Tuesday, August 19 2008
Mountain Home, ID to Portland, OR

Home again.

I feel like I should be able to find some kind of grand theme to tie my whole adventure together. But you know what? I don’t think life is really like that, all bundled up in neat little lessons and quips and quotes to hand on your refrigerator. No, it’s a lot more complicated than that, and I’m not going to try to put a tidy bow on the past five weeks just for the sake of form.

It’s difficult to believe that all of these things have really taken place during the same trip. I think about my time in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and it seems a lot longer than five weeks ago. Hell, I was in St. Louis at the Arch with Samuel the Amish gentleman on Friday and it seems like months removed from right now.

I’ve done my best to talk to a bunch of different people. I know I could have spoken to more, but I also know that I had to step outside of my own comfort zone in order to approach a lot of the people I did. There was a lot of learning that went on, and maybe some self-discovery, some really good times with friends, and perhaps a little sadness along the way, too.

Ten years ago, I made a very similar trip–though that one was only 3 weeks long. I was a different person then, as all of us were ten years ago. (as all of us were five years ago, or one year ago) Maybe I’ll make another grand tour of the United States once another decade has passed; I know there are many other places I’d like to visit and I’m sure I’ll have more friends to drop in on when that time comes.

For now, I’m going to settle back into my life here in Portland and enjoy remembering my big Road Trip of ‘08. I’m sure my Portland friends can look forward to me babbling on with story after story for a long time to come.

Thanks to everyone who so very sweetly followed along with me by reading and commenting. I’ll keep this blog live as a record and as a nice archive for anyone who wants to come back and re-listen to any of the voices or hear any of my stories again.

For now, I am going to slip into my very own bed and sleeeeeeeeeep. Good night, everyone, and pleasant dreams!

Monday, August 18 2008
Yellowstone National Park to Mountain Home, ID

Have you ever seen the craters of the moon? I have. They’re in Idaho.

Seriously, in the middle of Idaho is a national park called Craters of the Moon. The name comes from the appearance of the rocks for miles and miles and miles around. They’re almost completely black with very little plantlife on them at all. They are remnants of volcanic ash from long, long ago. I can’t say that I would have made a day of hiking through them, but they were pretty interesting to drive through. I’ve seen a whole bunch of beautiful, interesting, and diverse landscapes in the past month of driving around the country, but I’ve never seen anything like this:

About forty minutes north of Twin Falls, I picked up a hitchhiker. I had expected that I’d see more hitchhikers on my trip, but I think that the lack of them had to do with the fact that I was traveling primarily on big interstates instead of local highways and routes. So it was fortuitous that I was on US Route 22 when I saw Tim with his thumb sticking out:

Twelve years! As you can imagine, Tim has racked up a story or two while on the road. As a matter of fact, he’s turned the journals he’s kept into two books, a short story, and a poem, all of which you can read at his website, Walls of Jericho.

Tim speaks with passion and enthusiasm, and it’s difficult not to get caught up in his energy. His mind works incredibly fast, too: any examples of hitchhiking I’d ask for, he wouldn’t so much as blink before starting into them. It was almost like putting a quarter in a slot and watch ‘im go:

My favorite of Tim’s stories is an epic tale that I would have to file under the heading of Small World:

Believe it or not, this is just one of many series of hitchhiking adventures where Tim has run into people he’s met, or who know people he has met simply by sticking his thumb out on the side of the road. As best I can tell, most of us are probably only a few degrees of separation from Tim–and if you’ve ever picked up a hitchhiker in the past 12 years, perhaps you’ve met him yourself!

I dropped Tim off at a park where he said he would spend the night before getting in touch with a friend the next day. I wish him well on his journeys.

And with that, I am just about ready to bring this series of interviews to a close. The first interview I had on my trip was on Day 1 with a hitchhiker, and I can think of no better way to bookend the whole adventure than with Tim’s interview.

After thirty-five days on the road, tomorrow I head home.

Sunday, August 17 2008
Cheyenne, WY to Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone.

As I left for my trip, a friend of mine told me that you learn a lot about yourself on a journey like this. I think that’s true, in some respects more than others. But Yellowstone helped me confirm something I’d always suspected about myself: I am soooooo not a camping guy. I know, I know. I’m supposed to like camping, and I’m supposed to like nature, and yadda yadda yadda. But it’s just not in my blood, and I’m going to have to come to terms with that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with nature or camping, or any of that–I just know for certain that it’s not for me.

(or, to be more philosophical and open-minded about it, camping is not for the 32 year-old version of me–who knows what I’ll be like in 20 or 40 years from now? perspectives and tastes change all the time, right?)

Since I was there for the evening, however, I walked around the campsite to find an interview subject or two. I met a family from Twin Falls, Idaho, who were on their annual vacation. Two young boys, Brady and Jack, had been riding their bikes around the camp earlier while the parents, John and Nicky prepared the fire and unloaded some dinner supplies from the Winnebago. They told me that Twin Falls is the only place in the country that it’s legal to go base-jumping, which reminded John of the first time he’d gone bungie jumping.

John has an interesting cadence to his voice–very rushed-and-stopped, over and over. I think this comes from a bit of a more shy nature–or, if not shy, then I think he’s just the sort of guy who would rather let his actions speak for him more than his words.

Most of the speaking of the evening fell to Brady, a tow-headed 12 year old who has a knack for getting hurt. Seriously, almost every single one of the many stories Brady told me tonight end with him breaking a bone, or bleeding, or scarring his leg…. here’s a quick edit of about fifteen minutes of talking to Brady:

Actually, that thing about the dumpster might not be as dramatic as Brady made it sound. Here’s the full part of that story, with his mother’s input:

Brady’s little brother Jack is a little less of a hellion, but he’s still prone to the occasional injury. Since it was the apparent topic of conversation, he joined in with an anecdote of his own (though Brady, as older brothers will, couldn’t help but join in to help out with the story):

I bid the family good night and left them to their hotdog cooking.

I made my way back to my tent (graciously lent to me by my friends Randy and Lisa), and tried my best to get comfortable for the evening–but I just couldn’t do it. I stretched and twisted and turned inside the sleeping bag, on top of the sleeping mat, under the blanket, with my head on the pillow. It felt like the way you feel when you accidentally put a t-shirt on with your head in an arm-hole, and one arm out the body hole, and the other arm in the head-hole, and you try to make it fit comfortably, struggling and struggling and struggling, until you say to yourself: screw it, I’m just gonna sleep in the car again.

So I did. Eff you, camping.

Saturday, August 16 2008
St. Louis, MO to Cheyenne, WY

Today was filled with a lot of driving. So instead of a step-by-step account of nothing but roadsign after roadsign, I thought I’d take this opportunity to give you some suggestions for anyone planning their own road trips. Whether it’s for a day or a whole month, I hope these tips I’ve gathered will be helpful. (thanks, Lindsey, for the suggestion!)

Friday, August 15 2008
St. Louis, MO

I had a long walk and quite an adventure through St. Louis. My first big stop was the St. Louis Arch. Here are some photos I took of the monument:

And here’s one of the Arch’s reflection in one of St. Louis’s other buildings:

I happen to think those are some pretty cool pictures. But before I pat myself on the back too much, I have to say that one of the genius parts of the Arch’s design is that it is nearly impossible to take a bad photograph of it! Pretty impressive.

Now, I’m afraid of heights. But it seemed like it would be a shame to be so close to the Arch and not go up to the top. So I entered the underground ramp (after more security than I’ve even ever been through at an airport, by the way!), and found my way to the tram lines that run up either side of the arch. I shared an elevator with a family of four who were making a pilgrimage from Florida to Minnesota. And when I say “elevator,” I really mean something that’s a lot more like a space-pod, with room enough for five people to sit and stare at each other as the space-pod is brought up the Arch’s slope to the top. (a bank of eight pods run up and down on either side of the Arch)

At the top of the Arch are some thin, rectangular windows to peer out of. But even though the view from many of the windows was pretty cool, the most memorable thing I saw at the top of the Arch was an Amish family who was taking the tour as well! I was flabbergasted. I mean, I don’t know much about the Amish, but it seemed completely counter-intuitive to find them at the top of the St. Louis Arch. I decided that as much as I would have regretted not going to the top of the Arch, I would regret ten times as much if I didn’t try to get an interview with at least one of the family members once we were back on the ground. Thankfully, I was able to talk to Samuel Borntrager. Samuel told me that it’s not so uncommon for the Amish to make it outside of their community:

Do you hear the way he says “Souzwest Missouri”? I don’t think that this is a speech impediment, I believe it is the way that the community pronounces their ‘th’ sounds. Unfortunately I didn’t get to speak to anyone else in order to confirm this, but I am pretty certain that many Amish have different speech patterns than Standard English.

I asked Samuel about the differences between how people like me are taught to think of the Amish, and what the Amish are actually like. For example, how it’s jarring to see them out in the city. I am certain that I was absolutely insulting in the way I presented my question, but Samuel was kind and patient in explaining:

This got us onto the topic of religion which, if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll notice has been a pretty common theme among many people I’ve spoken to. But I will not go much into Samuel’s and my discussion because, frankly, it was a little heartbreaking for me to reveal to him that I don’t believe in Jesus. I could see such compassion and pity and concern for me, and by extension for America (and he said as much), it’s a little difficult to reflect on still.

So I’ll give one more clip from the man, if only to demonstrate what I think is another fascinating linguistic artifact. This is from when he and I were discussing certain theosophical doubts:

This is something I’d read about in other dialects of English, but I’ve never heard first hand. “It’s always been a world.” “It’s always been a blue sky.” He’s using the pronoun it’s where the Standard English uses there’s. When you think about it, there really isn’t any real meaning specific to there that requires us to use it in constructions like this. I love thinking about how language develops in different places to find that one word instead of another has made its way as the pronoun in these kinds of phrases. Forgive me for getting all language-geeky on you.

I stopped into Levine’s Hats (www.LevineHat.com), a hat store in downtown St. Louis. They not only sell many fine hats, but are also one of the few places left in the country who can actually create a hat from scratch, including making all of the felt, steaming and blocking the shape of the crown, and putting on all of the finishing touches that go into a really elegant hat. Hats used to be a de facto part of peoples’ wardrobe in the early part of the 20th century. If you were a man, it wasn’t a question of whether or not you wore a hat; you wore a hat. That started to decline in the 1960s. Lance Levine, the fourth generation of Levines running the store, explains that the decline of the hat was largely due to a certain President of the United States:

I also spoke to James Peterson (affectionately known as “Pete”), the establishment’s premiere hat-maker and repairman. Just as an example of the craft, skill, and specialized technique that goes into hatting, here is Pete talking about how he changed a porkpie hat into a fedora:

There was also an amazing custom hat hanging around the shop, and I couldn’t resist taking a photo to show you:

Isn’t that something else?? Pete didn’t make that hat (though he’s made similar creations), but here he describes it to me in a little detail:

My final stop in St. Louis was the City Museum. I had been told by some friends that I absolutely needed to check it out, but they didn’t really tell me what to expect. I suppose I thought it would be a museum about St. Louis with some great exhibits, kind of like the ones at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. And I was dead wrong. In fact, “museum” doesn’t really seem to be the right word at all.

The City Museum used to be a shoe factory (in fact they take pride in the fact that Tennessee Williams worked in the factory, and even paid homage to the factory in The Glass Menagerie), but has long since been closed down. So the gigantic building was left abandoned until an urban revitilization project came along and decided to turn it into what I can only refer to as nothing less than the best treehouse ever!!!

Re-using all kinds of industrial beams, scaffolding, scrap, and other metal, the City Museum provides kids (and some adults, if you’re small and nimble enough) with twisty-windy ways to crawl through, slide through, run through, explore, and discover. And kids love it! This is just a small sample of the things I heard kids shouting throughout the museum:

“Follow me!”
“Where are you”
“Where does that lead?”
“We’re lost. Have you seen the Dragon’s head?”

I think it’s nearly impossible to get an idea for what the City Museum is like–how vast it is, how much fun it is–unless you actually see it. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to capture some video of a small fraction of the City Museum’s wonders. Tell me, if you were still 7 years old, wouldn’t this be the coolest place to be?

Thursday, August 14 2008
Indianapolis, IN to St. Louis, MO

About a month ago I got an e-vite from my friend Lindsey. She was having a goodbye-party for all of her friends in Portland before she left for graduate school. Sadly, I had to decline the invitation because I was on the road. But wait… I thought to myself… if I remembered correctly, wasn’t Lindsey going to graduate school somewhere in the midwest? And hey… I thought to myself still further… wasn’t I driving through the midwest? Perhaps there would be a way that I could still say goodbye to Lindsey, even if I missed the big dinner.

So I met up for lunch with Lindsey in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University where Lindsey will be doing her graduate work. It was so great to see her! She has a very nice apartment in a charming city. We went for a walk through some of IU’s campus and down to a street filled with what looked like really good restaurants. We decided to eat at a Turkish establishment where I had a delicious vegetarian Markassa (I think that’s what it was), and Lindsey and I spent a few hours talking about our separate journies; plus I was extolling the virtues of my Excel budget (which I love) and Lindsey was extolling the virtues of furnishing your apartment from Goodwill. It was a beautiful afternoon, and I’m happy that I got to see Lindsey before she starts school.

On my way south, my funnybone was endlessly tickled by the constant announcement of an upcoming city. I couldn’t get over this city’s name. It still strikes me as hilarious. The best example I could find was on a banner hung outside of a Ryan’s restaurant. It practically begs you to rearrange the syllables to tell you just how good their buffet is:

Seriously, am I the only person who thinks that’s hilarious??

I stopped in a few stores to see if I could find any souvenirs with the town’s name on them, but I was left unfulfilled. I did happen to find someone selling a farm game a friend had told me about: essentially it’s a large wooden box with a hole cut into it, and the object is to toss beanbags into the hole. The midwesterners call this game, I’m not kidding, Cornholing.

Alas, the game was too expensive and large for me to take with me. Also, maybe getting a Cornhole game in Effingham would have been going over the top a bit.

Wednesday, August 13 2008
Indianapolis, IN

Today I went to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. It is known as one of the most exciting Children’s Museums in the country, with wonderful hands-on exhibits and plenty of fun ways to learn about trains, Egyptian mummies, space, and dinosaurs. In fact, dinosaurs practically crash through the building’s exterior to excite childrens’ imaginations:

The museum also hosts touring exhibits. A touring exhibit was actually the reason I wanted to visit the museum. See, there was an exhibit created in Portland that I never got to check out. It was a stroke of luck that some friends of mine knew some of the exhibit’s creators, and they knew where it would be traveling to. What subject could possibly entice me to follow it half-way across the country? Why, it must be….

Of course.

And the exhibit was two tons of fun. Not only were there plenty of high-tech toys to play with (all presented under the guise of low-tech), but all of the techniques of animation, and animation-related work, were presented in a clear and understandable way. Personally, I had a lot of fun playing with the stop-motion area, which is something I don’t get to do much at work. (to be fair, I don’t make much time for myself to practice it) I also met a few kids who were really interested in animation, and it was so exciting to see them getting to actually create!

Upstairs at the museum is an area called Story Avenue, a collection of life-size scenes (a bank, a barber shop, a dining room, the back of a car, etc.), where you can hear recorded stories from the experiences of Indianapolis’s African American community. This is where I met Portia Scholar Jackson, who helped create the Story Avenue exhibit. Portia is a professional storyteller, as well as a teacher of storytelling to all ages. I’ve recently become fascinated with the idea of storytelling technique (and I regularly listen to stories from The Moth), and I was fortunate enough to hear some of Portia’s stories of her Aunt Janice–you can tell that although these stories have a strong foundation in memory and fact, they have been crafted to enhance their ability to keep the listener entertained. The story begins when Portia’s supervisor at the museum asked a series of questions, designed to figure out what the Story Avenue exhibit should include:

See what I mean? I mean, clearly Portia is already starting off as a memorable personality and just hearing her tell a story would almost certainly be engaging in and of itself. But when she adds on top of that her craft and skill, well, I could have sat there listening to her all day. And as it happens, I kind of did: because even though the museum closed soon after we started talking, I mentioned that I was looking for a good place to eat dinner, and Portia told me that every Wednesday she and her husband went to the Jazz Kitchen. So I went to the Jazz Kitchen and had some delicious crab cakes, and even met up a little with Portia and her husband and two of her sons for a little bit of the evening.

And, oh! The jazz! There was a trio on stage–a sax, an organ, and drums… and man! Man! They are the Dixon/Rhyne Project, and you can check out some of their music here. I could go on and on about all three of them, as a group or individually–but suffice it to say that they were something else. Wow.

In between the museum and heading to the Jazz Kitchen, I stopped at a skate park I noticed from the highway, namely the Major Taylor Skate Park. I don’t know if that name will mean anything to anyone, but I figure that in case it’s known in the skate world, I should mention it.

I saw three kids taking a break from skating, sitting on the side of the park, so I decided to approach them for a bit of an interview. When I asked if anyone wanted to talk, two of the kids said, almost simultaneously, “Gage will talk to you!” This isn’t the first time this has happened: I’ve found that when I approach a group, people in the group tend to know who the talker is and will volunteer them before the talker gets a vote. Happily, Gage didn’t have any objections.

Gage told me a little bit about how much of a daredevil he is, and one of the times his daredevilry didn’t turn out so good:

I like how Gage talks. He reminds me of my friend, Jim, who is also a skateboarder. They both have a very laid-back approach to being intense, and aren’t afraid to throw around some old-school terminology. Or maybe it’s so new school that it seems old school–or something. Anyway, I like that Gage called himself a “beast.”

I also asked Gage about the first time he completed a really cool trick. I’m not sure he’d want me posting this, especially with his friend Gunnar’s addition afterwards, but… well, listen carefully:

Sorry, Gage. That’s just too damn funny.

Tuesday, August 12 2008
Buffalo, NY to Indianapolis, IN

The car I rented in Oregon has, it should come as no surprise, an Oregon license plate.

As I drive further and further away from Oregon, it’s fun to see the occasional driver or pedestrian do a double-take at my license plate. You can almost hear them thinking “Wow, that is a loooong way from home.” And I have taken a secret pleasure in nodding my head and thinking “Yup. That’s right. I have driven many a mile, my friend.” A little bit of bragging rights never hurt anybody, right?

Today I am driving from Buffalo to Indianapolis. It is the first time that I am heading from East to West. To put it another way, it is the first time I am heading towards Oregon instead of away from it. And I can feel my “Wow, that car’s a long way from home” credit starting to dwindle away. It’s impressive to see an Oregon car in North Carolina. It will be less impressive to see an Oregon car in Wyoming, and incredibly unimpressive to see my Oregon car once I hit the state border of Oregon.

I have officially begun the last leg of my trip. The trip home. I can’t say I’m not eager to get back into my own apartment, to see my friends, to sleep in my own bed. But I wish my car would still be impressive to everyone who saw it on my way back to Portland. I guess that bragging rights can be ripped away as easily as they are bestowed.

Monday, August 11 2008
Buffalo, NY

I visited my brother Scott’s apartment today. I am always telling my friends about Scott’s apartment because of a collection he has. Scott collects miniature liquor bottles. You know the tiny ones like you get on airplanes? Those. Except that Scott has hundreds and hundreds of them, and they’re all different–many more varieties than I would have thought were possible. Check out the wall they cover:

I took pictures of some of the cooler sections of the collection (it’s all cool, but I couldn’t take pictures of everything, right?), and Scott even pointed out some of his favorites, and held some that were too difficult to photograph on the shelf. I hope you enjoy these pictures, because this collection just blows me away:

In the evening, I got out my microphone and sat down with my grandmother and her boyfriend. I was a little nervous about doing this. Although I had interviewed friends, this was the first time I would be talking to a member of my own family. I almost shied away from it, but I figured that since I had the microphone there with me on the trip, I’d probably regret it if I didn’t. And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is my grandmother talking a little bit about the grocery store her father ran when she was growing up:

Her father was very clear on how important family was to him:

I also spoke to Phil, whose 91 year old mind is still as sharp as a tack. He’s always got a quick-witted thing to add into a conversation, or an odd perspective to contribute. This is a story I didn’t know about Phil:

I love stories like that–and Phil has a bunch of ‘em. Maybe the next time I see him, he’ll be able to share a few more.

Sunday, August 10 2008
Buffalo, NY

This was walk-down-memory-lane day. Back in my hometown of Buffalo, New York and staying with my 83 year old grandmother and her 91 year old boyfriend, Phil.

I haven’t been back to Buffalo for 8 or 9 years, so there were definitely a few things that I wanted to relive while I was there. In the morning, my grandmother and I went to an antiques flea market that I used to attend every Sunday with my grandfather when I was growing up. It’s always a lot of fun seeing the old toys and furniture. Now that I was going with my grandmother, she was able to see a bunch of items from her past that have long gone out of use. For example, we saw a few refrigerators–the wooden kind, with a special compartment for the ice that the ice man would deliver in blocks to your door every morning. It made me think of all of the things from my own childhood that will be out of fashion and in an antique mall by the time I’m 60 or 70 years old. I’m almost certain that most of the telephones I grew up with will be completely obsolete. To say nothing of fax machines. Or cassette tapes, which are just about antiques right now, and CDs. How about 70 watt light bulbs? Or anything else we’ve all decided leaves too large of a carbon footprint? You can expect to find it all in the antique mart in a few short decades from now.

For lunch I decided that I was going to break a very personal rule. See, I haven’t eaten fast food since December of 1999. (unless you count Subway, which I don’t, and we can get into that another time) But I knew that since I was going to be back in Buffalo, a city I rarely visit, it would be a shame if I didn’t relive one of my favorite childhood meals: Mighty Taco. Mighty Taco is a local chain of fast-food taco vendors, and believe me they kick Taco Bell’s ass. If you’re in the Western New York area, you can’t go wrong with a little Mighty Taco.

Or so I thought. It turns out that, even though the tacos tasted exactly as I remembered them, the thrill had disappeared. They simply weren’t as good as when I had last had them 10 years ago. I guess that’s how it always goes.

And now it’s back on the wagon for me.