I took off after recording the Detroit footage, and decided to stop about 3 hours short of Chicago to stay at a motel to soak up a bit of internetting. Shortly the next morning I completed the trip to Chicago, with absolutely no plans whatsoever except picking up my friend Hanna at the airport at 6:30 in the afternoon.
I had a fairly massive bag of laundry to do, so after a quick lunch it was off to see where my GPS would take me to get it done. A couple of missed calls by it (several closed places, and a few that had no coin-op service), I finally found one in what appeared to be a mostly Latino neighborhood. Got all my shit cleaned and ready to go, including the Silly Shoes, which by now had acquired a smell rivaling that of bigfoot’s dick. It’s the only drawback in what have become the raddest, most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn in my life.
The cleaning (and finding a place to do it) took a hefty amount of time, and by the time I got out I basically had a chance to maybe catch a single landmark before 6:30 rolled by. I drove by the Sears Tower, where I had heard a new attraction had recently opened. Called The Ledge, it consists of a glass enclosure on the 103rd floor where you step in, look at the vast city below you, and immediately piss your pants in fear. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, and there was a fair line of people waiting to go up, so instead I decided to go to Millenium Park and check out the amazing giant shiny egg there:
Called “Cloud Gate”, this thing was a fucking trip for sure, it was hard to stop looking at. And going underneath it and looking up was a hell of a mindfuck. Here’s a bit of it in motion, see if you can spot me in the reflections:
Right as I was shooting that bride and groom, I got the text from Hanna that she’d arrived in Chicago, and I took off to pick her up. Hanna was gonna come join me for an adventure in the South Dakota Badlands, which were still about 14 hours away, so after a bit of deliberation we decided to not stay in Chicago for the night, but instead drive as far as we possibly could through the night in order to be able to get to the Badlands the following day at a reasonable time.
But first, we had to get some dinner. We had a craving for Indian food (best fucking food in the universe), and bit of google mapping and a random pick later, headed to a Indian/Pakistani corner joint that seemed low key and delicious.
Two seconds after we stepped in, we realized this was a far realer deal than anticipated. Massive beards, kufis, zero women, and zero white people, this was an intensely Muslim eatery, with completely unpronounceable names for food made up of several different kinds of sludgey material. After an interesting and somewhat succesful attempt to communicate with the guy behind the counter, we picked a bowl of stuff that contained chicken, another bowl of stuff that contained lamb, and a plate of naan bread, and proceeded to stuff ourselves silly to our heart’s content. Blissful stuff, those dudes sure know how to make tasty amorphous food matter.
While on the way out, we checked out some newspapers and publications on a table near the door, where I caught a lovely 1/4 page ad for a conference titled “THE FALL OF CAPITALISM AND RISE OF ISLAM” with a picture of a scary looking Muslim castle on it. Um, maybe next time.
We set the GPS for Rapid City, SD, and took off into the night, heading north to Winsconsin. Around midnight, we decided to start shopping around for motel rates, found a reasonable spot, and crashed for the night. We still had around 9-10 hours to go the following day.
Little did we know we were gonna embark on a 4-day trip into one of the most surreal (and largely ignored/unknown) landscapes known to man, the Badlands of South Dakota. Massive storytelling coming up next.
On my way from Toronto to Chicago, I decided to swing past Detroit and go crazy with the camera. I’d heard that Detroit was looking pretty surreal these days, with rows upon rows of abandoned buildings everywhere, and nature slowly creeping back and reclaiming the land.
I spent about two hours there just shooting stuff… I fucking love this camera, and I’ve been having a ton of fun with it; expect more stuff like this coming up for Badlands and Yellowstone.
Big ups to Rus from Savannah who hooked up the info to locate good spots to shoot. This is Detroit today, a snapshot of the decaying America we all hope we never get to see.
Off I was to depart the lands of America and enter, however briefly, Canadian territory.
However, there was one small thing I had to do before I crossed the border. I was gonna drive through Buffalo, NY, so it was imperative I stop by for buffalo wings.
Jim in Albany had recommended I choose Duff’s, a spot apparently very famous for their badass wings. The fame was well deserved, these were some of the best wings I’ve ever had, definitely the best buffalo-style. A 12-pack of spicy bitches later, I was off on the road again, to make a quick stop by Niagara Falls before I continued to Toronto to meet yet another Friend from The Internet, and frequent blog commenter (see many of the past posts), Mike.
Mike had mentioned the Falls had a better view from the Canadian side, so I decided to cross the border before I stopped there. All went smoothly, save for the border guard tripping balls over the PR license plate on my car. Apparently, only a handful of cars from PR must have ever crossed this border, cause they don’t even have PR listed in their database; the guy had to write I was from Pennsylvania (PA), in order to be able to log me in their records… not sure how that works out.
So soon after I crossed I headed just next door of the border to catch Niagara Falls. It was packed like a motherfucker, with the closest parking spot about a mile away from the river’s edge, and charging $18 Canadian for it. I said fuck that and parked briefly in a spot that could well have been a valid parking spot if it wasn’t for the half dozen signs that clearly said it wasn’t. It was close enough for me to dart out and get a few quick shots and some slo-mo tests with the new camera. 5 minutes later I was back in the car and on my way.
I arrived at Mike’s in the early evening. Found a suitable spot for the Yaris nearby, and without wasting a second, Mike was out the door with me in tow to go check out some spots around. We walked up Kings/Queens street and checked out some fucking amazing graffiti around… Toronto must not give much of a fuck about graffiti cause there was a lot of it in plain view, all amazing pieces that must’ve taken hours to complete. I’m guessing it was all legal walls cause there was no way there would be so much of it, and of such quality, if it was prohibited.
During this walk I came to the sad conclusion that ATMs in Canada are racist towards PR banks. I was unable to get cash anywhere, and I had forgotten to round some up on the way to Toronto. Mike was all kinds of awesome and spotted me with Canadian $ while I worked the situation out.
Another quirky fact that Mike informed me of was that Toronto was having a garbage strike, and trash cans and dumpsters hadn’t been attended to in about 18 days. Funny enough, I didn’t notice the overflowing trash cans until he told me. Maybe it was cause I’m used to living in a place where trash piles up on a regular basis, and where people have absolutely no qualms about committing fucking atrocities like the Noche de San Juan disaster at Ocean Park. I’m pretty glad I missed that, cause I would’ve fucking exploded if I saw that in person. 6/24/09, Never Forget.
Next up, a quick stop at Poutini’s, where I was to try out the authentic Canadian cuisine they call
poutine, but which I call Bowl of Crazy Shit. Basically, poutine is french fries smothered in gravy and tossed with a large helping of cheese curds. It sounds super gross, and looks even grosser:
…but goddamn if it wasn’t fucking delicious. That shit fell like a ton of bricks into my stomach, and I was surprised to see that my circulatory system was functioning properly and that I retained the basic motor functions required for walking. We then left to head down the street and find a place adorably named The Bovine Sex Club. Unfortunately, it did not contain fornicating cattle, but it did have an impressive crowd of people who were obviously far cooler than I was. Tattoos, piercings, gravity-defying hair, inhumanly tight pants, you name it. The place itself was awesome, with walls covered in all sorts of craziness like mannequin heads, TV’s, bikes, pieces of plumbing, etc. A rockabilly band was holding it down, keeping the punks and mods moving while we sat a bit back and had a couple of beers. Very rad place that made me feel thoroughly unhip.
We called it a night after that. Mike hooked me up with a hammock he has hanging in his living room (how awesome is that?) and I had the best sleep in days.
The next day, Mike had to go to work (this is a given), and I was set to go out exploring Toronto on my own. Mike however had been rad enough to make me a little map pointing out all the rad shit I could see in a day taking a big loop into the city, as well as pointing out the places to miss (upscale touristy shop streets, overly hipster locations, and an area defined by Mike as “Gaytown”). Both Alan in Albany and Mike had been emphatic about the Art Gallery of Ontario being the #1 must-see spot if I only had a day to explore, so I set a beeline for that and grabbed a bus. I got off a bit early to walk through the graffiti alleys in better daylight (it was evening the day before) and snap a few flicks:
…then I crossed through Chinatown (those that know me would know why), finally found (after about 8-9 tries) an ATM that was mercifully willing to give me money, and finally arrived at the AGO. This place was HUGE. A lot of it was dedicated to Canadian art, which is probably as lame as it sounds (I didn’t check it out), but it also housed some amazing contemporary art collections and had a special exhibit on surrealism. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed unless it was outdoors or an area bathed in natural light, so pictures are scarce. It did have this fucking awesome wooden staircase in it though, one of the apparently 3 things you can take a picture of in the museum:
My time was mostly spent in the top floors with the contemporary art. There were too many amazing pieces to cound, including a series of totem poles made out of golf bags (with animal faces and everything), a big furry magnetic block with “hair” made out iron filings, and an entire bathroom (including faucets) made of string and see-through fabric. My absolute favorite piece though, was “Stretch #1″ by sculptor Evan Penny, and it blew my fucking mind. I couldn’t take a picture of it, but The Internet™ provides:
Now, sure it looks trippy in that image on your monitor, but I can’t even begin to explain how much this thing fucks with your head when you see it in person. The artist (seen standing next to the sculpture) has been studying digital and photographic image distortion techniques for quite some time, and now sets out to recreate these in 3D at fairly large scales. The thing is, these are hyper realistic, with individual tiny hairs making up the stubble and blue veins and capillaries visible under the skin. Whatever angle you approach it from, you see a perfect photographic distortion, like you took a picture of a normal guy and squeezed it in Photoshop… but you walk around the whole thing and the illusion is PERFECT. Your mind stops comprehending what it sees, it wants to believe it’s a 2D image, but depth cues and the multiple viewing angles throw that impression off until your visual cortex overheats; you can almost feel the neurons in your brain struggling to keep up. It registers a very distinct perceptual and psychological impression on you, I don’t think I’ve ever reacted so strongly and so physically to a piece of art. Check out more of this guy’s stuff, it’s fucking unbelievable. Fuck Ron Mueck (guy who makes giant realistic people, you may have seen his stuff in a PowerPoint slideshow your cousin sent you… right after the guy who does the sidewalk chalk illusions), this dude’s on another level. Peep this page for more pictures and angles of Stretch #1.
Another super impressive exhibit, which I thankfully could take pictures of, was by Giuseppe Penone. This dude basically digs into old trees and finds the young tree within, then carefully carves out the “old” wood to expose it. At first I thought the guy was just carving a tree shape out of the big slabs of wood, but careful analysis revealed otherwise. You know the knots you find in the grain on pieces of flat wood? Those aren’t just cute little oval markings, those are actually cross-sections of branches that existed when the tree was younger. This guy carves and follows the knots to the core of the tree, revealing branches long ago swallowed up by the thickening tree trunk. Super fucking badass, check it out:
Finished up with a tour of the surrealism exhibit, which was a nice bookend to the Dalí Museum I had seen at the beginning of the trip. Interesting to see the other artists in the movement get some shine; Dalí was just too badass and completely overshadowed pretty much all of them, basically making surrealism synonymous with his name.
After the AGO mindblowingness, I went for long walk to at least catch the Royal Ontario Museum from outside, cause I heard it looked pretty crazy. It certainly did:
It was too late to go inside, even though the Dead Sea Scrolls were in exhibit and I really wanted to check those out. However I had just spent more than 4 hours in the AGO, needed to get some lunch, and needed to find some wi-fi for blog updating. Mike came out of work and met me at a Starbucks, where the poor guy had to wait for like an hour before I finished up (sorry about that dude). We walked down the street, found a camera store where I got myself a cheap but sturdy tripod, then headed back to Mike’s place, where we spent a few hours picking random records from his extensive collection and throwing them on the turntables to see what showed up. My fave was these dudes who exceeded all levels of goofy whiteness, and had incredible song titles such as “Favourite Shirt” (The name of the band escapes me, Mike, if you’re reading this, maybe you can help me out).
I can’t remember exactly when this happened, but at some point we went out for a quick beer at a place that had a ridiculous selection of beers worldwide. This is just one side of the beer list:
We were pretty beat that day and decided to take it easy after that. The next day I was set to take off to Chicago (via Detroit), and I wanted to stop by a camping store nearby to cop a better sleeping bag for the cold mountain nights at Yellowstone, and also grab a vastly superior backpack for backcountry camping. We woke up to a pretty nasty thunderstorm that didn’t last long, headed to the store and got my awesome new stuff, then said my farewells to Mike. Mike is a seriously awesome person, who not only perfectly outlined a comprehensive yet condensed Toronto experience, but was also willing to help me out when ATMs were being unfriendly, AND gave me an awesome mini sandbag tripod which is the fucking coolest thing in existence. Big ups Mike, I owe you many.
Many hours of endless Canadian farms rolling past me, I crossed the border back to good ol’ USA (where I was asked nonchalantly if I was transporting marijuana) and entered the decaying ruins of Detroit, MI.
A very special post, the Detroit Apocalypse Tour, is coming up next, so keep your eye out. Till next time.
After the 3 straight urban experiences, one of them being pretty much the ultimate urban experience (NYC), I was extremely giddy to get back to nature. I needed to rack up the experience points and get to the advanced camping level needed for the Badlands and Yellowstone. My closest friend David, from PR, who went to Cornell, has never stopped raving about awesome Ithaca is, although many others disagreed by pointing out is middle-of-nowhereness (I’ve since realized most of these people suck at life), and I never really went out of my way to go visit him while in college. I regret that, cause Ithaca is, indeed, fucking awesome.
I had come up with 3 possible camping spots near Ithaca. I consulted with David and he heavily favored one called Taughannock Falls, although I was a bit hesitant since the pictures on the brochure showed a bunch of asshole kids playing around a lake with arm floaties. Nonetheless, I decided to listen and headed straight there. Since I had left Albany later than planned, by the time I got to the camping spot, it was a bit too late to go out for a hike and get good light for pictures, so I just focused on setting up a cozy camp. The campground was OK, nearly full, but I found one spot that looked like a shitty site (rocky, inclined) that for some reason compelled me to check it out further. I then found a trail not visible from the roadway that led about 100 yards into the forest, and ended up in what seemed to be an abandoned (or at least seldom used) campsite, with an old picnic table and tallish grass. I actually liked it quite a bit, and I enjoyed that it was very secluded, so I did a bit of flattening and weed pulling and set up camp for the night:
Notice how I was yet so unfamiliar with the new camera I hadn’t even turned off the date display on it. I did a bit of reading up on the camera features and getting some test shots, like this poor firefly who tried to mate with the propane lamp.
A fitfull night’s rest later, it was early morning and time to take a hike to see what was so fantastic about this waterfall (which was not visible on the way there… the lake with kids was plenty visible though). I had literally not seen ONE picture of this waterfall, so I wasn;t sure what I was gonna encounter. There were two trails, one that goes along the top rim and looks down on the gorge, and one that follows along the stream at the bottom looking up. As per David’s suggestion again, I followed the bottom one.
The hike to the waterfall was about an hour, maybe a bit longer cause there were so many stops along the way to get closer to the stream and see fantastic shit.
When I finally got to the waterfall, I was truly not prepared for how impressive it was. 215 feet tall, it is taller than Niagara Falls by 30 feet, and is surrounded by a concave atrium where the top of the walls threaten to come down at any moment… and they can, since the geology and makeup of the rocks makes the ones at the bottom erode faster than the ones at the top, giving the walls their concavity. Plenty of signs warned you to get the fuck away from these rocks, and it sounded like a good suggestion. The scale of this thing was fucking epic:
And I finally got a chance to test out the video features on the camera on it. It was a very serene, quiet, grey morning, and I was very happy to see that I could much better capture the essence of moments with this than I ever would with still images (I’m a pretty shitty photographer). Here’s Taughannock Falls at 210 frames per second:
My mind pretty blown, I walked back to the car and decided to head into town to check out some of the other suggested stuff. I had some very rad Vietnamese food for lunch, then headed to the Johnson Museum in Cornell. The museum collection was OK, mostly historical and ancient art with a bit of contemporary, but its true draw was its architecture and the stunning 360° view of Ithaca visible from the top floor.
After the museum, it was off to Starbucks to do some blog updating, and then to Ithaca Beer Co. to try some tasty beers. Left with a six-pack of Flower Power IPA and headed back to camp. A small hike through the forest before sundown netted delicious wild raspberries and blackberries, and then it was back to bed. The next day, I was bound to get moving to Toronto, but there was one important thing I had to do before I left. I had to get rid of the Ginodoll.
To tell you the truth, I’ve been having trouble finding miserable situations to put him in, cause there’s very little misery to be had on this trip. He takes up too much valuable space in my backpack, so I just decided to get rid of this stupid gimmick and not concern myself with it anymore. Therefore, we went to the lake for a swim. Here he is, admiring the view:
…before I tied a special buddy to his ankles:
…and sent him off for a permanent swimming vacation:
Wheeeee.
Sploosh.
I waded in quickly (it was cold as shit) to make sure he was securely fastened to the bottom, told him to fuck off, and got on the road to Canada. I hope a thousand salmons are shitting on his head right now.
You wouldn’t believe it, but Albany was actually pretty fucking awesome.
A lot of it had to do with my hosts there, Alan and Jim, who besides going to all lengths to make my stay there a fun one, played an excellent and very succesful game of smoke and mirrors in order to make Albany seem interesting. So I can at least say Albany’s worth a visit, but only if you know Alan and Jim.
They didn’t waste any time as soon as I got there. For starters, Alan had made me three (3) CD’s of awesome music for my roadtrip. I think only two people have bothered to send me good roadtrip music after my call to action earlier, so shame on you guys. The dudes from Albany are cooler than all of you. I’ll let you think about that for a minute.
I can’t remember for the life of me what I filled it with, but it was dark and strong (8-9% alcohol) and awesome, and it gave me a pretty decent wallop. I would have had another one and gotten pretty damn hammered, but it was getting late, the place was emptying out, and I was still in the rush mode of staying just one night and moving on, so I had to take it easy lest I miss an opportunity to grab a good camping spot on my next stop, Ithaca.
Next morning I did my whole wake-up-too-late schtick, this time with a mild hangover, and had my portrait taken with the Superyaris by Alan, who is a pretty fucking sick photographer. He busted out this ancient looking camera, the kind you hide under a little black blanket to take a picture with, and snapped the flick. That’ll take a few days to get developed, so I don’t think we’ll get to see it until after my trip is over. I’m confident it kicks ass though.
I was about to head off to Ithaca but was convinced to have lunch (hard to say no to Indian food) and take a tour of the Capitol and the surrounding area, Empire State Plaza. I was definitely not expecting to be awed the way I was by it.
The place was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, an architect best known for designing the city of Brasilia in Brazil, which is easily one of the craziest looking places on earth:
Empire State Plaza was not much different. It was pretty rainy, so I didn’t catch many flicks:
And here’s some much better images that are not mine:
That crazy thing in the middle is a performing arts center, and is actually called The Egg. There’s a huge series of tunnels and interconnected offices underneath the whole thing, with old school elevators, incredible cast-iron gates, and epic stairwells. It was all very strange and interesting, I’m pretty certain I’ve never been in a place quite like that, and I’m glad I stuck around to see it.
I eventually took off pretty late to Ithaca, without having a clear idea of where I was gonna camp out at. Research revealed 3 major campsites near the town, and a call to my friend David helped reveal the obvious choice: Taughannock Falls. Thankfully, I made it there before sundown and there were still plenty of spots available… but that’s a matter left to the next post.
Providence, like Savannah, was relatively uneventful in the way that there really wasn’t anything to take pictures of. Also, I cut my stay short from the scheduled two nights there so that I could pop in an extra day between Toronto and Chicago coming up. Therefore, this is gonna be a short and rather boring post, and I apologize.
I arrived in Providence in the early evening, and met my old roommate Ramon, a crazy Dominican who is well on his way to become King of Providence, and the entire world soon thereafter. I got there just in time to catch a 7pm screening of Public Enemies, which was pretty badass, but fell short of greatness. Also, someone needs to teach Michael Mann how to shoot in digital and make it look good. Superman Returns looked great (though it was a shit movie), Apocalypto looked great too, Benjamin Button looked incredible, hell, even fucking Crank 2 looked amazing… all of them shot in digital video. But there were too many times in Public Enemies, usually in the nighttime shootouts, where it just felt like dudes in costumes running around with toy guns and recording it all on a handicam. There were bits and pieces in Mann’s Collateral and Miami Vice where the cheap video look popped up, but never as flagrantly as in this movie. Still, the solid pacing and structure of the film keeps it up above the fray. I digress… besides watching the film, we didn’t do much that night. Had some food at Kartabar, an old hangout run by a giant Lebanese dude who is almost cartoonish in his gangsterish appearance, then passed out at Ramon’s pad.
The next day Ramon had to go to work (as all my hosts have had to do), so I took the opportunity to do three key things.
One, I did a pretty hefty amount of laundry at the old coin-op where I used to do it in college.
Two, I wrote a lot of stuff for the blog.
Three, I drove around EVERYWHERE in Providence. It may not mean much to you all, so I won’t bore you with details, but it was incredible to revisit all the different spots I used to frequent nearly 10 years ago. Thayer street, my old apartment above ACME Video, Taste of India, the RISD beach, downtown Providence, you name it. A lot has changed throughout the years, some places almost unrecognizable, but it still drew up a huge amount of memories. College was fucking fun times, for real.
Those 3 things basically consumed my entire day, and since I had cut my stay short, I had to take off in the late afternoon. I went back and had an incredible steak dinner with Ramon and his girlfriend, said my goodbyes, and took off for the next stop, to meet up with yet another Friend from The Internet, Angry Alan, in Albany, NY.
Ah, New York City. A city I often claim to hate but always love to visit. That feeling got tested about a few miles before even entering the city, when I had to pay nearly $30 in rapid-fire tolls. It’s like paying entrance to some kind of amusement park. All other big cities are pretty chill, maybe $5-10 at the most in tolls to swing by, but no, NY has to be like “Oh yeah, we’re fucking New York City” and stiff you 3 times that.
Note: Unfortunately, I had to completely skip Philadelphia in order to get to NYC at a reasonable time, so no pictures of delicious Philly cheesesteak.
I had carefully arranged my schedule to make sure I hit the city on the weekend of July 4th, thinking there would be some good activity going on. And there certainly was a lot of activity, mainly right before I arrived, when apparently half the fucking city packed their bags and took the fuck off to the beach elsewhere. This meant that instead of places and streets being packed to the tits with people, they were packed to maybe just under the bellybutton. Disappointing at first, cause I realized there wasn’t gonna be too much outrageous partying going on, but it turned out to be fantastic, because for a change, New York was totally driveable and chock full of awesome parking spots everywhere.
I immediately met up with my friends Guille, Nicole, and Eddy, and chilled for a while before crashing for the night. The next day I had scheduled myself a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, which I’d always wanted to visit. After the intense nature experiences, I was due for a bit of art review to balance it out. The place did not disappoint, packed with super influential landmark pieces I’ve been seeing in books since I was a little kid. Interestingly enough, it seemed like it was totally OK to take pictures, although I find the taking of pictures of famous pieces of art to be a supremely useless endeavor. Nonetheless, there were a few unsung heroes that I felt needed to get a bit more exposure.
For example, here’s a portrait of David Carradine:
This is obviously fucking brilliant work:
And this is a piece by Giacometti called “Disagreeable Object”. I think that’s a great name, because I very much disagree with it:
This was a room-sized installation where visitors marked their height and the date of visit, and over time, as thousands of people added to it, a fuzzy band built up lined around the room:
It was a very thought-provoking piece. Mainly, it made me think about how many of the low marks were made by children, and how many were made by midgets. Then it would make me giggle. I agreed with this piece much more than the previous one. Finally, we have OOF:
OOF.
My artist longings satiated, I met up again with my friends and headed to Central Park to chill for a while and do a bit of people watching. My favorite person was this dude who who showed up with a newspaper and dropped face-down a few yards away from us. He looked like a Mexican laborer. Dude opens his newspaper, and reads it for about 7 seconds before he looks up and stares at the girls around him while gently grinding his crotch against the soft grass. Unfortunately my camera had no video zoom, so you can’t appreciate the subtle hip motion, but at least you can see him in position here:
After the Park, we headed to the IMAX theater in Lincoln Square to watch a movie I’d be anxiously awaiting to see, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I was super fucking pumped to watch another Michael Bay movie about giant robots punching each other on a giant screen, and had patiently waited to get to NY before doing so to make sure I got a true IMAX experience (there’s a lot of theaters out there being touted as IMAX, when in fact they’re just regular theaters with the screens shifted closer to the seats to appear larger). My excitement dwindled a bit when I got in and realized that the entire other half of the city who didn’t leave for the weekend had decided to come see Transformers at the same time I did. We had to sit in the very first row. In an IMAX theater. To watch Transformers 2. If you’ve seen the movie, you know it’s 2 and a half hours of being bludgeoned over the head with clanging metal, explosions, robot testicles, dogs humping, generally loud shit, and John Turturro in a thong. Thankfully it also contains a lot of Megan Fox ass, which looked truly fucking spectacular up on that screen. Despite the circumstances it was a pretty rad experience overall, it completely set a new bar for GIANT STUPID SUMMER MOVIE. Let’s see if 2012 can top it.
After having my brain melted, my ears imploded, and my neck twisted for nearly 3 hours, we headed back to rest a bit before heading out to get a bit of drinking going. We met up with my friend Selena and headed out to a bar called Nu Blu, which sounds like a brand of sunglasses you can get on TV. They had a really sweet jazz/lounge improv band going, and we proceeded to get hammered in an commonly expensive fashion:
I then violently passed out on the cab ride back home:
Apparently, I do this a lot.
Next day, we head out to check the Apple store, since I was in need of an extra battery for the Modbook that should come in handy out west, where electrical outlets will become much more scarce. Pretty trippy, ultramodern place filled with people who had no interest in buying a Mac but sure like playing with them pretty things.
After that, I wanted to go to B&H Photo, a giant photo supply warehouse that does a ton of business online, and whose single retail store resided in Manhattan. I had been eyeing a new camera that had me supremely intrigued, but was only available online. Only like 3 stores carry it in stock for retail, and they’re all in NYC. B&H was by far the most well-known of the three, and I was told it was crazy magical place run by a huge crew of Hassidic jews, which made it sound pretty interesting. So while I knew I wasn’t gonna be doing a lot of price haggling, I was excited about checking out the jewish equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
Problem was, this place was about 30 blocks away from the Apple store. Plan A was to grab a cab or train there, but somehow Selena, who punches people for a living and is in remarkable shape, convinces me that we should walk there. I figured I’d been doing a lot of damn walking lately anyways and the exercise between drives could only be a good thing. So we walked, and walked, and walked. And fucking walked, until we got there.
And it was fucking closed.
I couldn’t fucking believe it. How could they possibly be fucking closed? Big retail store? On a Saturday on a big business holiday weekend?
Oh. Right. Saturday. Jewish people.
A big forehead slap afterwards, we grabbed a train to Queens to check out PS1, an offshoot of MoMA that showcases hip contemporary art, and which during the summer hosts a number of rad daytime parties in its outdoor areas. Every year they hold a contest for people to submit design proposals to build some sort of crazy structure and/or space to host said parties. Apparently, this year’s winning entry was a a series of big furry volcanoes. The vibe and space this thing created reminded me a LOT of Burning Man, so it was immediately awesome to me:
Really good beer on draft too, with DJ’s running sets all day. Saw some more rad art, met a few people from RISD I haven’t seen in years, and generally had an awesome time.
After a few hours, we headed back to get some dinner, which came in the form of incredible pizza. We had apparently lost track of time, cause we were only halfway on our food before fireworks started going off on TV. It was like “Oh shit. I guess we missed that”. Mostly I was OK with missing it, because after watching the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies (the event where China dropped its pants and told the world to suck its mighty red dick) firework shows don’t really impress me anymore. It looked pretty cool though.
After some deliberation on what to do that night, there were apparently a few good parties going on in Brooklyn, we decide that we’re all old and exhausted and can’t handle extra night craziness, so we grab some booze and head up to Guille’s office rooftop for some chill skyline nighttime lounging:
Besides it being really fucking cold and me forgetting my jacket, it was a perfect way to end the day. I was pretty beat, and was scheduled to get moving to Providence early the next day.
Like all departure days, I tell myself I’ll get up at 7 to get on the road early, and end up waking up close to 10. I say goodbye to all the good folks who came out to hang, then head immediately to B&H Photo to get a second try at that camera. Sure enough, the place was open, and it was fucking EXACTLY like I had imagined it. Yarmulkas and curly sideburns everywhere, and crazy conveyor belt systems running in a million directions delivering packages everywhere in the store. I found the camera I wanted, fiddled around with it a bit, and instantly fell in love and bought it:
It’s a Casio EX-FH20, part of a crazy line of cameras that are able to shoot awesome slo-mo footage and have a huge array of options for shooting objects in motion. This thing can grab 40 full-size 9-megapixel images in just one second, and shoot video at up to 1000 frames a second, which makes it extremely awesome and fun to experiment and play with. It’s particularly well suited for outdoor/wildlife photography, which made it perfect for my needs. I’ve since had a chance to get to know it better and have shot some rad stuff with it. Expect more images and video, and less written stuff as the trip unfolds and I head out west.
I ended up leaving rather late for a 4-hour trip to Providence, land of my alma mater, RISD, to officially begin the middle leg of the journey. And that, folks, is coming in the next post.
So, my first camping adventure, Shenandoah National Park. Arriving here by car reminded me of the view on the way to Jajome back in PR, except at an outrageously epic scale and containing 300% more deer. I could not believe what I was seeing outside the window. America means a lot of different things to different people, but we can all agree that it is fucking enormous.
The park is specifically designed for scenic driving, consisting of a single winding road stretching for about 105 miles, with 4 main campgrounds alongside it and miles and miles of backcountry between them. Scattered through the road are dozens of overlooks that just keep hammering you in the face with greatness as you drive along. It is absolute driving bliss.
No more than 10 minutes into it I notice some cars stopped ahead of me, and people are looking out their windows and sticking cameras out. Right next to the road, a mama bear with three little cubs strolling around on some Disney shit. I knew then this place was the goods. I tried taking a picture, but the attempt was pretty futile. They had already scurried in a bit into the forest, so all you get is an ambiguous dark spot:
I couldn’t decide which of the 4 campgrounds to stay at so I chose the one that seemed the most low key, Lewis Mountain. I wasn’t thrilled with it at first, since it didn’t seem backwoods enough and tents were pretty close to each other. But the other 2 nearest campgrounds were each 25 miles away, and I wanted to hike at least one trail before the sun came down, so I said fuck it and pitched camp:
…then took off to check out a nearby trail that promised a bit of bouldering and even more gigantic views. At this time some clouds had started to roll in, and some rain started to drizzle, but all was good because I was outfitted with a magical plastic poncho that deflects water spells. Here’s some of what I saw:
Click on that thin 360° panorama image above to see it in much larger size. It was pretty breathtaking.
I headed back and decided to catch a quick power nap before making myself some dinner. I sleep for a bit, wake up, and realize I must’ve been pretty fucking exhausted, cause 5 hours had passed and it was now 1 AM. I looked out my tent and the entire camp was completely shut down, not a single sound or light anywhere. Well, too fucking bad, cause I gotta eat.
I grab my headlamp and start setting up some stuff at the foot of the tent, and before long I had a hearty bowl going. It was at this point that I hear steps in the darkness in front of me. I look up, the headlamp shines ahead, and I proceed to shit my pants.
You know how in cartoons, when they show a spooky forest, there’s a bunch of evil eyes of different sizes glowing among the bushes?
Well folks, that’s not just in the cartoons. In front of me, right beyond the headlamp’s reach, were 7-8 pairs of eyes of different sizes staring at me, all joined in the singular effort of scaring the living fuck out of me. You know, I did my homework. I read the campground instruction manual. I was aware of the wildlife around here and had taken every precaution and followed every direction for how to not get eaten by a large mammal. Yet, here I was, about to get my shit ruined by a pack of bears. With rabies.
I gently covered my bowl and put it away from the tent, then went back and grabbed a more powerful flashlight. The light from that one cleared up a lot of things. One, it was not bears, but a pack of deer (actually called a herd of deer, but that sounds gay so it’s a pack), and two, deer in the dark are still scary as fuck. To get an idea of what they looked like, watch the first minute of this video, and then multiply what you see by 8. So, while I was pretty relieved that I would not get eaten, I was still pretty spooked by the fucking evil demon deer outside my tent. They moved on pretty quickly, and I finished off my meal.
I was supposed to only stay one night, and then leave early the next morning to get to NYC on schedule. After all the awesome shit I’d seen so far, I wasn’t sure that was gonna happen. I decided to sleep it on it and decide in the morning.
It took me about 7 seconds upon waking up to say fuck NYC and stay an extra day here. However even though the previous night’s encounter was pretty fucking terrifying, I was extremely gripped and wanted to go a little crazier. I headed to one of the camp offices to get myself a backcountry permit. I wanted to literally camp in the middle of the fucking forest, no cars, no other tents, no restrooms, no kids on Razor scooters (who the fuck brings that to a campground?), no dogs under leash law looking miserable, nothing. Just me and the forest.
The ranger at the desk helped me pick out something nice that wouldn’t kill me hiking… since I was taking that extra day, it would mean getting up extra early and hiking BACK the following morning for a crazy long drive to NY. Found an area about 2.5 miles into the forest, next to a stream with cascades, and said hell yeah. Got my permit and off I went to stake out my spot.
It was here that I kinda regretted buying a shit backpack at Wal-Mart that’s geared towards carrying clothes and only vaguely looks outdoorsy. I had to work some magic with bungee cords and straps in order to attach the sleeping bag, lantern, and other essentials, and the result was workable if not dicey. In the end I carried a ton of shit that I probably didn’t need, but you live, you learn. Besides rain starting to pour pretty heavily, the hike down wasn’t too bad, but I was a bit concerned about how much it was gonna suck to hike back up, cause it was a rather steep 2.5 miles and my shit was heavy.
Eventually I passed the marker cascades and started looking around for flat areas. I found a spot that looked too good to be true and looked around, and surely enough that was it. It had signs of frequent use, like clearings, pre-felled trees, and a badly concealed shitting area about 100 yards down. I set up camp immediately:
This is for Bob, who has been incessantly insisting that I need to get a bear bag, yet refusing to believe that I would remember to buy one:
AQUIIII esta tu bear bag, cabron.
No sooner had I set up that I realized that people had been here much more recently than I thought, cause the assholes had thrown out a bunch of roasted peppers and strawberries nearby. Might as well put a neon arrow pointing to my tent saying EAT THIS HUMAN. So I spent a few minutes clearing out the gross half decomposed food, which reminded me that I needed to attend to the Ginodoll. I left him alone far away in the cold, but with the help of some beef jerky, I made sure he would find some company at some point in the night:
Next, instead of coming back the trail I came from, I took an alternate route to my car that was quite a bit longer, but that turned out to be more gentle in slope than the entrance route. Got myself a hearty dinner up at a lodge, then headed back down to camp when it got dark, a pretty scary headlamp-assisted journey in on-and-off rain. I was rather disappointed to find that on the way up and back down, someone else had dropped in and set up a tent a few yards away. Nevertheless, I was so tired and cold and wet from the rain I just wanted to rest… I had a single beer I had brought with me, then I put all the smelly stuff in the bear bag and passed out. No crazy animal incidents that night.
Next morning I pack my bags, check and pick up the Ginodoll (sad to say, untouched by wildlife) then proceed to nearly destroy my leg muscles trying to hike back up with all my shit. The numerous breathers I had to take ended up being great moments to soak in my surroundings though, it really is like a storybook forest out there. Thankfully, half the trail back up was a gently sloping (but fucking interminable) fire road made for cars that was much easier on the calves than the regular trail. Got back to the car, spent a solid hour doing another round of car tetris, and finally took off for a mad scramble up to NYC.
On the way out however, I caught another young bear by the side of the road, and caught a much better but still pretty disappointing flick of it:
Tremendous experience at Shenandoah. I have a feeling I’m gonna have the camping and outdoors bug going strong for a while.
Awesome. I’d once come to the Smithsonians in DC when I was like 10 or so, and remember it being a fantastic experience. I’m obviously a huge nerd, and nature and science have a place in my heart as big as that for art and design… going to the Smithsonians for me is like a junkie finding a palace made of needle spires and spoons. My friend Carmen had to work during the day, as has been the case with many who I’ve stayed with, so I took the metro line down from Baltimore by myself to arrive at Union Station, and after a solid scramble to find free wi-fi and post updates, headed off to the Mall for some enlightenment.
It was a nice long walk, followed by even longer walks in the museums themselves. I saw people riding around on rented Segways and thought that if I had worn the 5-toed shoes, I would’ve rented the Segway just to be the biggest douche in DC that day. I might’ve even taken a fanny pack.
After a long deliberation, I decided that I would nurture the science side of the brain, and leave the next art museum experience for MoMA in NYC. First target was the Museum of Natural History for wacky animal antics.
It was here that I noted a grave mistake for which I apologize to all of you. I forgot my point and shoot camera and only had the phone cam, and even that was at half battery after the morning wi-fi scramble. So, there are really no decent pictures on this round, just bits here and there.
One of the things I had underestimated is the size of these goddamn museums. Jesus Christ, the walk down the Mall is an epic event. Once inside I realized there was no way I was gonna see everything in this place, especially since I’m the kind of person who will read EVERYTHING on the exhibits. I focused on insects, reptiles, and general crazy animal shit. There was also an exhibit on soil. That sounded hilarious to me, so I went in and found out that of all the towns of PR you could gather a sample of soil from, the Smithsonian Institution chose Bayamón.
Finally, I caught a special exhibit on ants that blew my top off, ants and their behavior have recently become a topic of great interest to me, some of the interactive projects I have planned for after the trip deal with such things so that exhibit was a major score. Ants are fucking nuts, this is a scientific fact.
Soon after that I ate a hot dog that looked like the most spectacular hot dog I’ve ever seen, for the 4 seconds I held it before it completely disintegrated in my hands. I forgot to grab napkins too, so I was stuck trying to somehow shovel it into my mouth with my bare hands and creating a tremendous saucy mess all over my face in the process. The walk afterwards through the crowd to find napkins was fairly embarrassing.
It was getting a bit late and I needed to hit up another museum, so I chose Air & Space. That dude’s crazy telescope at the Guidestones had sparked a curiosity in astronomy and tools for observing the heavens, so at least for the Space part I was pretty hyped. Apparently these guys now have another, even crazier museum out of DC, that has a fucking Space Shuttle in it and a Concorde and all kinds of ridiculous shit that’s not supposed to be indoors. I was pretty upset that I wouldn’t be able to check it out since it was kinda out of the way. Air & Space was plenty awesome though… lo and behold there’s an exhibit on the evolution of telescopes. It was funny to see it evolve into comical sizes from the meager skinny tube some dude with a beard held back in the day. Also tried my hand at some aircraft design and engineering, although the museum’s clearly outdated technology wasn’t able to recognize the brilliance of my proposal:
While leaving the museum at closing time, I grab a Smithsonian booklet just so I’ll have something to read on the train back to Baltimore. My next steps were a bit ambiguous… I could either stay one more day and check out the Aquarium in Baltimore, which I was completely down for, but already had that experience in Atlanta and was feeling a bit museum-ed out, or I could head the following day to Philly and stay there for the night, to hit NYC by the following day. Honestly, I wasn’t too psyched on Philly. I actually just wanna stop there to have a cheesesteak cause I haven’t had one in years, and if possible check the art museum to see my favorite painting. However I had recently learned (from The Internet™) that the painting was currently not in exhibit. So I was a bit stuck on what my next steps were, until I sat on that train and started reading the booklet.
A section on the National Park Service had this picture of an epic meadow, with a caption identifying it as Shenandoah National Park, just 75 miles southwest of DC. I was sold. After the little warmup at NC, and seeing all these nature exhibits, I was itching to get going on some camping, even though the latter part of the trip will be heavily focused on that. A little more digging in on their site and there was no question, I had to go and camp out for a night there. I promptly arrived at Baltimore, had 2 beers at a jammy called Brewer’s Art (here’s a pic of the list for you crybabies asking for proof), and then I quickly passed out, to get up the following day at 6am, and take off for a detour adventure. And what an adventure it’s been.
I’m writing this from my tent, in what turned out to actually be a TWO day detour, because I am in love with this place. Of this you will learn on the next post, if I survive the night. There are bears here, and they want to eat me.
So what wonders awaited me at Hidden Lake Campground?
Well, for starters, a trailer park. And a not particularly well-hidden lake.
I rolled in pretty late, having taken my time to get supplies, have lunch and dinner, etc. The old lady who ran the campground seemed a bit confused at the random solo guy showing up with a tent at 10pm, especially since 70% of the tenants were RVs and permanent trailers. Nonetheless, she hooked me up with a nice spot near the lake, which I could tell from afar contained several un-hidden lake-like structures, such as trampolines, rafts, and personal floating devices tied to a very unhidden dock.
The night was relatively uneventful. I was certainly expecting less creepy crawlies, which is a good thing cause I love creepy crawlies. Of course, there’s wonderful creep crawlies like this awesome daddy longlegs:
And then there’s the asshole cousins of creepy crawlies, called Shits that Fly Around in the Air and Hit You in the Face. These truly became a problem when I resorted to using my headlamp to navigate my way in the dark. Within seconds I was socked in the eyes by at least 3 moths and one scarab beetle. Another thing is I had heard that as you go further north on land, the mammals get bigger but the insects get smaller. This is not true. While I’m sure the mammals thing is true, insects up here are still fucking big, if not bigger. Look at this fucking ant:
What the fuck do you feed these things here? Back in PR ants are like the size of that thing’s head, but they’ll still ruin your shit if you’re not looking. I can’t imagine what this would do if you pissed it off.
So anyways, quick dinner by the stove:
Followed by a long bout of writing till the batteries died, then passed out. The next day I got up and was about to eat some breakfast and head out, but that lake was looking pretty saucy:
Quick swim, shower, and finally headed out for a long drive to Baltimore. In Baltimore was Carmen, another Friend from The Internet, also from 12ozprophet.com. The plan was to crash there for two nights, using the day sandwiched in between to explore some Smithsonians next door in DC. First thing I noticed? Baltimore is hood as fuck. Even the nice places look hood. I was kinda shook at first of where I was gonna leave the Superyaris, even though I was assured it was completely safe… there were catatonic old ladies sitting on the front steps of houses, people obviously on meth, shady dudes under the streetlights, etc. It went down the whole checklist of sketchy. Nonetheless, it turned out to be completely safe indeed and the Superyaris made it with no problem. I was ready to call it a night, but we decided to watch Groundhog Day first, which made it the second Harold Ramis-directed film starring Bill Murray I’d seen in almost as many days.
