Truckin'

A summary of the trip so far:

We set out on July 20th, leaving Seattle a bit late (11 pm) and managed to drive until around 3am before pulling into a rest stop and crashing for a few hours. From there, it was a driveathon- Nym and Jarrod basically slept and drove in shifts, getting us all the way to Madison, Wi before we stopped for longer than it takes to fill up a gas tank. (except for one brief stop in Northfield, Wi, when the heat drove us out of the van and into Jackie's Bar for a beer. If you're keeping track, that's driving through Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and into Wisconsin. Yeah, intense. Una and I have taken to calling it the "Fugue State", as the van was incredibly hot and stuffy, and you couldn't really sleep, and ended up always feeling sort of half awake, half drunk, with maybe some brain matter dribbling out of your ears. Good times!

We rolled into Madison around 11 pm, and while Nym and Una checked out a local cafe to work on booking their individual tours, Jarrod and I took to exploring the city. We walked to downtown, wound up at a bar called "Frequency", walked back to Williamson St (where we stayed), checked out another bar called "Willy's", found a great organic bread dumpster, a house party with a fire pit in the back yard that we were welcomed to (thanks, Jason), a 1/2 bottle of whiskey, and finally a place to sleep in the form of the roof of a shed in a small community garden/ park. I think we were a bit stir crazy after such a long drive.

The next morning we woke up around 6am, got coffee, and set out exploring in the opposite direction. We wound up at Lake Wisconsin (I think), which was gorgeous in the early morning, but was full of mosquitoes. But! It was also full of baby ducklings, so the 8 million bug bites were worth it.

From there we headed to Lazy Jane's for- unexpectedly- an all vegan breakfast. The staff was beyond friendly, and the place was adorable. The rest of the day consisted of walking, walking, walking- back through downtown to the University, up through some of the historical neighborhoods, which was full of some amazing houses. Jarrod and I even took an impromptu tour of a house up for sale, which was 999 years old! Then it was vodka lemonades back at Willy's, and a few beers while walking the railroad and sitting by a river under a foot bridge. I pretty much fell in love with Madison- Williamson St has three collectively owned and run businesses- a bakery, a grocery co-op, and a printing studio. Madison seems really progressive too, with a bunch of vegan and veggies places to eat. And did I mention the bikes? The most bikes in any one place I've ever seen. There has to be like, a 4 bikes per every resident ratio, I swear. Top it all off, its really pretty, and all the buildings are old and full of character. We will be staying there again on our way back towards the West Coast, hopefully meeting up with some of the Pyroclast kids, who apparently own a house around there.

We set out from Madison, got stuck in the horrible traffic around Chicago, and finally made it to Bowling Green, Oh, at 1 am. Bowling Green is where Jarrod's last stop with us was, as that's where his parents and some of his siblings live. We went to Harold's Club, where Jarrod used to book shows, for last call, and ran into his friend Maurice, who added Nym to the show bill for the show happening there the next night (Friday). Maurice, and the door guy at Harold's, where both really friendly and hilarious.

After Harold's shut down, Jarrod and I took off once again to explore, while Nym and Una scored some dumpstered pizza at the place Jarrod used to work at (small world). With our screwdrivers in hand (Vodka and OJ, not the tool, mind you), we managed to find yet another backyard fire pit we were welcomed to, this time by two guys, Dougie and John.

(There's nothing quite as surreal as drinking Bud Light by a can fire in a backyard in Bowling Green, Oh at 3am with a 40+ year old man named Dougie, who is blasting 70s rock (but calling it 80s metal), who also keeps trying to alternately sell you his waterbed and get you to move in.)

From there, we found another house party, thrown by a bunch of younger kids from the college- who actually were also friends with the bands Nym was slotted to play with the next night. One kid in particular, Josh, told us about an awesome resource, dodiy.org, and also might come hang out with us back in Seattle or play a show at Squid. Its amazing when awesome stuff like that magically comes together.

I went back to the van to pass out, while Jarrod was incredibly industrious, and built himself a mini Ewok village in an abandoned lot with a $30 tent from Walmart. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rianbean/3756120470/). Once I woke up, Jarrod left to visit his parents and I got coffee and walked through Bowling Green's Historical neighborhood- which was beautiful, but the humidity and heat was making me dizzy. I relaxed and wrote for an hour or two in a small park, before meeting back up with Jarrod and Nym and getting cocktails at The Attic, which was a decent roof top bar with horrible, horrible music. Becky, a friend of J's from high school, came and hung out with us, and we all headed back to Howards for Nym's show. I wish I could have photographed the looks on the crowds' faces when he played his set. The line up for that night were all indy, emo, pop music, and his noise-chaos-break core- dressed like a psychotic bumble bee set basically blew their minds. It was pretty exceptional.

Becky and her husband let us sleep at their place, which was a bit outside of Bowling Green. It was nice to conk out in a bed and actually sleep a solid 8+ hours in a row after a week of the half-sleeping Fugue state in the hot, hot van. The next morning, they treated us to breakfast at The Waffle House, a 24-hour phenomenon unknown on the West Coast, and we said our goodbyes to Jarrod and headed out towards Braddock, our first farming stop and the place we will be staying at the longest- 3 whole weeks of farming and exploring the area.