the mini/mynnie road trip

So I got home last night just about a week after I left. The road trip was great, a success, and I got to do a lot of fun things I hadn’t expected I’d be doing. If you’d like to just jump to the photos, they are here. However the one above is probably the best one. Here’s a daily outline of how my trip went. For people who like to follow along with these travels when they are happening, please feel free to friend me on Foursquare which is a little app I use to “check in” places and allows me to make little trip summaries like this one. While I pretty much always come back around to post updates here, occasionally there are bits of data stored in places like Foursquare, facebook, Twitter and Trip Advisor. Here’s the recap.

States visited: MA, RI, NY, NJ, PA, OH, WV, IN, IL, MO, KS, OK, TX, NM, AZ, CA
States stayed in: PA, MO, TX, NM, CA
Road Trip Duration: Monday noon til Saturday afternoon

Reason for the trip: A friend got a job writing for Mad Men and had to move to LA basically yesterday. Had a car in Brooklyn that he wanted to have out with him. Car transport services take forever and cost a lot. I have a busted-up foot and can’t do much but sit. I figured sitting in a Mini Cooper was preferable to sitting at home. Plus work has been bugging me to take a vacation since forever. I offered to help.

Monday – The car was in Brooklyn. I offered to meet the car somewhere, but driving out of Manhattan was not going to be possible. I am okay driving in the city but don’t enjoy it and I am jumpy in other people’s cars. My friend’s brother had the car and we arranged to meet in New Rochelle NY. Jim dropped me off at the Providence train station and off I went. Minis have this weird little starting mechanism where there is a key-like disc, not really a key. I got into the car, said goodbye to my friend’s brother and realized I had no idea how to start the car. Also I was in a taxi zone. Figured it out, headed off. The big downsides to GPS devices is that they don’t really tell you what’s coming up. I’ve always liked how Google Maps will give you a list of choices, directions you might want to go. I was planning an I-40 trip but first I had to get out of NY which meant the George Washington Bridge (and traffic!) and a wrong turn in Jersey. The first 30 miles of my trip probably took 90 minutes. Then things picked up. I stayed in an unremarkable Howard Johnson’s in New Stanton PA which was super cheap and totally okay. Got up the next morning determined to make some time up.

Tuesday – Just drove drove drove. Ate beef jerky from the car and listened to podcasts and noted that there weren’t as many people in the rest areas as I’d expect. Stopped at a family restaurant called Dottie’s in Cuba Missouri and noticed the Route 66 mural and thought “Oh hey that’s around here isn’t it?” Peeked at Trip Advisor trying to choose among the interchangeable roadside hotels and was hipped to a cute little place called The Wagon Wheel that was just around the corner and on the historic highway. The price was right and the place was adorable but also sort of shrieky with tree frogs (one of which seemed to be in my room) and so my night was less restful than it could have been. I downloaded a white noise app for my phone. This was the last day I saw anything resembling traffic except for construction.

Wednesday – This seemed like when my trip really began. I went to Waffle House for grits and also stopped at the Missouri Route 66 Welcome Center which gave me maps and ideas of where to go next. I was making great time, so I decided to take some side trips down some of the disconnected parts of Route 66. Not only was this a nifty look into some American nostalgia [and of course I ate up the Wikipedia entries and learned a lot about 40’s-70’s era roadtripping] but the sorts of restaurants and hotels that were on these little disjointed parts of the old touristy highway were exactly what I was looking for. Places like the Crown Railroad Cafe in Flagstaff AZ and the River Valley Inn in Needles CA. I stopped in Shamrock TX and stayed at the Irish Inn which was run by Indian folks. I’ve noticed that the types of motels I tend to gravitate towards (off-brand, inexpensive, possibly old fashioned) had a tendency to be run by people from India and I wondered a little bit why that was. Apparently it’s the law of averages. Here is an interesting old New York Times article that talks about it somewhat. I liked the Irish Inn. It was right on the highway but also pretty quiet. They appeared to be renovating it as I slept!

Thursday – got on the road for a short trip to Santa Fe to see my aunt and uncle. Went to an incredible Texas rest stop after spending the previous day in Oklahoma where their rest areas are closed or non-existent and they have non-EZ-pass-taking toll booths that are unstaffed and require $1.15 in exact change! Terry and Jerry been exceptionally supportive and just present in my life, especially since my dad died and have repeatedly told me to come visit. Their place was almost on the way, so I stopped by. First real traffic of my trip and then headed up a mountain to stay with them at 8000 feet. Got to spend some quality time with them and their dog. Ate too much chocolate and got a headache from the altitude. Was happy to get to see familiar faces and I will have to come back again sometime.

Friday – Maybe could have pushed and made it all the way to LA but decided instead to do more Route 66 meandering. There was a decent guide on Wikitravel showing how to do this without winding up lost or thirty miles off in the wrong direction. I did some of the side routes from the Arizona and California sections. I really enjoyed looking out the window at formerly-hopping roadside America. Was very sad that I couldn’t stay at the Grand Canyon Caverns and their open air rooms. Wound up in Needles where I got a poolside room at a nice old motel and caught up on email and sleep before heading in to LA the next day.

Saturday – Needed gasoline and wound up having to get it in Ludlow which was a pity because it was very expensive gasoline, but a delight because I wound up eating at the Ludlow Cafe (not the old one, the new one) which is one of those “keepin’ it real” places you always hope you’ll wind up at complete with amazing coconut cream pie and some folks with a broken down car trying to get a ride in some direction other than the one I was going in. Historical Route 66 as it’s called parallels Route 40 in a lot of places, so it’s sort of fun to be zipping along on an empty road at 55 next to the big trucker highway where people are going 75 and getting to see more stuff including the big 66es painted in the roads. I got to my friend Michael’s house in Pasadena mid-day and then made the scary trafficky trip into Los Angeles to drop off my friend’s car later in the day. I was so terrifically relieved to hand over the keys to him, my friend who I had never met until this point.

I spent the rest of the trip hanging out with my friend Michael and eating tacos and going to the library and playing with his dogs and taking a long shower and finally flying home yesterday. Limping through the airport reminded me that I am still healing and coming back to a low-level MetaFilter kerfuffle reminded me that this is the first real vacation I’ve had in a while, years, and maybe I could stand to take a few more.

some before and some after

I have some friends who came down to Westport for a while and did one of those work vacation things. They spent some time here recreating and noodling around and taking advantage of the nice location and the decent weather. And then they spent some time helping me around the place. I was hoping for just a little gardening and weeding but they found the power washer and went to town on the patio along with helping out with a lot of other terrific things. I am still galumphing around in this boot (may be a few more weeks, otherwise I am feeling great) and it’s tough to describe what a wonderful thing it was to just have the place get all spruced up around me while I concentrated on working and getting sleep and eating well and getting better. I’m a pretty stubbornly independent person; having people around getting things done with no input from me and having folks to chitchat with over dinner and snacks was incredibly pleasant in a way I’m not really used to.

The week before this, Jim and I headed to Indiana on a fly-by trip to get the remainder of my Seattle stuff that has been in various basements since I moved from there “for good” around 2003. I still have a few misc. pieces of furniture in a few places (anyone know where my metal table got to?) but for now the bulk of my things are in places that are mine. Last step is to get the Topsham stuff which is temporarily in a friend’s shed into either my apartment or some nice yard sale or FREE pile somewhere. The trip was fun and short and filled with little nifty parts and I’d forgotten sort of how much I enjoy road trips, and Waffle House.

Which is good because this next week is going to be a Real Road Trip where I do the thing I used to love doing and drive someone else’s car across the country. In this case a friend of mine got a job in Los Angeles and has a Mini in Brooklyn and I have a free week more or less and there you go. I’m taking the first real week off of work that I’ve had in years (mostly my own fault) and this will be my first cross-country trip I’ve taken with a smart phone, as far as I can remember. And for longtime readers you will remember that I used to do this sort of thing a lot.

So I’m assembling some maps and NOT getting tour books from AAA and realizing that I don’t have to plan almost any of this and can still find good places to see and eat and sleep. Driving out, flying back. Hoping to be almost out of this boot by the time I’m back in MA/VT.

Seriously, look at this patio!

falling action

What a week, things were going great. I was getting sequential full nights of sleep for days on end, not a care in the world, no more falling down barn to haunt my dreams. Then on Friday night when Kate was heading down to the South Coast, she tripped [“over nothing” she said] and wound up headed to the hospital and sent home with an air cast and instructions to stay off her foot. How lousy! I sympathized and said I’d think healing thoughts towards her while Jim and I were off to a celebratory “I sold the house!” dinner and then a local baseball game.

Except, as we were talking the scenic route to Montpelier [via a few more Vermont towns I wanted to photograph for my new 251 quest] I got out to take a photo, stepped in a hole of some sort and heard a crunching sound from my ankle. I limped home crabbily and didn’t think too much about it, I’ve sprained plenty of ankles, I seem to have loose ligaments. But as I was getting up to go to the bathroom a few hours later and still couldn’t put any weight on my foot at all (after RICEing and ibuprofen), I took the standard Ask MetaFilter advice when someone is debating heading to the ER and called my health insurance, described my symptoms and they were like “Yeah may as well get it checked out.”

So, not 24 hours after Kate’s visit to the hospital I was in my local emergency room–which is pretty much across the street from my house–hanging out with the dirt bike injured and waiting for my turn at the x-ray machine. The verdict was “avulsion fracture” which isn’t as nasty as it sounds. I asked the doctor “Does this mean I have a broken leg? A broken ankle?” and the answer was not really. So while me and the ER nurse were chatting about how terrible it is when people come to the doctor after looking stuff up on the internet–a favorite topic for doctors as well as librarians–I got a lot of bandages wrapped around my ankle and some high test ibuprofen and was told to stay off of it and come back to talk to the podiatrist on Monday.

It should surprise no one that I am not the world’s best sit-at-home patient. I also live up a flight of 28 stairs (which I scooted down on my butt to go to the hospital). The good news is that having a low key weekend hanging out and watching movies and eating snacks is one of the things Jim and I like to do. So he did some food shopping, I borrowed a pair of crutches from my landlady, rolled up all the rugs to avoid mishaps and we settled in to do not much of anything. I traded cranky ankle stories with Kate, my left-handed sister who had messed up her right foot. As you can see from the photo, I did the opposite.

houseCLEANED

So it’s sort of crazy but I actually sold the house. The crazier part of it is that when I signed a purchase and sale with these buyers months ago [the first people to make a serious offer on the place] they were interested in moving in as soon as possible and we set the closing date right then, July 13th, and that’s actually when the house closed. Apparently this rarely happens. The actual event was pretty much pro forma. Sign a bunch of stuff, say hi to the buyer [and his wife and adorable little kids] who I was meeting for the first time, receive a big check and then go driving around taking photographs of Vermont towns hoping even more than usual to not get into a major accident.

The whole thing wound up really well, in exchange for me chipping in some of the closing costs (not part of the original deal) the buyer basically took the place as-is meaning waiving the usual back and forth that happens when they get the place inspected and say things like “Well there is a kestrel in the chimney, will you take $500 off the price for kestrel removal services…?” which I was happy for. This meant a little less angsting over what “really clean” means in barn terms. I gave away a household’s worth of furniture to the RE-Store in Barre (wonderful people). I gave away ladders and drill presses and card catalogs to friends. I threw a lot of things away, even stuff that was maybe recyclable. It felt weird. I put some stuff in a friend’s shed until I can figure out what to do with it. I have even more stuff in my place here than before.

Not being a homeowner [of my OWN home, yes I technically own some part of my dad’s place but I certainly do not feel that it’s mine] is about as good as I thought it would be. Not having 40 acres of land does not cause me psychic distress. Or if it does, it’s significantly less distressing than owning a house that is too far away and too high maintenance and not enough fun. As my sister, who sold her own house a year and a bit ago, presciently said “You’ll wonder why you didn’t do it years ago” and she’s totally correct.

As an odd and only-sort-of-related coda, I am heading out to get my stuff that was originally in a friend’s basement in Seattle since I moved out of there for good in … 2003? Yes, 2003 (thanks Scott!). Another friend drove it partway across the country last year and now there is a storage unit full of … things I haven’t seen in almost a decade that I am going to retrieve. Renting a van, the whole deal. I think it’s mostly books. Some clothes. A few odd bits of furniture. This is the sort of thing that I call a vacation.

houseclean

No sooner had I posted a breezy little “Hey here’s what’s up; check me out, posting twice in a week!” than things got busy. And this is busy-for-me busy which is somewhat crazed by other people’s perspectives. In short, I got a buyer for the barn and they were interested in closing as soon as possible. And this would mean handling all the deferred maintenance and whatnot in as short a timespan as possible. And that would mean dealing with all of this in the same two-month is period where I had six (6: MA, ME, NH, NY, NC, Montreal) talks planned along with the usual stuff. My thought at the time was that school would be wrapping up and then I’d want to be busy and then would kick back, spending some time in Westport and maybe just noodling around New England. Instead I’ve been following this schedule where I’ve been working at RTCC Tues/Weds then leaving for somewhere Thursday, giving a talk, then coming back Saturday and assembling people to go do stuff at the barn in the meantime. And also trying to get contractors to fix things at the barn that have needed fixing for longer than I care to admit.

The whole thing sort of pushes a bunch of buttons for me that are difficult. Having to make a bunch of phone calls to poke people about getting things fixed (I had to call the furnace people six times to get a set date, this seems abnormal to me). Having to face that this all might have been simpler if I’d handled chunks of it before now. Feeling time pressure on someone else’s schedule. Writing big checks for things like surveying and renting a dumpster. Getting friends to help me with a sort of messy annoying task and trying to manage a bunch of people doing a weird hard-to-outline job. Dealing with the fact that I bought this house when I was maybe too young and too isolated to really manage it properly. Explaining to people that I’m actually mostly happy being this busy but that yes, I don’t have time to hang out when I’m in their city. Deferred gratification hoping it will all feel worth it at this point. Managing a lot of other people’s stuff that was left behind at various points and being annoyed at that. Throwing away things that might, in some other world, be reusable and repurposable. And doing a lot of this while also managing my full time job at MetaFilter while other people are trying to go on vacation and have their summers be fun also. There is no cell service in Topsham. I can’t multitask there. This is the good news and the bad news.

This weekend my friends Stan and Brian and Forrest (pictured, with me. I keep forgetting I am short) came up to help me clean out the barn and it was an incredible surgical strike of efficiency. We were there for about 2.5 hours and got most of the barn emptied out. This means now I have to mostly sort out the small stuff and figure out what goes to the thrift store and what goes to the yard sale, but that the bulk of the “things I can’t lift” have been lifted. I have about three weeks.

And so there were a bunch of other things I was going to talk about, but today has been my first Totally Free Day [where I wasn’t writing a talk or having a thing scheduled or out of town] in quite some time. And I’ve been meaning to write this all down. I’ve still got a few small jobs there if people are interested in coming up and saying goodbye to the place. All barn jobs come with a free meal at the Wayside afterwards. Worth considering.

inward looking out

I finally got a series of headshots that are me with the newish haircut. One of the downsides of having shorter hair is that it looks different a lot. Long hair is sort of always long no matter how you wear it. Anyhow, a local photographer friend came over and we did about fifteen minutes of chatting and 45 minutes of photographing and now I have a decent series of professional-lady pictures which should serve me well. I’d love to get this photo to replace the one of me that’s in Wikipdia, but I’m sort of not supposed to do that myself. Any takers?

And an update on last weekend’s walk. We were up at seven am, on the road by eight and had walked almost nine miles by noon. The food shelf fundraiser had 60+ walkers and four dogs and raised over 21K. Pretty exciting stuff. Thanks to everyone who supported me. I was surprised how not-achey my legs were for the rest of the day; I was mostly just sleepy from not having gotten enough sleep from the night before. Wednesday was the first neighborhood fun run where I ran a mile. I’ve never been much of a runner, but I’ve usually been able to hold my own when running with the neighborhood children who seem to be the only other people who only run a mile (most adults go for two miles or 5K). Usually I run with Rachel and we go slowly. This time I ran fast since I’m not that good at pacing myself. The good news was I ran an 11-ish minute mile. The bad news was that is TOO FAST for me and I was achey in the thighs and calves for the next two days. Which is always a bummer when you live up 28 stairs.

So it’s off to the gym for me today to try to work some stamina and stretching into those muscles. I’ve got a new birdfeeder here so it’s a little difficult to tear myself away from the Woodpecker Window but it’s nice knowing that it’s as lovely outside as it is in, I’ve heard.

cameras obscurae

I took a week off and was down in Westport. The weather was okay. I went to the beach every day both to get exercise and also to take photos of the plovers that run by the shoreline, eating little things in the sand. I had a few friends on the internet who enjoyed them which was an extra nudge to get outside and get some photos, even in marginal weather. I like being outside with a camera. But, the beach isn’t nice to cameras. So the top photo is the last picture my old camera took before the lens would no longer open without a sickening grinding noise and then finally wouldn’t open at all. I am old enough to know better.

So because I am a terrible creature of habit and it had taken me so long to warm up to this damned camera after losing its predecessor in a lake, I wanted to replace it. You’d think a camera that was a few years old would be easy to replace. Turns out, for better or worse, this model has held its value decently well, but I was able to find a “like new” model through the Amazon Marketplace for about half off. And, because I have a small stack of Amazon gift cards [thanks dad’s frequent flyer miles] the price was free-to-me.

The camera arrived, and was like new enough, so I had it when I went to Topsham yesterday to walk the land with a couple who were maybe interested in buying it. It’s a confusing process, wandering around looking for metal stakes in the ground which, you hope, indicate the property boundaries. This is doubly true when it’s foggy like this. From the back of my property you couldn’t even see the house. This is not, technically, the first photo with the new camera. The first one is some confused squinty close up of me; you could easily add a thought bubble “Is this thing on? Oh I guess so!” I like this one better.