Jul 21 2014
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Wassup USA?

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Cushioned Lawn Chair

Cushioned lawn chairs.

Cushioned lawn chairs.

I have been there. I have seen the nation’s Capitol. I have walked the red, white, and blue pathways between trees and gardens and courtyards and hotdog stands and even more trees and tourists wearing tennis shoes and little dogs and bigger dogs and barricades and motorcades and esplanades and ice cream trucks.

I have sheltered myself from the hideous rays of the sun, cursed myself for wearing black skinny jeans and a grey shirt that shows sweat faster than I can produce it, and talked to my mom on the phone in the National Gallery after seeing masterpieces by Monet, Manet and other people that I can’t remember.

Yes, I have seen the glory. Yes, I have seen the power. Yes, I have seen stacks on stacks of marble buildings sandwiched between lawns that know no end. Yes, I have seen the irony in buildings dedicated to populations we have decimated and yes I have seen the waves of government workers in their slacks and white shirts and polished shoes going to do the will of a people that has forgotten to vote.

Seek, they say, and you shall find. Go, they say, and you will arrive. I tell you this, that I sought treasure and I have found it. I went to find destiny and I have found it.

In the courtyard in front of the U.S. Botanical Gardens there is a bounty beyond worth to a weary traveler, something so delectable and holy that only a few know about it or experience it.

It is cushioned lawn furniture, and it is heaven. This is not just a park bench. This is not merely a wooden chair. Nay, my friend. This is a park bench and a chair with a thick green cushion on it, free for anyone to sit and rest on for as long as they like and contemplate the likeness of President Garfield, who was assassinated not very far from the spot.

To one used to the concrete wastelands of San Francisco, the idea of a public, cushioned park bench is almost as loony as free coffee at a physical library. For this is not a world of free lunches, free back scratches, or free cushions. Unless, of course, they’ve already been paid for through taxes.

I wish I could comment on the brilliance of a Degas that I saw today, or perhaps the strange nature of travel and how it both brings you closer to people yet also distances you from them. Instead, I can only think – nay, I can only dream – of the lawn furniture at the U.S. Botanical Gardens. Such plushness. Such wonder. Such glory. Amen.

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Jul 20 2014
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Wassup USA?

The People You Meet and / or Avoid on the Greyhound

greyhound

greyhound

The woman rigidly sitting upright wearing dark glasses. She mutters continuously while staring straight ahead and has long straw-like yellow hair and a basket covered in a trash bag.

The man who stands in the glass doorway with his arms inside his sleeves and his hands down his pants.

The man with growths all over his body and a woman too wide in the ass region to step through a door without turning sideways. She yells at him and asks him lots of questions, almost like she’s quizzing him.

The woman that sat next to me and looked like a raisin. She said she’d been on the bus for four days coming back from Tampa to visit her mother who was 99 and dying. Terrible cough, delirious with sleep deprivation, fingernails long and textured, and a terrible itch on her left wrist that she would scratch for minutes on end, her dry skin rasping and flakes that would fly off and cover her purse, which she would then scratch/brush onto the ground. Yum. A nice person, though.

The young male hippie with a small backpack, no cell phone, and stringy hair.

The Australian woman traveling with Apple products.

The chatty Kentuckian with two tattoos with two different men’s names and a vaporizer that she’s passionate about who eats an entire Cinnabon then complains that her stomach is hurting.

The man who can’t get his change out of the Greyhound ticket machine and threatens to come in and run it over if he doesn’t get his money back.

The bus driver who likes to be called Todd and not bus driver.

The man with a laptop sitting in front of me who battled Greyhound wi-fi for the entire ride from Greenville to Charlotte.

Everyone else (like me) just trying to get from point A to point B.

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Jul 19 2014
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Wassup USA?

A Fun Post with Lists and Numbers and Stuff. Ice Cream Too.

Nibble Nook

Fair thee well, dear Nibble Nook

Tonight marks the end of my time at Ridgecrest. It’s been a unique experience and something both completely unexpected as well as completely different from everything else I’m doing this trip.

I wanted to do a by-the-numbers thing, so I did it below, starting with 26. It ended up being more numbers than I anticipated, but I’m a freaking trooper so I finished it.

Next stop: D.C. by way of Charlotte.

26 different flavors of ice cream tried (my favorite: extreme moose tracks – chocolate ice cream on chocolate fudge on  chocolate chunks. Insulin not included.)

25 minutes to hike to the top of Royal Gorge Lookout, where I arrived sweating and out of breath but thankful for the beauty of the earth and strong arms for dipping ice cream.

24 cups of coffee every three days (8 cups a day) (it’s an addiction).

23 or so volunteers that are wonderful, kind people who helped me understand how difficult facebook is to use and let me in on the secrets of life they’ve learned through the years.

22 physical miles and 10,000 cultural miles to Asheville, NC.

21 is the drinking age in the US. I did not drink any alcohol this past week, which was great news for my wallet.

20 years until I turn 45, which is still young according to the other volunteers.

19 miles hiked at least, all of it solo. No bear bites!

18 dollars spent on a hamburger at the Grove Park Inn. I ate the entire thing, an entire biscuit, and all the fries. I immediately wanted to vomit but hate wasting money.

17 seconds – the amount of time I spent considering stealing a towel from Ridgecrest. I decided against it because it was white and would look very dirty after just a short while. Also, it’s wrong.

16 times I laughed to myself when I thought of how close the Nibble Nook is to being the Nipple Nook.

15 eggs eaten at least. Probably more like twenty, but twenty was already taken in this listicle.

14 reasons to come back next year and seven to never return ever again.

13 hours of straight rain. And then another 48.

12 different buildings to get lost in and / or play hide and go seek in (full disclosure: not sure if it’s actually twelve).

11 o’clock is time to play Bananagrams with the ladies.

10 o’clock is thirty minutes until closing time at the Nipple Nook.

9 accidental curse words or other cultural faux pas that my filter let slip through.

8 days in Baptist territory. No alcohol allowed, and nothing weird preferred.

7 chapters written in my cheesy romance novel featuring a budding relationship between a Nibble Nook volunteer and a boy’s camp counselor. I won’t ruin the ending for you.

6 o’clock is dinner time! Most days featured food that was half fried into oblivion, baked well past done, or sauteed in butter until it lost all its senses. This is not the place to come for your diet.

5 hours of solo hiking wearing forest-colored clothing during what may have been bear hunting season. Also, no one knew where I was. Also, I didn’t know where I was.

4 different people’s detergent I used in the laundry room. I hadn’t brought any and figured I’d spread the burden.

3 hours spent driving to and from Mt. Mitchell in terrible fog on windy roads. This was probably the closest I came to dying.

2 new facebook friends (at least).

1 unique experience I will carry with me until I birth something creative from it, and then I’ll carry that creative thing with me until the day I die.

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Jul 18 2014
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Food, Wassup USA?

Hello Styrofoam. I Think You’re Trying to Kill Me but I’ll Still Drink Coffee Out of You.

Styrofoam

Styrofoam

Before I start, let me be clear that I know nothing about styrofoam and its affect on my health. Everything I know about styrofoam comes from whatever liberal pseudo-science they put in the water in San Francisco and something my babysitter said to me when I was in 5th grade about how microwaving styrofoam can give you cancer. Since then, I’ve researched and learned nothing.

That said, styrofoam was a part of my childhood. I ate school lunches off of it, microwaved leftovers on it, and drank all kinds of beverages from it. I once tore up a styrofoam cup and put it in a shoebox for the famed engineering challenge of creating an egg crate that would protect an egg from a 20 foot drop. Styrofoam did not work, but it sure was staticky.

I moved to San Francisco about two years ago and had kind of forgotten about styrofoam. It’s banned from restaurants in San Francisco and styrofoam cups, plates, and trays are a rarity. Through an assimilation process that’s been going on since my arrival, I’ve gradually learned to associate styrofoam with Bible thumping conservatives, anti-education monsters, and death. At no point was any of this directly said to me. It’s just what happens when you’re in San Francisco long enough and drink enough locally roasted coffee (from ceramic cups of course.)

Now that I’m traveling in areas that are not protected from styrofoam, I’ve started using it again. I drink coffee from it and I want to say that everything’s fine, and that nothing has changed and I’m still the same woman from Oklahoma who doesn’t care about cancer caused by heating up styrofoam but I’m not and I do.

I think the styrofoam is probably killing me. I think it makes the coffee taste weird and dissolves into it when the coffee is too hot, and then those styrofoam molecules turn into cancer in my body that can activate at any point. I’m afraid of the styrofoam cup but I’m more afraid of how terrible I’ll feel if I don’t take coffee to go from breakfast. It’s a choice of two evils, and one promises death in the future, and the other promises a nasty headache until dinner.

I think the correct path is clear.

So I’m on to you styrofoam. I know you’re trying to kill me but you won’t get me before I flee back to my Bay Area styrofoam free sanctuary. Until then, I’ll see you for breakfast.

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Jul 17 2014
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Wassup USA?

This Actually Happened: Boy Playing the Banjo in a Tree for Tips

North Carolina Busking

North Carolina Busking

I had just purchased a terrible coffee with some not terrible chocolate covered espresso beans and was sitting outside in Black Mountain, North Carolina when a banjo started to play somewhere. It seemed to be coming from behind a tree, but I wasn’t sure so I continued to look towards where the sound was coming from. All of the sudden, I saw a jar of lowered from the tree itself.

At that moment, I realized something incredible was happening. A person was sitting in the tree, playing the banjo, and had tied a tip jar to a rope and hung it from the branches. I thought to myself that I must marry this person if they are a male. Maybe I could put my phone number in the jar and then he’d call me and we’d go have a secret beer after I escaped the Baptist camp and we could talk about feminism and how much he respects women and hates the idea that women must submit to men in any way shape or form and I would admire his jawline while he talked eloquently and with good humor.

Then I thought it would be better to look at the person first, make sure he was male and not too young or too old, and then proceed with falling in love.

I crossed the street to give the person a tip (which is the most effort I’ve ever made to tip anyone), and then looked up in the tree. Sure enough, it was some dude. Unfortunately, he looked high school age and like he was terrified of people. That would certainly explain the hiding in the tree at least.

I’m not into the underage thing so I moved on but still put that banjo-boy-plucking-in-a-tree experience in my back pocket. I’ve seen three camels in a truck, and I’ve seen a mad hatter biking down Market Street in San Francisco, but this was one of the stranger and more wonderful things I’ve experienced (and taken a picture of!)

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