A Little Bite of a Big Apple

So I made it into New York today. Dale showed me around a little. I saw the giant twin tower crater and the financial district. And we walked to Time Square. The whole city is lit up to the point you can only tell it's night because the colors are more vibrant. This place is so crowded. So full of people living and jostling, competing over everything. Jobs. Food. Parking. Air. It's amazing. And all in this setting that's layers upon layers of history. You have brand new laid over centuries old. Bricks and glass and metal and grime. It's amazing. Fascinating. I want to see more. I open my eyes wide to take in more than once. I'm sure I look like a bumpkin, but what do they know? These people that live their lives in this city and never really see it as they dodge traffic and talk on cell phones and sip coffee in their haste to get ahead to earn more to spend on drinks every saturday night... They don't see the world as I see it. You can see the people who do. The ones standing still, like me. Not necessarily the tourists with the cameras and the shopping bags from Century 21 and Macy's. Not them. The other ones. The ones that stand out because they're clear in a blur of rushing pushing people. They're watching the world run around without seeing.
I wish I could see more. I'll have to come back.
Tomorrow Dale and I are driving to Cleveland.



















This Water Tower Robot is pointy and old. I like him.

My Little Miracle: The Night-Walker of Western Tennessee

So I found out the reason for my prolonged stay in Tennessee.
After bringing me back to the house Oleg went for a walk to make himself feel more tired, and along the way, as he was walking down the sidewalk he was pounced on my a ferocious ball of fluff. This adorable little kitten then came home with him and slept in my hand while he went out to get food and litter for it.

It looks really young and really neglected. I think Oleg has a new owner.
If my flight hadn't been canceled, Oleg wouldn't have been outside, and this rambunctious ball of cute would have gone unfed and unloved.

We named it Gremlin.

American Airlines makes babies and puppies cry

Or, rather, they make me cry. They canceled my flight and there isn't another till tomorrow. This means I won't get to see NYC this time around. I'll have to head back this way again after my birthday. It just sucks because this time I had a place to stay and everything worked out.
I guess as Irwin says, that's the nature of winging it.

Thunder Storms and Studying

So today I stayed in and studied. I'm trying to finish work for my sociology class today.
Outside the clash and roll of thunder can be heard at intervals. It's been going on since early this morning.
I met Oleg's friends Matt and Tiffany today. I like them, they're really friendly with a great sense of humor. It really makes the study breaks fly by.
Tomorrow I should be going to the Museums in Nashville before getting on the airplane to New York. I'm excited.

A Robot Sighting in Knoxville Tennessee

Ennis emailed me a robot he saw in Knoxville Tennessee! I'm loving this. If anyone else wants to contribute a water-tower robot or a traveling story/picture or question (I've gotten a few) feel free to post comments or email me!

Ennis' sighting and message:
Hi Sparrow,
I thought you might enjoy this. I spotted another one of Irwin's robots in Knoxville, TN. This one looks a little more futuristic than the ones we saw on the prairie. Apparently this was left over from a previous year's World's Fair that was held in Knoxville. It sort of stands out from the rest of the town, but an interesting if not iconic object all by itself.
E

Trigger Finger

So today I got to shoot and be shot. And of course by being shot I mean with a camera. Though I got to shoot a few guns. I don't usually do this, being from California and all. But it was actually pretty fun. And a little jarring at first since it was my first time handling machine guns. If I didn't have really good teachers I'd have been scared out of my wits at being handed one of those things. But luckily Oleg and Frank are excellent when it comes to making sure you know what you're doing.
I mentioned before that Oleg's photography site is how I met him in the first place. It may seem odd then that this is the first time I've actually done anything studio with him, since I've known him now for more than four years. (here's a link to his older pictures of me, and soon probably some of the ones taken tonight as well.) But I finally relaxed enough to let the lens point my way. And I actually like some of the images that came out.

A Picture For My Mother

She'll know what it means.
Mom, I took this one just for you.

The Mississippi and the Gateway to the West

Today I went up to the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. It was incredible. Even just standing next to the towering stainless steel monument inspires awe and a bit of sun-blindedness. The simple design and the way it reflects the sun makes it the perfect symbolic gateway to the land believed to be the answer to everyone's dreams... It's a monument to Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, though I don't know how many people actually know that.
The arch stands in the middle of a grassy park, but I saw the pictures. They tore down many of the old brick buildings along the waterfront (which were probably the original city) to make way for this glamorous silver tower. It's sad to me because of all the history that was lost. All they saved of the area was a church and the old courthouse from the 1800s where they tried the Dred Scott case. Don't get me wrong, the arch is amazing, and it was loads of fun to get into those little pods that make up the tram to the top and watch the spiral staircases out the tiny windows that let you see the interior structure. And the view from both sides of the observation deck are amazing. The land is so flat you can see forever in either direction. On one side you have the Mississippi River and on the opposite bank is Illinois. On the other side, behind the turquoise dome of the Old Courthouse, St. Louis stretches out into the horizon. It really is a big city. Or rather, several clusters of sky scrapers linked together by corridors of low end housing. 630 feet at the apex allows for some pretty breath-taking views.

After we left the gateway behind we drove through Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee. While passing a lake in Kentucky I noticed some trees along the banks that looked like they were wrapped in cotton candy... Then I realized that the gauzy substance was spider-web. Being arachnophobic, this did not sit well at all and I proceeded to be very glad I was in a moving car.

At any rate, I got to Nashville without being eaten by giant bird-catching spiders, and am now enjoying the company of my friend Oleg who I first met on my first jaunt around this country in a similar manner to this. Though I'd actually known him online for a while before meeting him in person. I met him because I commented on his website.
So now I am here and have plans to run around Nashville tomorrow, looking at some museums and apparently learning to shoot (not just guns, but infrared cameras as well).

On a side note, the pictures in the Adventures of the Water Tower Robot post are in reverse order to how I meant them. But I'm too lazy to change the order now, so look at them in whatever order you like.

The Adventures of the Water Tower Robot

Where Moonbeams Fall To Earth

Today I walked around Kansas City, Missouri much of the day. It was sunny and balmy, and the whole place seemed incredibly green after the last few days of desert and prairie.
This city apparently was designed to emulate the grandeur of European cities. It was built with large tree-lined boulevards and a plaza built to resemble Seville, Spain. It also has the most fountains of any city with the notable exception of Rome. Quite the feat for a heartland city in the US.
Near the geographic center of the continental US, this city really spans the border of Kansas and Missouri, bringing the people to a clashing, like the saying "the wrong side of the tracks". Many of the Kansas side folk seem to have a distinctly holier than thou air towards their Missouri neighbors. Unfortunate. But the University campus is beautiful. And the students seemed friendly, and much less white bread than I've seen in a while.
I spent some time in a cafe called Muddy's. It was pretty comfy. Right across the street from the campus, it was dark inside and full of students. It also had tables under the awning outside for those of us who preferred the sunlight.
Driving through the different parts of the city was more like visiting separate cities in that every part I saw was so very different in aesthetic and population. The plaza looked Spanish and was full of shoppers and war protesters carrying signs saying things like "If you're pro-life you can't be pro-war" and "Oil Royalty = Pilate, Bush Inc = Herod, All Innocent Dead = Jesus... You = ?". The campus cafe was dark and hip and full of clusters of students around laptops, it not being late in the semester enough for books. The WWI memorial was huge and white and had a crowd of people with red white and blue tents and long-tailed trick kites crowded around old looking army vehicles. Many of these people were in various service uniforms, glaring at me in my bright red spaghetti strapped tank top. The Old Kansas City center was brick, well kept, and empty. All of the neighborhoods seemed so disconnected, far apart and different.
Ennis spent eight years living here, so he was able to be a good tour guide with a lot of interesting facts and history.

Tomorrow we'll be spending the morning in St. Louis, climbing the Archway to the West and getting breakfast at a waffle house. Then We'll be headed for Tennessee where I'll be staying with Oleg for a few days. He's actually gotten me a ticket to NYC so that I can still connect with the contacts I have there and in Cleveland. I'm pretty excited about the whole trip. The flight is nice cause it allows me more time with some Nashville friends, but still, I'll miss the Atlantic seaboard this trip now. Oh well, there's always next trip. After NYC I hope to keep my feet on the ground so I can enjoy as much of the country as possible.

By the way, if you guys think I'm on a wild adventure, you should check these people out! They're pretty awesome, huh? I wish I could hook up with them. I wish I had a valid passport still... I should fix that as soon as I get back...

And now, for the continued adventures of Irwin's cloud robot:

Cowboy Country and the Prairie Ghost Towns

We drove through a lot of flat land today. Leaving the red cliff plateaus and rich coffee black lava flows behind in Gallup, NM, we passed through some brief mountains topped with thunder heads trailing grey rain mists and came out in the wide open range country.

Long flat stretches where baby cows follow mother cows along fences in a loosely configured train of only moderate deliberation. They don't need to wander far from one windmill pumped water hole to the next. (The picture of the woolies is for Sophie and mom. And for Irwin, who knows I get excited too and points them out to me.)

In all of the places we stopped the people seemed tired and bored. There were towns that were nearly completely deserted, wiped out by who knows what.
There was one town though that we did know the cause of death for. Slightly after dark we came to Greensburg, Kansas. I don't know if anyone remembers but a few months ago this little town was literally destroyed by a tornado. Driving through there is still nothing but piles and piles of twisted metal that is only slightly recognizable as dumpsters and traffic poles. The rubble of every building has been put into a large pile on every property. There are several temporary relief homes that show signs of having been made permanent residences. The only building that looks like it was miraculously untouched is the liquor store. That sort of devastation is shocking to say the least. It's one thing to read about a tiny town getting blown off the map. It means something infinitely more when you drive through the wreckage of people's lives and see what's left.
This picture is for Irwin. The water tower reminds me of a robot looking at the one little round cloud. I hope you like it.

The smell of Desert Sage

I told Sophie I'd show her the Grand Canyon... So here they are. A bunch of lovely pictures from the 24th of August. There's a fire on the north rim of the canyon. Can you see it?






Today we took a longer route to the Grand Canyon than we'd originally planned on.
We had to cross Joshua tree country, but while crossing the Colorado River, Ennis started telling me about Oatman, AZ (just past Boundary Cone Peak on the old 66). We decided to take the detour. It was excellent. The tiny little one street town was overrun by wild burros that came down the mountain looking for food. The tourists are sold carrots and water, the only things they're allowed to feed the cuddly animals. Signs hang on all the buildings reminding us that the burros are wild and may bite or kick, though they seem pretty gentle to me.
While there we also took a look at the Oatman hotel where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard honeymooned. It made me think of Irwin, and listening to Death Cab For Cutie.
We drove up the 40, which has taken up much of the old Route 66, and tried to get post card stamps at a post office in Kingman. The post office was closed for lunch, which I found supremely amusing because it harkened me back to the towns in Montana with no post office or post boxes.
Anyways, we made it up to the Grand Canyon and spent some time on the Southern Rim and in the gallery where they have an exhibit on the Native Americans who live there, the Havasupai. It was all so breath-taking. And no pictures, especially not mine can truly capture the vastness of such a place. It's sheer immensity and the length of time it took to forge, not to mention the age of the rock everywhere but especially at the bottom... It's incredibly humbling. It's impossible to think that your problems are huge when you're looking at it, because next to that canyon they are inconsequential. A speck of the sands of history.
After the Grand Canyon we drove on. The night is beautiful, with black clouds that drift over the moon, making the edges silver, and leaving patches of sky clear and full of stars. But even though there are bright clear patches and intensely silver linings, the clouds themselves spill rain and lightning. The sheet lightning looks like beautiful pink gold jelly fish tentacles. The rod lightning is crisp white and strikes the ground. Both the flashes and the silvery moonlight filtered through the clouds are just enough to illuminate the miles-long trains that stretch and crawl on the Santa Fe line, and the sage bushes that are showy but aromatic on the fields to either side of us. Their smell intensified by warm rainy air.
We crossed the border to New Mexico tonight. Tomorrow there's more world to see.

An Introduction to Ennis

Ok, so people've been asking me who I'm riding with right now, since I promised an introduction and none came so far. So here's one that he's free to expand upon in the future:

Ennis is from Northern California. He's a pilot and absolutely loves the Grand Canyon. He also has a little boy who asks a lot of questions and prefers to fly rather than drive because it's faster.

Ennis' long awaited self-introduction:
Sparrow and I have traveled nearly half-way across the United States, and it seems only fitting for me to introduce myself at this juncture. My name is Ennis and I had the good fortune to meet Sparrow by way of Craigslist rideshare. It seems that fate had somehow conspired to bring us together for our trip across America. And what a trip it has been thus far. Through farmlands in California, to the deserts of Mojave, and beyond. From the Grand Canyon to the Colorado Plateau. From the vast stretches of Eastern New Mexico to the threshold of the Great Plains.
I am writing to you this evening from Wichita, KS. At one time in my life, I had spent 8 years living in the Midwest, not far from here. We'll be passing through there tomorrow, that grand cow town some call Kansas City. I prefer to think of it as a part of my former self, a time in a much younger man's life when he was only beginning to explore all that he could be. I can't wait to see what memories are invoked in me as we roll past part of my history.
More travels await us in the coming days. Excitement builds as we get closer to NYC, and soon I'll be with my son. But for now I'm in rapture with the roads that still lie ahead of us. The journey continues......

funky picture side note

on a side note, the pictures keep coming out not lined up or whatnot. I'm still figuring this blog thing out. Please be patient with me. But at least the pictures are up. It's not all of course, but it's a very slow internet connection. More later. Arizona is tomorrow!

Highway 5 and the lights of the Valley

Today was the jaunt through California along Highway 5. Approximately 550 miles through California heartland and the bottom of the Sierra Nevadas.
The Valley was beautiful and bright. A vivacious sun heating the ground, turning the hills that lovely brown gold for which the state is known. The air half way down was darkened by the smoke from that fire that's been going on since July. It gave the air a smokey blue grey cast. And though it was dark by the time we passed the windmills near Bakersfield, I could see them turning in the moonlight, along with the silhouetted oak trees on the various shades of blue and grey that made the hills as we approached the state border.
Tomorrow we'll make a stop at the Grand Canyon, which I've never seen before. I told Miss Sophia I'd post a picture of it just for her.

The Battle Towards the Door

The day of flight is here and I've had to battle my way to it.
Nearly everyone thinks I'm crazy for getting into cars with strangers and going places I don't know.
But it has always been about adventure. About exploration. About reaching into the cracks and corners of the universe and learning their textures and smells. We only live on this planet once (I think, but you never know), and I want to know the world I live in. Really know it.
I don't want to fly over places but to them. I think more people want to, and less know how to do it. Or how to let go of their fears long enough to do it.
With this window into my life on the road, I want to dispell some of the fear that lays heavily in the minds of those who still know how to be currious. BE CURRIOUS! And I will show you what is out here. There's less need to be afraid than there is to be excited.

"...there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars..." -Kerouac, On The Road

The Process Before the Flight

The excitement mounts as the time for take off nears. My stomach takes flight first, buzzing around and making me giddy. I can't keep this stupid grin off my face.
I have a secret. The people around me don't know I'm about to take off. I'm about to step out on the road and be somewhere entirely different tomorrow. They can't see the wings that've sprouted from my back and are proceeding to stretch for the iminent use.

Is it cliche if I think that The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the book of course, I've never seen the movie) was onto something? But there are some things, like a towel, that come in very good use and you wish you'd brought.
Of course some of us go without bringing towels. They're a bit bulky and if you plan on washing you'll likely be somewhere with towels available. Sometimes it's not the case however. I used to have to wash my hair with a Burt's Bees shampoo bar in the sink at the bus station and dry it under the hand-blow-drier thing (what are those called, by the way?). I could deffinitely have used a towel then. Especially considering it was snowing outside.

So most considerations should be to basics you take for granted and the environments you plan to travel through. If you don't know, try to cover your bases.

I've managed to link up with someone headed for New York City. Amazingly enough, he's able and willing to take me all the way there. This isn't something you get by sticking your thumb out generally speaking. This is somthing you get when you post on craigslist, and even then, this is rare. His name is Ennis, and since I'll be going through several states with him, I'm sure it's only proper to introduce him. Or let him introduce himself.
Ennis and I looked at the map, and we've decided on a route which runs south through the desert. I've never seen the Grand Canyon, so we're stopping there along the way. Of course the desert means two things. Extreme heat and sun block. It would mean extreme cold as well during a different time of year....

Ok, enough rambling. I have things to do before I go...

The Dance of the Umbrella

Wind pulls the umbrella into a wayward dance. Embrace it.

Several times now the need to whirl across the wide open spaces of America has overtaken me. This year is one such year. Though I regret I didn't publish my last two trips, I'm happy to be able to share this one. Maybe now people can see why I'm in love with the open road. Maybe this will show what draws me to the highways.

There are places to live for that people only fly over.
Everyone has a favorite place. Tell me yours.