THE BOWER BIRD CONSTRUCTS AN ELABORATE STRUCTURE ON THE FOREST FLOOR FROM TWIGS, LEAVES, AND MOSS

We stayed with Kale and Hannah for the first few days, venturing out from the inflatable mattress every morning to try and find a place. We’d pretty much narrowed the search down to Capitol Hill, a very hip neighborhood next to Downtown w/ quite a few strips full of coffee shops, restaurants, bars, clothing stores, and organic produce. Heaven.

Long story short, we gave into the magic that had carried us this far (sincerely), and stumbled across a place for at least $200-300 less than everything else we had seen. Hardwood floors, TONS of storage, more square footage than anything else we checked out, and directly between 15th and Broadway, two of the major strips in Capitol Hill. Absolutely perfect (except for the lack of grounded outlets, squeaky floors, a neighbor upstairs that gets off on doing laps in her living room in high heels, and other things not worth complaining about). Here is our castle:







I think you can see a video that Juli made of our apt. and me scurrying around like a lonely specter here: http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y69/julim/may%202006%20big%20move/?action=view&current=newapartmentmpg.flv

The weather, BTW, has been PERFECT. Exactly one day of rain—the rest of the time temperatures have been in the 70’s, clear skies, refreshing breeze with flowers in the air, no humidity, beautiful lakes and Puget Sound all around us, and the Olympics on the east horizon, the Cascades on the west horizon, and when it’s really clear, Mt. Rainier rising like our very own Mt. Fuji directly to the south.

I know, I know, just wait for the dreary winter with piss rain and then you all can laugh and throw sandballs at me or something, but for now I’m soaking it in.

Jeff Randolph has been our own little Emerald City angel thus far, taking us to all kinds of good food, good views, and good conversation. He and Nazik have fantastic friends and family who have already taken us in as one of their own. Good to have folk like that around…

Just so you can see how beautiful it’s been, here’s a recent jaunt to get incredible Mexican food in Queen Anne:







Though we look stoic, in actuality we are drunk on good weather. It makes you a content little zombie.

Seattle is divided up into all kinds of neighborhoods that each have independent farmer’s markets, festivals, and concerts. Recently, Fremont (where Toby and Adam used to live) had a Solstice Festival, which is famous for a naked bike ride. Kale and I got there late, but I have to say that we felt embarrassingly normal among all the body paint, stiltwalkers, and glitter-throwing.

It felt awkward to take too many pics of naked folks, but here’s one just to prove it:


The best part about it all? TONS of families around, showing their toddlers what a naked fat person loving life looks like. Very refreshing.

So after getting settled in a bit, we went to pick up Ty at the airport. He’ll be staying with us for the foreseeable future as he and I try to start a pop (!) band in earnest, which basically means overdosing on the Pogues and gospel music as we sit around with acoustic guitars and annoy the upstairs neighbor.

This is us arriving at the abode with minimal luggage in hand:


This is us chilling in the abode with minimal furniture surrounding us:

WESTWARD, HO!

After the last night of depravity and another day of holding mail, dropping off house keys, and other inane tasks, we got up early, made Bethany and Juli cry and me almost cry (I’m fairly positive Jay cried into his pillow after we left), and then took this picture:


Then we forgot the iPod charger and something else and had to go back to Beth and Jay’s apt. all anti-climactic-like.

But after that, there were no more tears. Kind of unbelievable. Methinks Juli has been gradually leaving for weeks now in that secret way that she has from time to time. So even though it’s cheesy, we proceeded to be a great team yet again as we sojourned across this land that’s really just WAY TOO BIG.

Funny thing about that charger I mentioned earlier; we never ended up needing it BECAUSE THE EFFING IpOD BROKE THE DAY THAT WE LEFT. I was stuck listening to “Memoirs of a Geisha” (Thanks, Jaime) for half of the trip. The. Woman. Talks. Un. Bee. Leave. A. Blee. Ess. Ell. Oh. Double-U. For reals.

Made good time and got to New Orleans by the late afternoon. Stayed w/ Francesca and Andy, who are consistently the best people to have around when you need assistance. They have an incredible house in Covington, both exterior…:


…and interior:


It didn’t take much convincing on their part (read: a beer and a bed) to convince us to stay an extra night. We swang on swangs…:



…and sat on sitters to our collective hearts’ content:


This is Juli in a cat suit, impersonating a cat:


We also met Tom, who is an internerd friend living in NOLA and playing music and being genuine and all that good stuff. Juli keeps calling him my boyfriend, which is cruel and inhumane (to Tom). Big ups:


I could write five more paragraphs about how stuff is still all beyond screwed up in Nawlins, but I won’t because this is shaping up to be another mammoth post (but hey, these have been mammoth trips recently).

Suffice to say that we went straight through Baton Rouge-which is where my grandma lives—because she was in Gville at the time (where I was just two days prior). Just can’t get to everyone that you need to get to sometimes. She should be proud of me, though, because I found Coffee Call ALL BY MY BADASS SELF:



Juli INSISTED on beignets, so I braved the fierce winding highways of Baton Rouge on childhood instinct alone.

I felt oddly Southern this whole time, and could easily see myself on a big ol’ porch w/ a banjer and mint julep in ten years time. Guess it doesn’t kick in until you leave.

Juli goes, “That’s the Miss’ippi river.”:

I go, “Hush up and look awkwardly genuine.”:

This was supposed to be our trip mascot, but I broke his horn right after this picture was taken because I can’t do anything right:

We then proceeded to hit every truck stop in LA, TX, NM, AK, NV, CA, OR, and WA…:

…and NEVER EVER FIND A DECENT TRUCKER HAT ANYWHERE. What the HELL is wrong with Texas?

Luckily, Andy gave me a bitchin’ John Deere hat, which gave me the power to eat/drink/slurp slurpees w/ the wifey:


I also found all kinds of treats in men’s rooms, including the Bin Laden Condom (no, I didn’t actually buy it to find out what the hell it was):

Here is what the middle part of the country looks like:

Here is what our lunch looked like for the next few days:

We drove through Dallas into Denton the next night, which was decent time (shot for 500 miles or so a day). We didn’t take pictures in Denton because there is nothing worth taking pictures of in Denton.

We put a lot of hours into our backsides the next day and went all the way to Albuquerque, which meant a whole lot of this…:

…and more of the Asian. Woman. Who. Can’t. Seem. To. Speed. Things. Up. At. All. Ever. Ever. Ever. The iPod remained a stubborn, broken bitch-bastard.

Albuquerque ended up being VERY cool—we stayed in Old Town…:


…had a great dinner, and a BEAUTIFUL breakfast out on a patio (which is right up Juli’s proverbial alley):





The huevos rancheros were divine/to die for/delish.

Then we drove through A LOT of this:


Cool stuff.

Then we got to this:

Very much cooler stuff.

When we drove into the park, I was all, “TWENTY-FIVE dollars for the Grand Canyon?!?!?!? Does it come w/ a happy ending?” The park ranger informed me that the Grand Canyon does not, in fact, come with a happy ending. Now you know.

We have approximately 75 more pictures that look just like this:


This is Juli looking for a gelato stand at the bottom of the canyon:



This is me connecting w/ the Earth whilst simultaneously begging Her not to blow me into her gaping vagina with a gust of wind:


They have good beer and good-God-this-is-awful food at the Grand Canyon:



So awful, in fact, that the only thing that will eat the stale hard pretzels are these huge radioactive cave squirrels:


Of course, we were still ultra-pissed when he took the pretzel right after this shot.

Very beautiful, and begrudgingly worth the $25 clams:


We soldiered onward, heading west.

This is how to dry your washed apple and take an arty photo at the same time:

You can make a lot of money this way if you live in NYC and know the right people.

This is the set of the next Star Wars film:


Actually, it’s the Hoovered Damn, and it’s somewhat unimpressive when you’ve been driving for 50 miles w/ the needle below “E” and still no gas station in sight. Also, we went through a terrorist checkpoint to make sure that we weren’t going to blow up George Lucas’s wet dream.

We were going to take a picture of the state trooper because he looked just like Cheech Marin, but then we realized that we were damn lucky to get through seeing as how I have a bushy, burly, tribal-looking beard now and we also had a big crate full of wired metal boxes (read: guitar effects pedals) hidden under a tarp in the bed of the truck.

So we kept our damn fool traps shut and drove steely-eyed straight to Vegas, where we encountered this:


Kevin and Hillary are starting their own commune out in the desert and neon sin, replete w/ multiple progeny. Here is a shit-ton of cute photos of Teegan:










We ate great food and talked good talk w/ Kevin, Hillary, and Teegan, too. They’re really doing well out there and it felt fantastic to see Kevin in such a good spot career-wise, Hillary in such a good spot pregnancy-wise, and all of them in such a beautiful spot family-wise. They’re a good future example.

They also make awesome funny faces:







Of course, we are heartbreakers at our core, so we bid them fond adieus and headed for CA.

At this point we ran out of books-on-CD and had to get more BECAUSE THE IpOD WAS STILL BEING A REAL BITCH-ASS AND REFUSING TO WORK. We got David Sedaris, Herman Hesse, and that Kite Runner one that made me feel sad and awful:


Pretty crazy how quickly the landscape changes once you get into CA:



And don’t think for a second that we’ve forgotten about Copperopolis (see previous trip). We'll be snuggled between those rolling hills soon enough, working on a squeaky printing press in an old barn or something.

Also, we found the set to the next, next Star Wars film:

It’s either that or the Bio-Dome. Can’t be sure.

Here’s where things get less interesting because we’re six days in now and sick of taking pictures. We stayed with Tanya again in Stockton for a night and then thought about going all the way to Seattle (at least 13-15 hours) and then wised up.

We stopped in Eugene instead and were glad to return there (Juli considered grad school at Univ. of Oregon a few years ago, which come to think of it would have made this trip A LOT cheaper).

Very hippy-y and somewhat quaint, but we like it. They have REALLY good (read: dark and strong) microbrews there that you get to buy and take with you. Best invention EVER:


Got up at a decent hour, did some remote recording in the woods behind a rest area...:


...and then headed through absolutely gorgeous weather straight to our new home:



And all things begin as they end:

The iPod, by the way, started working the day we got into Seattle.