you're old enough to change your ways

i'm too tired to blog!!!!
sorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry!


i have so much to share about so many special and majestic places!
about the power of humanity! about pockets of life! about crying from joy! about lake michigan the size of the ocean!

please stay tuned, maybe tomorrow night in buffalo, back in my homestate, the fancy will strike me to quantify this magic.

i've seen: nebraska, iowa, minnesota, wisconsin, michigan, illinois, indiana, ohio, pennsylvania, and the width of new york. tomorrow is more michigan, ohio, penn, and ny again. i am ready and willing. i am happy to rest in a friend's house in saline, michigan and be slightly buzzed from more than a few miller high life's. also happy to say i've seen the very place where those beers were created. american life is a jigsaw puzzle i can't wait to put together. the upper peninsula opened my eyes to real true unwaivering unyeilding and unforgiving life and its a good one. we just need the fuel. do everything with love!

(picture dump right into your eyes tomorrow, pinky promise)

with a vision of a gentle coast

hey there hi there ho there from sunny omaha
i am EXHAUSTED.
sarah is napping in bed and i am at ecremery in dundee because although i finally found a signal on her porch, my computer didn't have enough power and sarah doesnt have any grounded outlets to deliver the power to compy5000. bummer. so i'm sitting in the ice cream shop like a total nerd.

i am actually too exhausted to go into full detail about yesterday's drive and last night and today (so far) i do have pictures so maybe i will show you some of those?

tomorrow i am going back to minneapolis, hopefully arriving before dinner, and staying there until sunday or monday. i officially decided to drive through the u.p. on my way home and stay once up there and once with robyn in ann arbor, and then again with fernando's mom in buffalo. i am so excited to see new places and also not have to deal with chicago (hopefully ever again)

i will say briefly that yesterday was driving on i-35 south and then i-80 west and iowa wasn't as awful as i remembered it, but i wouldn't wish that drive upon anyone anyways. i am happy to rest in nebraska and think about how all these landlocked states butt up against each other like staggered bricks. iowa, nebraska, missouri, kansas. this country is a puzzle of greatness. let's all be america and hold hands forever. kiss kiss.



windmills and fields of opportunity (aka corn) in iowa.



this is obligatory. some exits had the kum&go listed as gas AND food. ONE STOP SHOP! loaf&jug is still the best one i've seen.





omaha. full of hills. believe it or not. sarah lives in a cute small neighborhood called dundee and she doesn't drive so she walks everywhere. its quite a strange place to choose to live when you have no car, but this is where she lives and this is where i visit her.



we saw jay farrar's band son volt last night at slowdown in downtown omaha. it was a great show and its a really great space to see a show.





lunch today at la buvette in the old market was delicious and it felt so nice to be outside in the shade. i ate the whole thing.



thrifting is happening. why am i buying? i can't stop! everyone has their thing. mine is piling up 300 pair of shoes and staring at the sheer mass of stuff i have plucked from the earth. rarrrrrrrr.

so i am ready to be done with this ice cream nonsense now. i may lay in sarah's bed and watch monterray pop and never even show my face to the bars of omaha. then again, i may pop into o'leavers for just a few hours to see if its as crazy as i remember and as people keep telling me it is.

omaha: who knows! when you cross the missouri from iowa into nebraska there is a sign on the bridge that says "nebraska: the good life!" i'll try to snap something on my way out tomorrow.

love y'all. check you next time!

driving down the street while four cylinders are setting the beat

hello and hi from the land of 10,000 lakes.
i don't know if i have the energy for the kind of post i know the day after the fourth of july deserves, and i apologize for that in advance.

i have to drive to omaha today. i wish i could teleport there. i had a fight with a friend of a friend of a friend in this bar last night because i told him i didn't like iowa and it turns out not only is he from iowa, but he bears the brunt of my saying i dont particularly love iowa for the ENTIRE STATE. i tried to explain that if he insulted new york state as a whole i wouldn't be offended because i dont live in the entire state. he said "i am iowa" i said "i am america, and i say 'fuck iowa'" that basically ended it. he said that was the best thing i could have said and everything ended on good terms. naomi wasn't thrilled. can't please everyone!

J4 was really excellent from tip to tail and we started things right with a summer garden brunch complete with a bloody mary and mimosa bar at chiara's cousin's house.







good thing we brought our appetites!

we stayed there much of the afternoon, it rained during the middle of it, and we had to take shelter in one of the many sheds that had been built from old signs. yes, it was as magical as it sounds. then the sun came shining again and dappled on everyone and everything and the angels sang sweet songs and everyone held hands.









then we rode bikes to a beach called "hidden beach" (which, i believe, is on cedar lake) even though i guess its not hidden anymore. it had gotten too late to actually get wet so we just layed about in our suits and talked to some people about life.




emily was excellent to give us a ride to nicolet (sp?) island where we watched the fireworks display from adam's friend johan's backyard. apparently its very private and fancy so that was cool. emily had never even been there!
then we went to this thing called the 10 second film festival which was crazy packed full of people and pretty funny also.



finally we went to the best place: nye's
i can't explain how good this place is and i was slightly offended no one had ever taken me there before because it is the PERFECT PLACE. there was a polka room where three elderly people were playing instruments and people were dancing and there was also piano karaoke with only like 100 songs where you write your choice on a napkind and hand it to the piano lady and then she points to you and sometimes she helps you if you forget the words. gosh it was great. i sang 'knock three times' and 'margaritaville' life is great.





okay nebraska is calling. i gotta get a move on. i wish the future was real and i could just poof myself over there. ALAS!

love!

found it!

the country's calling and that's where i'm going

this here country is a little green, and there's a lot of country that you ain't seen

christ almighty what a day.
i composed a giant journal post on paper while i was waiting for my dinner tonight and i will retype it here in some time. probably tomorrow morning.
for now you should know i am alive and my plans of sleeping on a couch or floor were dashed to dust and instead i'm sprawling in king size bed in another ramada, this time in downtown milwaukee.

how is this possible, you ask? not quite sure, because the people of milwaukee are certainly nice and certainly hospitable. i definitely don't have the money to afford much more of this, and i'm sure everyone was correct when they told me i should just fly.

know this much: tomorrow morning i get a free continental breakfast and i sure as hell am going to eat every free bit i can get my mits on after i take a dip in the heated outdoor swimming pool. got it?

until tomorrow....

got to pass it on, before all hope is gone, let the light go by you if you dare

oHIo from toldeo; an all-america city! (i kid you not, apparently this is not a title that is hard to garner)

today was a day that was all about lake erie. i woke up at denise's cute house



and had some coffee (decaf) and then said 'adios' and went to 2 salvation army stores in buffalo (wednesday is family day, which means every tag except one color is half off!)



i left buffalo around 2 and started west on i-90 (the longest highway in the united states, running 3,084 miles from seattle to boston). the rain came and went, just like yesterday. i found a few great classic rock stations (i think they were, GASP, canadian!) that entertained me until the pennsylvania border.

erie seemed quiet and the gas was only $2.45 there. pennsylvania was just a small blip in my days drive and in no time i was saying HI! to ohio. this is when the drive got interesting. i will say that today was miles better and more interesting, scenery wise, than yesterday. i love my state, but the middle is really boring! i-90 snakes through downtown cleveland and i got to see all the little houses with their colored roofs angled at what appeared to be 70 degrees or more. they looked fine all lined up like that. cleveland is a good looking working city. i think lake erie is blue collar. i decided this today.



at some point i got to leave 90 and take the much more scenic ohio 2. this bought me through the town of sandusky and directly across sandusky bay.



ohio seems to be in some kind of tug of war between the east and the middle of the country. this is the first time i've really driven past wheat fields (not sure how that is possible, but i promise it is true) the golden wheat and the grey skies and the red barns made a really nice composition but its only been captured on film (where it belongs) so you'll have to wait to see. i'll give you this instead:



i even got to drive past a nuclear power plant! i could only think of the simpsons.



i'll tell you what i think of toledo: its a nice manageable blue collar city with quite a bit of character and very few chain stores (from what i saw).



i like toledo! it helps that i've found SO MANY beautiful 70's wood soled platform shoes. plus all the ladies in the shops have been very sweet. one was so surprised i was from new york, i was like "its not that far!" she says "i know but we don't get a lot of them"


tonight i am sleeping like a queen in a king size bed. i hope i can crash on somebody's couch or floor tomorrow in MILWAUKEE where my main agenda go on the miller brewery tour. BREW CITY. i was all nervous because its a 5.5 hour drive so i was thinking i would have to leave at like 10am to get there before the last tour at 3:30 but then i realized its in the CENTRAL TIME ZONE so i get an hour! if that's not a gift from god, i don't know what is!

now i need to inventory all my treasures and do some girl stuff so i'll wake up all beautiful and shit.
much love from the buckeye state.