gwax's rumblings

I spent this past week­end in Ithaca, NY vis­it­ing Liz at Cornell. Ellen and I drove out late Friday and came back mid-Sunday. It was very chill and we didn’t do much but it was a good change of scenery and com­pany, which pleased me. I’m pretty sure that a good time was had by all. And I’m being lazy, so that’s all the blog updat­ing that you get for now.

I fin­ished the return trip to Massachusetts today and am writ­ing this from my room in Concord. Total trip mileage was 3553 (keen, it’s sym­met­ri­cal). I’ll prob­a­bly get myself back into the city tomor­row, though it might take more than one day.

Today was an inter­est­ing one. I started at a rest area in Virginia where I ignored the two hour park­ing limit and got eight hours of sleep. Between there and New Jersey, things were pretty unevent­ful. However, an inter­est­ing thing hap­pened when I stopped for lunch and gas in New Jersey, I picked up a hitch-hiker head­ing for New York. Mind you, this was no nor­mal hitch-hiker, this was Ludovic Hubler (you’ll want to click the British flag if you can’t read French)(also, it’s kind of flakey in some browsers). I’m sure you’re ask­ing who is Ludovic Hubler and why should I care? He’s this French guy who is hitch-hiking around the world, try­ing not to spend any money at all on travel expenses. He started in France, hitch-hiked across the Sahara, across the Atlantic, to Antarctica, up to the US and I gave him a ride from the mid­dle of Jersey to New York.

That’s my excit­ing news of the day; I picked up a hitch-hiker. The first time I ever pick up a hitch-hiker and I get the hitch-hiker to end all hitch-hikers.

This morn­ing it’s the 3000 mile mark.

I’m not lost but I’m some­where in Southern Florida and I don’t know exactly where I am. It doesn’t much mat­ter as my time is val­ue­less right now and I am pretty good at fig­ur­ing out where I am in strange places.

Truth be told, I am actu­ally kind of glad that I am bush­whack­ing through unknown ter­ri­to­ries. This is a beau­ti­ful part of the world that I had never seen before. It reminds me of Southern California a whole lot.

I’ve found I-95 now, so all my prob­lems are solved from here to Massachusetts.

I’m hit­ting the 2000 mile mark on the trip odome­ter right now.

I’m deep in the land of Dixie (which being a proper noun can, sadly, not be used in Scrabble) now, Savannah, Georgia to be pre­cise, and it’s time for a break. What bet­ter way to take a break than to sit down and update my blog? Probably a bunch of things but that’s not the point.

I’ve been get­ting pretty tired of the alpha­bet game so I’ve only fin­ished 3 more alpha­bets putting me at 25 and look­ing for a “Q”. I’ve also been tear­ing a pretty solid swathe through my CD col­lec­tion hav­ing fully lis­tened to 14 KMFDM albums, 1 KMFDM sin­gle, 1 MDFMK album, 1 KMFDM vs. Pig album, 1 Lucia album, 1 Happy 2B Hardcore com­pi­la­tion, 1 Aphex Twin album, 1 Daft Punk album, 1 Gigi D’Agostino com­pi­la­tion and 1 Mr. Velcro Fastener album. I think that I’m going to give local radio a shot for a while.

I don’t really mind the dri­ving; it’s kind of pleas­ant. I am get­ting a lit­tle bit fatigued but not tired or tired of the dri­ving, a prob­lem solv­able by breaks like this. The sun is set­ting; that should make things dif­fer­ent. Let’s see if I can get another 4 hours of dri­ving in and make my way into Florida.

Well, I’m sit­ting in a Pizza Hut some­where in North Carolina, par­tak­ing of the lunch buf­fet. Things go well and I am 260 miles from where I started the day. If I can keep myself going until late tonight, I should make Key West by mid-tomorrow.

I fig­ured that it was about time to send out a progress report from the grand state of Virginia. I’ve been here chill­ing with Sherv and hav­ing a grand old time since I got here Sunday evening. We’ve mainly just been chill­ing and not doing any­thing ter­ri­bly extravagant.

Virginia is a pretty nice place, at least the Virginia Beach region. I’ve been notic­ing some big dif­fer­ences between this part of the coun­try and Massachusetts, but many of them are rather sub­tle and I don’t par­tic­u­larly feel like going into a grand old com­pare and con­trast thing. Suffice it to say that it’s quite nice and gives me the feel­ing of really tak­ing a vaca­tion and get­ting away, which is a feel­ing that I don’t often get.

Tomorrow I hit the road again for Key West. It’s going to be a longer drive so I expect to get through the alpha­bet a few more times. I was play­ing the alpha­bet game on my way down here and I made it through the alpha­bet a full 22 times and will pick up again look­ing for my 23^rd “J” when I get back out there. The dri­ving is quite nice and I was only get­ting a lit­tle tired come around hour 8 or 9. It’s 20 hours to Key West from here so we’ll see about that and I expect the 30 back will be something.

Well, plenty more fun ahead, back to chillax­ing in Virginia with Sherv.