a city called Victoria, which is a very cute city, but Herbwise Farm is about 50 miles north of it, so we didn't stop anywhere and headed off. We didn't have any difficulty finding the farm and luckily I remembered the street number because it wasn't labelled with its name.
We parked in a gravel driveway among some other cars, all which were from "Beautiful British Columbia" according to their license plates. Then we looked around. There was a light on in a window, and some other mysterious buildings in the dark. We walked toward the window, and a very bright security light came on. Some guy appeared in the window.
Me: "Hi, I'm Kylara?"
Tomko: "Is this Herbwise Farm?"
Scott: "Yeah. Do you sleep in your truck or do you need a place?"
Me: "Uhmm, we could pitch a tent?"
Scott: "I'll be down."
We waited for ten minutes or so. Scott had a flashlight and told us to grab our sleeping bags and things, and led us along a path, around a pile of gravel and tractor, through some trees and to a little cottage. It had an adorable porch and electric lights, which we turned on. It also had a bed and two little tables. It's like a real place.
Scott waved his flashlight further down the path and said that's the outhouse, then left. I checked out the outhouse: A very traditional-type outhouse, with a half-moon on the door, a handle made out of the jawbone of some animal (the teeth wiggle a little like they want to come out when you grab it), and latches made out of sticks that rotate to block the door.
I made the bed and then went to sleep, for it was late.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Salt Lake City to Olympia
The drive seems like a blur that includes about 16 hours and 900 miles.
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Shortly after getting out of the SLC metropolitan area, we passed into the state of Idaho.
Neither Tomko nor I had a very good idea of what the upper, leafy part of the potato plant looks like. At the beginning of Idaho, we saw a lot of corn and occasional hay, but nothing else: Particularly, we expected to see fields and fields of unidentified crops, which we could quickly assume to be potatoes.
By observation, Tomko and I determined that potatoes have above-ground parts that are kind of like soybeans in height and greenitude. We have not yet checked with the internet to verify this one way or another.
We were ahead of schedule--we were going to Portland and then leaving for Olympia at 2am--so we were somewhat leisurely about our drive. We decided to stop in Boise, since who doesn't want to be able to say that they went to Boise? Also, it was about 4pm and I figured that if we wanted to hang out at a public library, then we better do it sooner than later (before all libraries close).
There are many reasons that you will find homeless punk kids hanging out around a library. We ran into several when be pulled into the library, asking Tomko for cigarettes. Libraries are great places because they have: climate-control, electrical outlets, computers and internet access, potable water and sanitary facilities, and because you don't need to justify being at a library. You can hang out and that's just what you're supposed to be doing. If you have no money but want to hang around a nice place for a while, libraries are where it is at.
After we chatted with the punk kids for a while, we went inside. The first thing I remembered to do was to call VW parts places to see if they had headlights that would fit my car. The first place said yes. $62 each, including bulbs and orange plastic bits and so on. Great. Fine.
I am shocked that I managed to get from Baltimore to Boise without front turn signals, without being pulled over a single time.
We went to the place and got the new turn signals. I got someone to come outside with me to see if I was attaching them correctly, and as I was putting in the driver's-side one (the one that simply disappeared and I never got to see the inside workings of), I realized exactly where the hook on the spring was supposed to go. I made sure everything else was lined up and the light was plugged in, then yanked the spring into place. Horray!
The passenger's side one (the one that fell out because I had not placed the spring correctly) was a lot harder and took a lot more time, because unlike the driver's side, this had pieces of the engine blocking most access to the place where you wanted to put the spring. After I repeatedly bruised the top of my hand and knuckles shoving against gravity and springs, and then using miscellaneous silverware from the car as levers, Tomko managed to place the spring onto a piece of metal. It was not the correct piece of metal, but this isn't relevant. I yanked on it and couldn't get it loose, proclaimed Byzantium healed, and we got on our way.
Boise has adoooorable rush-hour traffic wherein we were stationary for about thirty seconds.
Oh, also we got a sleeping bag in Boise. Apparently, my mother reports to me, there were like three sleeping bags in the garage that I could have taken from Maryland but no one checked the garage to find this out.
On and on we drove. We hit Portland around 1am, and then hung out at a gay bar waiting for our friend Davi to get off work an hour later. Then he jumped into our car and directed us to his house in Olympia, Washington, where we quickly fell asleep.
View Larger Map
Shortly after getting out of the SLC metropolitan area, we passed into the state of Idaho.
Neither Tomko nor I had a very good idea of what the upper, leafy part of the potato plant looks like. At the beginning of Idaho, we saw a lot of corn and occasional hay, but nothing else: Particularly, we expected to see fields and fields of unidentified crops, which we could quickly assume to be potatoes.
By observation, Tomko and I determined that potatoes have above-ground parts that are kind of like soybeans in height and greenitude. We have not yet checked with the internet to verify this one way or another.
We were ahead of schedule--we were going to Portland and then leaving for Olympia at 2am--so we were somewhat leisurely about our drive. We decided to stop in Boise, since who doesn't want to be able to say that they went to Boise? Also, it was about 4pm and I figured that if we wanted to hang out at a public library, then we better do it sooner than later (before all libraries close).
There are many reasons that you will find homeless punk kids hanging out around a library. We ran into several when be pulled into the library, asking Tomko for cigarettes. Libraries are great places because they have: climate-control, electrical outlets, computers and internet access, potable water and sanitary facilities, and because you don't need to justify being at a library. You can hang out and that's just what you're supposed to be doing. If you have no money but want to hang around a nice place for a while, libraries are where it is at.
After we chatted with the punk kids for a while, we went inside. The first thing I remembered to do was to call VW parts places to see if they had headlights that would fit my car. The first place said yes. $62 each, including bulbs and orange plastic bits and so on. Great. Fine.
I am shocked that I managed to get from Baltimore to Boise without front turn signals, without being pulled over a single time.
We went to the place and got the new turn signals. I got someone to come outside with me to see if I was attaching them correctly, and as I was putting in the driver's-side one (the one that simply disappeared and I never got to see the inside workings of), I realized exactly where the hook on the spring was supposed to go. I made sure everything else was lined up and the light was plugged in, then yanked the spring into place. Horray!
The passenger's side one (the one that fell out because I had not placed the spring correctly) was a lot harder and took a lot more time, because unlike the driver's side, this had pieces of the engine blocking most access to the place where you wanted to put the spring. After I repeatedly bruised the top of my hand and knuckles shoving against gravity and springs, and then using miscellaneous silverware from the car as levers, Tomko managed to place the spring onto a piece of metal. It was not the correct piece of metal, but this isn't relevant. I yanked on it and couldn't get it loose, proclaimed Byzantium healed, and we got on our way.
Boise has adoooorable rush-hour traffic wherein we were stationary for about thirty seconds.
Oh, also we got a sleeping bag in Boise. Apparently, my mother reports to me, there were like three sleeping bags in the garage that I could have taken from Maryland but no one checked the garage to find this out.
On and on we drove. We hit Portland around 1am, and then hung out at a gay bar waiting for our friend Davi to get off work an hour later. Then he jumped into our car and directed us to his house in Olympia, Washington, where we quickly fell asleep.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Unceasing Corn: The Nebraskan Odyssey
Our intended route was from Omaha to Medicine Bow National Park, Wyoming, but this is not what happened to us.
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Upon leaving Omaha, we were made part of a gang war with automatic weapons at a Texaco. I believe the dispute was over the grade of their meth-corn. Wait, no, that's not right. We left in usually-trusty Byzantium, but her "Check Engine!" light came on. This was alarming, because it could mean roughly four hundred things, major or minor. Luckily, right off the highway was a huge Volkswagen dealership and repair shop. We pulled in there and they ran diagnostics. The sum of the troubles is that the car is old and could use some new widgets and wiring, but still runs good. While waiting for a while, we enjoyed free wireless internet and coffee. I abused the hell out of the free infinite coffee part, let me tell y'all. Eventually we left and got back on the highway, and the next several hours are a fugue-like dream that involves nothing but corn. Nothing. Endless fields and flatlands. I thought Indiana was bad! You readers are lucky.
TOMKO: Every time I see one of those little side streets, I want to drive down it until I get to a house, knock on the door, and demand WHYYYY.
CHRIS: There is land beyond the corn.
TOMKO: What, you mean like soybeans?
The sun began to set and weariness fell upon the drivers after the exhausting sojourn through corn-based nihilism. We saw a sign on the highway for a campground, which turned out to be just a bunch of acres owned by a single guy who rents it out as a camping stopover. He only wanted twelve dollars and change for taking up a spot and pitching a tent for the night. Not a bad deal, I'd say! Especially including the fact that the place had a (questionably up-kept) putt-putt course and a merry-go-round. Also, potable water, bathrooms and hot showers. The night was not offensively cold; sleep came easily, and we broke camp and hit the road early in the morning to finish the last of our trek through one of the most boring--and deceptively expansive--states in our union.
After an indeterminate time and at an indistinguishable place, the land began to slowly elevate and rise up, continuing to gradually do so as we crossed the continental divide. I was relieved to see rocks and hills once again, which I continued to see as we made our way to Salt Lake City, Utah, sleeping a night in a national forest in the interim.
View Larger Map
Upon leaving Omaha, we were made part of a gang war with automatic weapons at a Texaco. I believe the dispute was over the grade of their meth-corn. Wait, no, that's not right. We left in usually-trusty Byzantium, but her "Check Engine!" light came on. This was alarming, because it could mean roughly four hundred things, major or minor. Luckily, right off the highway was a huge Volkswagen dealership and repair shop. We pulled in there and they ran diagnostics. The sum of the troubles is that the car is old and could use some new widgets and wiring, but still runs good. While waiting for a while, we enjoyed free wireless internet and coffee. I abused the hell out of the free infinite coffee part, let me tell y'all. Eventually we left and got back on the highway, and the next several hours are a fugue-like dream that involves nothing but corn. Nothing. Endless fields and flatlands. I thought Indiana was bad! You readers are lucky.
TOMKO: Every time I see one of those little side streets, I want to drive down it until I get to a house, knock on the door, and demand WHYYYY.
CHRIS: There is land beyond the corn.
TOMKO: What, you mean like soybeans?
The sun began to set and weariness fell upon the drivers after the exhausting sojourn through corn-based nihilism. We saw a sign on the highway for a campground, which turned out to be just a bunch of acres owned by a single guy who rents it out as a camping stopover. He only wanted twelve dollars and change for taking up a spot and pitching a tent for the night. Not a bad deal, I'd say! Especially including the fact that the place had a (questionably up-kept) putt-putt course and a merry-go-round. Also, potable water, bathrooms and hot showers. The night was not offensively cold; sleep came easily, and we broke camp and hit the road early in the morning to finish the last of our trek through one of the most boring--and deceptively expansive--states in our union.
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| Our surprise campsite even had WiFi! |
After an indeterminate time and at an indistinguishable place, the land began to slowly elevate and rise up, continuing to gradually do so as we crossed the continental divide. I was relieved to see rocks and hills once again, which I continued to see as we made our way to Salt Lake City, Utah, sleeping a night in a national forest in the interim.
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