. . . the rest of sixteen.

On our way from Louisiana to Austin, we made two critical stops: one, a dreamland cementskape which Ted desperately needed to roll upon and two, house holding hobbies gone uncontrollable.

First, the Hammond Skate Park

Insert Ted commentary here: BEAUTIFUL. so fun, so brief. a ten year old rock and rolled the above obstacle first try, i, on the other hand, had to play the "one more try" game with melissa for twenty minutes. -t.

Second, the UCM Museum, AKA: the Abita Mystery House


Neither pictures, nor words can capture the inspirational experience that is the Abita Mystery House. Art and oddities cover the walls, floor to ceiling, floors and ceilings. It spills out of every opening, it has set up residences outside as well as in. The more you look the more you see, the more you see the more you smile. John Preble, you're a genius, and we love you.


Some of his obsessive collections include bottle caps, paint by numbers, used rolls of film, arcade machines, and pocket combs to name a few. There is a long hallway lined with push button activated southern town dioramas, a two player piano (one cranks while the other pushes keys), and countless taxidermy mash ups.

fourteen, fifteen, and the beginning of sixteen. . .

Tanya kindly took the day off to show us a few of the hot spots in Tampa. Including, but not limited to: Cafe Hey, Grass Root, Cappy's Pizzeria, and New World Brewery. It was so good to see Tanya and Ryan, a few of their friends and some of the places they frequent. I, unfortunately, did not get my camera out, except to document this exceptional raw sandwich, which I consumed, per Tanya's recommendation at Grass Root:


Ted, more diligent than myself, took a couple of candid shots, documenting the loveliness of Tanya and Ryan:

(Disclaimer: In real life they generally have smiling faces.)

We greeted the next day and soon Ted and Ryan were off into the heat....HEAT of the day to go skating at the bro bowl. The bro bowl is located in a rough area of Tampa, which seems to be undergoing some sort of un-roughing process of sorts the past couple of years. Ryan made sure Ted didn't have his wallet with him, and of course no camera was brought along (So no pictures, sorry. The rest of the internet has some nodes dedicated to pictures of said bro bowl if you wish to peruse). this is ted typing, it was too difficult/complicated to pretend otherwise. anyhow, the bro bowl is a tampa skate institution, being built some thirty odd years ago. its quite the old, crusty buscuit of a skate park. down hill snake run for maximum speed into the heart of this lumpy lumpy bowl, sometimes full of meandering children, sometimes really full of meandering children. once heat stroke seemed imminent, we returned to the air conditioned pods of apartment, car, apartment, dali museum (oof. so weird that its in tampa, but amazing. so many huge works i hadnt seen before in real life. the details are incredible). got up early the next day and started driving to New Orleans (melissa is back on the keyboard!).

Hunger overcame us in the panhandle, so Ted texted Google "vegan restaurants, pensacola, fl" and Google advised us to call the End of the Line Cafe. . . It was amazing and cheap! (Homemade cashew cheese, thai iced tea with coconut milk, and $5 for a vegan rueben?!) Thanks, google.

We split the chef salad:


And the knuckle sandwich:
Delicious!

We arrived at the hostel (One of the only two places we had to pay to stay at in our whole cross countries adventure.) a little late, but we walked around, saw the sights and Ted ate an order of Beniets, whilst I sipped chicory coffee:



From New Orleans we drove all the way to Austin, arriving at the home of our generous couchsurfing hosts, late in the evening.

To be continued. . .

(10), 11, 12, 13

(day ten, for it was left out of the last post, methinks...chester county, the repository of big city money moved a bit west, once money is secured and leisure time is guaranteed aboard horses or near barbeques. so much developement in the area since the last visit to camphill soltane, last november. we got a bit lost in the new web of condos and housing developments. with the clother household located, we took in the twilight sky of lightning bugs and dear friends giving freely of their community's bounty of food and love). day eleven, now, we are on this next triplet of days officially. welcome. we acclimated fast into the community of clother and soon enough finley was head butt hugging and body slamming us at leisure. lovely hill country and lengthy talks and quality friend time im not sure translates well into blog form. heres some pictures in words stead...

twelve days in, we embarked early, south. driving through eastern states, passing through about one or two every couple hours, i was left with the feeling somewhat akin to eating white castle. while eating there can be a bit gratifying, due to the seeming vast amounts one is able to consume in a relatively short amount of time, underscored by the mound of slider boxes left in one's wake, it all leaves one feeling a bit nauseus. the east isnt nearly as bad for you as white castle, dont get me wrong, but soon enough (well, 12 hours later) we stepped out of the car in charleston, dazed and a bit nauseus in the heat. my brother rich and his family (nicole! sister in law cassandra! two little dogs!) welcomed us with their air conditioning and our own room (and vegan treats rained down on melissa from the beneficiant and ever spoiling hands and heart of one nicole trager). we were excited to see charleston through the eyes of a year spent there (already!) by mi familia. and we werent diappointed in the least. spanish moss, low country charm, boiled peanuts! and sweet tea and sweet tea and older than america america-ness hit us yet again with beauty and humidity. swam in the atlantic-luke warm bath

and retired for nilch and blokus and soon enough we found our way back to the freeway, still pointed south (with new oil circulating through the car. three thousand miles in, a bit over three thousand more to go). thanks to rich and nicole and crew for your love and hospitality...



(thank you, rich! thank you, nicole!)

day thirteen was consumed by the drive south, to tampa. however, we made a stop in savannah, thanks to the influence of rich and nicole's recent trip there and the memories they shared about it. spooky little town of more history and lots of spanish moss. deep into ross mcelwee country (dont know? look him up, and deluge your life in his films), we set out to find barbeque, hidden in some side street. this side street turned out to be hidden even more than anticipated for there was a whole heaping mess of construction around the establishment. the brisket was heavenly, and gallon number five or six was reached on the sweet tea o' meter. the swampy, dense air of central florida greeted us, soon followed by more vegan treats, this time, though, from the beneficiant hands of one ryan fujiki-hastings (so many commas, i apologize). thus endeth our triplet of days. stay tuned....

eight, nine, ten

*NOTE: Parents of small people. Some of the photos in this post may be a little scary for children under the age of six.....


after the reprieve of northampton's trees and rivers and lakes and foods and friends, we took to the hills, arriving almost on the vermont border. the out-of-the-way amazingness that massachusetts has to offer is overflowing, and we harvested it to the best of our ability and appetite.
(harmonic bridge, playing traffic in the key of c).
assorted odds and ends of art i had not a clue about led me to what i should have spent the whole time pondering and inspecting and loving.
sol lewitt, beautiful man, beautiful mind. composing symphonies in the very detailed instructions he left for the craftmen/women that would then perform his peices on varying walls throughout the world. the notion of playing a building with color, pattern, line and improvised scribbles hit both of us very hard with its profundity, and the sheer magnitude and scope of his body of work on display in those hills bordering vermont. this retrospective (that will be up for the next 25 years. go see it!)began with lewitt's earliest wall drawings, done just in pencil, describing very simple shapes. the colors and shapes blossomed througout lewitt's life, but as his life declined he returned to pencil drawings (albeit not as simple as the early works, and allowing for a lot more improvisation in the execution)...
way too brief (theme of this trip) visit with the wall drawings and we kept up the momentum south. really fast and intense rain storms through northerly states, gave way to clear views of new jersey, which was surprising in its beauty. native son daniel smith led us straight to the bosom of more friends. well, friend. kristen wagner welcomed us to her adopted city of sisterly love. the next day, early, i fumbled about the streets of philadelphia and finally found myself underneath the I-95, trying to navigate the bowls and lumps and tangled marvelous mess of fdr skatepark. the perma-lost state i seem to live in most of the time left me with only twenty minutes to skate. back to friends, we met up with the newly christened mr. derek forester-dehaan to grrace ourselves with the amazingly informative and stocked mutter museum.

above you will see the colon of a man that did not have the nerves in his intestines that would normally tell him its time to poop. this resulted in it all piling up, his colon expanding and finally killing him. at the time of death, forty pounds of poop (two and a half buckets!) were taken out of the colon and it was taxidermied for our viewing pleasure. so much to take in, the history of conjoined twins, so many fetuses in bottles, a huge skull collection and so on and so forth. had to sneak these fotos, for the security guards enforced the no picture rule with gusto.
(team mutter 09)


we took in more old america (coupled with the older than america america we saw a few days previous in western massachusetts. it is all very startling to see things in our country older than 150 years) and kristin, despite her stance of horrible tour guide-ship, showed us the vastness of the city in a small, way too small amount of time.

an hour west, to the hill country of chester county and the next triplet of days will be up soon and very soon.

And how could I forget Boston?

In our last post, I forgot to mention our stay in Boston. (Forgive me, Greg/Lila/Kaitlin/roommate of Kaitlin!) Our time in Boston was a blur, albeit lovely. We had dinner with Greg and he walked us all over Cambridge. Later we met up with Lila and she treated us to ice cream cones and sorbet. We slept over at Kaitlin's and in the morning she and her roommate took us to The Other Side Cafe for breakfast (amaaaaaazing!). We spent the afternoon sitting in a park reading books, chit chatting, and people watching. Fantastic.

Five! Six! Seven!

and then. . .

We spent the whole day hiking Acadia National Park, on what was probably the best trail I've ever been on.

Roots, bridges, stairs, lakes, climbing, plains, windswept views, and planks. All of it was lovely.













We went home to the Couchsurfers, tired and happy. They shared cake, and we all shared stories. An additional couchsurfer just in from somewhere, heading somewhere else had been invited to stay as well. He reminded us not to judge a book by its cover, and to always always always listen with an open ear. He played tunes on the guitar, some Marc Bolan, some Leadbelly, and some of his very own. He entertained our hosts late into the evening and a bit into the morning while Ted and I found some much needed sleep.


(Tofu scramble, home fries, vegan pancakes, coffee and soymilk at a regular old cafe, not advertised as vegetarian friendly.)

After breakfast, we headed south to Northampton, Massachusetts to see my first Chicago roommate and our dear, dear friend, Rene. (Sadly, our timing was bad and we did not get to see Stacey. All the more reason to return, not that we are lacking reasons.)



She took us to a beautiful old house with a fantastic view. Then we went back to her lovely vegan home, and made pizza with broccoli, onion, potatoes and homemade pesto, all from the farm she works at. For dessert we shared a slice of the cake her roommate made.



We biked around downtown and had breakfast at Green Bean (delicious!) and then Rene took us on a hike leading to her top secret swimming hole.





We went to a bakery called the Hungry Ghost and split a peanut butter cookie, fresh from the kiln.



Rene took us to the farm she works at, and let us sample some of the produce.



Did you know that overgrown lettuce looks like christmas trees?



Then we had to hop in the car to get to the Book Mill for "books you don't need at a place you can't find", and it was well worth the drive.



The Book Mill is on a hill beside a running stream. It's filled with good books at reasonable prices and plenty of nooks and crannies to read them in. They also have a cafe that serves fantastic food, delectable desserts, and locally brewed kombucha.



After our bicycle tour of Northampton I was smitten. A town with a bike rail path that runs throughout it, local shops and restaurants that support the local farmers, vegan eateries, beautiful bookstores, and hills to hike. . . What more could a person need?