Charm City

A note from eva....

It's summer again. Unlike Hope, I like the humidity in some ways. I like feeling the world around me. Plus it's an incentive to wear cute dresses and tank tops-- rare parts of my wardrobe in Seattle.

It's always hard to arrive at a new home, because it can never match the old in terms of comfort and familiarity. But even without our stuff (yet), this is better then most moves have been before. Fran and Steve's warm welcome complete with frozen homemade food trays, and a landlord that we know beats moving to cities that I'd barely even been to before.

Anyway, it's still not Seattle. Today I'm looking for a car, with the mistaken intention for it to meet my hiking and outdoor needs that the NW has to offer. At the very least it will be good for the winters out here, but I don't know how much other outdoors I'll be able to do with this schedule. Of course, I still don't have my schedule...that will be something to look into tomorrow.

For incentives to visit Baltimore, check out the Visionary Art Museum at http://www.avam.org and Artscape http://www.artscape.org/ and the Honfest, which unfortunately, we missed this year http://www.honfest.net/. Plus, there's always the favorite Delaware beaches http://www.rehoboth.com/home.html and some nearby wine tasting.

Safe and Sound.

and so here we are, in our apartment with its lovely newly-painted walls (but not new carpet in the portion of the place not pictured - the 3 bedrooms, den and hallway. also not pictured to the right of the image is the dining room, eat-in kitchen and screened in outdoor porch). this carpet issue is a matter of small dispute with the very sweet and lovely landlords, and will be cleared up once our copy of the lease arrives tomorrow morning with our stuff. in the end we may have to pay for these ourselves, but it will be worth it to ensure allergy issues for Eva and cosmetic ones for both Eva and myself. this is one UGLY carpet.

my parents are truly beside themselves. looking at them is like seeing double. they've taken us out for dinner once already, and will do so again shortly. they also brought us casseroles in the old fashioned tradition - a spinach pie, a baked ziti, and a bread pudding, all half-cooked and frozen to provide us with meals as we settle in. oh, and bagels from New York that were brought down by friends of theirs who had been visiting for the weekend. they were - and this is no exaggeration - a religious experience.

now all the stressy work kicks back in - no more packing now, but massive unpacking, me looking for work, Eva getting ready to start her fellowship. oh, and the HEAT. Baltimore's summer weather is VILE. right now, at 6 p.m., it's 88 degrees with something like 80% humidity. the air is more like soup than air, and i'm completely grumpy and drained simply from being out in it this afternoon. any chops i had in my prior Northeastern life are gone, leaving me purely as a weather wuss in a Mid-Atlantic city which sits mostly below sea level. mosquitoes and thick air. i actually got claustrophobic from being outside. i felt deprived of oxygen.

but do come visit! (i'm cracking myself up right now).

i will say, in defense of visiting, that the fall here is amazing, and the cold winter never gets cold like points North of here, so i don't mind it, and the spring we have just missed was also really lovely.

but the summer is going to suck.

gotta go take a very long shower and lie in front of an air conditioning vent.

An Unexpected Stop.

UPDATE: severe weather has stopped us in our tracks outside Cleveland. and when we say severe weather, we here in the I-90 travel plaza are NOT kidding around.

thanks to Eva's mom, we have a NOAA weather radio (see me holding said radio with a look that defines this whole experience above), and it's been going off like a needy puppy. first there were severe thunderstorm watches and warnings, and then the dreaded tornado warning some fifteen miles away from us. in a carefully controlled panic, we drove to the next travel plaza and got the hell out of the car.

this travel plaza i think may exist in an alternate universe where American highway stops have wi-fi, food-court like nasty dinner choices, live doppler weather maps on television screens, and free phones to call any hotel on a long list of places you might want to stay while avoiding your tornado.

needless to say, the place is packed to the rim with freaked out wet travellers. we were able to obtain gross food (for the second time today for me, which is a shame because we'd done a halfway decent job of eating better previously), call our hotel in Pittsburgh and cancel it (the storms were basically huge and running ahead of us - we would have been in this same weather for the next five hours if we hadn't decided to just stop moving and let it go on ahead), and call a nearby hotel and book it.

and now i've posted to this here blog as well.

tomorrow we will drive the 359 remaining miles to Baltimore, a slightly longer day than planned, but perfectly manageable in the absence of blinding rain and funnel clouds.

A Break in Chicago.

so now we're coming to the end of this part of things. we spent thursday driving down to Chicago, stopping at the Milwaukee Art Museum - a pretty crazy architectural structure - to see a show by London photomontage artists Gilbert and George. we had lunch in the museum, and then went to Oak Brook (outside of Chicago) to spend some time with Eva's grandmother.

the traffic here could kill a person, by the way. it took forever to get from Milwaukee to Oak Brook, and then forever to get from Oak Brook to our hotel.

we had dinner thursday with Eva's cousin Renee and her girlfriend Anne, and then spent Friday with my friend Rachel, her son Sam and her husband Tim. it was a really lovely day - we walked along Lake Michigan, had three really lovely meals, and played ball with Sam in Rachel's back yard. it was definitely a mini-vacation.

now, though, we're back in our road mode. and we are tired. and we are beginning to feel the stress of what's coming - getting to Baltimore and having no stuff, Eva's job starting, my job situation somewhat unclear, etc. we considered for a moment driving directly through to Baltimore today, but decided that getting there in the middle of the night, exhausted and bleary, served no real purpose at all. so we're heading for Pittsburgh, as the plan dictated.

first, though, some strong coffee. we're going out hunting for some. why is it that the hotels always try to pass of brown water as coffee?

Wisconsin in all its Glory.

Eva convinced me not to get the cheesehead. she was right, i think. mostly because i already have one. i did however get a shirt commemorating my stop at lambeau. the whole thing was pretty amazing - we were far from the only people taking pictures here, and the pro shop at the stadium was as big as a football field itself, and had two floors. it also contained this:

which is, as you can see, an old ford pickup with its bed full of cheeseheads. good stuff.

the town itself is amazing. everything is yellow and green - including things like the mcdonalds and the circuit city signs. streets are called Packerland Avenue and Holmgren Drive (i'm confident he won't get himself a street in Seattle when he retires next year).

we had dinner in the shadow of the Budweiser plant here in Manitowoc with Eva's mom and aunt. this town sits along Lake Michigan, which makes it feel like an ocean beach town a bit. Eva's mom's house looks out at the vastness of the lake. it's really quite lovely. apparently the maker of the world's most expensive yachts builds them here, and so the glitterati are occasionally glimpsed inspecting what their 10 million bucks has built them.

they also have the best ice cream here that i've had in a long time. I actually think Eva is out getting a pint of it to have for breakfast. she likes to escape in the mornings from the hotels.

Eva's mom put us up in a Holiday Inn because she felt bad about her house not being clean (we didn't give her much warning, since this stop was added when it became clear that parts of the Wisconsin roads we originally were taking are flooded out.) we tried to talk her out of it, we could have stayed with her, but she made the reservation while we were talking to her aunt and paid for it over the phone, so our protests went unheard.

today we go to Chicago, and tomorrow is our little holiday - no driving, just spending the day with my old friend Rachel who i haven't seen in five years. i think the pause will do us good. the car is starting to make me feel spacey and logey just looking at it.

Good Lord, a City.

i think we were really surprised at how strongly we appreciated the sight of the Minneapolis skyline. we really were starved for some urbanity after North Dakota - although it really was gorgeous there on the west end (the east end was flaaaaaat, and so really was the west end of Minnesota).

we stopped in Fargo (skyline-free) for lunch at the Space Aliens bar and grill. Eva took this pic of the sign. note that despite her most excellent intentions she somehow managed to cut off part of the sign and, it seems, get two fingers in front of the lens:

i was on the phone and not present at the photoshoot. but do note the background, which is the facade of the place, and the fact that they're now serving egg rolls! they're also looking for people to open new franchises, so i'm considering a career change. i believe there's a real future in serving chinese food to creatures from outer space. i wonder if they'll develop Bronx accents and start asking if we host Passover seders.

we had dinner last night with Karen and Morgan, which is always a good time, and got a good look at their lovely house. it was also a huge joy to see people we knew. it felt like we had ARRIVED somewhere. sadly, we were returned to the hotel and reality late in the evening, and were reminded that we have to get in the car shortly and continue this going going going thing.

Eva is out wandering around Minneapolis on foot a little bit before we lock her back in the car. She's doing amazingly well considering her natural need to not sit still for too long. she procured a jump rope before we left for excessive energy use at rest stops. it's pretty brilliant, actually. i, the lazybones, only seek a change of position. if we get out of the car and i can stand for a minute and then get to a hotel and i can lie down, i'm all set. although i have been doing very well with doing yoga in the mornings so i can keep from being stiff.

today we're driving through Green Bay, so look tomorrow for a picture of me in a cheesehead in front of Lambeau Field. And tonight we're at Eva's mom's in northern Wisconsin before heading to Chicago.

Bismarck.

the highway signs are a trip by themselves. not pictured, but witnessed by us both:

Home On The Range, MT (had its own sign, with an arrow - we missed the pic, sorry)

and my favorite, which went by too fast:

Hebron, ND: The Brick City
Home of Historic Fort Sauerkraut

we came very close to going to see what such a fort would be like, but we feared both for time and the potential for really a very very strong smell.

Montana went on for what seemed like years - North Dakota was a monstrous relief. My well-travelled old friend Karen (who we will have the pleasure of seeing tonight in Minneapolis) told us to make sure we saw the badlands in ND, and so we stopped at a scenic lookout. what we found was, first of all, buffaloes.



right near the car at the lookout. yes, the look on my face is, in fact, saying: "Should we be this close to this buffalo? Shouldn't we move the car???")

but he wasn't interested in us - he was dining on the lookout grass and completely oblivious to the large number of cars who were hovering around him, either too nervous to drive by or amazed and taking pictures.

and when we parked and went to look at the badlands from the lookout, this is what we saw:


it's hard to see with the picture so small, but it's really quite amazing. and Eva is also kinda cute.

Eva wanted to drive the 36-mile loop, but it was late and we were still nearly 2 hours from Bismarck so i protested. in the end we didn't do it, which turned out to be a very good thing, as the time had changed on us and we were unaware. we were so confused when we got to the hotel that we had to call the front desk and ask them - sheepishly - what time it actually was.

luckily we're in central time for a few days. no more confusion until after chicago. off we go.

Deep Fried Twinkies.

greetings from Bozeman, Montana.

unbelievably, after all the packing, the hauling, the cleaning, more cleaning, the small construction projects, the expensive improvements, and more cleaning and painting, we got out of Seattle yesterday morning around 9:30. just in time, too. the renters moved in at noon. whee.

we took turns melting down in the car while leaving (general not wanting to go away from Seattle), and by the time we reached the first of yesterday's many mountain passes, exhilaration at the coming adventure plus relief that we were actually finally done and leaving took over. the weather was lovely, and the scenery equally so.

Eva somehow convinced me to stop in Kellogg, Idaho (home of the white supremacists, she said, "but really a lovely town."). i was starving and exhausted, and therefore much more likely to be convinced to do something moronic like stop somewhere like that. what we found was a diner off of I-90 called sam's, which i have to say was pretty great. it was half an old-fashioned drive-in, half a diner, but the drive-in part was closed. the manager was an old stone butch, cigarette-smoking and order-barking, who recognized us as likeminded in the parking lot and chatted with me for a while. (although i admit i had a moment in which i was afraid she was a spy for the neo-nazis, and would soon disappear to return with skinheads to do us in).

the sign behind the counter at the diner listed DESERTS, with one S, and the first thing on the list was a deep-fried twinkie (i swear i will take my camera into every one of these places from now on). this supposed delectable caught the attention of my medical professional girlfriend, who has regretted passing up the thing since we pulled back onto the highway after eating. she talked about twinkies and hostess cupcakes and various nasty treats all the way to Bozeman, finally leading me on a wild-goose chase looking for a dairy queen here before we gave up the ghost on vile sweets and collapsed in the hotel.

i dreamt everyone at Starbucks was involved in incestuous affairs (no one from prepress, tho, just so you all know). some of the players involved in the mess were people i didn't know, but some of them were. there was a lot of drama. dan smith and his ponytail had some role in this, but it isn't clear in my memory. i was exhausted the entire length of the dream and just wanted to go home, but couldn't. work processing and life processing all at once.

alright, got to do some yoga before folding myself back into the car. pictures on the next post, i promise.

H

Bozo. Alone.

it's very empty. the allied van lines folks have come and gone, taking with them all of our stuff and leaving behind a number of scratches in the floor.

and it's very quiet. well, not so quiet. we still have a lot to do. like replanning our route due to midwestern flooding. and finishing cleaning up in preparation for the renters, who are moving in tomorrow, shortly after we get in the car and drive away.

this blog will contain various images, thoughts, complaints, concerns, and general news from the seven-day roadtrip to Charm City, and the settling in of the Forstenzer-Moore household in same.

momentarily we will go offline in Seattle, due to the strange need Comcast has for us to give them back their modem.

next post will be from points unknown, along the route. check back to see where we are and what we're up to.

future posts will also be higher on wit and content. this one has us both exhausted and still stressed out trying to get everything done.

H (&E, from the other room)