Pre-Game Show

To get ready for a two month trip across the country, one needs to do oh so many many things and most of them leave you with no money for gas.



1 - If you are going to hike through, drive through or camp at any National Park you should just buy a
We will be doing all three several times over and this leaves me so much more money to complete the next steps:

2 - Buy all of the books ever printed and sold on www.bn.com You only have to do this step if you read as fast as TheKate. But don't worry, Dr. George, TheKate is only reading stuff to complete all of her graduation requirements!

3 - Buy all of the clothes needed for such a roadtrip at www.moosejaw.com. Let me recommend sunday sweats and hoodies. Paul is modeling one of their premium products here:

(Click on it. I dare you.)

4 - Buy all of the equipment you could ever hope to own at www.rei.com. If you don't do this you will end up just like TheKate in the Rocky Mountains back in '05 (it just looked better than saying last year):

5 - Shove all of this into the car. You may need to cross your fingers and jump up and down a bit to make it fit just so.









and this is by far the hardest step:

6 - Say goodbye to Boo Radley

The least difficult step is lucky #7 - Leave!

Day 1: September 7

Leaving our lovely home and incredible dog in Columbus and headed to Chicago.
We pass the evening with Paul's dad, David and Liz Djupe. This trip is not so bad when we have a bed and roof over our head for the first two nights!

Somewhere between Columbus and Chicago

A haiku by Paul Djupe (somewhere near South Bend):

I likes me the Kate
Birthday in Chicago great
Topolobampo!

A haiku by TheKate:

TheKate needs to pee
don't want to stop in South Bend
although its the pits

Paul's haiku response:

Dark cows in the field
Kate reads her fun poetry
Urine must flow soon

Kate counters with:

Haikus are good things
Passing time while Paul drives
Counting his fingers

Paul's deep haiku (at exit 29 Michigan City / Westville Indiana):

Chocolate bitches
Phrase with infinite meaning
No one else knows what

Kate's one two jab:

Pee Pee everywhere
If we don't stop soon who knows
how long the smell lasts

Car upholstery
Is it absorbent or just a
flotation device?

Paul's Fart dyad:

I sit and I fart
Pappadums and diet coke
smells like chinese food

Sorry I'm farty
I cannot seem to help it
Smelt it? You dealt it.

At least an hour of haikus comprise the wang series (dedicated to Scooter McClurg):

With my twelve inch wang
and wearing these assless chaps
Clearly gauntlet's thrown

With my twelve inch wang
I wave it high in the air
and scare little kids

With my twelve inch wang
(of my whole family its true,
just ask Jennifer)

With my twelve inch wang
oh how I wish it were true
Mustard and onions

With my twelve inch wang
I will need a booster seat
to come to dinner

And finally:

We are almost there
I never thought I'd hear those words
and want to turn around

Day 2: September 8

My birthday in Chicago. Weather was not predicted to be nice, but just as last year it could not have been more perfect.

The morning started with a trip on the El (or is it just L?) to downtown Chicago. I got to hear some great birthday songs when I checked my voicemail

A late lunch at Bin 36 started off the feeding frenzy


The Art Institute of Chicago is a guaranteed stop on any Chicago trip since I love it so much.



In great weather, there is nothing better that strolling around the streets of Chicago with another guaranteed stop at the Jazz Record Mart for some new (to me) old music

No celebration would be complete without the ultimate dining experience, Topolobampo (Green Zebra is the only rival to this claim)

Before the El turned into a pumpkin, we jumped on a returned to suburbia

Having come back to the same place that I celebrated last year, with such similarly beautiful weather and with a most agreeable and compatible partner in crime tricked my mind into not quite knowing which year I had taken the architectural boat tour or bought my most favorite of necklaces at a street fair (both last year) so much so that I thought if I just walked back to the same spot, I would see the same old man taking tickets to get on the boat or the same vendors and their wares. A quick walk four or five blocks to the river straightened that -confusion up – it did still leave me a bit disoriented - a waking moment where the dream seems more real than the scene before your just opened eyes.

Affectionate

09.08.06
A special moment on Chicago's El Train

Illinois Center

09.08.06
The view when getting off the El Train downtown

I am 28!

09.08.06
Bin 36 was the first course on the day's menu – wine flights and satisfying food. Only one course was truly memorable:

Birthday celebration #1 dessert:

Roasted Peach

Buttermilk Cappucino sauce

Thyme Ice Cream

Crushed Pistachios

some sort of Brown Sugar crumbly cookie/cake

Every flavor would jump out and shine for a moment before the next would temper it. It was incredibly pleasurable to sit back with a single bite of this dessert and feel as if you have traveled some distance.

Bin 36

09.08.06
Our lunch at Bin 36 was made better with the ordering of two different wine flights - that means 10 different wines to kick off my birthday celebration.

Harry Callahan

09.08.06

The Art Insitute had some interesting exhibits although Paul may not remember since he took a bit of a nap at the Harry Callahan photography exhibit.



Two things stand out in the Harry Callahan exhibit:

1- He liked to take pictures of his wife's butt. There are pictures of her naked behind taken over the course of 13 years. Many were in outdoor scenes, hotels, etc. Some were artsy and some were just a bit too real and depressing for my taste. She must have been the most tolerant person.





2 - One of his photo series focused on prairie grasses that showed movement and patterns. Not entirely interesting in and of itself. But his reaction to the media critiques. There is a quote in response to one art expert's interpretation of these pictures in which Harry states that the assigning meaning to his photographs was ridiculous - he only took the pictures because he thought the grasses were pretty.

The Art Institute

During our trip to the Art Institute, Paul and I had to check out our standard favorites. No visit seems complete without a Georgia O'Keefe or a de Kooning (as a way of saying hello to the Massa). This trip, we seemed more struck by a less traditional Georgia, Shelton with Sunspots. Also, Edward Hopper's Night Hawks had returned to its normal display in the Art Institute.











Paul's favorites include quite a few Marsden Hartley's and Rothko's. (Anyone that has checked out our normal photo blog may recognize the Paul appreciating Rothko (PADko?) from last year's birthday trip to Chicago.)














Mine are a bit more random. I am drawn to an Antonio Mancini painting called Resting. It almost brings me to tears because it reminds me what my darkest moments of depression feels like. There is something about her face...















An additional must see is Picasso's The Old Guitarist because it bears a striking resemblence to a drawing of Paul that my most talented nephew Michael drew at Christmas time. I will have to scan that drawing in to the computer once I am back in Ohio.

Hoping angels don't have good aim

09.08.06
PAD finds his favorite Marsden Hartley and feels like he is in a game of Mousetrap.

The Art Institute of Chicago is our Playground

It wasn't until afterwards that I even considered whether there were museum docents nearby.



















Shadow and light are fun too. Aren't they?

The GREATEST of all

09.08.06

The real celebration did not begin until we sat down at Topolobampo! This dinner was all that I wanted out of this trip and now I am happy... and old!

Day 3: September 9

Leg 1 of today's trip: Chicago to Decorah, Iowa to visit Seed Savers
Leg 2: Decorah to Blue Mounds State Park in Minnesota

Notes to make you feel like you were there with us...

Songs running through my head incessantly:

• Rent’s opening song
• Hang on Sloopy
• Sweet child of mine

Observations of the day:

• Iow-egian women are not nice.
• The United States should consider disbanding into small regional countries with a unified defense system.
• The structure (or lack of) of poetry is confusing.

Today’s accomplishments:

• Getting out of Chicago (or at least the suburbs) in less than 2 hours
• Visiting 4 states. We only intended on seeing three but Iowa is a bit rude by placing inaccurate directional signs to mislead travelers to leave the state and go to Wisconsin instead. We should have understood this to be a warning that Iow-egians hate outsiders as we are now sure it was intended.
• Not getting lost on Iowa’s secondary roads. However, we misestimated how long it would take to travel said secondary roads and missed the whole purpose of this leg of the trip by 30 minutes. Ugg.
• Getting brisket from a diner in the “nicest little place in Northeast Iowa”
• Seeing Scandahovians, Jews and Hispanics living in harmony as God intended. Eden must be Postville, IA
• We have yet to see if we will make it to our reserved campsite before it is closed. If not, finding a place to stay in Luverne Minnesota will surely be our greatest accomplishment.

Iowa

9 September
Decorah, Iowa
Every spring, I spend all of my money buying tomato seeds from Seed Savers. I wanted to check out the actual place so we took a 4 hour detour to a desolate corner of Iowa only to find out it closed 30 minutes before we got there. That did not discourage me at all - we did just a little trespassing to make it all worth while.

Minnesota Bound

While driving from Chicago to Iowa to Minnesota - we had a minor reality check on how long it would be to Yellowstone (one our next stops) and also to Seattle (our final stop).

Somewhere on I90

Sleeping arrangements

09.09.06
Camping in the Blue Mounds State Park

Day 4: Sunday

Mission 1: Blue Mounds State Park tour to see the buffalos
Mission 2: Crossing the big ole state of South Dakota without spending a dime there

If you need reasons to boycott South Dakota: Reason 1 & Reason 2

Detour through the Badlands (the best part of the state)
Mission 3: Camping in Devils Tower, Wyoming- the first National Monument

Notes to make you feel like you were there with us...

Minnesota. South Dakota. Wyoming.

Madeup word of the day: Hippocrapamus – used to express disbelief – meant to be said slowly and possibly with a long whistle afterwards

Observations of the day:

• In addition to picking out the worst movies ever created and offered on Netflix, I (Kate) pick the jazz cds that are neither “seminal nor superb” (quote from liner notes). Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Dizzie Gillespie have disappointed me.
• South Dakota is the pits.

A recap of road conversations:

• Our new sleeping bags are incredible!
• A dog named Briley is super cute. He/she has a serious butt shake when you are trying to pet him/her and Briley is not sure if Paul is a good person. S/he makes me miss Boo Radley very much.
• The bison observed in Minnesota’s Blue Mounds State Park are cool. What isn’t cool is the additional vehicle registration fee on top of the camping registration fee and the park fee – they are tricky that way. Sticking it to the man $7 at a time.
• South Dakotan’s don’t like to talk politics in spite my efforts to shame them. They do however talk politics when they are law professors eating at Topolobampo on my birthday. And that man, Barney or Stanley, is a good man. An incredible conversationalist especially when considering he was talking with complete strangers. At times I felt like I was sitting in on an amazing graduate seminar – but that is probably the neglectful grad student guilt setting in.
• The real deal with abortion as a state (or federal) issue is that it is not at all about abortion. No one is arguing for the right to kill babies (or fetuses) it is about the government’s regulation of a person’s body and future. A real path to reducing the number of abortions in this country is by making alternatives more feasible (ie. Free prenatal care; free health care for all children; all pregnant couples must complete an introduction to parenting and coping course (both the female and the male – whether they are a couple or not) and affordable (or free) quality child care) Short of forcing boys to wear a big red A on their chest or a yellow star on their sleeve, this is the most equiniminous way to disperse the “burden”, social stigma, and overcome a few of the issues that result in a decision not to carry a baby to full term.
• South Dakota is a big bully because it taunts you about snakes in the grass when there are no snakes. It’s the same way in DC (except they don’t tell you there are snakes, bullies do. Bullies like my brother Steve. It doesn't matter that he told me about the DC snakes that eat you if you touch the grass back when I was in 2nd grade; It haunts me.)
• North Dakota should increase tourist dollars by allowing gay marriage and creating a town called Happy Land. Other possible money makers: create an eco friendly state of the art scientific research center that rivals all other world brain banks and most important of all – create a fantastically huge buffalo preserve.

Blue Mounds Bison and PADalo

09.10.06