Interestingly, if I try to do a non-emoji heart symbol in the title, it reads it as broken code. Good to know.
I adore Los Angeles, think of it very much as "home," and after a year of living in Chicago still say I'm from California. I wasn't excited to go, though, which might be in part because I travel so much that it sort of takes that kind of edge off. It wasn't until I got on the plane and buckled my seat belt that I thought, "I'm going back."
This post is about two months late, and I won't be getting into a ton of detail because most of what I did was hanging out with friends and catching up, and there are some things that don't get shared. But there are the things that can:
-I nearly killed the car as soon as I got it. It was driving weird, and I barely thought they were going to let me out of the Avis lot with it, the way I was stopping and starting while figuring out the brakes, and managed to figure out how to shift gears so I could actually drive on the freeway. It wasn't until I had gotten out of the car and gotten back in later that I realized I had put it in first when I could have just put it in drive. Oops.
-Went to In N Out first thing. I'm a vegetarian, but their grilled cheese is basically the hamburger without the burger, and it's incredible. I need one transported to the Midwest.
-Found vegan Chinese food.
-Had a quiet moment at Long Beach, which I think was my favorite moment of the whole trip. Just a girl and her filty, filthy beach.
-Got Mexican coffee from my favorite place, Portfolio on Junipero and 4th.
-Buzzed past my old apartment in Long Beach. It's pistachio green now, I swear to god.
-Went to Disneyland! Did a bunch of Star Wars stuff, then realized the lines weren't bad so we kept putting off lunch until we felt blood sugar crashes coming on. Then we went to Trader Sam's to drink for three hours before coming back. I came away with a Han Solo lunchbox and a light up Millennium Falcon ice cube. A+ trip.
-Met a friend from Canada to go to the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Aside from some sets and the prop house, we saw the DC and Harry Potter museum, and a warehouse full of Batmobiles. Also there were four adorable teenage-ish sisters who were so happy whenever we got to something Pretty Little Liars-related.
-Got my picture taken at Central Perk.
-Also did some Harry Potter greenscreen work.
-Found myself a horchata latte. If you can ever get one of these, do it. If you can get things like Mexican coffee, drinks, or food, get it, it is actually authentic there.
-Spent most of my time stuck in traffic on the 710, now my least favorite freeway.
-Met up with said Canadian friend to go to Universal Studios, where I went on maybe three things, but I got to hang out at Hogwarts and have butterbeer and that's all I really needed from life.
-Left Universal at 3, and got coffee at the Starbucks there, which was a grave mistake. Got coffee at 3:30. Drove over to Avis at LAX in traffic to drop off my rental car and was told I could catch a bus from LAX to Union Station. Leave Avis around 4:30 on the shuttle to LAX, find the right place for the shuttle, then wait. Realize at 5:30 I should see when the bus is coming, realize I have about a half hour to wait. Bus gets there at 6. Bus gets stuck in rush hour traffic. Bus gets to Union Station at 7:23, at which point several people have missed their trains and I'm about to. The guy checking people's tickets is extremely rude and keeps making people who're about to miss their trains wait for him because "that's not the way to be." I get on my train at 7:25 after sprinting through the train station with my luggage, basically have a mild asthma attack, pick the only empty seat on that car next to a poor guy who after ten minutes of me coughing and wheezing and being a general mess, asked to get off at the first stop to get away from me. :(
-Then threw an aspirin into my bra.
So, LA was a ton of fun, and there's still plenty I want to do. I still haven't gotten to the Last Bookstore, and I want to go back to Hollywood Forever for a movie, and I want to drive up to Hearst Castle, and go to the Broad, and I'll have to go back to see Star Wars Land when it's finished, and and and. I also think I did things in the right order, too; I'm not sure I could have left LA without my heart breaking unless I was going to San Diego next. And then by the time I left San Diego I was so tired I just wanted to get to my bed, I didn't care what state I was in.
I'm picking a better way to get to San Diego, though. That method did not work.
10.9.16
1.9.16
Doesn't count when you're on vacation
The other day I was talking to some coworkers about a family vacation one of them took, and the conversation went something like this:
"My husband yelled at me because he said we spent almost a thousand dollars on food for the week. I said it was better than eating out all the time where it'd be more."
"Well, you're on vacation. You're not supposed to care about that kind of thing on vacation."
"Exactly! Calories and prices don't count when you're on vacation."
Oh, for this to be true. Because dude, I am paying now for not paying better attention then.
I'm kind of grounded at the moment because I spent more in LA than I meant to and then got hit with car issues all at once, so I couldn't bounce back from vacation as fast as I wanted to financially, and I still owe people money. (Also I swear an LA post is coming.) On top of that, after a summer of hating the way I looked in 90% of the photos taken of me, I stepped on the scale and realized I also put on more weight than I'd thought, because I got too busy and broke and it was hard to keep up with a workout and health routine, which also explains why I've been so tired the last few weeks. After a summer in the sun even my skin is rebelling against me and I'm spending a lot of time hydrating and applying lotion because it's actively not fun to deal with. I had an awesome summer, but I overdid it in every way possible. So now I'm in this mode of trying to repair the damage I did, in the gym, at the bank, and in the kitchen.
I'm never going to tell anyone they have to go on vacation and stick to a strict budget and count every calorie. That's zero fun at all. But at the same time, your life is more than just the week or so here and there when you're on a vacation. While you're trying to keep it memorable and try new things, the trick is to not make yourself regret it later, and not to make the parts of your life you don't spend on vacation harder. Make sure you've saved up enough to handle splurges, and don't splurge on everything. Do better than I did. Learn from my mistakes.
Especially on the sunscreen. Dear god, remember sunscreen.
"My husband yelled at me because he said we spent almost a thousand dollars on food for the week. I said it was better than eating out all the time where it'd be more."
"Well, you're on vacation. You're not supposed to care about that kind of thing on vacation."
"Exactly! Calories and prices don't count when you're on vacation."
Oh, for this to be true. Because dude, I am paying now for not paying better attention then.
I'm kind of grounded at the moment because I spent more in LA than I meant to and then got hit with car issues all at once, so I couldn't bounce back from vacation as fast as I wanted to financially, and I still owe people money. (Also I swear an LA post is coming.) On top of that, after a summer of hating the way I looked in 90% of the photos taken of me, I stepped on the scale and realized I also put on more weight than I'd thought, because I got too busy and broke and it was hard to keep up with a workout and health routine, which also explains why I've been so tired the last few weeks. After a summer in the sun even my skin is rebelling against me and I'm spending a lot of time hydrating and applying lotion because it's actively not fun to deal with. I had an awesome summer, but I overdid it in every way possible. So now I'm in this mode of trying to repair the damage I did, in the gym, at the bank, and in the kitchen.
I'm never going to tell anyone they have to go on vacation and stick to a strict budget and count every calorie. That's zero fun at all. But at the same time, your life is more than just the week or so here and there when you're on a vacation. While you're trying to keep it memorable and try new things, the trick is to not make yourself regret it later, and not to make the parts of your life you don't spend on vacation harder. Make sure you've saved up enough to handle splurges, and don't splurge on everything. Do better than I did. Learn from my mistakes.
Especially on the sunscreen. Dear god, remember sunscreen.
28.8.16
Sunday night party
I used to have a goal, that I would go to at least one new place every year. The last couple years I've blown this out of the water- this year alone I've added West Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee as new states I've been to. So my 2017 goal is to get out of the country, because not counting Tijuana (and I don't), I've never been. And in truth, the Alaska trip means I'll be spending a couple days in Vancouver, but... if I'm being really honest, Mexico and Canada just seem easy as an American. I can just walk over the border using a passport card, though you can see the above linked Tijuana post to see why I'm not in a hurry to do that again.
So, I'd like to do something in addition to Vancouver. A while back I told a friend that once I'm done with Disney we should look up Groupon deals and whatever's cheapest, we should go. So tonight I got bored and started looking up Groupon Getaway deals, just to see what's out there. Mainly what I'm finding is that you can do all-inclusive trips for pretty cheap if you're okay with someone else making your itinerary. I don't know that I know anyone who's done a tour group through something like this, but I also feel like if it wasn't reputable I'd have heard about it on the news by now, you know? Also aside from European tours that are slightly out of my price range right now, it looks like we'll be a little limited to Mexico, Jamaica, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Which is fine with me. I have no problem hanging out on a beach as long as I also get out to see the area beyond the hotel/resort.
Also, thanks to Groupon, I want to go to the Galapagos.
So, I'd like to do something in addition to Vancouver. A while back I told a friend that once I'm done with Disney we should look up Groupon deals and whatever's cheapest, we should go. So tonight I got bored and started looking up Groupon Getaway deals, just to see what's out there. Mainly what I'm finding is that you can do all-inclusive trips for pretty cheap if you're okay with someone else making your itinerary. I don't know that I know anyone who's done a tour group through something like this, but I also feel like if it wasn't reputable I'd have heard about it on the news by now, you know? Also aside from European tours that are slightly out of my price range right now, it looks like we'll be a little limited to Mexico, Jamaica, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Which is fine with me. I have no problem hanging out on a beach as long as I also get out to see the area beyond the hotel/resort.
Also, thanks to Groupon, I want to go to the Galapagos.
20.8.16
Alaska is a go!
Today, eight months after we first started discussing it, Nick, our mom and I booked our cruise to Alaska. I've spent the last few weeks researching and trying to come up with the absolute best deal, and we ended up deciding on going on Norwegian. Most of the cruise lines tend to go to the same places and you can get the same excursions, so it basically comes down to what kind of boat you want to go on, and for our price point Norwegian was the best deal. I went into some pretty exhaustive detail, too, creating a spreadsheet with each potential trip listed and filtered by its start and end points, stops, dates, days of the week, and prices. We factored in holidays for vacation time. We considered the flight prices to Vancouver versus Seattle, and didn't consider Seward at all because that would include more time and money to get there from Anchorage than I was willing to spend. I learned that May and September are cheaper even though July and August are the best times to go, and decided that oceanview rooms are kind of pointless because for $150 more all they offer you is a porthole. I checked out the best decks if you get seasick (not an issue with us, but just in case) and took the advice to stay away from kid friendly decks if we wanted something quieter. I considered ports, and how much time we had in them.
There is a lot of information out there, if you search it out and/or a crazy person like me.
Most of the total is paid, with a little less to pay up for before February. We don't go until May, and excursions are not close to being bookable yet, but now I'm doing my research on those. The excursions through the ship seem to be pricey, so I'm doing a bit of a deep dive to try and find deals and see if it's worth it to take a van up to the Yukon instead of a train ride to save $70 per person, etc.
So if you have any tips on things to do in Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan, feel free to drop a comment! Particularly if you know the best place to see a moose.
There is a lot of information out there, if you search it out and/or a crazy person like me.
Most of the total is paid, with a little less to pay up for before February. We don't go until May, and excursions are not close to being bookable yet, but now I'm doing my research on those. The excursions through the ship seem to be pricey, so I'm doing a bit of a deep dive to try and find deals and see if it's worth it to take a van up to the Yukon instead of a train ride to save $70 per person, etc.
So if you have any tips on things to do in Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan, feel free to drop a comment! Particularly if you know the best place to see a moose.
17.8.16
The downside
I am in awe of people who travel all the time. I'm not sure I could do it constantly, much as I'd want to (if I had the opportunity). Maybe it's because my trips tend to be pretty action-packed with not a lot of downtime, but my first reaction when a friend announced she was spending a year traveling the world was "That would be EXHAUSTING."
I've learned that personally, I need breaks. A few years back I worked a full week, took a late flight to Portland for a wedding, flew back on Sunday, worked half a week, took a redeye to Chicago for another wedding. I handled it fine, because it gave me a little normalcy where I could sleep in my own bed and do laundry and make something for myself instead of eating out. And maybe it was truer in LA. One of the reasons I left was because I wasn't taking advantage of being there and wasn't doing enough, and here I'm constantly busy. Since getting back from California I've had friends out here and gone to Chicago and have a podcast taping to go to and a party and a baby shower in Wisconsin in my vey near future. I haven't been able to have a down period to recover. It's absolutely normal to get the blahs after vacation, but at some point they should be able to go away. Plus I admittedly tripped up in financial post-vacation recovery, so I get stressed out when I think of Disney in 57 days even when I should be just fine. I won't get a chance to recover mentally, emotionally and financially from my July vacation until mid-September.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Untitled as all get out, but my life's doing pretty good at the moment. I would just also appreciate a nap, and a million dollars.
What I'm saying is, full-time travelers, I salute you.
I've learned that personally, I need breaks. A few years back I worked a full week, took a late flight to Portland for a wedding, flew back on Sunday, worked half a week, took a redeye to Chicago for another wedding. I handled it fine, because it gave me a little normalcy where I could sleep in my own bed and do laundry and make something for myself instead of eating out. And maybe it was truer in LA. One of the reasons I left was because I wasn't taking advantage of being there and wasn't doing enough, and here I'm constantly busy. Since getting back from California I've had friends out here and gone to Chicago and have a podcast taping to go to and a party and a baby shower in Wisconsin in my vey near future. I haven't been able to have a down period to recover. It's absolutely normal to get the blahs after vacation, but at some point they should be able to go away. Plus I admittedly tripped up in financial post-vacation recovery, so I get stressed out when I think of Disney in 57 days even when I should be just fine. I won't get a chance to recover mentally, emotionally and financially from my July vacation until mid-September.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Untitled as all get out, but my life's doing pretty good at the moment. I would just also appreciate a nap, and a million dollars.
What I'm saying is, full-time travelers, I salute you.
7.8.16
Touristing Chicago
I feel like it's harder to talk about live in/near it. A couple years ago I could have written pages upon pages of stuff to do in Chicago because I visited it a lot, but now that I'm here it didn't really occur to me. Except that I have friends from other states coming into town this week, and coming up with things was incredibly easy, so I thought I'd write something up for it.
First off, getting around Chicago is very easy. I'm not great at public transportation, or directions, but I find it pretty easy to get around here. And unless I'm supposed to be somewhere at a set time, if I get a little turned around, it still tends to be fun. Also, I hate driving in the city and refuse to do it if I don't have to. It's a lot of one-way streets, a lot of buses, a lot of pedestrians who step out into the street (full disclosure: I do this too), and once I get turned around in a car and then end up searching for a one way street I can actually turn down I've become a raging Hulk monster. So, I prefer to take the train down to Union Station and head out from there. Most of the city is on a grid, and if you need to know which direction to go, if you look in any one direction and don't see buildings in the distance, that way's east to the lake. Easy.
So, things I recommend:
-Millennium Park- Once upon a time I thought this was a stupid idea, but I really love this place. There are gardens and sculptures that are changed out often so you can see something different each time. There's a giant fountain with faces on it that spits water at you in the summer, and in the winter there's outdoor ice skating. There's also the bandshell, where you can catch many, many concertas and events, and which if you look at it a certain way, is absolutely phallic.
Also, there's The Bean/Cloud Gate. Let's be real, it's why you wanted to come in the first place.
You can also use the giant winding metal bridge (which bunnies used to travel overnight and rip up the gardens, fyi) and get over to Grant Park. Again, a lot of concerts here, and it's where the Taste of Chicago is held every summer, and it's the home of Buckingham Fountain, which I'm told is amazing at sunset though I've never managed to witness it myself.
-Next to Millennium Park you'll find the Art Institute. If you're into art at all, I highly recommend this. It's very easy to spend hours here.
-The whole of the Museum Campus is great. The Field Museum is good, with Sue the Dinosaur, and it was my favorite as a kid because it has mummies. As an adult, I realize they don't change a lot of stuff out often, so unless they have a special exhibit it's soemthing I can get through in a couple hours. >The Museum of Science and Industry I am way into. It's more hands on, with exhibits on the human body and cole mines and you can go into a German submarine. It's a great place for kids, and as I've been looking at the website for this I'm thinking I need to go back myself sometime soon.
There's also the Shedd Aquarium, which is one of the better aquariums I've been to as they've been updating it in recent years. My favorite part is the giant tank as soon as you walk in, which will also be the source of a nervous breakdown one day when I hear a parent tell their kid "Look, it's a hammerhead!" when it's CLEARLY A BONNETHEAD SHARK and the information is LITERALLY ON A SIGN RIGHT IN FR ONT OF YOU, DON'T MISINFORM YOUR CHILDREN BECAUSE YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE READING.
Ahem.
I wish I could say I have great love of the Adler Planetarium, but aside from a decent star show on the ceiling, every memory I have of this place is looking at pictures on a wall. However, if you go outside to the back of the planetarium, you'll get the best skyline views in the city.
-If you still want great views, the Sears Tower (Willis Tower, whatever, sigh) is okay. It's tall, but it's also a little too tall. A few Christmases ago Nick and I took Mom here and were told that it was open, but it was too foggy and you wouldn't see anything. So we went over to the Hancock Building, which has the 360 Observatory. The whole place is open to look out, and when I was there I got some great views of Lake Michigan frozen over, because it was really that damn cold.
-I have spent entire days just exploring the Magnificent Mile. It's all stores, so you can go in and check things out, or window shop, or pop into FAO Schwartz and play with everything.
-A recent discovery: I got it in my head to go on an architecture cruise, so yesterday we went to Wendella Boat Tours. We chose the river and lake tour, so we got an in-depth tour of the nearby buildings, and then headed out onto Lake Michigan for skyline views. I had so much fun on this, and would absolutely do it again.
-Another discover is the Harold Washington Library, which is nine floors. We wandered around taking pictures and being jealous of the kids who get to use the amazing children's section, and rode the escalators up to the gardens, which instantly became one of my favorite interiors of all time. I'm not even going to post a picture. I want you to go and be as surprised as I was.
-Chicago is an amazing theater town. We get the good shows at theaters like the Chicago Theater and the Goodman, but there are plenty of them sprinkled around the city. And I will always recommend catching something at Second City.
-Wrigley Field. I'm a Sox fan, but this is a great venue.
-There are zoos! One is Lincoln Park Zoo, which is free but has pricey parking, and is pretty cool. If you want to get out of the city itself for a bit, you can also go to Brookfield Zoo, which you can easily get to by train. I'm very wary right now of how animals are treated in zoos and aquariums, and both of these were probably not the best when I was a kid, but they've stepped it up a lot and I like them both. Also Lincoln Park has some great city views around the back.
-And finally, just try the pizza. I don't care if you think it's "not real pizza" or you have some messed-up loyalty to New York's pizza, which for the record is just fine and not much to rave about BUT THAT IS NOT WHY WE'RE HERE. My personal favorite is Pequod's, but if you can't get there, it's all about Giordano's or Lou Malnati's, which you can find easily downtown. You can do Geno's East if you're getting desperate. Uno can suck it.
Happy Chicagoing!
First off, getting around Chicago is very easy. I'm not great at public transportation, or directions, but I find it pretty easy to get around here. And unless I'm supposed to be somewhere at a set time, if I get a little turned around, it still tends to be fun. Also, I hate driving in the city and refuse to do it if I don't have to. It's a lot of one-way streets, a lot of buses, a lot of pedestrians who step out into the street (full disclosure: I do this too), and once I get turned around in a car and then end up searching for a one way street I can actually turn down I've become a raging Hulk monster. So, I prefer to take the train down to Union Station and head out from there. Most of the city is on a grid, and if you need to know which direction to go, if you look in any one direction and don't see buildings in the distance, that way's east to the lake. Easy.
So, things I recommend:
-Millennium Park- Once upon a time I thought this was a stupid idea, but I really love this place. There are gardens and sculptures that are changed out often so you can see something different each time. There's a giant fountain with faces on it that spits water at you in the summer, and in the winter there's outdoor ice skating. There's also the bandshell, where you can catch many, many concertas and events, and which if you look at it a certain way, is absolutely phallic.
Also, there's The Bean/Cloud Gate. Let's be real, it's why you wanted to come in the first place.
You can also use the giant winding metal bridge (which bunnies used to travel overnight and rip up the gardens, fyi) and get over to Grant Park. Again, a lot of concerts here, and it's where the Taste of Chicago is held every summer, and it's the home of Buckingham Fountain, which I'm told is amazing at sunset though I've never managed to witness it myself.
-Next to Millennium Park you'll find the Art Institute. If you're into art at all, I highly recommend this. It's very easy to spend hours here.
-The whole of the Museum Campus is great. The Field Museum is good, with Sue the Dinosaur, and it was my favorite as a kid because it has mummies. As an adult, I realize they don't change a lot of stuff out often, so unless they have a special exhibit it's soemthing I can get through in a couple hours. >The Museum of Science and Industry I am way into. It's more hands on, with exhibits on the human body and cole mines and you can go into a German submarine. It's a great place for kids, and as I've been looking at the website for this I'm thinking I need to go back myself sometime soon.
There's also the Shedd Aquarium, which is one of the better aquariums I've been to as they've been updating it in recent years. My favorite part is the giant tank as soon as you walk in, which will also be the source of a nervous breakdown one day when I hear a parent tell their kid "Look, it's a hammerhead!" when it's CLEARLY A BONNETHEAD SHARK and the information is LITERALLY ON A SIGN RIGHT IN FR ONT OF YOU, DON'T MISINFORM YOUR CHILDREN BECAUSE YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE READING.
Ahem.
I wish I could say I have great love of the Adler Planetarium, but aside from a decent star show on the ceiling, every memory I have of this place is looking at pictures on a wall. However, if you go outside to the back of the planetarium, you'll get the best skyline views in the city.
-If you still want great views, the Sears Tower (Willis Tower, whatever, sigh) is okay. It's tall, but it's also a little too tall. A few Christmases ago Nick and I took Mom here and were told that it was open, but it was too foggy and you wouldn't see anything. So we went over to the Hancock Building, which has the 360 Observatory. The whole place is open to look out, and when I was there I got some great views of Lake Michigan frozen over, because it was really that damn cold.
-I have spent entire days just exploring the Magnificent Mile. It's all stores, so you can go in and check things out, or window shop, or pop into FAO Schwartz and play with everything.
-A recent discovery: I got it in my head to go on an architecture cruise, so yesterday we went to Wendella Boat Tours. We chose the river and lake tour, so we got an in-depth tour of the nearby buildings, and then headed out onto Lake Michigan for skyline views. I had so much fun on this, and would absolutely do it again.
-Another discover is the Harold Washington Library, which is nine floors. We wandered around taking pictures and being jealous of the kids who get to use the amazing children's section, and rode the escalators up to the gardens, which instantly became one of my favorite interiors of all time. I'm not even going to post a picture. I want you to go and be as surprised as I was.
-Chicago is an amazing theater town. We get the good shows at theaters like the Chicago Theater and the Goodman, but there are plenty of them sprinkled around the city. And I will always recommend catching something at Second City.
-Wrigley Field. I'm a Sox fan, but this is a great venue.
-There are zoos! One is Lincoln Park Zoo, which is free but has pricey parking, and is pretty cool. If you want to get out of the city itself for a bit, you can also go to Brookfield Zoo, which you can easily get to by train. I'm very wary right now of how animals are treated in zoos and aquariums, and both of these were probably not the best when I was a kid, but they've stepped it up a lot and I like them both. Also Lincoln Park has some great city views around the back.
-And finally, just try the pizza. I don't care if you think it's "not real pizza" or you have some messed-up loyalty to New York's pizza, which for the record is just fine and not much to rave about BUT THAT IS NOT WHY WE'RE HERE. My personal favorite is Pequod's, but if you can't get there, it's all about Giordano's or Lou Malnati's, which you can find easily downtown. You can do Geno's East if you're getting desperate. Uno can suck it.
Happy Chicagoing!
3.8.16
The next big thing
Since I was a kid I've dreamed of going to Australia. For years I blamed it on being a kid who thought koalas were cute, and recently realized it was probably more that Robert Scorpio on General Hospital was Australian. I wish I was kidding about this reasoning but it's true. I've always been fascinated by it. I'm interested in the culture, the slang, the accents, the boys, the fact that people can live there at all when everything's designed to kill them, and I know people joke about that but there's something in that that genuinely speaks to me. I have all these things I want to see and do, and in a dream world I could spend a whole summer there, exploring everywhere I can get to. I have a friend there who's been encouraging me to go for years, and I would love to, but it's always been too expensive. Australia has been my holy grail of trips for my entire life.
Last weekend, my friends and I got together at one of our houses. I'd just gotten back from California, my ex-roommate had just gotten back from London, and most of the night was us talking about our trips. And then somewhere towards the end, the one I'm going to Disney with told us that she's going to Australia next month basically on a company's dime, and I have been seething with jealousy ever since.
I want this clear: I don't compete. I find inspiration in other people getting to travel, and I'd much rather celebrate someone else getting to do something cool rather than being upset about my own situation. But I was mad at life about this one. Sarah once got to go and invited me, and I couldn't come up with the money in time and it's always bothered me, and this was worse than that. Days later I was still sitting at work thinking, "Why am I not doing that?"
And then I thought, "Why am I not doing that?"
I'd told my Australian friend a couple weeks ago that my goal was to go there in 2018. So I'm going to make it happen in 2018. I'm not going to get a whole summer to travel. It'll probably be more like two weeks, and I'll have to choose which cities I want to hit. I'd always wanted to tack New Zealand and Bali on there, and I'm not sure that's feasible. I'm going to have to be judicious and find deals and make some sacrifices, but so far it's looking like I can actually pull this off if I'm careful over the next two years. I've been doing research, figuring out which cities are the best for what I want to do, and I'm making notes on prices so I have an idea of what I need to save.
I'm also figuring out how much it's going to cost to go diving with sharks. That is non-negotiable.
Last weekend, my friends and I got together at one of our houses. I'd just gotten back from California, my ex-roommate had just gotten back from London, and most of the night was us talking about our trips. And then somewhere towards the end, the one I'm going to Disney with told us that she's going to Australia next month basically on a company's dime, and I have been seething with jealousy ever since.
I want this clear: I don't compete. I find inspiration in other people getting to travel, and I'd much rather celebrate someone else getting to do something cool rather than being upset about my own situation. But I was mad at life about this one. Sarah once got to go and invited me, and I couldn't come up with the money in time and it's always bothered me, and this was worse than that. Days later I was still sitting at work thinking, "Why am I not doing that?"
And then I thought, "Why am I not doing that?"
I'd told my Australian friend a couple weeks ago that my goal was to go there in 2018. So I'm going to make it happen in 2018. I'm not going to get a whole summer to travel. It'll probably be more like two weeks, and I'll have to choose which cities I want to hit. I'd always wanted to tack New Zealand and Bali on there, and I'm not sure that's feasible. I'm going to have to be judicious and find deals and make some sacrifices, but so far it's looking like I can actually pull this off if I'm careful over the next two years. I've been doing research, figuring out which cities are the best for what I want to do, and I'm making notes on prices so I have an idea of what I need to save.
I'm also figuring out how much it's going to cost to go diving with sharks. That is non-negotiable.
1.8.16
SDCC 2017: The (belated) post-con rundown
I'm not big on recovery days after a vacation. There are ways to ease back in without taking up more vacation or sick time that can be used for later trips, at least if you're me. And yet I had to take a sick day on Tuesday because my god, this con took it out of me. I feel like I'm still recovering.
I'll be real from the start: this was one of my least favorite cons, and I've been to seven. Part of it was friend drama that's not going into this blog that put a damper on things, but a lot of it was that there wasn't as much there as in previous years. The schedule was heavily loaded for Saturday but then I had a lot of holes in my schedules the other days. Usually Vikings and Bates Motel take over a parking lot for offsite events. That didn't happen this year. It was a five hour wait for the Game of Thrones Experience which was severely lacking when compared to other years. I spent less than five minutes at Petco Park and deciding I didn't want to do any of the things there... In fact on Wednesday travel buddy Sarah and I went to Petco at 6:30 to see it an hour and a half after it opened, and there was one food truck and one attraction ready for people. Things were still going up around the Gaslamp, things weren't up around the marina... It was really disappointing on that front. Maybe we got spoiled, but I actually weirdly got bored at times when I'm used to having way too much to do.
And then there was stuff Comic Con International couldn't control, like the weather. My weather app said it was 73 degrees. My weather app is a motherfucking liar. It was very hot for San Diego, and humid, with large crowds of people giving off body heat, and no one seemed to be prepared for it. Most pictures of me from the weekend already have my makeup melted off. On top of that, people were littering like animals, and the janitorial staff or whoever cleans up was really bad about doing it, so things smelled and if you had to sit on the ground you had to watch where you were putting yourself, and it all led up to things just feeling gross. It's an anomaly. I've never seen it like that before. I hope I never see it like that again.
But that's enough about the disappointments, though there's a Story in here that I will get to. Despite these things I did have fun, so let me talk about what I did there:
-I stood in line for two hours on blacktop for a raffle to get Star Trek premiere tickets. I didn't even want to go. I was there to help my friends have a shot. A couple eventually got them, after going back. So glad I got the sunburn.
-I actually got out on the exhibit floor twice. It's a great place to take pictures and check out what there is to buy (though I've never spent more than $10 on myself), but usually it gets massively crowded and claustrophobic. It did that Sunday, when I was actually trying to get things for people and I had to flee because it was too much, but Thursday was a good run.
-I took insane amounts of pictures at the Star Wars booths. Like, it's a very real problem.
-While in line at about eight am on Friday, I got a call saying, "I'm watching you right now." One of my friends was in the line next to me.
-Got the hell into Hall H. More on this later.
-Had breakfast at the same place as Sigourney Weaver.
-And Anna Kendrick.
-Took part in a singalong at Animaniacs Live.
-Ate like a normal person! Mostly
-Slept somewhere that wasn't a hotel room floor! Like a hotel room bed!
-Ran into Ralph's just before closing to buy snacks to cram into a Han Solo-in-carbonite lunchbox a friend bought me in LA. For the rest of the weekend I was able to say things like "I have snacks in Han Solo," and "Do you want to look through Han Solo?" and I am bringing him everywhere from now on.
So, the Hall H line. If you've never been, the biggest room in the convention center is Hall H, which holds upwards of 6,000 people. The really big stuff goes in there. The lines are also ridiculously long to get in, and years and years of con staff not stopping people from starting lines earlier than the rules state mean that you might have to wait a day to get in. Which isn't really as bad as it sounds. One person can keep a spot in line for five people, so throughout the day you can have people come by and bring things or take a shift for a few hours so you can wander around, get food, see other things, whatever.
Iiiiiii did not have that that day. My roommates had left around 2:30 am for another room, and at 6 on Friday I woke up with a feeling that I needed to get in line. After ending up in the wrong line- again, line management sucked- I got into the Saturday Next Day Line, where I ended up back on the blacktop that I'd been in for the Star Trek tickets I didn't get. And we didn't really have a system for who would ever relieve me or when people would be around, so I basically sat there for nine hours and tried not to get sunstroke. I made friends with the women in line behind us, which got me a bathroom break and a walk into the Hyatt for blessed air conditioning, where everyone in the ladies' room said things like "You are getting pink." I'm not exaggerating about the sunstroke, either. I came fairly unprepared, not realizing I'd be on blacktop and that I'd be there for that long, so I had water and sunscreen that I applied six times and still got burned. I ended up taking off my shirt because I had a tank top on underneath and wore the shirt as a cape to try and protect more of my skin. Some friends brought me coffee and water. My amazing awesome from Kelsey came to keep me company and took a nap in the parking lot and brought me an umbrella, which I didn't realize I needed until I had it. She is my Hall H superstar.
Also we were next to the poor man's version of the Abigail from Fear the Walking Dead, which played zombie noises for two hours behind me.
I got a two hour break when my roommates got out of their last panel. I got to eat, shower enough to rinse off the sweat and gross, and then after seeing a tweet that they were handing out wristbands, we headed back down to the line. We didn't need to. Someone had mixed up the time they were going out that day and so the line was packed again early. Thanks, person who didn't know what they were doing.
The way this works is: in order to get into Hall H, you need a wristband. People are joined by the friends they were saving a spot for, and everyone has to be in line when they hand them out, or you're out of luck unless you want to try on the actual day of those panels. They have A, B, C, and D, all color coded, and once you get your wristband you can go home and sleep, and the next day you'll be able to rejoin the line at the back of your color group. Or you can sleep in line and keep your space. We had a couple people sleep in line, which was a good call since there were reports that the line people were ignoring the color groups and sending everyone who returned the next morning to the back of the wristband line regardless of where they should be. This was not the biggest problem there.
In the morning we had some really great line guys, who offered to get me coffee if I gave him the money, who walked the lines making sure they knew everyone and just being friendly. Then while I was finally on my break, they had a shift change, and things went to hell. We were next to the ferry, and a bored ferry worker on her phone kept directing people through the Next Day Line to get there. And while the guys in the morning were great, they hadn't roped off the lines. When wristbands started going out and everyone stood, the back of the line smushed so that people couldn't tell where the line actually was in an attempt to jump ahead. I'm pretty sure people were using the ferry misdirect in order to hop in line, and the line monitors we had now did not care. They were utterly clueless. People were getting upset, and while we were checking the @HallHLine twitter account to see where they were on wristbands, we'd see a lot of tweets saying "Security is needed at the parking lot." It was a lot like being in a zombie movie where you can hear it all right behind you but you're just too ahead of it to see what's going on. The mess was very close to us, and I'm very grateful for the feeling that told me to get up and get in line when I did.
Wristbands stopped for a while. The people in charge of the line people, called blinky blinks (they wear blinkers), came over and started questioning things. They pulled people up to just behind us out of the parking lot and next to the boats, where we were given wristbands and then stopped again. And when I say we were close to it, I mean that my group got out of the parking lot, as did the three women behind us, and two guys behind them, and then they shut things down until they got the line settled. And then we were stuck waiting for a little while, until they moved us ahead to get in place to sleep. Now, we really should have been under the tents based on when I got in line, but we weren't. They moved us near them, next to a couple of generators, and then moved us back, right under the lights of the Adult Swim carnival, which I think stayed on all night. And that was where people had to sleep. I stayed long enough to claim a place in line, because they tend to compress things too much and then when people rejoin there's no room, and once people were crawling into sleeping bags, I went back to my room to sleep in a bed.
In my opinion, Hall H was worth it. I'm not sure my roommates would agree, but I may have to do this again next year. We saw the Star Trek anniversary panel (eh), the Aliens anniversary panel (fine), Women Who Kick Ass (good), and then all the movies Warner Brothers presented, and then Marvel. We got wands given to us by Eddie Redmayne, who literally ran around Hall H in a heavy sweater in San Diego in the summer, in order to do some kind of light trick for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We saw Will Smith take over the Suicide Squad panel, which was fine with me because he's Will Smith. We got the Wonder Woman trailer, which I didn't get to see because at the time I was behind both a tall guy and a tall guy with an Afro. We got Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy footage and saw the casts of movies and by the time we got to Marvel, the energy in the room was amazing because that's what everyone was really here to see, so people went nuts over everything, and then there was a whole mess while we had to wait for them to hand out hats. Which I could have skipped out on but most certainly did not.
So, as a whole, SDCC this year wasn't my favorite. Next year'll be better.
I'll be real from the start: this was one of my least favorite cons, and I've been to seven. Part of it was friend drama that's not going into this blog that put a damper on things, but a lot of it was that there wasn't as much there as in previous years. The schedule was heavily loaded for Saturday but then I had a lot of holes in my schedules the other days. Usually Vikings and Bates Motel take over a parking lot for offsite events. That didn't happen this year. It was a five hour wait for the Game of Thrones Experience which was severely lacking when compared to other years. I spent less than five minutes at Petco Park and deciding I didn't want to do any of the things there... In fact on Wednesday travel buddy Sarah and I went to Petco at 6:30 to see it an hour and a half after it opened, and there was one food truck and one attraction ready for people. Things were still going up around the Gaslamp, things weren't up around the marina... It was really disappointing on that front. Maybe we got spoiled, but I actually weirdly got bored at times when I'm used to having way too much to do.
And then there was stuff Comic Con International couldn't control, like the weather. My weather app said it was 73 degrees. My weather app is a motherfucking liar. It was very hot for San Diego, and humid, with large crowds of people giving off body heat, and no one seemed to be prepared for it. Most pictures of me from the weekend already have my makeup melted off. On top of that, people were littering like animals, and the janitorial staff or whoever cleans up was really bad about doing it, so things smelled and if you had to sit on the ground you had to watch where you were putting yourself, and it all led up to things just feeling gross. It's an anomaly. I've never seen it like that before. I hope I never see it like that again.
But that's enough about the disappointments, though there's a Story in here that I will get to. Despite these things I did have fun, so let me talk about what I did there:
-I stood in line for two hours on blacktop for a raffle to get Star Trek premiere tickets. I didn't even want to go. I was there to help my friends have a shot. A couple eventually got them, after going back. So glad I got the sunburn.
-I actually got out on the exhibit floor twice. It's a great place to take pictures and check out what there is to buy (though I've never spent more than $10 on myself), but usually it gets massively crowded and claustrophobic. It did that Sunday, when I was actually trying to get things for people and I had to flee because it was too much, but Thursday was a good run.
-I took insane amounts of pictures at the Star Wars booths. Like, it's a very real problem.
-While in line at about eight am on Friday, I got a call saying, "I'm watching you right now." One of my friends was in the line next to me.
-Got the hell into Hall H. More on this later.
-Had breakfast at the same place as Sigourney Weaver.
-And Anna Kendrick.
-Took part in a singalong at Animaniacs Live.
-Ate like a normal person! Mostly
-Slept somewhere that wasn't a hotel room floor! Like a hotel room bed!
-Ran into Ralph's just before closing to buy snacks to cram into a Han Solo-in-carbonite lunchbox a friend bought me in LA. For the rest of the weekend I was able to say things like "I have snacks in Han Solo," and "Do you want to look through Han Solo?" and I am bringing him everywhere from now on.
So, the Hall H line. If you've never been, the biggest room in the convention center is Hall H, which holds upwards of 6,000 people. The really big stuff goes in there. The lines are also ridiculously long to get in, and years and years of con staff not stopping people from starting lines earlier than the rules state mean that you might have to wait a day to get in. Which isn't really as bad as it sounds. One person can keep a spot in line for five people, so throughout the day you can have people come by and bring things or take a shift for a few hours so you can wander around, get food, see other things, whatever.
Iiiiiii did not have that that day. My roommates had left around 2:30 am for another room, and at 6 on Friday I woke up with a feeling that I needed to get in line. After ending up in the wrong line- again, line management sucked- I got into the Saturday Next Day Line, where I ended up back on the blacktop that I'd been in for the Star Trek tickets I didn't get. And we didn't really have a system for who would ever relieve me or when people would be around, so I basically sat there for nine hours and tried not to get sunstroke. I made friends with the women in line behind us, which got me a bathroom break and a walk into the Hyatt for blessed air conditioning, where everyone in the ladies' room said things like "You are getting pink." I'm not exaggerating about the sunstroke, either. I came fairly unprepared, not realizing I'd be on blacktop and that I'd be there for that long, so I had water and sunscreen that I applied six times and still got burned. I ended up taking off my shirt because I had a tank top on underneath and wore the shirt as a cape to try and protect more of my skin. Some friends brought me coffee and water. My amazing awesome from Kelsey came to keep me company and took a nap in the parking lot and brought me an umbrella, which I didn't realize I needed until I had it. She is my Hall H superstar.
Also we were next to the poor man's version of the Abigail from Fear the Walking Dead, which played zombie noises for two hours behind me.
I got a two hour break when my roommates got out of their last panel. I got to eat, shower enough to rinse off the sweat and gross, and then after seeing a tweet that they were handing out wristbands, we headed back down to the line. We didn't need to. Someone had mixed up the time they were going out that day and so the line was packed again early. Thanks, person who didn't know what they were doing.
The way this works is: in order to get into Hall H, you need a wristband. People are joined by the friends they were saving a spot for, and everyone has to be in line when they hand them out, or you're out of luck unless you want to try on the actual day of those panels. They have A, B, C, and D, all color coded, and once you get your wristband you can go home and sleep, and the next day you'll be able to rejoin the line at the back of your color group. Or you can sleep in line and keep your space. We had a couple people sleep in line, which was a good call since there were reports that the line people were ignoring the color groups and sending everyone who returned the next morning to the back of the wristband line regardless of where they should be. This was not the biggest problem there.
In the morning we had some really great line guys, who offered to get me coffee if I gave him the money, who walked the lines making sure they knew everyone and just being friendly. Then while I was finally on my break, they had a shift change, and things went to hell. We were next to the ferry, and a bored ferry worker on her phone kept directing people through the Next Day Line to get there. And while the guys in the morning were great, they hadn't roped off the lines. When wristbands started going out and everyone stood, the back of the line smushed so that people couldn't tell where the line actually was in an attempt to jump ahead. I'm pretty sure people were using the ferry misdirect in order to hop in line, and the line monitors we had now did not care. They were utterly clueless. People were getting upset, and while we were checking the @HallHLine twitter account to see where they were on wristbands, we'd see a lot of tweets saying "Security is needed at the parking lot." It was a lot like being in a zombie movie where you can hear it all right behind you but you're just too ahead of it to see what's going on. The mess was very close to us, and I'm very grateful for the feeling that told me to get up and get in line when I did.
Wristbands stopped for a while. The people in charge of the line people, called blinky blinks (they wear blinkers), came over and started questioning things. They pulled people up to just behind us out of the parking lot and next to the boats, where we were given wristbands and then stopped again. And when I say we were close to it, I mean that my group got out of the parking lot, as did the three women behind us, and two guys behind them, and then they shut things down until they got the line settled. And then we were stuck waiting for a little while, until they moved us ahead to get in place to sleep. Now, we really should have been under the tents based on when I got in line, but we weren't. They moved us near them, next to a couple of generators, and then moved us back, right under the lights of the Adult Swim carnival, which I think stayed on all night. And that was where people had to sleep. I stayed long enough to claim a place in line, because they tend to compress things too much and then when people rejoin there's no room, and once people were crawling into sleeping bags, I went back to my room to sleep in a bed.
In my opinion, Hall H was worth it. I'm not sure my roommates would agree, but I may have to do this again next year. We saw the Star Trek anniversary panel (eh), the Aliens anniversary panel (fine), Women Who Kick Ass (good), and then all the movies Warner Brothers presented, and then Marvel. We got wands given to us by Eddie Redmayne, who literally ran around Hall H in a heavy sweater in San Diego in the summer, in order to do some kind of light trick for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We saw Will Smith take over the Suicide Squad panel, which was fine with me because he's Will Smith. We got the Wonder Woman trailer, which I didn't get to see because at the time I was behind both a tall guy and a tall guy with an Afro. We got Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy footage and saw the casts of movies and by the time we got to Marvel, the energy in the room was amazing because that's what everyone was really here to see, so people went nuts over everything, and then there was a whole mess while we had to wait for them to hand out hats. Which I could have skipped out on but most certainly did not.
So, as a whole, SDCC this year wasn't my favorite. Next year'll be better.
19.7.16
Currently: Encinidas, CA, at last check
I'm on the train to San Diego currently, what while the LA portion of my trip was busy and anazing and will warrant its own post, getting to the second part of my California trip has not been smooth sailing.
But, I whined about it enough and instead I'm going to talk about one of the great, little parts of LA.
I was pretty massively scheduled, and there was so much I wanted to do that I couldn't fit in. I was spending Sunday at Disneyland, but I had jet lag, which meant I was up earlier than I needed to. So I decided to use the time before my friends picked me up to drive to Long Beach.
I spent most of my time in LA living in an old apartment in that city, and it was barely legal. I had a bedroom made of styrofoam and we passed down the apartment from person to person so that people ended up being completely left off leases and the rental company got away with doing shady things because of it. But I loved it. I loved the area, and while I'm not one to lay out on a beach for hours, I spent a lot of time driving to the beach to sit and get away for a while. When my parents went through their divorce I'd put on my headphones and angrily walk the twenty minutes to the beach, walk in the water some, and then I'd be madder at the hill of stairs by the end than I could be at any person. I went back there now, when it was overcast and cool, parked in front of one of the houses I always wanted to live in and walked down the stairs.
I love the city. But the beach is filthy. It's covered in trash, and it's a little scary to walk barefoot, but I went up to the water, kicked off my flip flops, and walked in the water for a little bit. Just a few minutes, since I had to get back to the hotel for my pickup, and took pictures before heading back up the giant stairs.
I got in my rental car and said aloud, "It smells like gross beach in here."
It didn't stop me from going to my favorite coffee shop, too. It's called Portfolio, on 4th and Junipero, and I spent a lot of time there when the Internet would be down. I got a Mexican hot chocolate, loved how so many of the pastries are vegan now, and saw that the clientele now is largely white-haired people at 7 am on a Sunday morning.
I got back to my hotel with just enough time to step into the shower to scrub the beach smell off my feet before my friends showed up. Totally worth it.
But, I whined about it enough and instead I'm going to talk about one of the great, little parts of LA.
I was pretty massively scheduled, and there was so much I wanted to do that I couldn't fit in. I was spending Sunday at Disneyland, but I had jet lag, which meant I was up earlier than I needed to. So I decided to use the time before my friends picked me up to drive to Long Beach.
I spent most of my time in LA living in an old apartment in that city, and it was barely legal. I had a bedroom made of styrofoam and we passed down the apartment from person to person so that people ended up being completely left off leases and the rental company got away with doing shady things because of it. But I loved it. I loved the area, and while I'm not one to lay out on a beach for hours, I spent a lot of time driving to the beach to sit and get away for a while. When my parents went through their divorce I'd put on my headphones and angrily walk the twenty minutes to the beach, walk in the water some, and then I'd be madder at the hill of stairs by the end than I could be at any person. I went back there now, when it was overcast and cool, parked in front of one of the houses I always wanted to live in and walked down the stairs.
I love the city. But the beach is filthy. It's covered in trash, and it's a little scary to walk barefoot, but I went up to the water, kicked off my flip flops, and walked in the water for a little bit. Just a few minutes, since I had to get back to the hotel for my pickup, and took pictures before heading back up the giant stairs.
I got in my rental car and said aloud, "It smells like gross beach in here."
It didn't stop me from going to my favorite coffee shop, too. It's called Portfolio, on 4th and Junipero, and I spent a lot of time there when the Internet would be down. I got a Mexican hot chocolate, loved how so many of the pastries are vegan now, and saw that the clientele now is largely white-haired people at 7 am on a Sunday morning.
I got back to my hotel with just enough time to step into the shower to scrub the beach smell off my feet before my friends showed up. Totally worth it.
16.7.16
Currently: O'Hare Airport
I've flown dozens upon dozens of times, mostly through O'Hare or LAX. I'd been warned about TSA lines, so I downloaded the MyTSA app, figured with a 10-20 security line wait I was good, and Nick dropped me off at O'Hare at 7 am for a 9:15 flight.
Oh dear god. This airport was not this bad before, I swear. I got there and walked into a wall of people. I had to ask "What airline is this for?" to the longest line, only to be told, "All of them. It's for dropping off luggage."
I checked in, got in line, then was told it should have printed out the luggage tag, then had to go back to the counter.
"Is it always this bad?" I asked.
"Well, it's the weekend," said the woman at the counter. "All these flights are taking off at once, and it gets... busy."
"That was super diplomatic," I said.
She smiled and said thank you, and directed me to the end of the luggage line, which had gotten longer.
I made friends in line. There was a woman from LA who was worried about making her 8:00 flight, and a student from St. Maarten who was willing to tell me all about how much he does not like it there. "At least your violence is interesting, and causes discussion," he said. "Nothing to discuss there." Mostly we complained about how much the line to just leave out luggage was not moving, but I weirdly got a chance to show off my airport skills by giving advice on what to do if you miss your flight, or how to skip ahead in the security line when you need to book it.
The security line was no problem. I had to walk further but I got to go right through, and they threw me in an expedited security line because it was open.
Currently I'm at the gate, hoping the LA lady made her flight since I don't see her here, and I'm Watching two women try to catch a sparrow who's decided to hang out in the seat next to me. I swear my airport experiences at more interesting than most people's.
If you want to see more of my California adventures, I'm on Instagram at @thereandbackblog and I'm tweeting at @gothereandback. The sparrow next to me is also tweeting.
Oh dear god. This airport was not this bad before, I swear. I got there and walked into a wall of people. I had to ask "What airline is this for?" to the longest line, only to be told, "All of them. It's for dropping off luggage."
I checked in, got in line, then was told it should have printed out the luggage tag, then had to go back to the counter.
"Is it always this bad?" I asked.
"Well, it's the weekend," said the woman at the counter. "All these flights are taking off at once, and it gets... busy."
"That was super diplomatic," I said.
She smiled and said thank you, and directed me to the end of the luggage line, which had gotten longer.
I made friends in line. There was a woman from LA who was worried about making her 8:00 flight, and a student from St. Maarten who was willing to tell me all about how much he does not like it there. "At least your violence is interesting, and causes discussion," he said. "Nothing to discuss there." Mostly we complained about how much the line to just leave out luggage was not moving, but I weirdly got a chance to show off my airport skills by giving advice on what to do if you miss your flight, or how to skip ahead in the security line when you need to book it.
The security line was no problem. I had to walk further but I got to go right through, and they threw me in an expedited security line because it was open.
Currently I'm at the gate, hoping the LA lady made her flight since I don't see her here, and I'm Watching two women try to catch a sparrow who's decided to hang out in the seat next to me. I swear my airport experiences at more interesting than most people's.
If you want to see more of my California adventures, I'm on Instagram at @thereandbackblog and I'm tweeting at @gothereandback. The sparrow next to me is also tweeting.
10.7.16
A love letter to LA
I never really felt like I fit in in Chicago. Don't get me wrong, I love it and think of it as one of the greatest cities in the world. I love the architecture and people and pizza and its museums and culture and there's so much to do and there is much sportsball. But it has its issues. It's too cold, it's too hot, it's violent... In 2003, I was living in the western suburbs, I was surrounded by a lot of people who had no problem dropping racist or homophobic language around to the point where I was really uncomfortable being around them. And I think because I was uncomfortable, I had a hard time being me. I was quiet in conversations and never expressed my opinions and to be completely honest, I felt unappreciated. And then one day in winter, I hit black ice on an overpass while driving home at night and almost wiped out, and I decided I was moving.
I'd been to California before. I don't even know how it happened, but I got it into my head as a kid that I wanted to be famous and live in a house by the beach. You want a lot of things for yourself as a kid, but this stuck. And when I graduated from high school, three months later I was on a plane to LA.
It didn't go well that time. I was living with an online friend who couldn't decide if she wanted me as a roommate or not, her live-in boyfriend harassed me, I didn't know that having a car was imperative there, and so I was never able to find a job because I was limited to basically the mall because it was in walking distance. I lost a lot of weight because I was too poor for food. But I loved it. I'd walk to the store and talk to people on the way. Once I was walking late at night, and there was a group of four black girls across the street who spotted me and called, "Are you alone? No, no, no. We'll protect you," and crossed the street to walk me home. I never felt unsafe in my neighborhood in Culver City, but it was one of the nicest things people have done for me. I had a couple friends, who unfortunately lived in Orange County and so one of them would pick me up and drive me to the other friend's house like they were sharing custody of me. Sometimes I'd have to go to work with Steph because she couldn't drop me off, which was fine by me because I got to go to Disneyland for free then, where I mostly people-watched. We'd hang out on Hollywood Boulevard and pick up things meant for tourists that meant that I could be an extra in a movie, or run around on Aliso Beach too late and night and lose our shoes. Once we drove to the desert for a party where I found I actually had no problem talking to people I didn't know, and I demolished them at Star Wars trivia. I was chubby and had always thought that I wouldn't be pretty enough in LA, but I got dates off the street and got an invite to an industry party that I wasn't able to go to. I began to notice when one friend became jealous of me and started trying to sabotage me and my self-esteem, and I learned how not to stand for it anymore.
And then because I ran out of money, my mom had to fly out and come get me to move me home. But I saved. I lived at home and worked, and put that money towards moving me back to California at some random point. I was more open now, too. I began speaking out when things bothered me, and when my friends went back to not appreciating me, I ditched them for ones that did, until they came back to me. If I hadn't fit in before, I really didn't fit in now.
So in August of 2003, I picked up and moved back. I lived with some guy from Roommates.com in Redondo Beach, though that friendship fell apart pretty quickly. I worked for a temp agency that put me to work at UCLA, where I found one of my favorite jobs ever working for the maintenance department of off campus student housing, where our office moved around from a frat house to the converted first floor of an apartment building. I wrote a book at a Coffee Bean on my lunch. I knew someone who knew I wanted to act, so she arranged for me to be a production assistant on a low-budget movie that she was working on, and I realized that I didn't want to act, I wanted to run the show. I worked seventeen hour days for three weeks for a grand total of $200 and it was some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. It ended with me having to drive Peter Weller home at the end of the shoot. I talked about cell phone service with Robocop. That led to other jobs, including one that let me into Universal Studios for free and had me running around the park in order to find a specific flavor of Gatorade for Brendan Fraser. My friend Karyn, whose friends I'd ruined at trivia years earlier, worked on Sunset so when I was working up at UCLA we'd meet at the Virgin Records on Sunset and have coffee and talk about writing until traffic died down.
After a year with a roommate who turned out to be kind of a misogynist, I moved to Long Beach, and that's where I really hit my stride. Roommates came and went, but Rebecca and Jasmine were the best. And, I got my place by the beach. It was a 20-minute walk down Anaheim to the actual beach, which became a thing I did especially when I was upset, and I had a lot going on then. I had a favorite coffee shop called Portofino, I was friends with people at the Ralph's, I went full-on nerd around Rebecca and then when she was out of town, Jasmine and I lived like frat boys who partied too much. I was in LA when marriage equality became a thing, and witnessed the anger that happened when Prop 8 yanked it away, and got to celebrate with friends again when it was given back. People would come to visit me and I'd struggle to figure out what to do, because I was so used to being there now that it was hard to come up with stuff. I found out that I was pretty much a natural when it came to earthquakes, and where natives would freak out I'd be totally fine, and I developed a new appreciation for rain because we didn't get a ton of it, and when we did the streets would flood because the city planners hadn't understood things like drainage. I was mostly friends with my roommates' friends, and I'd follow them to parties or clubs, not because I was a follower but because that's where the cool stuff was.
When I moved to Downey, Rebecca and Jasmine were long gone, one having moved to Texas and another in with her boyfriend, though we're all still friends. Downey I was never that impressed with, to be honest. I was really poor at the time and it was close to work, and I got a discount through there and they weren't going to run my credit. But I met a couple of my best friends there, and started going out more. I became a regular at the Largo in LA, seeing the Thrilling Adventure Hour every month and Eddie Izzard every time he was in town. He used the Largo as his way to run through new material, so in three shows over about a year I saw his latest show from its very earliest incarnation into something that was polished and real. He even did fifteen minutes at the end of one show in Spanish, and I stayed because I was wondering if I'd learned enough Spanish by osmosis to understand it. (No.) And maybe I became a little more aware of my looks, but I don't know that that's a bad thing. Instead of making me self-conscious, it made me aware of how to pull myself together, to dress myself and actually make my eyebrows look like they belonged on a human face. People expected a certain thing of me in LA, and it meant that I take care of myself now, and I consider that a plus. Sure, it's kind of shallow and you're going to have to hear about the new religion trend or how someone you know knows someone famous or what's new in yoga, but for a place that can be so focused on looks it's also really damn inclusive.
And when I decided I had to move back to Chicago, even for a while, I started my bucket list and discovered so much more to California than I realized was there. I took several road trips, and went to Catalina, and visited a Frank Lloyd Wright house, and did all these things that apparently caught everyone's attention on Facebook. If I'd actually made myself do these things the whole time, I might not have left. I didn't feel like I was having enough experiences, and that I'd grown stagnant, and in leaving I realized I just hadn't been trying hard enough.
I'm actually pretty happy in Chicago. Things have changed since 2003, which helps a ton. If someone's an idiot, I can call them out on it and they'll probably realize that yeah, what they said was probably assy. I go out a lot and see a lot more of the country than I did before, and I get to be around while my friends' kids grow up, and I'm around family, and it's all pretty great. But I really wish I could just move everyone I care about to LA. I miss the weather and the people. I miss getting dragged to K-Town and getting amazing pastries from some bakery where I'm not sure what I'm eating because no one spoke English. I miss vegan restaurants and food trucks. I miss seeing amazing sunsets that I should be Instagramming along with every other person in LA, dammit. I even miss getting to parties and spending a lot of my conversations talking about how I got there and what the parking is like. There is this feeling to LA, this energy, that I can't recreate here. I really just belong there.
I only have four days, and most of my agenda is seeing people. But there are places I need to revisit, and I'm working on finding time to go back to Long Beach and get a Thai iced tea at Portofino, and maybe trying to head up to Echo Lake Park and The Last Bookstore because I didn't get to them before. While looking for things to do with some friends for a day on this trip I discovered all this other stuff I still want to do.
Next time, LA. I'll be coming back for you.
I'd been to California before. I don't even know how it happened, but I got it into my head as a kid that I wanted to be famous and live in a house by the beach. You want a lot of things for yourself as a kid, but this stuck. And when I graduated from high school, three months later I was on a plane to LA.
It didn't go well that time. I was living with an online friend who couldn't decide if she wanted me as a roommate or not, her live-in boyfriend harassed me, I didn't know that having a car was imperative there, and so I was never able to find a job because I was limited to basically the mall because it was in walking distance. I lost a lot of weight because I was too poor for food. But I loved it. I'd walk to the store and talk to people on the way. Once I was walking late at night, and there was a group of four black girls across the street who spotted me and called, "Are you alone? No, no, no. We'll protect you," and crossed the street to walk me home. I never felt unsafe in my neighborhood in Culver City, but it was one of the nicest things people have done for me. I had a couple friends, who unfortunately lived in Orange County and so one of them would pick me up and drive me to the other friend's house like they were sharing custody of me. Sometimes I'd have to go to work with Steph because she couldn't drop me off, which was fine by me because I got to go to Disneyland for free then, where I mostly people-watched. We'd hang out on Hollywood Boulevard and pick up things meant for tourists that meant that I could be an extra in a movie, or run around on Aliso Beach too late and night and lose our shoes. Once we drove to the desert for a party where I found I actually had no problem talking to people I didn't know, and I demolished them at Star Wars trivia. I was chubby and had always thought that I wouldn't be pretty enough in LA, but I got dates off the street and got an invite to an industry party that I wasn't able to go to. I began to notice when one friend became jealous of me and started trying to sabotage me and my self-esteem, and I learned how not to stand for it anymore.
And then because I ran out of money, my mom had to fly out and come get me to move me home. But I saved. I lived at home and worked, and put that money towards moving me back to California at some random point. I was more open now, too. I began speaking out when things bothered me, and when my friends went back to not appreciating me, I ditched them for ones that did, until they came back to me. If I hadn't fit in before, I really didn't fit in now.
So in August of 2003, I picked up and moved back. I lived with some guy from Roommates.com in Redondo Beach, though that friendship fell apart pretty quickly. I worked for a temp agency that put me to work at UCLA, where I found one of my favorite jobs ever working for the maintenance department of off campus student housing, where our office moved around from a frat house to the converted first floor of an apartment building. I wrote a book at a Coffee Bean on my lunch. I knew someone who knew I wanted to act, so she arranged for me to be a production assistant on a low-budget movie that she was working on, and I realized that I didn't want to act, I wanted to run the show. I worked seventeen hour days for three weeks for a grand total of $200 and it was some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. It ended with me having to drive Peter Weller home at the end of the shoot. I talked about cell phone service with Robocop. That led to other jobs, including one that let me into Universal Studios for free and had me running around the park in order to find a specific flavor of Gatorade for Brendan Fraser. My friend Karyn, whose friends I'd ruined at trivia years earlier, worked on Sunset so when I was working up at UCLA we'd meet at the Virgin Records on Sunset and have coffee and talk about writing until traffic died down.
After a year with a roommate who turned out to be kind of a misogynist, I moved to Long Beach, and that's where I really hit my stride. Roommates came and went, but Rebecca and Jasmine were the best. And, I got my place by the beach. It was a 20-minute walk down Anaheim to the actual beach, which became a thing I did especially when I was upset, and I had a lot going on then. I had a favorite coffee shop called Portofino, I was friends with people at the Ralph's, I went full-on nerd around Rebecca and then when she was out of town, Jasmine and I lived like frat boys who partied too much. I was in LA when marriage equality became a thing, and witnessed the anger that happened when Prop 8 yanked it away, and got to celebrate with friends again when it was given back. People would come to visit me and I'd struggle to figure out what to do, because I was so used to being there now that it was hard to come up with stuff. I found out that I was pretty much a natural when it came to earthquakes, and where natives would freak out I'd be totally fine, and I developed a new appreciation for rain because we didn't get a ton of it, and when we did the streets would flood because the city planners hadn't understood things like drainage. I was mostly friends with my roommates' friends, and I'd follow them to parties or clubs, not because I was a follower but because that's where the cool stuff was.
When I moved to Downey, Rebecca and Jasmine were long gone, one having moved to Texas and another in with her boyfriend, though we're all still friends. Downey I was never that impressed with, to be honest. I was really poor at the time and it was close to work, and I got a discount through there and they weren't going to run my credit. But I met a couple of my best friends there, and started going out more. I became a regular at the Largo in LA, seeing the Thrilling Adventure Hour every month and Eddie Izzard every time he was in town. He used the Largo as his way to run through new material, so in three shows over about a year I saw his latest show from its very earliest incarnation into something that was polished and real. He even did fifteen minutes at the end of one show in Spanish, and I stayed because I was wondering if I'd learned enough Spanish by osmosis to understand it. (No.) And maybe I became a little more aware of my looks, but I don't know that that's a bad thing. Instead of making me self-conscious, it made me aware of how to pull myself together, to dress myself and actually make my eyebrows look like they belonged on a human face. People expected a certain thing of me in LA, and it meant that I take care of myself now, and I consider that a plus. Sure, it's kind of shallow and you're going to have to hear about the new religion trend or how someone you know knows someone famous or what's new in yoga, but for a place that can be so focused on looks it's also really damn inclusive.
And when I decided I had to move back to Chicago, even for a while, I started my bucket list and discovered so much more to California than I realized was there. I took several road trips, and went to Catalina, and visited a Frank Lloyd Wright house, and did all these things that apparently caught everyone's attention on Facebook. If I'd actually made myself do these things the whole time, I might not have left. I didn't feel like I was having enough experiences, and that I'd grown stagnant, and in leaving I realized I just hadn't been trying hard enough.
I'm actually pretty happy in Chicago. Things have changed since 2003, which helps a ton. If someone's an idiot, I can call them out on it and they'll probably realize that yeah, what they said was probably assy. I go out a lot and see a lot more of the country than I did before, and I get to be around while my friends' kids grow up, and I'm around family, and it's all pretty great. But I really wish I could just move everyone I care about to LA. I miss the weather and the people. I miss getting dragged to K-Town and getting amazing pastries from some bakery where I'm not sure what I'm eating because no one spoke English. I miss vegan restaurants and food trucks. I miss seeing amazing sunsets that I should be Instagramming along with every other person in LA, dammit. I even miss getting to parties and spending a lot of my conversations talking about how I got there and what the parking is like. There is this feeling to LA, this energy, that I can't recreate here. I really just belong there.
I only have four days, and most of my agenda is seeing people. But there are places I need to revisit, and I'm working on finding time to go back to Long Beach and get a Thai iced tea at Portofino, and maybe trying to head up to Echo Lake Park and The Last Bookstore because I didn't get to them before. While looking for things to do with some friends for a day on this trip I discovered all this other stuff I still want to do.
Next time, LA. I'll be coming back for you.
9.7.16
One week.
I kind of want kudos for being as productive as I am with a sinus headache this bad. I'll wait for your applause.
*waits*
Okay good.
I had plans today. It's my only day to do everything before a busy workweek and I leave on Saturday. Then I woke up and my head was pounding, and it hasn't really gone away, so my plans for the gym evaporated. I've said before that I train for SDCC, and I really do. It's a lot of time on your feet, sometimes in very real heat, sometimes up hills, when you're tired and carrying a lot of stuff, so I do see how long I can do on the treadmill and won't get tired. Also, I'm going back to LA and there is a pressure to look better than I feel like I do, but. I work out to feel confident enough to go toe to toe with a hot chick, you know?
But I did laundry. I went through everything I have left in my overnight bag that tends not to get emptied all the way after trips and checked how I'm doing on travel sizes and toiletries, so I made a list of what I needed and made a trip to Target. I'm sure there'll be another one on Thursday as I freak out at forgetting something, but I'm prepared as of now. I have a final checklist of all the things I have to make sure to have.
And then there's packing.
Here's how I do things: I make a list of what I want to wear on each day, because I'm That Person. I roll fold everything for space. I have things laid out by day just so I can make sure I have it all, and I try to keep things in some kind of order because I've found that it's a lot easier for me that way. When I have to get up at 4 am to go somewhere and haven't had coffee, I'm not smart enough to be able to pick out an outfit. In fact, I swear to god, I will roll a pair of underwear up in the shirt because there have been many, many instances of me forgetting that and I have learned. Then in the morning I can just grab and go and get ready.
I've got two pairs of jeans, including the pair I'll wear to the airport, because a good part of my trip will probably involve sitting on the ground a lot and things can get dirty fast. (Packing tip: put jeans and heavy things at the actual bottom of the suitcase, next to the wheels, because it won't tip over that way.) There's a sweatshirt for cold nights in line (anyone who says it doesn't get cold in California lies), and a bathing suit because my hotel has a pool. I constantly lose socks so I just straight up bought an extra 6-pack to throw in there. (I like the colored ones because it's easier to pair them up and easier to tell what's dirty and what's not on day nine of a ten-day trip.) I bring extra black and white tank tops, usually for the "oops this shirt is more sheer than I thought" issues because a lot of companies confuse "burnout tank" with "making you pay $12 for something that makes you accidentally flash your boobs." Besides, things get dirty or the weather's not what you think and it pays to bring something extra.
There'll be more to go in there. I'll need a couple different pairs of shoes, more socks, sunscreen, a hat, hair stuff, things like that. My backpack is going to have all the important stuff. And the thing is, I'll have everything in my suitcase tonight and then on Friday before I go I'll end up repacking everything because I always do. I am nothing if not thorough.
Also I need to keep a little bit of space for any swag I bring back. Never forget the swag.
*waits*
Okay good.
I had plans today. It's my only day to do everything before a busy workweek and I leave on Saturday. Then I woke up and my head was pounding, and it hasn't really gone away, so my plans for the gym evaporated. I've said before that I train for SDCC, and I really do. It's a lot of time on your feet, sometimes in very real heat, sometimes up hills, when you're tired and carrying a lot of stuff, so I do see how long I can do on the treadmill and won't get tired. Also, I'm going back to LA and there is a pressure to look better than I feel like I do, but. I work out to feel confident enough to go toe to toe with a hot chick, you know?
But I did laundry. I went through everything I have left in my overnight bag that tends not to get emptied all the way after trips and checked how I'm doing on travel sizes and toiletries, so I made a list of what I needed and made a trip to Target. I'm sure there'll be another one on Thursday as I freak out at forgetting something, but I'm prepared as of now. I have a final checklist of all the things I have to make sure to have.
And then there's packing.
Here's how I do things: I make a list of what I want to wear on each day, because I'm That Person. I roll fold everything for space. I have things laid out by day just so I can make sure I have it all, and I try to keep things in some kind of order because I've found that it's a lot easier for me that way. When I have to get up at 4 am to go somewhere and haven't had coffee, I'm not smart enough to be able to pick out an outfit. In fact, I swear to god, I will roll a pair of underwear up in the shirt because there have been many, many instances of me forgetting that and I have learned. Then in the morning I can just grab and go and get ready.
I've got two pairs of jeans, including the pair I'll wear to the airport, because a good part of my trip will probably involve sitting on the ground a lot and things can get dirty fast. (Packing tip: put jeans and heavy things at the actual bottom of the suitcase, next to the wheels, because it won't tip over that way.) There's a sweatshirt for cold nights in line (anyone who says it doesn't get cold in California lies), and a bathing suit because my hotel has a pool. I constantly lose socks so I just straight up bought an extra 6-pack to throw in there. (I like the colored ones because it's easier to pair them up and easier to tell what's dirty and what's not on day nine of a ten-day trip.) I bring extra black and white tank tops, usually for the "oops this shirt is more sheer than I thought" issues because a lot of companies confuse "burnout tank" with "making you pay $12 for something that makes you accidentally flash your boobs." Besides, things get dirty or the weather's not what you think and it pays to bring something extra.
There'll be more to go in there. I'll need a couple different pairs of shoes, more socks, sunscreen, a hat, hair stuff, things like that. My backpack is going to have all the important stuff. And the thing is, I'll have everything in my suitcase tonight and then on Friday before I go I'll end up repacking everything because I always do. I am nothing if not thorough.
Also I need to keep a little bit of space for any swag I bring back. Never forget the swag.
7.7.16
Get It Done Day
I'm nine days out from going to California. Yay! Of course, this has also been a little nervewracking, for reasons.
Long story short, I was going to stay with a friend but that fell through, which kind of left me scrambling to find somewhere else. Well, I found a decently-priced, well-rated hotel in Bell where the staff responds to all the reviews so you know they're paying attention, and I got it through Booking.com, which means I get free cancellations/changes until the day before I get there. So in the off chance that I find somewhere else cheaper (or free) I'm not obligated to stick with it. But to be honest, I do like the freedom it affords me, especially since I know I'm going to be all over the place seeing people and trying to fit in everything possible that I can in four days. (How much In N Out is too much In N Out?)
And today's what I'm calling Get It Done Day. Sunday is my only full free day to do laundry and run errands and do things before a 10-day trip, so I sat down this morning and made myself a list of all the things I need to do, and I'm doing what I can. Mostly the logistical stuff.
I got my car rented. This was a Process because I was doing price comparisons anytime I got free time today, and while the cheapest was Fox Rent-A-Car out of LAX, the reviews were pretty scary and talked about long wait times, and especially when I have to leave LA at a certain time after dropping off the car, I'd rather spend a little extra if it means I'm not wasting time and risking it costing more if I have to get a new car or I miss out on my train. I found that booking a car with Avis through Priceline Mobile was the most cost effective way to go, and turned out not to be that much more expensive than what I would have paid with Fox.
After dropping off my car I'll catch a cab or Uber (I'm not sure how the LAX area does this now, so that's a thing to research) to Union Station to catch a train to San Diego. I know from experience that the station there is in walking distance to the hotels, because I've taken the train down quite a few times and been part of a large group of people wheeling their luggage to the downtown hotels. Unfortunately it means I'm getting in too late to bug certain San Diego friends, but the great thing about how I do SDCC is that I find ways to bug my friends anyway.
I'm packing, I've gone through and figured out what travel sizes I need, I'm prepared on things like backpacks and water bottles and camera batteries... So I'm getting there. It's going to cost a lot more than I wanted it to, but I can manage it, and it's a good thing my job requires overtime.
Long story short, I was going to stay with a friend but that fell through, which kind of left me scrambling to find somewhere else. Well, I found a decently-priced, well-rated hotel in Bell where the staff responds to all the reviews so you know they're paying attention, and I got it through Booking.com, which means I get free cancellations/changes until the day before I get there. So in the off chance that I find somewhere else cheaper (or free) I'm not obligated to stick with it. But to be honest, I do like the freedom it affords me, especially since I know I'm going to be all over the place seeing people and trying to fit in everything possible that I can in four days. (How much In N Out is too much In N Out?)
And today's what I'm calling Get It Done Day. Sunday is my only full free day to do laundry and run errands and do things before a 10-day trip, so I sat down this morning and made myself a list of all the things I need to do, and I'm doing what I can. Mostly the logistical stuff.
I got my car rented. This was a Process because I was doing price comparisons anytime I got free time today, and while the cheapest was Fox Rent-A-Car out of LAX, the reviews were pretty scary and talked about long wait times, and especially when I have to leave LA at a certain time after dropping off the car, I'd rather spend a little extra if it means I'm not wasting time and risking it costing more if I have to get a new car or I miss out on my train. I found that booking a car with Avis through Priceline Mobile was the most cost effective way to go, and turned out not to be that much more expensive than what I would have paid with Fox.
After dropping off my car I'll catch a cab or Uber (I'm not sure how the LAX area does this now, so that's a thing to research) to Union Station to catch a train to San Diego. I know from experience that the station there is in walking distance to the hotels, because I've taken the train down quite a few times and been part of a large group of people wheeling their luggage to the downtown hotels. Unfortunately it means I'm getting in too late to bug certain San Diego friends, but the great thing about how I do SDCC is that I find ways to bug my friends anyway.
I'm packing, I've gone through and figured out what travel sizes I need, I'm prepared on things like backpacks and water bottles and camera batteries... So I'm getting there. It's going to cost a lot more than I wanted it to, but I can manage it, and it's a good thing my job requires overtime.
27.6.16
SDCC prep begins!
This is about to become an SDCC blog for a bit, sorry.
We're a month out from San Diego Comic Con, and right about now is where it's very easy to get obsessive about it. Checking Twitter (when you follow the right accounts, shout outs to @SD_Comic_Con, @sdccgotgirl, @Crazy4ComicCon, @ParksAndCons, @HallHLine and @Ballroom20Line) means seeing more and more tweets about what's coming, who's coming, what people want to do, what we know of the schedule... It gets hard to escape if you're online. And that makes it exciting.
Badges have shipped. Usually at the sale you can buy tickets for yourself and a couple other people, and then you'd pick the badges up onsite on Wednesday before the con. This year they shipped all the badges to the person who bought them, which might work out okay? I had a friend from one group buy for a friend from another group so there was some coordination in getting it sent to where it needs to be, and it'll take more coordination to make sure people can meet up on Wednesday to get their correct badges, but it can be managed. We'll see how well it works out.
The schedule is starting to come together. The full schedule comes out two weeks before, but things get announced early, and information trickles in. I already have some idea of what I will be doing on what day. There are some things they don't change from year to year. Certain panels always get the same time and same room, so I know that even though I gave up on The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones I'll probably sit through the panels while waiting for one I really want to see. Star Wars Day is always Friday. Sunday is family day, so younger-aimed fare goes then. My one big thing so far is that I don't really want to spend all my time waiting for one panel. Getting into something like Marvel or Star Wars requires a lot of waiting. You have to be in line to wait, you have to be there for a certain amount of time to get your wristbands, you have to sit in a room all day waiting for one specific panel that probably comes on at 5 pm, leaving others who really want to see the stuff before that in the cold. I'd much rather get out on the floor or walk around taking pictures of cosplayers or check out some of the offsite stuff, and there are ways to do that if you have a group in line that will allow you shifts so that people can leave and do their own things for a while before returning to let you do the same. But waiting in Hall H all day, with little food and sitting in uncomfortable chairs for eight hours straight can be brutal. Moreso if you try to do it two days in a row, which I might do. And if by chance I can't get into the room, then there's already plenty of stuff I'm interested in seeing instead.
Otherwise my California schedule is coming together a little, and even though nothing is going on the weekend I am there I'm still trying to find stuff. I'm also trying to figure out when to go to San Diego, since I kind of want to go on Tuesday but Amtrak is not being helpful. I'm close enough to it to start packing (though first I need to empty out my suitcase from when I moved), and I'm training to spend a lot of time walking, and and and and and.
Starting to get excited. It's pretty neat.
We're a month out from San Diego Comic Con, and right about now is where it's very easy to get obsessive about it. Checking Twitter (when you follow the right accounts, shout outs to @SD_Comic_Con, @sdccgotgirl, @Crazy4ComicCon, @ParksAndCons, @HallHLine and @Ballroom20Line) means seeing more and more tweets about what's coming, who's coming, what people want to do, what we know of the schedule... It gets hard to escape if you're online. And that makes it exciting.
Badges have shipped. Usually at the sale you can buy tickets for yourself and a couple other people, and then you'd pick the badges up onsite on Wednesday before the con. This year they shipped all the badges to the person who bought them, which might work out okay? I had a friend from one group buy for a friend from another group so there was some coordination in getting it sent to where it needs to be, and it'll take more coordination to make sure people can meet up on Wednesday to get their correct badges, but it can be managed. We'll see how well it works out.
The schedule is starting to come together. The full schedule comes out two weeks before, but things get announced early, and information trickles in. I already have some idea of what I will be doing on what day. There are some things they don't change from year to year. Certain panels always get the same time and same room, so I know that even though I gave up on The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones I'll probably sit through the panels while waiting for one I really want to see. Star Wars Day is always Friday. Sunday is family day, so younger-aimed fare goes then. My one big thing so far is that I don't really want to spend all my time waiting for one panel. Getting into something like Marvel or Star Wars requires a lot of waiting. You have to be in line to wait, you have to be there for a certain amount of time to get your wristbands, you have to sit in a room all day waiting for one specific panel that probably comes on at 5 pm, leaving others who really want to see the stuff before that in the cold. I'd much rather get out on the floor or walk around taking pictures of cosplayers or check out some of the offsite stuff, and there are ways to do that if you have a group in line that will allow you shifts so that people can leave and do their own things for a while before returning to let you do the same. But waiting in Hall H all day, with little food and sitting in uncomfortable chairs for eight hours straight can be brutal. Moreso if you try to do it two days in a row, which I might do. And if by chance I can't get into the room, then there's already plenty of stuff I'm interested in seeing instead.
Otherwise my California schedule is coming together a little, and even though nothing is going on the weekend I am there I'm still trying to find stuff. I'm also trying to figure out when to go to San Diego, since I kind of want to go on Tuesday but Amtrak is not being helpful. I'm close enough to it to start packing (though first I need to empty out my suitcase from when I moved), and I'm training to spend a lot of time walking, and and and and and.
Starting to get excited. It's pretty neat.
12.6.16
South Haven: Year One
This morning a six-year-old girl came into the room I was sharing with my ex-roommate bff and saw me putting on foundation and asked why I was doing that, and I responded, "So I don't look like a lobster."
I spent the weekend in South Haven, MI with five of my best friends from high school, two friends we've made since who could come, one significant other, and eight children between the ages of one and twelve. This could have been a disaster, and I think at least a few of us were worried that it might turn out that way, but it was great. A couple months ago, some of those friends were talking and decided we should get everyone together, and found a house I think off of Home Away. I'm sure you've heard of AirBnB or seen this sort of thing on HGTV, and it's the same sort of thing: people rent out their vacation homes to people for income, so instead of having to get a bunch of people together in a hotel, you get one big place for everyone to gather, and if you get enough people together it's a lot more cost effective. There was a $1000 security deposit, with the rest being paid a month out. We paid about $150 per person for both the house and for food and supplies, sent roughly 435 texts going "Going to the store, need anything?" and then on Friday we packed it up and drove two and a half hours north.
I worked that day (and accidentally left my office in a bit of chaos due to email not syncing, sorry to any coworkers who might be lurking) and left at 3, getting to the house around 6 pm with a time change to Eastern. I was the last to arrive, and everyone had set up in the house already. And the house was legitimately great. There were five bedrooms, two on the lower level and three on the upper, but the master had enough room for an air mattress, there was a great room downstairs that had two sets of bunk beds plus a twin bed, there was a futon in the pool table room, there was a small bed off the sunroom and a large area there where another air mattress could go, and the too-comfortable couch could sleep four. There were four bathrooms, including one that you had to go through when you used the back door to go to the yard, which was awkward, but these things happen when you have house additions. They provided us with supplies and toys and kitchen gadgets that I was still discovering on the way out. There was a fire pit, picnic tables, a deck, a playground that had two playsets for the kids, basketball hoops, a volleyball net, a pool table, foosball table, air hockey table, and ping pong table. No one could ever say they were bored.
We got to have dinner around a big table with all of us, and then moved outside for the world's most disorganized volleyball game. The house is surrounded by woods, so we had to send someone in there quite a bit to go get the volleyball, until we started hearing a raccoon get very upset with us. As a bonus, we kept saying things like "Does anyone know what poison oak looks like?" only to find out today that there actually is poison ivy in there. Soooo we should probably watch for sign of that for a couple days. We let the kids hang out on the playground and made our way to the firepit, having drinks and watching the kids roll down the hill until they had to go to bed. Once everyone else retired, it was down to four of us, playing pool (very carefully; scratching the felt would cost us $400) and talking until we were tired, too.
When you have a house full of people, especially with kids, it doesn't matter how much room you have; you will most likely wake up early. I'd wake up to go to the bathroom and hear people in the kitchen and there was no going back to bed after that. It didn't matter if it was 6:30 am our time, it's time to put the contacts in and join everybody. The second day I was the second awake. My friend's boyfriend was up at like 5, and he was already dressed, putting things in the dishwasher and taking out the trash, and I was a tired lump on the bench around the dining room table, blearily playing with my phone until other people woke up. The first day we cooked way too much food for breakfast and put the rest in giant ziplock bags and then took our time getting ready because the baby was sleeping, and we had more time to talk before the beach.
In California I spent most of my years living in Long Beach, which is named because it's a long beach. That's what I'm used to. My first beach after moving back to the Midwest was in Lake Geneva, which was a designated area that had been blocked off that you could see the end of from anywhere you stood. It was disappointing. I was actually happy with South Beach here. There are seven, and we picked this one because there was a lighthouse that we didn't have to climb anywhere to see. The websites also told us we didn't have to pay to go there, but the parking closer to the beach is paid and metered parking, so that was a surprise expense. The beach itself though was a pleasant surprise. It's on Lake Michigan, so it doesn't have the salt smell I love, but it was a huge beach, not too busy even though after all the worry about the weather it turned out to be a beautiful day. The lake water was cold, though. I think it was 59 degrees? So people wading in would quickly chicken out and walk back, and the kids would start shivering when they were out too long. It was also good that the water didn't get too deep. I swam out with one of the kids pretty far (there was a lot of "You're obviously cold, let's go back," and then she'd say "Nope, I'm fine," and swim out further) and the water was still up to my hips. There were some good waves, but I didn't get too nervous to see some of the older kids hanging out in the lake by themselves. You could see the lighthouse from the beach, and if you look at maps of South Haven, the Black River has very definite markers that run into the lake, and I was curious about that and will show you by hyperlinking a picture. Turns out that the boats from the marina use that to go into the lake, so you could watch as a line of sailboats and speedboats and small cruise boats made their way into Lake Michigan in a single file line. We did run into one problem, though. We made sure all the kids were slathered with sunscreen, but all the adults forgot our backs, so we're all red now. Oops.
Most of us went back to the house, though one car went to find a Meijer, and one person took her son to go explore the downtown area that I didn't get to see except while driving through it. It's small, but there was a little market happening, and they had ice cream shops and restaurants and shopping. The rest of us wanted to shower off the sand, and we thought that we'd overestimated the water heater and that was why four of us were taking freezing cold showers at once, but no, the water heater had just gone out. We didn't realize that's what it was till late, though, and left a message then that they didn't get until 6:30 am, at which point they sent someone over to fix it and we had hot water in time for showers before we left. I also think all of the adults were pretty well exhausted, but we had dinner and let the kids play and went back out to the firepit to make s'mores. Which, by the way, I'd only ever had on a campfire on retreats in high school when all we had to use were sticks to put marshmallows on. All this time I thought I didn't like s'mores when in fact I just didn't like bark in my food. They're way better with metal utensils that were handily provided by the owners.
And then this morning we had to go. After having coffee and talking on the deck, when people started getting up we had to start getting things ready. We had to pack ourselves up, empty out the fridge and distribute the extra ziplock bags full of food and give away alcohol that went amazingly unused and eat up whatever we could so no one had to take it home. Our carbon footprint this weekend was massive. Sorry, environment. There were also instructions from the owner on how to leave the house, so furniture had to be returned to its rightful place. Dishes had to be done and the dishwasher had to be run. We had to strip the beds to get them ready for laundry, even though we didn't have to get it all done. We still made sure that and towels were at least started before we left. We found all the things that had been misplaced over the weekend, cleaned up messes, and made sure everything was the way it was when we got there. It seems like a lot, but when you have a house full of people helping and you can tell the little kids to watch TV till you're done, it's easier than it sounds.
As vacations go, this has to be in my top five. I had a great time with friends and did a lot of laughing. I'm bruised all to hell from volleyball and am burnt and don't necessarily like the way I look in the photos, but none of that matters. What matters is finding a weekend to do this again next year.
I spent the weekend in South Haven, MI with five of my best friends from high school, two friends we've made since who could come, one significant other, and eight children between the ages of one and twelve. This could have been a disaster, and I think at least a few of us were worried that it might turn out that way, but it was great. A couple months ago, some of those friends were talking and decided we should get everyone together, and found a house I think off of Home Away. I'm sure you've heard of AirBnB or seen this sort of thing on HGTV, and it's the same sort of thing: people rent out their vacation homes to people for income, so instead of having to get a bunch of people together in a hotel, you get one big place for everyone to gather, and if you get enough people together it's a lot more cost effective. There was a $1000 security deposit, with the rest being paid a month out. We paid about $150 per person for both the house and for food and supplies, sent roughly 435 texts going "Going to the store, need anything?" and then on Friday we packed it up and drove two and a half hours north.
I worked that day (and accidentally left my office in a bit of chaos due to email not syncing, sorry to any coworkers who might be lurking) and left at 3, getting to the house around 6 pm with a time change to Eastern. I was the last to arrive, and everyone had set up in the house already. And the house was legitimately great. There were five bedrooms, two on the lower level and three on the upper, but the master had enough room for an air mattress, there was a great room downstairs that had two sets of bunk beds plus a twin bed, there was a futon in the pool table room, there was a small bed off the sunroom and a large area there where another air mattress could go, and the too-comfortable couch could sleep four. There were four bathrooms, including one that you had to go through when you used the back door to go to the yard, which was awkward, but these things happen when you have house additions. They provided us with supplies and toys and kitchen gadgets that I was still discovering on the way out. There was a fire pit, picnic tables, a deck, a playground that had two playsets for the kids, basketball hoops, a volleyball net, a pool table, foosball table, air hockey table, and ping pong table. No one could ever say they were bored.
We got to have dinner around a big table with all of us, and then moved outside for the world's most disorganized volleyball game. The house is surrounded by woods, so we had to send someone in there quite a bit to go get the volleyball, until we started hearing a raccoon get very upset with us. As a bonus, we kept saying things like "Does anyone know what poison oak looks like?" only to find out today that there actually is poison ivy in there. Soooo we should probably watch for sign of that for a couple days. We let the kids hang out on the playground and made our way to the firepit, having drinks and watching the kids roll down the hill until they had to go to bed. Once everyone else retired, it was down to four of us, playing pool (very carefully; scratching the felt would cost us $400) and talking until we were tired, too.
When you have a house full of people, especially with kids, it doesn't matter how much room you have; you will most likely wake up early. I'd wake up to go to the bathroom and hear people in the kitchen and there was no going back to bed after that. It didn't matter if it was 6:30 am our time, it's time to put the contacts in and join everybody. The second day I was the second awake. My friend's boyfriend was up at like 5, and he was already dressed, putting things in the dishwasher and taking out the trash, and I was a tired lump on the bench around the dining room table, blearily playing with my phone until other people woke up. The first day we cooked way too much food for breakfast and put the rest in giant ziplock bags and then took our time getting ready because the baby was sleeping, and we had more time to talk before the beach.
In California I spent most of my years living in Long Beach, which is named because it's a long beach. That's what I'm used to. My first beach after moving back to the Midwest was in Lake Geneva, which was a designated area that had been blocked off that you could see the end of from anywhere you stood. It was disappointing. I was actually happy with South Beach here. There are seven, and we picked this one because there was a lighthouse that we didn't have to climb anywhere to see. The websites also told us we didn't have to pay to go there, but the parking closer to the beach is paid and metered parking, so that was a surprise expense. The beach itself though was a pleasant surprise. It's on Lake Michigan, so it doesn't have the salt smell I love, but it was a huge beach, not too busy even though after all the worry about the weather it turned out to be a beautiful day. The lake water was cold, though. I think it was 59 degrees? So people wading in would quickly chicken out and walk back, and the kids would start shivering when they were out too long. It was also good that the water didn't get too deep. I swam out with one of the kids pretty far (there was a lot of "You're obviously cold, let's go back," and then she'd say "Nope, I'm fine," and swim out further) and the water was still up to my hips. There were some good waves, but I didn't get too nervous to see some of the older kids hanging out in the lake by themselves. You could see the lighthouse from the beach, and if you look at maps of South Haven, the Black River has very definite markers that run into the lake, and I was curious about that and will show you by hyperlinking a picture. Turns out that the boats from the marina use that to go into the lake, so you could watch as a line of sailboats and speedboats and small cruise boats made their way into Lake Michigan in a single file line. We did run into one problem, though. We made sure all the kids were slathered with sunscreen, but all the adults forgot our backs, so we're all red now. Oops.
Most of us went back to the house, though one car went to find a Meijer, and one person took her son to go explore the downtown area that I didn't get to see except while driving through it. It's small, but there was a little market happening, and they had ice cream shops and restaurants and shopping. The rest of us wanted to shower off the sand, and we thought that we'd overestimated the water heater and that was why four of us were taking freezing cold showers at once, but no, the water heater had just gone out. We didn't realize that's what it was till late, though, and left a message then that they didn't get until 6:30 am, at which point they sent someone over to fix it and we had hot water in time for showers before we left. I also think all of the adults were pretty well exhausted, but we had dinner and let the kids play and went back out to the firepit to make s'mores. Which, by the way, I'd only ever had on a campfire on retreats in high school when all we had to use were sticks to put marshmallows on. All this time I thought I didn't like s'mores when in fact I just didn't like bark in my food. They're way better with metal utensils that were handily provided by the owners.
And then this morning we had to go. After having coffee and talking on the deck, when people started getting up we had to start getting things ready. We had to pack ourselves up, empty out the fridge and distribute the extra ziplock bags full of food and give away alcohol that went amazingly unused and eat up whatever we could so no one had to take it home. Our carbon footprint this weekend was massive. Sorry, environment. There were also instructions from the owner on how to leave the house, so furniture had to be returned to its rightful place. Dishes had to be done and the dishwasher had to be run. We had to strip the beds to get them ready for laundry, even though we didn't have to get it all done. We still made sure that and towels were at least started before we left. We found all the things that had been misplaced over the weekend, cleaned up messes, and made sure everything was the way it was when we got there. It seems like a lot, but when you have a house full of people helping and you can tell the little kids to watch TV till you're done, it's easier than it sounds.
As vacations go, this has to be in my top five. I had a great time with friends and did a lot of laughing. I'm bruised all to hell from volleyball and am burnt and don't necessarily like the way I look in the photos, but none of that matters. What matters is finding a weekend to do this again next year.
9.6.16
Planning post: MI and CA
Tomorrow I leave work early to head up to Michigan, after daily group texts of "I'm heading to Costco/Target/Wal-Mart/Sam's, does anyone need anything?" and buying more alcohol and already hoping that we can do this again next year. I'm looking forward to a fun weekend with so many of my best friends, and we're also hoping it doesn't storm the whole weekend, mainly because we're going to have I think nine kids in the house between the ages of 1 and 12. But it's okay. I read a lot of Babysitters Club growing up. I'm sure we can do this. We're plucky.
And since I'm the last one to arrive tomorrow, they're also not allowed to put me in the crappy room because they claimed the good ones first. I watched ten seasons of the Real World, I know how this goes.
The other big thing is that yesterday I told people in LA when I'm coming back and started arranging plans. The issue is that I have like six different groups of friends out there, there's no overlap, and so I might have to juggle some things because I really only have about four and a half days and there's a lot to do. But I think I have a schedule in mind, and I have a place to stay, and that's the important part. Also with one set of friends there's talk of going back to one of my favorite places I've ever gone, and I'm not gonna lie, I've been really not-so secretly hoping that's what they want to do ever since it came up. I sort of don't want to jinx it by saying what, but it'll get a post regardless soon because it's awesome and I love it.
And for now, it's last minute packing for tomorrow, and then I'll put my brain to work more on California.
And since I'm the last one to arrive tomorrow, they're also not allowed to put me in the crappy room because they claimed the good ones first. I watched ten seasons of the Real World, I know how this goes.
The other big thing is that yesterday I told people in LA when I'm coming back and started arranging plans. The issue is that I have like six different groups of friends out there, there's no overlap, and so I might have to juggle some things because I really only have about four and a half days and there's a lot to do. But I think I have a schedule in mind, and I have a place to stay, and that's the important part. Also with one set of friends there's talk of going back to one of my favorite places I've ever gone, and I'm not gonna lie, I've been really not-so secretly hoping that's what they want to do ever since it came up. I sort of don't want to jinx it by saying what, but it'll get a post regardless soon because it's awesome and I love it.
And for now, it's last minute packing for tomorrow, and then I'll put my brain to work more on California.
6.6.16
Flashback post: Holland, MI
Since I'm in Michigan in a few days, let me tell you about the last time I went there, to a different city.
When I first moved home, I was pretty excited for fall. California really does have weather, but I hadn't been home in the fall for a very long time, and I had been dealing with FOMO over people Instagramming pictures of pumpkin carvings and leaves changing colors. And since at the time of planning Michigan was the only Midwest state I'd never been to (I cheated by going on an overnight trip to Detroit, oops), my friends and I decided to take a day trip up to Holland, MI.
Holland is about three, three and a half hours up north around the lake from Chicago. We packed up snacks and drove up, stopping on the way at Crane's Orchards, where we got to go apple-picking. It's the most Midwestern thing I've ever done. It was pretty crowded when we got there, and we had to stop and get a demonstration first. A woman there sold us bags to carry apples in- you can bring your own- and made sure we knew what was off limits and what wasn't. A lot of the apples were out of season and weren't being sold, so we had to avoid those areas. We also got to try a lot of different types of apples to find out what we liked and wanted to get, which was cool, because I knew about Macintosh and Granny Smith and that's about it. We got to wander around as much as we wanted within certain areas, and pick whatever we wanted. They charge by the pound, so if you feel like paying for five pounds of apples, get five pounds of apples. And there were people there who had brought wagons and carts, so hey.
If Holland makes you think of... well, Holland, it should. There are tulip and windmill gardens, which was actually a plus for me because everyone's really made me want to go to the Netherlands and this is all I've got right now. So we stopped in at Veldheer Tulip Gardens/De Klomp, because we were hoping to see the windmills and one of us needed to get souvenirs for her family. Unfortunately because the tulips weren't in season (end of April to middle of May) the gardens were closed, which meant we couldn't get out to see the windmills like I wanted. We did get to go inside and buy tulip bulbs, though, and then went over to De Klomp, where they have wooden shoes that you can get things carved/burned into. There was a surprising selection considering it's wooden shoes, by the way. They also had knick knacks and things, if you're into that sort of thing. I bought a shot glass.
We walked around downtown Holland for a while and grabbed lunch, and unfortunately not a lot was open on Sundays. Not just that they closed early, they just weren't open. So that didn't take nearly as long as we thought it would, which was just as well since the highlight of our tour (IMO) was Windmill Island Gardens. Apparently not open in the winter, admission is $9 to walk around gardens, and to yes, see some damn windmills. They have the only Dutch windmill in the US, and you can actually go up into it. We accidentally ended up on a tour, because I personally just wanted to see how high we could go up and thought we could kind of bypass the tour. Nope! We were kind of stranded on it because it was a small enough group that it was rude to leave, and the space gets smaller the higher you go so you couldn't really sneak anywhere. Though at one part they showed us the blades, and we got to step outside from the deck and have our friend who stayed below get pictures of us veeeery high up. It was all I really wanted.
I think it's a cute stop. It doesn't take a ton of time, but the windmill was neat, and they had something where... there are giant skis, with wooden shoes for you to put your feet in, and up to four people can try to walk across the lawn in it. We tried it, and it's harder than it looks, but it's something I'm pretty confident in saying I will never do again so it was worth it. There are shops, too, where you can buy Dutch foods, though let's be real, all you want is Stroopwaffles and you know it.
Our last stop was the Big Red Lighthouse, which is something one certain friend will not live down for a very long time. I'm a fan of lighthouses, so I was all on board with this, but when we got there and parked, we started heading away from the water. She insisted she knew where we were going, and so we walked through the woods? Such as you do to get to a lighthouse? Traditionally? At the end of the trail were stairs. Stairs that went very far up. I was not feeling it; in my early 20's I rolled my ankle while going down the steps to leave a movie theater and I fell downwards onto the next step on both knees, and now I have the knees of a 70-year-old. Stairs are my mortal enemy, especially if I didn't know I'd be facing them and wore the wrong shoes. I got about halfway up and decided that I was done, and let everyone go ahead. But I got bored in a few minutes and got lousy cell reception, so I kept going because eh, whatever. Aaaand for the second time in less than a year I climbed myself into a mild asthma attack. I have decided to stay away from mountains for a bit.
It turns out we had climbed Mt. Pisgah... which overlooks the Big Red Lighthouse.
I want you to look at that picture. I even made it extra large. Look right in the center. There's a black blob right there, coming from what looks like it might be a pier in the distance on the right, and it's just above the treeline on the left.
That's the Big Red Lighthouse. It was so not worth that climb that now meant going back down on knees that are- to put it kindly- old souls.
That was my last experience in Michigan. Good times with good friends, and when I head to a different part this weekend, you best be aware that any lighthouses I see will be from the damn ground.
When I first moved home, I was pretty excited for fall. California really does have weather, but I hadn't been home in the fall for a very long time, and I had been dealing with FOMO over people Instagramming pictures of pumpkin carvings and leaves changing colors. And since at the time of planning Michigan was the only Midwest state I'd never been to (I cheated by going on an overnight trip to Detroit, oops), my friends and I decided to take a day trip up to Holland, MI.
Holland is about three, three and a half hours up north around the lake from Chicago. We packed up snacks and drove up, stopping on the way at Crane's Orchards, where we got to go apple-picking. It's the most Midwestern thing I've ever done. It was pretty crowded when we got there, and we had to stop and get a demonstration first. A woman there sold us bags to carry apples in- you can bring your own- and made sure we knew what was off limits and what wasn't. A lot of the apples were out of season and weren't being sold, so we had to avoid those areas. We also got to try a lot of different types of apples to find out what we liked and wanted to get, which was cool, because I knew about Macintosh and Granny Smith and that's about it. We got to wander around as much as we wanted within certain areas, and pick whatever we wanted. They charge by the pound, so if you feel like paying for five pounds of apples, get five pounds of apples. And there were people there who had brought wagons and carts, so hey.
If Holland makes you think of... well, Holland, it should. There are tulip and windmill gardens, which was actually a plus for me because everyone's really made me want to go to the Netherlands and this is all I've got right now. So we stopped in at Veldheer Tulip Gardens/De Klomp, because we were hoping to see the windmills and one of us needed to get souvenirs for her family. Unfortunately because the tulips weren't in season (end of April to middle of May) the gardens were closed, which meant we couldn't get out to see the windmills like I wanted. We did get to go inside and buy tulip bulbs, though, and then went over to De Klomp, where they have wooden shoes that you can get things carved/burned into. There was a surprising selection considering it's wooden shoes, by the way. They also had knick knacks and things, if you're into that sort of thing. I bought a shot glass.
We walked around downtown Holland for a while and grabbed lunch, and unfortunately not a lot was open on Sundays. Not just that they closed early, they just weren't open. So that didn't take nearly as long as we thought it would, which was just as well since the highlight of our tour (IMO) was Windmill Island Gardens. Apparently not open in the winter, admission is $9 to walk around gardens, and to yes, see some damn windmills. They have the only Dutch windmill in the US, and you can actually go up into it. We accidentally ended up on a tour, because I personally just wanted to see how high we could go up and thought we could kind of bypass the tour. Nope! We were kind of stranded on it because it was a small enough group that it was rude to leave, and the space gets smaller the higher you go so you couldn't really sneak anywhere. Though at one part they showed us the blades, and we got to step outside from the deck and have our friend who stayed below get pictures of us veeeery high up. It was all I really wanted.
I think it's a cute stop. It doesn't take a ton of time, but the windmill was neat, and they had something where... there are giant skis, with wooden shoes for you to put your feet in, and up to four people can try to walk across the lawn in it. We tried it, and it's harder than it looks, but it's something I'm pretty confident in saying I will never do again so it was worth it. There are shops, too, where you can buy Dutch foods, though let's be real, all you want is Stroopwaffles and you know it.
Our last stop was the Big Red Lighthouse, which is something one certain friend will not live down for a very long time. I'm a fan of lighthouses, so I was all on board with this, but when we got there and parked, we started heading away from the water. She insisted she knew where we were going, and so we walked through the woods? Such as you do to get to a lighthouse? Traditionally? At the end of the trail were stairs. Stairs that went very far up. I was not feeling it; in my early 20's I rolled my ankle while going down the steps to leave a movie theater and I fell downwards onto the next step on both knees, and now I have the knees of a 70-year-old. Stairs are my mortal enemy, especially if I didn't know I'd be facing them and wore the wrong shoes. I got about halfway up and decided that I was done, and let everyone go ahead. But I got bored in a few minutes and got lousy cell reception, so I kept going because eh, whatever. Aaaand for the second time in less than a year I climbed myself into a mild asthma attack. I have decided to stay away from mountains for a bit.
It turns out we had climbed Mt. Pisgah... which overlooks the Big Red Lighthouse.
I want you to look at that picture. I even made it extra large. Look right in the center. There's a black blob right there, coming from what looks like it might be a pier in the distance on the right, and it's just above the treeline on the left.
That's the Big Red Lighthouse. It was so not worth that climb that now meant going back down on knees that are- to put it kindly- old souls.
That was my last experience in Michigan. Good times with good friends, and when I head to a different part this weekend, you best be aware that any lighthouses I see will be from the damn ground.
3.6.16
Planning post: Michigan
Next weekend a group of friends and I are renting a house in South Haven, Michigan for the weekend. Unfortunately because my schedule is that of a crazy travel-obsessed person, I was out of town both times they all got together to discuss the trip. However, I was tasked with figuring out what to do in a town I've never been to with not as much information to go on than I'd like.
Which, let's be real, is right in my wheelhouse.
I meant to do research at lunch yesterday and then my workday blew up. I meant to do it this evening and then got busy doing things around the apartment. Then before I shut down my computer for the night I remembered that I still had to do this, and an hour later I'm still online, researching.
Recently I was asked how I find things to do, and that's going to be a much bigger post, but here's what I'm doing now. I don't have the address to the house yet, but I have the link to its rental site, and therefore found the cross streets. I enter that in Google Maps and start checking around to see if there's anything I can see nearby, since it's a small town and I expect things to be close. Which they are. We're not far at all from the beaches, and all the big stuff to do tends to be around the coast of Lake Michigan. I'm not sure how many people will be around, but I know there'll be kids and know the ages of all of them even if some of them don't come, so I can check for things for them. I also know we'll have at least two guys there, so I can try to look for something they might be into that isn't "watch the kids while the girls go to the winery," even though as I'm looking it might come down to "watch the kids while the girls go to the winery." I also asked in group text if there was anything specific people wanted me to check into, so I have a starting point.
So I Google, which is the absolute best tool for this kind of stuff. It'll always bring me to Trip Advisor, but also to other sites that might be helpful, like the official town site, which lists things like weekend events and gives some pertinent information in a little box so I don't have to go searching through a whole site trying to find any parking fees or whatever. I was asked to look into the beaches, where they are and if there's a cost. So I looked up the two beaches, got their addresses and plugged them into Google Maps to see what the drive is like, and as I start doing this for more stuff I get a relative idea of where things are located in relation to each other. Sometimes sites (Trip Advisor is usually good for this but I found it on the official site this time) will give you lists of things you can do in town if you only have a certain amount of time. If something sounds good to you, look it up.
After an hour I have a pretty good idea of the layout of the area, am pretty sure I can give directions to certain places, and have a pretty decent list of directions, addresses, and prices on my phone so I can list it off or screengrab something if anyone needs the info. And to be completely honest, there doesn't seem to be a ton to do. But there are cheap vineyards and a park for kids and if we didn't all enjoy each other's company we wouldn't be going.
But seriously, bed now.
Which, let's be real, is right in my wheelhouse.
I meant to do research at lunch yesterday and then my workday blew up. I meant to do it this evening and then got busy doing things around the apartment. Then before I shut down my computer for the night I remembered that I still had to do this, and an hour later I'm still online, researching.
Recently I was asked how I find things to do, and that's going to be a much bigger post, but here's what I'm doing now. I don't have the address to the house yet, but I have the link to its rental site, and therefore found the cross streets. I enter that in Google Maps and start checking around to see if there's anything I can see nearby, since it's a small town and I expect things to be close. Which they are. We're not far at all from the beaches, and all the big stuff to do tends to be around the coast of Lake Michigan. I'm not sure how many people will be around, but I know there'll be kids and know the ages of all of them even if some of them don't come, so I can check for things for them. I also know we'll have at least two guys there, so I can try to look for something they might be into that isn't "watch the kids while the girls go to the winery," even though as I'm looking it might come down to "watch the kids while the girls go to the winery." I also asked in group text if there was anything specific people wanted me to check into, so I have a starting point.
So I Google, which is the absolute best tool for this kind of stuff. It'll always bring me to Trip Advisor, but also to other sites that might be helpful, like the official town site, which lists things like weekend events and gives some pertinent information in a little box so I don't have to go searching through a whole site trying to find any parking fees or whatever. I was asked to look into the beaches, where they are and if there's a cost. So I looked up the two beaches, got their addresses and plugged them into Google Maps to see what the drive is like, and as I start doing this for more stuff I get a relative idea of where things are located in relation to each other. Sometimes sites (Trip Advisor is usually good for this but I found it on the official site this time) will give you lists of things you can do in town if you only have a certain amount of time. If something sounds good to you, look it up.
After an hour I have a pretty good idea of the layout of the area, am pretty sure I can give directions to certain places, and have a pretty decent list of directions, addresses, and prices on my phone so I can list it off or screengrab something if anyone needs the info. And to be completely honest, there doesn't seem to be a ton to do. But there are cheap vineyards and a park for kids and if we didn't all enjoy each other's company we wouldn't be going.
But seriously, bed now.
1.6.16
Philly or Burst
I am once again fully conscious, and more importantly, alert. Let me tell you about my weekend.
I started off by getting stuck at work way later than I wanted, so by the time I met up with my mom and Nick, it was about 4:30. Getting out of Chicago on Memorial Day of course meant traffic, but it wasn't actually as bad as it could have been. Somewhere in Indiana we stopped at a Culver's for dinner and sat down to plot our night. Originally we were going to try and get to Columbus, but the timing wasn't working. Since we aim for bigger cities and their suburbs for stops rather than stopping at a random town we don't know anything about in the middle of the night, the next big city we'd hit was Cincinnati.
So, in my early 20s, I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends from online by picking essentially picking a city and then all going there for a weekend (or Wednesday to Wednesday, shut up I had no responsibilities then). The best years were the ones we had in Cincy, and those were some of the greatest weeks of my life, so of course we had to head back to the Cincinnati Marriott North. It's definitely changed since I was last there, mostly some of the furniture and the fact that there's a Starbucks counter now. I still remembered the way around, though, and would point out which floor I stayed on what year, and I think I even pointed out the vending area where I guzzled an entire margarita after an argument and then went back to a room party. (I'd say it was a memorable night but I do not remember most of it!) It's also just a great hotel, where the woman at the front desk even stepped out from behind it to point out where things were, and everyone was super friendly. The area's also grown out since I was there. At the time they were just building it up, and aside from a gas station and a couple restaurants, you had to drive elsewhere to get to anything. Now there are plenty of restaurants and coffee shops, a movie theater, and apparently a wine store which would have been a major attraction/problem back in the day (see also the margarita story). I actually really hope to get back here again soon, maybe with a lot of old friends.
We got out later than intended again, partly because there were pictures I needed to get of the hotel lobby, and we had 2:30 tickets in western Pennsylvania, sooooo Nick got pulled over for speeding. He wasn't going that fast, though, and it was the weirdest way I've ever seen someone get pulled over: the cop was sitting in his car on the side of the highway when he got out of his car and STEPPED INTO THE HIGHWAY to flag us down, even though cars all around us were speeding past. It always sucks getting pulled over, especially when you were definitely on par with the rest of traffic, but Nick had a good way of looking at it. After all, if he hadn't been speeding, there was no way we would have made our 2:30, so it was worth it.
After doing no more than three miles over the speed limit at any time and not stopping at all, and also driving through West Virginia for all of twenty minutes, we made it to our destination at 2:15. The confirmation email warned that we might be waiting for up to half an hour until our group actually went on the tour, but they took us right at 2:30 to see Fallingwater. It's a Frank Lloyd Wright house, built in the woods, on top of a waterfall. Wright was very much into bringing the elements of the outdoors inside- it's habit to look for the ways he implements them in each house I go to now- so this is pretty much the ultimate in doing that. It's also the ultimate in being super hot, because it was in the 80s and very humid, and the house is open and doesn't have air conditioning. They did have fans going in the rooms and gave us little handheld fans to take with us, because they were definitely needed by the time we got to the third floor. It's absolutely gorgeous, though. It became my favorite of his houses so far, and I'm sorry that we weren't able to get tickets for the more in-depth tours that would allow us to take pictures inside the house.
Outdoors, though, I definitely got pictures.
I'll put some on the Instagram if you want to see more.
We stopped for snacks and water, because after a lot of stair-climbing and a little hike in hot weather, Nick understandably hit the wall. Which happens. When you're stressed and busy and haven't had enough to eat or drink and it's hot, you can very easily hit a point where if you don't get a carb in you, you're either going to pass out or kill someone. Personally, I do this most years at SDCC and if you're going to be doing a lot when you're traveling, keep in mind that you very well might do this too. After leaving their cafe, we drove back through the terrifying sharp-cornered hills of rural Pennsylvania (that is definitely on the Insta) and then found our way to the highway to try and drive another five hours.
At one point, I caught a sign and said, "Did that just say we're in Maryland?"
"What?" Nick said.
"I could have sworn that sign just welcomed us to Maryland."
Sure enough, we were in Maryland. We had not planned on it. We thought the route would just take us straight through Pennsylvania, but since our hotel was in New Jersey, and we were using Waze, which took us through southern Maryland. I can't even make Google Maps do it, so annoyingly this map is not entirely accurate.
That said, it was a great detour. We found a surprisingly great pizza place just off the highway for dinner, and we looked over our options, realizing that Waze was probably going to take us through Baltimore. Here's the thing. I love Baltimore. I know it gets a really bad rap, but I really enjoyed my time there when I went before, and immediately I asked, "Do we have time to stop at The Waterfront?" Because apparently I travel enough that I have go-to places for certain cities. Unfortunately it was already going to be very late by the time we got in, and even if we just stopped in for a quick drink, it was Saturday night, and that wasn't going to be quick. We had to bypass it this time, but I've got it in my head to get back to DC sometime soon, so I'll get back then.
Our route also took us through Delaware! We'd been through Delaware before, on our way to Philadelphia from Arlington. We even stopped at the same rest stop just to say we were there, and also because we all desperately needed caffeine and to wake up. But this also meant that with Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey in one day, it tied my personal record and straight up blew up Mom's. (Previous record: New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire.)
You could tell when we finally got to Jersey because people immediately began trying to kill us with their cars. Immediately. People assured me that it was only the northern drivers that sucked, and then I was told that the southern drivers were scary, and there is not a lot of state! It's okay, I live in a state full of shitty drivers, too. That said... New Jersey didn't suck this time. We stayed at a Super 8 in Mount Laurel, about half an hour from Philadelphia. It was a smoking room and had some burn marks on the bathroom counter, and the pillow smelled of smoke when I woke up, but it really wasn't bad at all. The people were friendly, the room was clean, and I didn't fear staying there. Good on you, New Jersey! Work on your drivers!
We got to Philadelphia pretty early, and it was already hot. We paid too much for parking, showed Mom the Liberty Bell, and then got water ice from a street vendor. See, last time I was there, there were carts for those and cheesesteaks everywhere. I'm a vegetarian so the latter did nothing for me, but I finally snapped and decided I'd get a water ice at the next one we saw... and we never saw another one. So I made sure to do it this time, and then we walked around. Philadelphia is not a city I'd consider a top five favorite, but I'm more than happy to set out and explore it, and I've never really seen the same stuff. We stopped into the Old Carpenters' House and the Old Bank Building which is now a portrait gallery, and tried to get into a few more things but found that a lot of it was closed because we forgot it was Sunday. Still, it's great to be able to see amazing buildings like the post office and printer's office, and they are amazing. They're old but well-maintained, and they're surrounded by newer buildings, which makes for a really great look.
We made it to Christ Church before it was Mom's turn to hit the wall, and while sadly we couldn't go inside, I think because there were services starting soon, around back they had dispensers for water and lemonade for free, and we stopped to regroup and ultimately decided to reel it in. We walked back through the neighborhoods to find the car, and then headed over to Reading Terminal.
Reading Terminal is not far away, and it's a great big market. It's very crowded and you're probably going to stand in a line, but I like it. There are plenty of local quick service places, and you can find cooking supplies or candy or jewelry in the shops. Last time I bought a pair of earrings from Africa that I still get compliments on. We got coffee and snacks, then took a trip to a bakery because once I knew they had vegan cookies, I needed vegan cookies. And Mom wanted to find some old style candy, so we found that and got a bunch for the car, and then decided that we could start off to our last overnight city: Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh is about four and a half hours west, and required driving through several mountains. It was our earliest night, where we got to our oddly-placed but very nice hotel around 8 pm, early enough to get dinner and not have to get back on the road. However, the fact that the hotel was in a weird spot seemed to require us to drive around neighborhoods with super scary hills. Around Fallingwater had been a tame roller coaster. This was insane. It was sharp curves around houses and other cars that were going too fast, steep declines that sometimes led into the guardrail disappearing to allow access into even steeper hidden driveways like the worst surprise ever, and bumps because the road was not the best. Thank god the way back took us a more normal route, and we were able to get to bed at a more or less decent time.
Pittsburgh was not done screwing with us, though. After eating breakfast at the hotel and checking out, we tried to find the highway and hopefully a gas station, and instead we seemingly drove around the suburbs for at least half an hour. I have no idea what the GPS was trying to do, but we got gas, and we got on the road. And I wish we'd gone back through Maryland again. Pennsylvania and Ohio are pretty, but there weren't any real places to stop. Where Maryland had cool rest stops and restaurants where you could stop off for a meal, these states had service plazas. They have Sunoco gas stations, maybe a couple fast food places like McDonald's or Roy Rogers, occasionally a Starbucks, and one big place to get snacks or souvenirs. There's not much to them, and everyone is nearly the same, and it makes for very boring driving. Especially when you're on the road for ten hours. It was also hard to find anywhere to stop to eat because the fast food options weren't really appetizing, and that was all there was. The drive was largely quiet, because after four days with the same people you've said just about everything you need to say for now, and you just want to get home. Conversation tends to be like:
"Do you need to stop?"
"Yes/no."
That's it. It felt like an accomplishment to get to Indiana, where after a while at least the service centers ended and you could choose your own adventure. When we got to Michigan City we finally stopped off and made a snap decision to stop at a Steak and Shake, where they were super busy, ignored us when we got there, finally told us that there just weren't seats before she decided to clean off an empty table, and then left us without menus. I think we were there for almost fifteen minutes from start to finish without ever getting menus, and we had a deadline to get Mom back home for work, so we left and went to a Chili's instead. I think I might be done with Steak and Shake.
We finally got Mom home half an hour later than we'd planned, but that still wasn't bad, all things considered. We know how we all work together before we start planning next year's big trip. We got in a good adventure. And most importantly, I learned that maybe New Jersey isn't all bad.
I started off by getting stuck at work way later than I wanted, so by the time I met up with my mom and Nick, it was about 4:30. Getting out of Chicago on Memorial Day of course meant traffic, but it wasn't actually as bad as it could have been. Somewhere in Indiana we stopped at a Culver's for dinner and sat down to plot our night. Originally we were going to try and get to Columbus, but the timing wasn't working. Since we aim for bigger cities and their suburbs for stops rather than stopping at a random town we don't know anything about in the middle of the night, the next big city we'd hit was Cincinnati.
So, in my early 20s, I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends from online by picking essentially picking a city and then all going there for a weekend (or Wednesday to Wednesday, shut up I had no responsibilities then). The best years were the ones we had in Cincy, and those were some of the greatest weeks of my life, so of course we had to head back to the Cincinnati Marriott North. It's definitely changed since I was last there, mostly some of the furniture and the fact that there's a Starbucks counter now. I still remembered the way around, though, and would point out which floor I stayed on what year, and I think I even pointed out the vending area where I guzzled an entire margarita after an argument and then went back to a room party. (I'd say it was a memorable night but I do not remember most of it!) It's also just a great hotel, where the woman at the front desk even stepped out from behind it to point out where things were, and everyone was super friendly. The area's also grown out since I was there. At the time they were just building it up, and aside from a gas station and a couple restaurants, you had to drive elsewhere to get to anything. Now there are plenty of restaurants and coffee shops, a movie theater, and apparently a wine store which would have been a major attraction/problem back in the day (see also the margarita story). I actually really hope to get back here again soon, maybe with a lot of old friends.
We got out later than intended again, partly because there were pictures I needed to get of the hotel lobby, and we had 2:30 tickets in western Pennsylvania, sooooo Nick got pulled over for speeding. He wasn't going that fast, though, and it was the weirdest way I've ever seen someone get pulled over: the cop was sitting in his car on the side of the highway when he got out of his car and STEPPED INTO THE HIGHWAY to flag us down, even though cars all around us were speeding past. It always sucks getting pulled over, especially when you were definitely on par with the rest of traffic, but Nick had a good way of looking at it. After all, if he hadn't been speeding, there was no way we would have made our 2:30, so it was worth it.
After doing no more than three miles over the speed limit at any time and not stopping at all, and also driving through West Virginia for all of twenty minutes, we made it to our destination at 2:15. The confirmation email warned that we might be waiting for up to half an hour until our group actually went on the tour, but they took us right at 2:30 to see Fallingwater. It's a Frank Lloyd Wright house, built in the woods, on top of a waterfall. Wright was very much into bringing the elements of the outdoors inside- it's habit to look for the ways he implements them in each house I go to now- so this is pretty much the ultimate in doing that. It's also the ultimate in being super hot, because it was in the 80s and very humid, and the house is open and doesn't have air conditioning. They did have fans going in the rooms and gave us little handheld fans to take with us, because they were definitely needed by the time we got to the third floor. It's absolutely gorgeous, though. It became my favorite of his houses so far, and I'm sorry that we weren't able to get tickets for the more in-depth tours that would allow us to take pictures inside the house.
Outdoors, though, I definitely got pictures.
I'll put some on the Instagram if you want to see more.
We stopped for snacks and water, because after a lot of stair-climbing and a little hike in hot weather, Nick understandably hit the wall. Which happens. When you're stressed and busy and haven't had enough to eat or drink and it's hot, you can very easily hit a point where if you don't get a carb in you, you're either going to pass out or kill someone. Personally, I do this most years at SDCC and if you're going to be doing a lot when you're traveling, keep in mind that you very well might do this too. After leaving their cafe, we drove back through the terrifying sharp-cornered hills of rural Pennsylvania (that is definitely on the Insta) and then found our way to the highway to try and drive another five hours.
At one point, I caught a sign and said, "Did that just say we're in Maryland?"
"What?" Nick said.
"I could have sworn that sign just welcomed us to Maryland."
Sure enough, we were in Maryland. We had not planned on it. We thought the route would just take us straight through Pennsylvania, but since our hotel was in New Jersey, and we were using Waze, which took us through southern Maryland. I can't even make Google Maps do it, so annoyingly this map is not entirely accurate.
That said, it was a great detour. We found a surprisingly great pizza place just off the highway for dinner, and we looked over our options, realizing that Waze was probably going to take us through Baltimore. Here's the thing. I love Baltimore. I know it gets a really bad rap, but I really enjoyed my time there when I went before, and immediately I asked, "Do we have time to stop at The Waterfront?" Because apparently I travel enough that I have go-to places for certain cities. Unfortunately it was already going to be very late by the time we got in, and even if we just stopped in for a quick drink, it was Saturday night, and that wasn't going to be quick. We had to bypass it this time, but I've got it in my head to get back to DC sometime soon, so I'll get back then.
Our route also took us through Delaware! We'd been through Delaware before, on our way to Philadelphia from Arlington. We even stopped at the same rest stop just to say we were there, and also because we all desperately needed caffeine and to wake up. But this also meant that with Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey in one day, it tied my personal record and straight up blew up Mom's. (Previous record: New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire.)
You could tell when we finally got to Jersey because people immediately began trying to kill us with their cars. Immediately. People assured me that it was only the northern drivers that sucked, and then I was told that the southern drivers were scary, and there is not a lot of state! It's okay, I live in a state full of shitty drivers, too. That said... New Jersey didn't suck this time. We stayed at a Super 8 in Mount Laurel, about half an hour from Philadelphia. It was a smoking room and had some burn marks on the bathroom counter, and the pillow smelled of smoke when I woke up, but it really wasn't bad at all. The people were friendly, the room was clean, and I didn't fear staying there. Good on you, New Jersey! Work on your drivers!
We got to Philadelphia pretty early, and it was already hot. We paid too much for parking, showed Mom the Liberty Bell, and then got water ice from a street vendor. See, last time I was there, there were carts for those and cheesesteaks everywhere. I'm a vegetarian so the latter did nothing for me, but I finally snapped and decided I'd get a water ice at the next one we saw... and we never saw another one. So I made sure to do it this time, and then we walked around. Philadelphia is not a city I'd consider a top five favorite, but I'm more than happy to set out and explore it, and I've never really seen the same stuff. We stopped into the Old Carpenters' House and the Old Bank Building which is now a portrait gallery, and tried to get into a few more things but found that a lot of it was closed because we forgot it was Sunday. Still, it's great to be able to see amazing buildings like the post office and printer's office, and they are amazing. They're old but well-maintained, and they're surrounded by newer buildings, which makes for a really great look.
We made it to Christ Church before it was Mom's turn to hit the wall, and while sadly we couldn't go inside, I think because there were services starting soon, around back they had dispensers for water and lemonade for free, and we stopped to regroup and ultimately decided to reel it in. We walked back through the neighborhoods to find the car, and then headed over to Reading Terminal.
Reading Terminal is not far away, and it's a great big market. It's very crowded and you're probably going to stand in a line, but I like it. There are plenty of local quick service places, and you can find cooking supplies or candy or jewelry in the shops. Last time I bought a pair of earrings from Africa that I still get compliments on. We got coffee and snacks, then took a trip to a bakery because once I knew they had vegan cookies, I needed vegan cookies. And Mom wanted to find some old style candy, so we found that and got a bunch for the car, and then decided that we could start off to our last overnight city: Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh is about four and a half hours west, and required driving through several mountains. It was our earliest night, where we got to our oddly-placed but very nice hotel around 8 pm, early enough to get dinner and not have to get back on the road. However, the fact that the hotel was in a weird spot seemed to require us to drive around neighborhoods with super scary hills. Around Fallingwater had been a tame roller coaster. This was insane. It was sharp curves around houses and other cars that were going too fast, steep declines that sometimes led into the guardrail disappearing to allow access into even steeper hidden driveways like the worst surprise ever, and bumps because the road was not the best. Thank god the way back took us a more normal route, and we were able to get to bed at a more or less decent time.
Pittsburgh was not done screwing with us, though. After eating breakfast at the hotel and checking out, we tried to find the highway and hopefully a gas station, and instead we seemingly drove around the suburbs for at least half an hour. I have no idea what the GPS was trying to do, but we got gas, and we got on the road. And I wish we'd gone back through Maryland again. Pennsylvania and Ohio are pretty, but there weren't any real places to stop. Where Maryland had cool rest stops and restaurants where you could stop off for a meal, these states had service plazas. They have Sunoco gas stations, maybe a couple fast food places like McDonald's or Roy Rogers, occasionally a Starbucks, and one big place to get snacks or souvenirs. There's not much to them, and everyone is nearly the same, and it makes for very boring driving. Especially when you're on the road for ten hours. It was also hard to find anywhere to stop to eat because the fast food options weren't really appetizing, and that was all there was. The drive was largely quiet, because after four days with the same people you've said just about everything you need to say for now, and you just want to get home. Conversation tends to be like:
"Do you need to stop?"
"Yes/no."
That's it. It felt like an accomplishment to get to Indiana, where after a while at least the service centers ended and you could choose your own adventure. When we got to Michigan City we finally stopped off and made a snap decision to stop at a Steak and Shake, where they were super busy, ignored us when we got there, finally told us that there just weren't seats before she decided to clean off an empty table, and then left us without menus. I think we were there for almost fifteen minutes from start to finish without ever getting menus, and we had a deadline to get Mom back home for work, so we left and went to a Chili's instead. I think I might be done with Steak and Shake.
We finally got Mom home half an hour later than we'd planned, but that still wasn't bad, all things considered. We know how we all work together before we start planning next year's big trip. We got in a good adventure. And most importantly, I learned that maybe New Jersey isn't all bad.
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