We started our trip with a drive through Indiana, the long way, until we reached the river that separates Kentucky and Indiana. There was nothing around except a cute little town every few miles… and this big-ass casino that we had booked a night at, in the hopes of a classy room and a little fun wasting some money playing slots. The slots were, indeed, fun, and we all managed to blow a few dollars and stay entertained for a couple of hours. I thought about trying my hand at roulette again, but the stakes were too high for me… $5 minimum… a far cry from the $1 (CAD) minimum in Montreal, where I did so well, all those years ago. We had a decent dinner at a cafe where fish swam behind our heads, but awoke to find the room even more dirty and stained than we originally observed… we put up a little fuss, in the morning, and they comped the room. They also promised us a letter worth a free weekend and $100 hotel credit… which turned out to be a letter worth one free night and $50. We’ll probably use it someday. The breakfast buffet was great… we understood how the crazy old casino addicts could play all day and then gorge themselves on the buffet food and make it worth the price.

Then we headed down to Nashville. I think that, even though I had prepared the google maps of our trip, it hadn’t really dawned on me that we were driving through Kentucky, until we started this leg of the trip. I remembered trying to figure out how close we were going to be to where EJ lived, when we chose the Smokies as our overall destination, but somehow, the fact that we were driving across the state had gone totally unnoticed. We stopped in one, clear tourist-trap-of-a-town and almost went on a tour through a cave, but decided that the time commitment involved wasn’t worth it. Then we stopped at a giant “rock & gift shop” that reminded me of that scene in Zombieland where they bust up a cheesy gift shop. We also took some pictures of the entranceway to Dinosaur World, but decided not to waste $13 per person to go inside. We made it to Nashville before dark and hooked up with our friend Jesse for dinner. He took us to a couple of cool places: a really nice cafe, that seemed off the beaten path a bit, and a bar on Broadway, where you’re supposed to go when you visit Nashville, I guess. We heard the “Honky Tonk-Heroes” play and I got my dose of country music.

Then we headed across Tennessee to our cabin in Pigeon Forge. Google took us on a long stretch of NOT-interstate which resulted in one police officer pulling us over and “cutting us a break” by writing us a ticket that had the words “*Pre-Trial” written on it…  and assuring us that we would pay less than the actual fine, though that amount isn’t actually written on there anywhere, so we’ll see what happens when I call to take care of it. We were a little stressed about our cabin rental office being closed by the time we got there… but the directions to our cabin were in a coded lock-box outside the office… the unpaved and extremely steep road up to the cabin probably would’ve been described better by a person than that sheet of paper could’ve ever done. It took us a couple tries to get up the last stretch of road. We ventured back down to stock the cabin with some food from Food City and picked up a movie at a Blockbuster Express kiosk.

The next day, we cruised around Gatlinburg, skipped right through the cheesy touristy section, and toured around the crafters’ section of town. There was one scary shop full of wood-carved stuff (including belts!), and the walls were covered with signed portraits of every past republican president and letters thanking them for their contributions… There was a slightly friendlier pedestrian mall full of shops at a cute little covered bridge; We had some good ice cream there. On our way out of town we stopped at Hillbilly Golf, which was a mini-golf course installed on the side of a hill where we took a chairlift up to the top and played our way down. We actually went to dinner  at a BBQ place, based on the Hillbilly attendant’s recommendation, and then came back to golf.

Our friend in Nashville recommended that we go to Ruby Falls. He talked about it like it was in the same town as our cabin, but it was really 2+ hours away. We were up for a little road trip, though, so we decided to trust his advice. The cave was pretty awesome and the history or the cave and the original cave beneath it was pretty cool. The falls themselves were impressive, but the “7 minutes” that you get there is not sufficient for a photographer. The castle that they built out of the rock they pulled out while digging the shaft for the elevator provides a nice view of Chattanooga and the winding river. We decided we were hungry, so I busted out the Yelp app on my phone and started reading off the nearby restaurants. “Pizza sounds good.” was the decision, so I found the closest pizza place with the most ratings and it happened to be the best freakin’ pizza that any of us have ever had, I think.

We tried to save the Smokies for the day that had the best weather predicted, so that our pictures would be pretty and any small hikes would be bearable. We drove into the national park and started up the mountains… we pulled off anytime we saw something picturesque and wandered a bit, took lots of pictures. We went all the way up to the North Carolina line and saw where the appalachian trail meets the scenic road we were on… then we headed up to Clingman’s Dome, which included a half-mile walk up a fairly steep grade. We were all pretty exhausted, but we made it and the views were awesome. We decided that we deserved a good meal, so we headed to this Apple-themed place… it had a long wait, but a good reputation. Unfortunately, our waitress left and handed our table off to someone who was far too busy and sort of left us with no food for a half an hour… again, we put up a bit of a fuss and they gave us lots of free stuff. On our way back to the cabin, we experienced the world’s largest As Seen On TV store… it was entertaining, and maybe a little sad, but definitely an experience.

Then we drove home… as if we hadn’t spent enough time in a car, the family agreed to indulge my 50-minute detour to the nearest Tim Horton’s. A few of the roads were “closed” on our 50-minute detour, but we drove on them anyway. I must have missed Tim’s coffee a lot, because it tasted amazing. It was also a nice break in the drive… somewhere a little past the half-way point.

A little ways into our first day of driving, we started choosing the music we would play alphabetically, by band. You can see some of our soundtrack on my last.fm page. We were missing a few letters, went back to a couple, a bit out of order, and some of them came from Sarah’s iPod, but if you’re curious, I could try and figure out what all letters were. The iPods all got a little time on the stereo… we replaced my noisy, clicking tape adapter on the ride home. The Mazda got new struts (covered under that extended warranty we bought with the cars… phew) right before the trip, so the car performed great. My phone was a champ, it managed to get us internet access in the cabin, guided us by GPS, everywhere that we went, and let me check in on Yelp all over the place and finding us good places to eat. Yelp and a couple other travel/review sites definitely had better recommendations that the silly guestbook in our cabin – for example, when it comes to pancake houses in the area: Flapjacks, no; Log Cabin, yes. The cameras all performed admirably. A few pics from mine are up at Flickr. We brought a handful of film cameras and haven’t developed anything from them, yet.

I also took a trip down memory lane, earlier in the week, when an old ex-girlfriend apologized to me on facebook, in case she was ever heartless or selfish. She wasn’t and I told her so. It got me thinking about past relationships… there are a few people I should probably apologize to; I guess I have a few regrets, but I think I only really hold one grudge, maybe two. Facebook is certainly good for bringing up these random memories and feelings.

In other news, camp is almost over, though I got roped into an extra week. It’s going to be a low-enrollment/more chilled-out version of camp, but it’s still another week of getting up early and going to the city. My hope is that my seniority and 15+ years of camp experience will mean that I’m running the show as the fill-in director. My history in these matters is that I’m promised a director’s position and/or I fill in for one until a decision is made and then it isn’t given to me… no such promise was made this time, so maybe this will be the time it happens.

The commute to camp has been made much nicer, this summer, by the set of Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5vi that I picked up when they went on super-sale at Amazon. Unfortunately, the cord busted on the first set, so I had to get myself another set, but Logitech customer service got back to me about my complaint and replaced the first set for free… in the meantime, the cord started to separate, right at the jack, on the second set. I put some electrical tape on there to hold it together until the replacement set came. I’m hoping they replace them as well. The foam tips are the most comfortable, but it makes me sad that they fall apart after a week and half or so. I think my ear canals are too small or something because all of the various sized silicone tips irritate my ears a bit and seem to wiggle their way out. The cord is obviously cheap on this model, both have broken and it makes lots of contact-noise when I’m walking around, but if I ever upgrade to something better, I might look into those custom ear-molded ones.

I’m also still playing the music on my commutes from my iPod. I was hoping to be just be carrying the Droid. I am carrying an extra battery for the phone, so I don’t have that excuse anymore, and it’s not that it’s not capable, but the lack of gapless playback (for those few albums that really need it) or built-in volume normalization (for regular shuffle) or a shuffle-by-album option (for when I feel like reconnecting with my albums, which is most of the time) makes me continue to carry my iPod. There are alternative music apps that attempt to solve these issues (at least the gapless and shuffle by album), but none puts it all together. I’m sure that future versions of Android will get these features in, especially if the rumors are true and they start using android as an OS for a media-player type device. Will these features make it in before I upgrade to a new phone?

I’ve found the phone very difficult to use this summer. I’m not sure if it’s just too humid at my mostly-outside job, or if I sweat too much (likely) but the touchscreen gets all freaked out and thinks it’s being touched all over the place and renders the phone useless until I clean it off… and even then, I can only get good response from it for a few seconds until it starts freaking out again. If I go somewhere cool and dry (air conditioned) and give it some time to recover… and give myself some time to recover and not be so sweaty … it works just fine. This wasn’t an issue at all in the Winter and Spring; It will probably affect when I decide to upgrade to a new phone. I’ll be eligible for a bit of a discount in early July, and that humidity will just be starting to bother me again. So whatever awesome android phone is available on July 06, 2011, you can pretty much bet that I’ll be buying one. If it continues to happen on the next phone I own, I’ll have to seal my phone in a ziploc bag all summer, or something.

I’m pretty sure I have a legitimate use for the wireless tether feature of the Droid. We’ve booked ourselves a few days at a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN, in late September. The rental policy said something about having “local Knoxville area access numbers…” Dial-up? Awesome. I don’t think I know anyone in the area (unless EJ is still around there, somewhere), so this one is going to be pure vacation, for me, and no attempting to visit friends/family. That stuff will have to wait until sometime around the holidays. It’ll be one of the longer roadtrips we’ve done in the past couple years, and I’m excited about that.

I managed to get through the balances on most of the gift cards that were haunting my wallet… in a related note, some of you are getting christmas presents from me for the first time in years… or ever, maybe. I managed to avoid most of my impulses to buy things for ourselves that we really don’t need.

I’m getting very comfortable with my new phone; I’m happy with my choice… no regrets. I have a new number that sort of forwards to my old number, by the way… so, if you’re on Verizon, it’s cheaper just to call my old number, but if you’re not, lemme know and I’ll get you my new number.

I finished Mini-Ninjas, though I might just play it again on Hard. I am looking for a new game to become hopelessly addicted to during my break from work. If you have suggestions or games that you like to play online that we can play together, hit me up.

Right now, sitting at the desk at the Y, all I can really think about is seeing Star Trek. I’ve heard so many good things about it… sure, some classic trek fans have their issues, but it’s trying to reboot the Star Trek world, not continue it. With a bunch of the Fringe team behind the writing and production, it has to be good.
update: Star Trek didn’t happen tonight, but we did a lot of research into how to set up a clothesline for Patti for Mother’s Day. Hopefully we’ll fit Star Trek in, tomorrow.

Good things coming up: more days off, mini-vacations, new Fable II downloadable content, macbook

In the bummer zone: Garmin announced more delays for the Nuvifone. The android phones are looking more and more attractive, even though they don’t have turn-by-turn directions, yet. Unfortunately, the only android phone even rumored for Verizon has a crappy-looking keyboard. If I didn’t think I’d miss the real keyboard, I’d already have broken down and gone with the iPhone. In the meantime, my phone is surviving… only shutting itself off once or twice a day.

My fondest van memories are attached to the van that I owned: the big red van that we moved The Overtones around in. I paid the same price for that van that Doug paid for his, yesterday: $2,000. It had a huge rack welded to the top of it; the owner swore that it would hold anything I could get up there. On the back of the rack, there were some super bright flood-lights that were fun for freaking out tailgaters. It was the perfect size for the band. There were two big bench seats in the back and room for a third, but no hook-ups… this translated into plenty of room for amps, guitars and drums. We usually took one seat out, so we wouldn’t have to stack the equipment too high.

I kept on driving it after that band fizzled. I remember loaning out my services as van and driver to a friends band a couple times. The craziest van memories include the time I was carpooling home from the tech job in Marlborough, when a crazed cop pulled us over and decided to search the entire van for drugs. I think he found some rolling papers in Sands’ bag. We just hung out by the police cruiser with the other officer, whom we lovingly referred to as “back-up,” and stared in wonder as he tore through every inch of the beast. I think he broke the handle on my sliding door, too. A few months after I downgraded to a station wagon, I borrowed the van from my Dad, to help move my friend Becky back to Charlton, from NYC. I knew Dad was a little hard on vehicles, but the van had stayed pretty strong when I owned it, so I trusted it to handle this move. We made it all the way down to the city, got it loaded and then got all the way back up to Massachusetts, off the highway, to within 5 miles of Becky’s house, and the right front universal joint let go. The wheel slammed into the back of the wheel well and we stopped dead. It happened while taking a corner at 4 or 5 miles per hour or less… had it happened on the 150 miles of highway between NYC and Charlton, we’d have likely flipped and/or rolled and died. We had several hours to contemplate our luck as we sat around and watched tow truck drivers scratch their heads. The first tow truck driver showed up with a regular truck, took one look at the situation and realized that it wasn’t going to be simple at all. The next guy showed up with a flatbed, and we still had to use a couple hydraulic jacks in place of the useless wheel. I think we moved all of Becky’s stuff to a couple other vehicles, in between tow truck drivers.

Dad had taught me how to listen and feel for unusual noises and vibrations that might be signs of trouble… and yet, in the few months that he had driven the van around, since inheriting it from me, he had managed to ingore any signs that there was trouble. And he had plenty of experience with vans… we owned no less than 4 or 5 while he was operating his Pressed4Time franchise (corporate dry cleaning pickup and delivery service). I don’t remember getting the first van, but when he grew his route too large to handle himself, he hired a couple of guys and we went van shopping. I remember buying this enormous conversion van. It had a wooden bench in the back with the kind of cushion you’d find on patio furniture and some sort of bed-contraption in the middle, I think. I thought it was so cool. I was fairly sad when it got the standard white paint job and the clothes racks and support beams were installed in place of the bed-thing. If I had a day off (or faked sick to take a day off), I’d ride around in the back of one of the vans, rolling around with the clothes, all day, popping into some of the offices with Dad and helping carry clean clothes in and bags of dirty clothes out. I definitely preferred hanging out in the back of the vans than going into the super-hot dry cleaners at the end of the run.

Yesterday was a long day, but so much of it stirred up fond memories. I guess it’s the nature of vans, being so versatile, that you always have some custom attachments that you may or may not need… and you do a bit of converting and customizing, yourself.

So… I had a fun birthday. We hit Olive Garden on Thursday and had some friends over on Friday for dinner. I prepped my Puerco Pibil on Wednesday and Sarah and her mom cooked it all. I think everyone liked it. Sarah also made some awesome little banana cupcakes with yummy honey-cinnamon frosting. I also got a couple more Apple gift cards. I want to resist the urge to replace the Dell with a Macbook… at least until the end of June, when I’ll almost definitely be in tax-free New Hampshire. The Dell is still running, but it’s loud again, and blowing out the dust doesn’t seem to help… it also takes forever to boot, and weighs about ten pounds… which is too much to carry to work, four days a week.

I slept in, yesterday, for the first time in who-knows-how-long… and will get to sleep in again tomorrow. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have another day off until March 23rd… unless I request another weekend day off. I was going to do that when I was at work, today, but I forgot. Maybe I’ll call them tomorrow and put in the request.

Last call for hang-out requests while Sarah and I are at Mom’s house the weekend after Christmas!

First, I should mention that I entered this shot of Penny into a photo contest with the extremely vague theme of “Black & White.” Sarah found the contest, she entered too – You should vote for us.

Sarah is working today. She went from no jobs to one retail job at Jo-Ann fabrics, one photojournalism gig at a local paper and one Promotions gig (web design, print newsletter design, photo slideshows, etc.) for a non-profit in Florida. It’s weird to be home while she’s not; that hasn’t happened in a while.

While she was in Florida, gathering photos for this job and meeting the people she’d be working for, I replaced the G4 with a G5. I grabbed a last-generation G5 (just before the intel switch) on eBay. It’s crazy fast, compared to the G4, and stable, so far. I got everyone’s accounts migrated onto it without too much trouble. The handles got a little bent in shipping, but that’s ok. The G4 has been a trusty computer for many years now, mostly as a backup, occasionally as Mark or Drew & Candace’s main machine in Woonsocket, but I think my constant hardware tweaking was finally too much for it. It was crashing at random. I mostly suspected the not-really-for-a-mac video card, but I didn’t want to go back to the one that was slowing the whole machine down. It’s downstairs and hooked up to that behemoth of a CRT monitor that Zombie is hooked up to. When I have time, I’ll mess with it and see if I can make it stable. Unfortunately, it never crashed on my watch, so I don’t know if I can duplicate the problem.

I’d like to be downstairs, now, playing with the other computers and catching up on my TV shows, but Frank’s friend Karol is sleeping on the couch down there. I’m trying to think of a way to make noise and wake him up but not give away the fact that I’m doing it just to wake him up.

I did a lot of wandering around in between my grandfather’s funeral and the day Sarah and her Mom arrived. I didn’t make a checklist this time, I sort of winged it. I missed Putnam and Providence and Western Mass, as well as Sara and Drew, but I’ll try and make it up to them over the holidays or something. The most impressive changes were in Woonsocket. I drove around most of town on one of my first free days, while doing some errands.

Improvements since I lived in Woonsocket:

Starbucks: closed
Tim Hortons: opened a second location, with a drive-thru
Main St: more than half of the storefronts were occupied and open

Also, the Game Stop had a Wii Fit in stock.

I caught up with some people and did a little sightseeing around Worcester & Millbury and Webster & Dudley. I ate at Jimmy’s pizza, played Werewolves of London on the jukebox. I did some shopping for New England treats at a Market Basket (where I found the Coffee Milk on the same shelf as all the other milks). I helped Mom start to remake her living room and move beds around.

The girls arrived on Saturday night, right in the middle of what was left of the storm Hanna. They survived their long drive, though, and I was very proud of them. Sarah’s posted a pretty good recap of the first couple days at her livejournal. We saw some family, toured through Plymouth, hit King Richard’s Faire and then went to NYC and played tourist some more; visited the Statue of Liberty and ground zero and a good deli.

Tuesday, we had a little more rain, so we kept it local and did some indoor-type activities. We started with breakfast at Carl’s Diner in Oxford. The serving size has not gone down. We sat at the counter, for the maximum effect. I don’t believe we ate another real meal for the whole day. We did hit Friendly’s for some ice cream, that evening. I believe that was also the day we took in some Candlepin bowling at Mohegan in Webster. It’s still kind of a dive, but its charm is intact.

Wednesday, we met Mom in Worcester, after dropping my car off at the Mazda dealership for an oil change (and to look into the weirdness it went through on the drive out there). We headed to Lexington to visit the historic Battle Green, visited the cemetery where my Dad and my Grandfather are and then met up with Mom’s friend Joyce at Bruegger’s Bagels for lunch. I hadn’t had a Herbie Turkey in a long time, and it was very tasty. Then we drove downtown and walked around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, had some cream puffs and then went to my cousin Mark’s place, in Braintree, for dinner. Mark made us pick records to play, and then made us play his XBox 360 and his Playstation 3. He cooked his awesome mac & cheese and some amazing burgers for us.

Thursday, we took in Purgatory Chasm. We walked down the chasm and back up on the East side of it. It was very nice, good weather for it. We also went up to Dresser Hill and got some food and shakes. I don’t think the Dairy stuff is as good as it once was, but it’s still the only place I eat fried clams. That night, we went to the outskirts of Worcester and saw Mark’s group, The Accident that Led Me to the World, play in a barn attached to a huge farmhouse that about 20 people lived in. They call it a Collective (read: commune) and the show was a potluck. Lots of friendly modern hippie-types, nice big wood-burning stove in the kitchen, bunch of pretty good music. It was something I’d never expect from Worcester.

Friday, we decided to hit the Big E on opening day, as a stopping point on our way back home. It was fun to go down the avenue of states and expose Patti to all the local culture and flavors. We wandered through some of the vendors and a good chunk of the crafting section. We ate a little and walked a lot. Looking back, it wasn’t a good choice for a stop on the morning of a big drive. We were still pretty exhausted for the first few hours of the trip home, and we ran into torrential downpours and Tornado warnings, but we survived. I think I slept through most of Saturday.

Now that all of that is behind me, it’s time for you all to come out of the woodwork so we can hang out. Call me or something. Pretty soon, next week will be all filled up with NYC, Boston, Plymouth and other adventures and I won’t have any time left.

Even though I was half-relieved to be out of this musical situation, I still want to play, so I was a little upset. If nothing else, I have to go through the effort of finding musicians, again, and that’s a lot more effort than I originally imagined it to be. A little sadness and/or stress brought out all my usual urges. My first urge was the “nasty letter” … to go post on craigslist about not wanting to play with “impatient, pushy kids” and having unencumbered “freedom to use space, variety and melody” in my basslines… but I quickly squashed that idea. It was replaced with my go-to urge in times of stress and light depression: spending money. It started innocently enough, looking into the exhaust fan for the mac. But I was doing it on my zombie PC downstairs, which needed software updates… then I started looking into what kind of hardware was in there and whether I could max it out. It’s not like it was running slow at all and I barely ever even use that machine. I had an amazon cart full of hardware, when I came to my senses and realized I was stress-spending (like stress-eating, but more expensive).  I can spend money today on much more necessary things, like a haircut and an eye exam and new sunglasses…. and maybe new strings.

I guess this means I don’t need to pick up my 18″ cabinet when I go back east. I should probably retrieve it from whoever has it and get it to Mom’s, so I can have it shipped out here, when and if it does become necessary. We still haven’t firmed up any definite days for the week I’m out there, but the requests for hang-out time are coming in quickly, so if you haven’t commented or eMailed me, do it soon. T-Minus 6 or 7 Days … or something like that.

The plan is to drive out there on Tuesday the 2nd and stay until Monday the 8th (or maybe Tuesday the 9th, if we need an extra day). We’ve penciled in a King Richard’s Faire outing with my sister and her kids for Sunday, and we want to see some Boston and NYC, but otherwise, plans are fairly open. I think we should do a little candlepin bowling, eat breakfast at the counter at Carl’s Diner, if it’s still open and see any of y’all who live out there and miss me. Put in your requests for activities/hang-out time now.

Saturday, we spent the whole day in Mt Horeb, starting with breakfast at a great little place called Schubert’s. Then we took in the activities and sights of National Mustard Day. We didn’t actually participate in the activities or eat any mustard or mustard-themed food (Culver’s Mustard Custard?). But we did wander and take pictures and shop all the cute stores, including the gift-shop half of the Mustard Museum. Then we popped back into Schubert’s for milkshakes and rosettes. We also did some quick visits to the gift-shops of Little Norway and Cave of the Mounds. We bought some geodes. I’m not sure if we cracked them open yet. Then, after a little chillin’ at the motel, we got some yummy dinner at a place with a HUGE menu.

Sunday, we used the third part of our tickets to the House on the Rock tour. We did the other two parts last year. This was definitely the darkest part of the tour, but it was very cool… it started at the huge carousel and included the doll carousels, lots and lots of dollhouses and the amazing organ room. On the way home, we picked up some cheese and meat and ate at a Panera Bread rip-off called Atlanta Bread.

Pictures Here

It was nice to do a little road trip. I’ve been doing public transportation to work most of the summer and I’ve missed driving. I had kind of forgotten about the phenomenon that, back in high school, in the music groups that went on many trips, we called “bus head.” The theory was that sometime after two hours being enclosed in the same vehicle, something in your brain shut off. We found that it didn’t matter if it was a school bus or a nice comfy chartered bus or a van or even a car. Once you hit that point, you had “bus head.” We discussed it with our band director; It takes a long time to recover from “bus head.” We didn’t want to plan any trips with long rides and immediate performing, even if it meant leaving in the early morning. We needed at least two hours. We could unload equipment during those two hours, but we definitely couldn’t do any rehearsing or make any decisions or be expected to engage in any activities that involved a lot of thought.

Luckily, my drive to work usually stays just short of “bus head” inducing length, and the public transportation route involves changing from train to bus or “El” about halfway through. I actually drove a couple times this week. Wednesday, I got together with a couple guys, after camp, and played some music. I think it went pretty well, if it turns into something I will definitely let you all know. Thursday, we had our family night (that 60 inch TV was what my camp photos slideshow was being displayed on) and then some of the staff went to Whirlyball. I had no idea what Whirlyball was until I saw it. It’s kind of like like Jai Alai or Lacrosse, in bumper cars. It was fun.

One more week of camp left. This week includes a sleepover, possibly another trip to Eli’s cheesecake world, a visit to Independence grove and another cookout… so lots of excitement.

We’re going to see Step Brothers tonight with our recently engaged friends Jess and Jason. It looks like a typical Will Ferrel flick, which is usually a good take, and we used our $5 coupons from the opening night of Hancock… so it’s totally worth the price of admission, pretty much, no matter what.

Next weekend is our Theater in the Woods/Troll/etc weekend. I’ve definitely been looking forward to it. That also means that I have a four-day work week for camp… which is awesome. Not that camp’s hard, but it is a little draining. Only three weeks left, now. It also means that I get to do some more driving. Taking the metra/cta into work all summer has been fun, but I miss driving, and this should help make up for it. I guess I have to be more careful, now that I’m on my extended warranty. I didn’t know it was going to cost me a $100 deductible every time I needed something fixed for the next 50,000 miles.

Today, we took a drive up to Wisconsin. We stopped at the Jelly Belly factory on the way and picked up some candy. Our main draw up there was a couple breweries that make good root beers around Milwaukee. We managed to visit both of them and bought four cases of soda between them. We also ate at a great German place that had a very tasty Sauerbraten. We walked across the street and picked up a bunch of sausage and cheese.

And now, I’m feeling a little bit more tired than I think I should, given that it’s only 9.30… so it’s definitely not just camp that’s got me so exhausted.

In other news, my phone started doing weird things and “rebooting” itself, so I brought it to a Verizon store and got its software/firmware updated. It seemed to help. Apparently, I’m eligible for $100 towards a new phone at the end of August. I looked at what’s available, now and wasn’t overly excited by anything. And I’m certainly not going to double my bill [to get unlimited calling to anyone on any service] just so I’m eligible for the new iPhone rip-off. I may not do anything in the phone department until I find out what carriers the Nuviphone will be on. That would satisfy my new GPS urges and hopefully quash any iPhone urges. I don’t really want to rearrange the family phone plan, though, so if it can’t work with Verizon, it probably won’t happen. What’s nice is that my current phone has been pretty good to me for almost two years. My current little laptop with GPS has been adequate, for a little over two years, but it’s not nearly as convenient or nice as those little portable units. It’d be cool to do some one-stop shopping, but I have to be patient and let the cool new devices hit the marketplace.

Now, I’ve just gotta survive through the rest of the boring front desk gig at the Y… not that I’m complaining – boring work on the weekends is fine with me, but relaxing at home is nicer.

Getting utterly lost on the way there, due to our complete reliance on the unerring accuracy of printed out Google directions, made me realize that I really do benefit from the GPS. It’s time to get a unit in the car that’s mountable, unlike the cheesy little laptop. I added one with a good traffic system and a big screen to my Amazon wishlist. I’m unimpressed with MSN’s traffic system, on the laptop, but I’ve heard there are a couple new traffic monitoring systems coming out soon. We did chance upon a Cosi, though, so it wasn’t a total waste.

It’s nice to have my car back. I had to pay my deductible, but the Progressive dude seemed pretty sure that once he heard back from State Farm, that I’d get reimbursed pretty quickly. I got a nifty little keychain. It’s one of those classic, flat, rubbery ones. It’s a nice addition to my growing keychain collection. The place also did some serious cleaning of the interior. I was amazed.

I’m strongly considering using public transportation for camp this summer. I don’t need to carry a whole lot of equipment to camp everyday, and I’ve got my iPod and Nintendo DS for train/bus entertainment. I did some searching through transitchicago.com for routes from a couple of the Metra stations. The system is pretty darn cool, goes through Google maps and gives you alternate routes with approximate arrival times. Maybe I’ll try out a route or two next week, during camp training.

Our airport taxi wasn’t at the house on time, so we called them, and got upgraded to a stretch limo. We were late, but so was our plane. Frank, Sarah and I played Mario DS at the gate, and a random stranger joined in with us. Gotta love wi-fi video games. We ate Cinnabons at the airport, but after the delay and the long flight with minimal snacks and the extra long time it always seems to take United to get your luggage to the claim centers, we were starving. We said as much to the guy who drove our shuttle to the rental car place, and he suggested a couple very close food options. We picked up our super-duper 08 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT (later dubbed megatron, by Frank) it had power sliders and liftgate and a camera for backing up and a touchscreen stereo with Sirius built-in. It was pretty sweet. We immediately drove it around the block, to the closest food place that the shuttle guy recommended, Dave’s Diner. We got soups and sandwiches and desserts and it was all pretty yum. It was certainly, exactly what we needed. Then we found our way to our hotel (with the help of the GPS unit, that we added to the rental) and checked in. We decided to go check out what we could of the city, at that point, and ended up mostly driving through various neighborhoods as they closed up shop. We noted that Elliott Bay Book Company was still open, so we found some parking, shopped a bit, walked up and down a couple of streets and then got some pretty good Italian stuff at a place called Mitchelli’s. We headed back to the hotel, by way of a Walgreens, for some in-room snack foods.

The next day, we had our first sampling of the (decent) hotel breakfast, then headed directly for Pike Place Market. I think we got the full market experience in… saw the first Starbucks, experienced flying fish, had some mini-donuts, ate some crumpets. We debated buying some fish, but decided to put the decision off until it would keep for the trip home. We then headed back to the Pioneer Square area, to try and catch some of the shops that were closed when we walked around the night before. We really only went to one, Magic Mouse Toys, but it was worth it, big toy stores are awesome. Next we went around Elliott Bay to the viewpoint at Alki Beach. It was a great place to take in the whole Seattle skyline (pictures later, I promise). When we were done there, we decided to try to find Archie McPhee, which was fun… and we were about to get in the car and drive away when we saw More Archie McPhee across the parking lot. We started heading back to the hotel and then plugged “game stop” into our GPS, as an intermediate destination (Super Dodgeball Brawlers for the DS came out the day before we left, but we couldn’t find it anywhere). It brought us to a dead end street around the corner from Redmond High School. After a quick stop at a Target, where we saw a woman bring her dog shopping by letting him ride in the big part of the cart, we realized our error and searched for “gamestop” (without the space) and got our game. By this time, we were hungry, and entered Redmond Town Center, a giant outdoor mall, drove around it a couple times and then parked and walked over to Pizza Schmiza… which was delicious and well decorated. And then we went back to the hotel and to bed.

We attempted to get up early the next morning and drive directly to Canada. We didn’t get up as early as planned, but we got past the pushy, intimidating border guy and all the way to the Capilano Suspension Bridge in fairly good time. We walked around the grounds at the bridge for a while and took lots of fun pictures from up in the trees and stuff. We went to a very expensive Canadian Burger King on the way out and, since Sarah started running out of polaroid film, we plugged “camera” into the GPS. It led us to an amazing Asian mall called Aberdeen Centre. No film for us, but a crazy experience, none-the-less. We continued to make our way through the Vancouver traffic congestion to the ferries. When we finally got to there, we were a little early, so we headed into the Tsawwassen Quay Market and found Oh Gelato, a gelato place with amazing presentation and very yummy gelato. We got on the ferry, which was huge, and explored it for a while before settling down and enjoying the ride. When we got to Victoria, we decided against the gardens, since we were already tired from walking around Capilano, and instead, drove and walked around downtwon Victoria a bit. We even parked in the “Tourist Parking” and got out and took some pictures. We checked into our hotel for the night and Sarah’s Mom went and got some Red Robin, which was sort of gross. Then we slept.

We had a few choices for breakfast, but it was our last day in Canada and everyone indulged my Tim Horton’s obsession. We hit a camera shop for polaroid pack film, and scored some b&w. Our ferry out of Victoria filled up very early, so we were stuck there for a while. We explored the area we had driven and walked through the night before, including a great shoe store called Baggins with lots and lots of Converse. We also drove up to the castle and took a few pictures but didn’t go in any further than the gift shop. Then we wandered South to a place called Clover Point, where we had a cool view of the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula and some guys flying kites. We picked up some goodies at the Dutch Bakery and headed to the next ferry. We had to wait there a long time, questioned again by border and customs people.The ride was ok, though… we enjoyed watching the huge mountains in the distance get bigger and bigger. We arrived in Port Angeles, WA and, after a quick stop at Rite Aid, we headed up to the Olympic National Forest Visitors Center, which was closed, but just happened to be a guy there who workedin the park. He told us that we could probably make it to the rain forest with some daylight and could definitely make it to the coast before sunset. We decided to drive towards the coast, enjoy the sunset, stay somewhere in Forks then enjoy the Hoh Rain Forest and Hurricane Ridge the next day. We ate at one of the few restaurants in town and then checked into a HUGE suite just outside of town. I got the best night of sleep on the whole trip in that place.

We went to breakfast at the restaurant across the street from the one we ate at the night before. Breakfast portions were huge, so we were happy. Then we headed into the Rain Forest, which was gorgeous, and took a bunch of pictures. Furry trees are cool… then we went back through Forks, and around the park, through Port Angeles, again, and up to Hurricane Ridge. Lots of pretty mountain views on the way, but the top was kinda foggy/cloudy. We had a little food up at the visitor center on the ridge and then started the long drive to the original hotel … we didn’t make the ferry that cut through Puget Sound, so we had to drive around. I was pretty beat after all that driving.

Monday morning, we sacrificed a trip to the creperie to go visit Nintendo of America’s Redmond headquarters… it was sort of nestled in amongst Microsoft-land. There was a cute little visitor center. Then we headed downtown to check out the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, which I think were worth the money… we were a little worried about it after reading the reviews. We combined that trip with lunch/dinner at the Sky City restaurant in the Space Needle… then we popped over to Pike Place Market to buy more donuts and purchase the fish. I ate some donuts and drank some of the Walgreens milk that we bought on our first day, back at the hotel that night… and I think it made me sick.

On our last full day, we headed to the Georgetown Truck Stop for breakfast. It was very impressive… in it’s small size and big portions. Mt Rainier was our destination for the day… not the top… but the park, in general. We opted to go in the Southwest entrance, since it was open year-round, and some of the roads were still closed. We found out once we were in the park that the Northeast entrance (and Southeast entrance) were both also open, but some of the higher roads were not. It was kind of cloudy/rainy, so some of our views could have been better, but we did catch a break in the clouds and see Rainier at least once. The visitors center at Paradise was really cool, but apparently very impractical and due to be shut down… so I took lots of pictures of it. On our way down the mountains and out of the park, we grabbed some dinner at a local Inn/Restaurant/Gift Shop and then headed back to the hotel for our final night of sleep.

Aside from my body trying to eat itself from the inside, the day of our departure was fairly uneventful. There was a small delay in our plane, a large delay in our luggage getting to the baggage claim and a lot of sleeping, by me, through most of it.

Overall, great trip. We brought home a few Huckleberry flavored souvenirs and some clothing and trinkets from here and there. We’re on a website for the Forks visitors center, holding a sign, proving that we’re Twilight fans who visited Forks. I’ve got a bazillion pictures to go through… and I can now say I’ve been to the Pacific Northwest and that I like it a lot. I’ll surely think of some great thing that I forgot about or some super highlights to expand upon later, but for now, I am done.

I’m probably forgetting stuff, but already on the list are some gardens in Victoria, the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver and Pike Place Market and the Seattle Aquarium… on the probably/possibly/maybe list is the Space Needle, Experience Music Project, Boeing and the Underground Tour.

Some Yelp searching has turned up these, that I’d like to add to the food possibilities list:

Paseo – the words “food orgasm” come up in their reviews, especially when it comes to something called a midnight cuban.
HoneyHole – sounds dirty, and delicious… “best fries in seattle” in several reviews
Armandino’s Salumi – great reviews… short hours, long lines and sort of expensive, but worth taking a day off of work for!
Cloud City Coffee – need to snub my nose at Starbucks by having good coffee somewhere in Seattle and this place sounds pretty cool
Portage Bay Cafe – good breakfasts, some talk of “unlimited fruit” and such at the “toppings bar.”
Georgetown Truck Stop – affordable, delicious breakfasts

And some other stops/shopping that sounds interesting:

Elliott Bay Book Company – we like books.
Archie McPhee – toys and silliness
Lincoln Square Cinemas – in case we decide not to break our movie night tradition
Nintendo Headquarters – yeah, we love nintendo.

Any other suggestions?