We are leaving Philadelphia in five days! Holy Mother.

This weekend has been super, super awesome; definitely one of those weekends that's making me really feel how much I'll miss living in Philadelphia. Adjusting here was hard with no jobs and no friends, but in the year and a half we've lived here I've come to love it so much, and even regard it as a home of sorts. I hope there's a way I can live here again.

On Friday night, we have a small goodbye party for ourselves-- nothing huge, but it was really fun. We had a group of friends over, some who knew each other, some who didn't. Two of our friends brought margaritas and we made guacamole and played games and had a satisfying discussion about gender. I am so happy to have met such smart, nice people in this city. Most especially I have this one friend Emily who I am so happy to have gotten close with while living in Philadelphia. I went to college with her but never was friends with her then, but we met while we were working the same job the summer after graduating, and Aram and I convinced her and two others from Bard to move to Philadelphia shortly after we did. She is so fun and intelligent and I feel so comfortable around her (Emily! If you are reading this and I am making you feel funny I'm sorry!) and thinking about it just makes me happy. I think I have, over the years, begun to really, really value being friends with and knowing smart, amazing women that I respect in a way I never did in high school.

In any case. The party was fun. Saturday Aram spent some time with his bros while I did strength exercises and lazed around all day (I have a stress fracture in my left shin so I am off running until July, which is very disappointing and frustrating but I'm treating it right and just sticking to low-impact movements until this to keep myself strong. I am still hoping to start running again in July and be able to train slowly and intelligently up for a half-marathon sometime in the fall). Then Saturday night we went to Emily's house for her birthday party, which was a sundae party. It was a similar group of people and also such a nice time!

Sunday was not what either Aram or I expected it to be, but it turned out to be one of the best Sundays I can remember since we moved here. We bought tickets awhile ago to Maryland Deathfest, which is a big metal show in Baltimore. There were a few cool bands we were interested in, but we basically bought the tickets for the purpose of seeing Electric Wizard live. We were really excited to go, but neither of us woke up in a good mood on Sunday, and we were not really in the mood to go at all. However, reminding ourselves of the money we'd spend on the tickets, we begrudgingly got in the car and headed out.

Baltimore is only a two hour drive away, and as we drove we were talking about maybe getting some lunch before going into the show, and then heading in to see the other band we were interested in, Cough. About thirty minutes outside of Baltimore we heard a weird noise outside the car. We looked over to see if the car next to us was perhaps some monstrosity making the rumbling sound, but saw only the guy in the van next to us pointing animatedly at something on the bottom of our car. Uh. Oops. We'd blown a tire. Aram handled the car/the situation great and managed to pull the car safely off the highway at the next exit and onto the shoulder without damaging the rim. Luckily we were close to an exit. We called AAA and got a spare put on, but knew we couldn't drive all the way back from Baltimore after going to the show on a little donut tire (you're not supposed to go above 50 mph, according to AAA guy, just to be safe), and taking non-highway roads would take too long to get back, considering we weren't going to even be leaving Baltimore until midnight. So, we had to go find a place that was open on  Sunday and get new tires put on.

We got all four tires changed after talking to Aram's mom (it's her car) and his stepdad (who knows a lot about the car), which took like three hours all told. We killed the time in the only two things nearby-- a PetCo and a Costco. I was worried about killing three hours on the Pulaski Highway with basically nothing around and it being too hot to just sit outside, but it was actually pretty entertaining! We looked at hamsters and snakes for as long as we could, and then we got a "just looking" pass at Costco (which costs nothing) and wandered around getting free samples (we were starving) and exclaiming at how cheap most things were. Aram reminded me that we both are so endlessly fascinated with being frugal that it's easy for us to entertain ourselves by just examining and exclaiming over prices on things. "Oh! five-ninety-nine for two pounds of cherries? So cheap!" (please imagine this said in a yiddish accent). We were sitting rocking back and forth and relaxing in some lawn furniture when the car place called to say the car was ready. The time went by super fast. We picked up the car and headed to Baltimore.

At this point I was feeling really happy and pretty excited about the van trip. It was exciting to realize (I know this is stupid, but it's important I think) that we'd hit a roadbump in our plans for the day and just rolled with it. We had successfully entertained ourselves for many hours and even gotten some snacks without spending any money at all. This is the kind of thing that I'm excited to challenge ourselves with in the van. In Quebec city, for example. How many things can do for free? I think it helps that both Aram and I are easily entertained by price-comparison shopping; even when we're not buying anything, looking at buildings and architecture, and people watching. All of those things are free and readily available anywhere.

We got to Baltimore about four hours later than expected and had to finagle a parking spot, then go find quarters, then go back to the car....a lot of complicated bullshit, but we eventually were inside the show. We bought tacos and sat around for awhile, but Electric Wizard wasn't playing for hours and we had already missed the other band we wanted to see. We listened a little bit to whoever was playing but it wasn't really either of our thing, so Aram suggested we leave the show for a little while and take a walk down to the waterfront. We had a nice long walk through Baltimore down to the waterfront, which is full of funny tourist stuff and was a great place to stroll and people-watch. We were just talking and debating and had a really nice conversation. After the waterfront we climbed up a big hill and sat at the top looking at the city. Oh, it was so nice. Better than nice. I just felt so excited to spend days like this on our trip. Minus the expensive show, of course, but all the rest-- just spending time walking around and exploring, not having to spend any money to have a nice time. Just us hanging out and talking. I was having the best time, really. We went back to the show after that and hung out for awhile in the crowd and eventually Electric Wizard played.

They were incredible. I've never seen them live before so I can't comment on whether it was a good show in comparison to other shows, but it was so amazingly epic, ripped-from-the-core-of-the-earth kind of heavy, mind-blowingly deep and rumbling and awesome. I was next to a really cool group of people who were losing their minds and rocking out but also being really respectful of other people's choices/space.

I have a real pet peeve about assholes at shows who stand at the outer rims and shove people and try to make a pit. There IS a pit. It's in the middle. If you want to be in the pit, you go towards the front/middle. If you don't want to, you should be able to stand at the outer rims and feel safe. Everyone should respect everyone else's choices about what kind of show experience they want to have. Sometimes, I like to be pushed against everyone else, but last night, I was in the middle and was having a little struggle with claustrophobia, so I went to the outer rim and immediately felt better. Don't try to make a pit with the people who clearly aren't looking for it! Ah! Kids like that piss me off. But anyway besides some jerks behind me everyone was great and the show was just incredible.

As we were waiting, next to us a guy stepped up to the group of people next to him. He was just some regular dude-- short brown hair, hat, nondescript tshirt, denim vest with patches on it. Could've been anybody. He said to the group of strangers in front of him (while holding up some sort of certification/card), "Hey, I'm an ordained minister in Massachusetts. I can marry people. Does anyone want to get married?" Two men in the group hesitated for only a second, then said yes. The stranger performed a super short ceremony on them and declared them husband and husband. Then the pair and the stranger exchanged numbers and emails so the minister, he promised, could send them the paperwork that actually declared them married.

This made me so happy. Is it legal? Probably not. Does it hold? I don't know. But is metal sometimes stereotyped as being a bunch of old stuffy heads, overly concerned with masculinity and "hard"ness? I think so. Even to me, in the past, maybe. And it was especially refreshing given the kind of pushy, overly macho metal douchebags I encountered later in the night, pushing everyone everywhere. And I don't know if these two guys were super serious about each other, or if they were just casually dating and decided to make this particular statement at this moment. Or whatever the case was. They were kissing each other all over the place once they were declared married. They looked so thrilled. Either way, it made me so happy to see because it was so casual, like it should be. It was so...allowed. Like, we have this opportunity to get married when it's so illogically and so stupidly illegal for us to do so in lot of US states. So, we're gonna do it. Right now. But this was awesome. These two guys next to me decided, yes, we will get married here, and they did. Surrounded by "hard" dudes in black t shirts and studded vests. And everyone around them posed for pictures and the minister took pictures with them and got their address so he could send them the official paperwork. And they were so happy, kissing and holding onto each other. I know a metal show probably isn't the place for me to be preoccupied with politics, but come on! Shouldn't everyone be able to get married? It makes me so angry that we're even still talking about it. Boiling, really. I hate that we even have to have this ridiculous conversation. Anyway, these two dudes got married next to us. And then this epic, mind-blowing metal band played. And everyone was surfing on a sea of awesome. And I was so happy to be in the same crowd as such positive people. To sum up, despite the heat, broken car, and hours of free time to kill, I had a stellar time at this show.

Aram and I were absolutely starving by the time we got home. Before we left for the show, we each had a homemade protein smoothie, and I ate half a bagel. Aram ate a whole bagel. The snacks we had at Costco were nothing, like samples of grapes with two grapes. Then we ate two little tacos at the show each, but they had just a little bit of beans and then lettuce and stuff. Not very filling. By the time we got home around 1:45, we were ravenous. We stopped at the 24-hour grocery store a few blocks from our apartment and ended up making the most epically delicious meal that I'm pretty sure we invented-- baked (well, microwaved) sweet potato, mashed up in the skin with a little vegan butter, salt and pepper, and then stuffed with one cut up tofu hot dog and a bunch of vegetarian baked beans. Topped with hot sauce. Yes, it was incredibly delicious. I could only eat half of mine, it was so filling. I think we found an easy meal for camping if we don't use the tofu dogs-- just throw a potato in foil into the fire, and heat up the beans.

Anyway, the emotional outcome of this weekend for me was twofold. First, I realized how much I'm going to miss Philadelphia. I have met wonderful people here. It's affordable. It's an interesting, vibrant city with lots of wonderful things to do and lots of wonderful food to eat (very important to me, ha!). However, I cannot wait to take this trip. I am scared. But goddamn I am so excited.

Today I already did a lot of packing up of small random things into boxes. We are going to the bookstore now to look for a good atlas and then we're going to read by the koi pond at Penn which apparently has turtles to look at. And then tonight our friend Kate is making delicious food and we are going to have a picnic in Clark Park.

Yeah. Shit's pretty good.

Last weekend, we went back to see my family in western Pennsylvania.  I wanted to go for a few reasons.  First, there was a belated Mother's Day party with my step-father, Glenn's, family.  There was a political rift, only recently repaired, between Glenn and his family the last few years, so I haven't seen them in a long time.  It might be a while before I see them again, so I wanted to take this opportunity.  Second, my mom suffered a fall a few weeks ago in Montana.  She tore all of the gooey parts in the knee and fractured a couple bones for good measure.  There were also a stressful follow-up episode involving my mom taking a flight with a blood-clot which doctors were concerned could become dislodged and kill her (it didn't).  Even though she's totally safe, mobile, and unpained now, I wanted to see how she was holding up.  Finally, I needed to take stuff home before I left and I might as well do it now.

My mom married Glenn and moved at the same time I moved out (into my friend's garage), the summer before I went to college.  I grew up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which is a crappy former steel manufacturing town that has very little going for it and is mostly known for a flood that killed a few thousand people there in the late 19th century.  Now we live in Indiana, PA, about 45 minutes from Johnstown.  Indiana has a state university and in excess of one Indian restaurant, so it's less depressing.  I've only lived here over breaks from college, so it doesn't really feel like home to me.  I don't feel very nostalgic for Johnstown.  Practically no one I know lives there anymore.

On Saturday, I went out with Glenn and my teenage step-brother Stephen to the rail-to-trail and did a nice 26-mile ride.  It felt good, and it was a sweet goodbye to Willis Bike.

Sunday was the Mother's Day party.  Glenn grew up in rural northern Appalachia, and was raised to believe that the Second Coming would happen on a definite date before he was 25.  His dad, who's 81 and still the hardest man I've ever met, ran an unlicensed coal mine in the woods when times got rough.  He still works every day, doing repairs on cars, scrapping metal, and moving earth around the property.  Glenn tells a story - verified by other members of his family - about another backwoods clan who suffered congenital baldness and a peculiar speech defect, such that they could understand each other, but almost no one could understand them.  They called the patriarch of the family "Dutchy," because his defect was so incomprehensible that it sounded like Pennsylvania Dutch to outsiders.

Anyway, the party was really nice.  Glenn's sister, Sal, made the most incredible vegan pudding (avocado-based!) I have ever had the pleasure of eating.  They're all bright, fine people.  I'm always surprised by how accepting they are of me, despite how different I am.

This is an Asian Long-Horned Beetle captured by Glenn's brother Jeff.  Jeff works for the Government Extension Office.  This beetle is very damaging to hardwoods, and hasn't been identified in Cambria County yet, but that's where this one was caught.

Yesterday I realized that it would be a big mistake for me not to take a good number of books with me on this trip.  There will be long stretches where we won't have anything to do.   I'll want to take this time to catch up on some reading.  Jenna has a Kindle, which puts her ahead of the game.  I still need dead-tree books.  I bought a few books yesterday, and last night, posted on Facebook asking for recommendations.  The response was tremendous.  Unfortunately I have a limited budget and even more limited space, so I could really only add a few books from those recommendations.  This is probably a final list:

1. Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani.  I'm already halfway through this bizarre book of hyperstition; it came highly recommended by my friend Dan.
2. The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Jorgen Randers, Donella Meadows, and Dennis Meadows.
3. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.  I know nothing about this book other than that two of my best friends recommended it.
4. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin.
5. Ubik by Philip K. Dick.  There are two Philip K. Dick novels in this list; the sum total of my PKD reading is one of his early novels, which was okay but not spectacular.
6. Tristes Tropiques by Claud Levi-Strauss.
7. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.  I've never read Lolita.  
8. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  Despite my friend Owen's warning that Ender's Game is for fascists, it's a sci-fi classic I've been meaning to read.
9. Neuromancer by William Gibson.  I read another Gibson book recently and enjoyed it.
10. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick.
11. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.  Does it live up to the hype?

I got hustled by some smooth-talking Hare Krishna wearing a puka shell necklace.  I assume he stepped out of a time-machine from 1992, so his money is probably almost worthless in today's economy - I gave him a dollar for some miserable booklet about yoga.

I was also unable to deposit my insurance settlement check.  I have a terrible habit of keeping checks for a long time, laboring under the bizarre delusion that a check is safer as a physical quantity than a nebulous amount in a bank.  As such, this one - the big one, the check on which a great deal of my plans depend - exceeded the 90-day limit.  I'm a little frantic, even though I'm fairly sure my insurance company is bound  to reissue the check.

Given these two events, I am now $3,901 poorer than I expected to be today.

Jenna and I are planning on doing some backpacking this year.  We're doing at least one long trip - five days in the Olympic Peninsula - and hopefully some shorter trips.  We have framed backpacks from a trip my mom and I were going to do when I was a teenager, but never found time for.  Mom's backpack will probably just about fit Jenna; hopefully I haven't grown too much since high school and can use my pack.  We also have some of mom's old self-inflating sleeping pads and a packable propane stove.  Earlier in the year we bought some folding bowls, a plate/cutting-board, and some military surplus handled cups/bowls.

Tonight we tried to pick up some more backpacking-specific stuff we need.  We bought:

Marmot Limelight 2 backpacking tent.  I hope this isn't going to make Jenna too claustrophobic, because she'll, like, flail around and tear my hair out if it does.  Got a pretty good deal on it, and our friend Dylan has the same tent and says it's good.  But he's not halfway up a mountain dealing with Jenna freaking out about enclosures, is he?

Cheap foldable five-liter backpacking sink.  We'll have a two-compartment set-up for everyday dishes, but we'll have this little guy for long hikes.


Aluminum cookset.  We looked at higher-tech nesting sets, but online reviews suggested that the plastic on the strainer pot-lids often melted, and the included sink/pouches were pretty useless.  This set has what we need and nothing else.

We're also going to need sleeping bags, and we'll be putting together a First Aid kit and some other supplies in the last couple weeks here.

Weekly round-up:

On Friday, my college friend Elysia, who's now working at our upstate-New York alma mater, and my friend Jason, from New York City, came to Philadelphia to visit Jenna and I before we leave.  I met Jason after work on Friday to see Tragedy downtown.  We went to Trader Joe's with his friends and ran into Tony Pointless.  Lots of stage-diving, which is a neat trick when the stage is 18 inches off the floor.  A drunk guy kept collapsing into the pit and getting stepped on, so, in a surprising display of solidarity, a bunch of dudes lifted him up and crowd-surfed him to the back of the crowd.  Somehow I ended up getting stuck with him draped over my shoulders, so I propped him up against a pillar and left.  I'm pretty sure he soiled himself.  Tragedy played two covers for the encore - "Holocaust," by Crisis and Blitz' "Never Surrender."  Veri tuff.

Elysia and Jenna were at a gay club, so we headed there afterwards.  I've never been to a club before, nor a gay bar.  A guy kept taking off Jason's glasses and trying them on, or putting them back on Jason's face askew.  Totally weird night.  It was awesome seeing Elysia and Jason, both really fantastic people.

Saw the Liberty Bell and the Edgar Allen Poe house on Sunday with Elysia.  The Edgar Allen Poe house is probably the worst museum ever.  It's basically a very small house with unfurnished rooms and walls flaking probably lead-based paint, with very little in the way of exposition.  The shelves in the rooms were strewn with newspaper clippings, crappy art, and Poe poems on un-laminated printer paper.  Some of the clippings seemed connected in only the most tangential way to Poe - a story from a few years ago on the reality-TV-wannabes who claimed their kid had gotten swept away on a weather balloon, for instance, which, if I were to guess, is supposed to tie into the Poe "Balloon Hoax" story.  But it's a stretch.  The kitchen shelves contained nothing but a frankly terrifying stuffed orangutan and a half-full jar of molasses.

On Tuesday, I got the Professor to rap for me.  He tried several freestyles, each of which touched on his mother being a prostitute and shopping at the smack shack.  The Professor, whose real name is Tim, is a regular character/nuisance around Rittenhouse Square, distinguishable by a curious, round face, big glasses, and a predilection for ill-fitting suits.  He used to have a bunch of Einstein hair, but he's trimmed it down, for the hot weather, maybe.  The Professor describes himself as a photojournalist, and indeed, he has the rumpled, perma-drunk gonzo look nailed down quite flat.  You could easily imagine him wearing a fedora with a press pass stuck into the band.  I don't think he's homeless, nor obviously mentally ill, although his claim that he works for the New York Times is dubious at best, and he delights in telling customers that they're getting cancer from their plastic cups (before asking to borrow their cell phones).  After his rap he tried to convince me that the Russian army was going to stage a coup in the United States under the guise of an extraterrestrial attack, at the behest of the Rockefellers.

There are lawmakers right now discussing, as a legitimate political issue, whether or not it's okay to force doctors to stick a probe in a woman's vagina for no medical reason other than to shame her for trying to control her own body.  Why do people buy into power-behind-the-throne theories when the king is already getting away with murder?  Real life is scarier than conspiracy theories.

Last night, taking the trash out, I tried awkwardly to whistle, then yell to gain the attention of some friends of mine.  I did not succeed.  Moments later a trash bag lurched off the side of the can and exploded on the road.  It took upwards of twelve seconds to pick up the trash, which was irritating, but not as irritating as finding part of a coffee stirrer, carried down my arm on a rivulet of sticky coffee-dairy-sugar trash juice, stuck to my armpit.  Everything sucks.

I can't believe how soon we're leaving. It really snuck up on me. I guess I just kept thinking, "oh, we have a bunch of weeks, we have a good couple of weeks," and now I realize that my last day of work is next Friday, and then a week after that we're leaving Philadelphia to go to Boston to see my dad graduate. Then on June 10th, we leave.

I'm scared. I don't know why-- I guess I just don't know what to expect, and even though I do feel confident, I feel sure now that we will actually go, still I feel scared about what it's going to be like, will we have enough money, will the van break down before we even pass Michigan, etc etc etc. I'm nervous in this kind of generalized way and I'm not sure really what I'm nervous about, I feel like it has to be those specific things I mentioned about money and van problems etc, but I don't think that's it really. I think maybe it's just because it's so new! And because I am such a planner at heart, and though this trip is planned in a way, it's not planned the way I plan things. I can't obsess over details on this trip. I can't do any of the worrying habits I usually would fall into at this point. The way this trip is, it doesn't really work like that. I just have to let go, and realize that there's nothing at stake. Aram and I are finally in a place where things are certain, and we had stable jobs for awhile in Philadelphia, and we saved money, and we made plan for this trip, and now it's going to happen and I just have to stop worrying and stop trying to control everything and let go and just take the trip. And it'll be whatever it is.

I think this is something I really need. I really want to learn how to relax a little more and not worry so much about having everything under control. This trip is obviously a challenge for me since I tend to need to have every detail under control and I also tend to get super super worried very easily (ha! I'm sure if you're my family you already know that.) During the duration of the time we're on the road, I'm going to have to be flexible. Teach myself to let things go, to let plans change...that's a huge point of doing this, for me at least. I think I am very nervous because soon we will actually be living in this van and there will be no going back!

We are in really good shape as far as getting things ready goes, I think. Today I boxed up some more stuff which we will be taking back to Aram's mom's house this weekend-- his mixer, pedals, other music stuff. I also put some photos and art, notebooks, my tax forms, and other boring stuff in a box to take back to Boston with my parents when we eventually go there in June. We had these plastic drawers leftover from college with a bunch of random shit in them that I went through and cleaned out completely. We'll probably offer them to the guy moving into our house or just throw them away.

This weekend, we'll be taking mostly the rest of Aram's work clothes (save a few things for his last week), his music stuff, our bike trainer, Aram's bike, the rest of the art on our walls, and other odds and ends probably.

That basically leaves: several bags of clothes i've labeled "giveaway", our clothes that we're actually taking in the van, our bed, our dresser, our bedside table, my bike, my dad's bike rack that we've been borrowing, our fan, a giant amazing antique mirror, both of our computers, both of our cameras, a few books, my guitar, and about box's worth of random stuff that we will be taking in the van (mini word games/board games, plastic army issue drinking cups, a thermos, a foldable camping plate and a set of foldable camping bowls, my kindle, our passports, our trip planning notebook, my pens and sketchbook)

-The giveaway clothes are going to goodwill or something.
-Our bed is going to the guy who is moving into our house ( our friend max), he's going to buy that and the dresser.
-I'll offer him the bedside table for free (the knob is broken; it's from ikea :( if he doesn't want it, it'll just go in the trash)
-my bike and the bike rack will go home in the van (we'll have to take the bike apart I think)
-fan will stay in the house, we don't need it and it gets so hot here in the summer they will!
-the mirror will go to ambler, pa to my aunt's house, as she has a huge storage space and is kindly offering to store it for us as well as an awesome antique couch we bought awhile back that she is already storing
-the rest of it is coming with us.

That's really it. It's so weird to look around our room and see so little, and then when I walk into the living room and look around I realize basically everything there is our roommate's.

Anyway, this is a pretty boring post, but I wanted to kind of record where we're at. We leave Philadelphia in basically two and a half weeks. The last week we're here we're not going to be working, so we'll be taking care of loose ends like going through the pantry and figuring out what's our foodwise, helping to clean the house and get it ready for Max to move in, buying last minute stuff we need (first aid stuff, a camping "sink" for washing dishes, some more plastic/unbreakable dishes for eating off of, I need to buy some shorts...boring boring but necessary to take care of, cleaning out Aram's car)

And then we leave! Goddamn. We've talked about this trip for years. I think part of me never though we were actually going to take it.

A couple nice things I came across on the series of tubes at work today:

And:


Finally, this is the blog of a friend of mine from Bard, Ben Reed, who just finished up his travels through Asia and the Middle East, including the Birthright trip, which is something that Jenna and I are hoping to do before we age out.  His photos and experiences are very cool.  I've been enjoying reading through it.

Well, this has little to do with the van trip, but I wanted to write it anyway! It's been a long, long road of training for me as a runner. I started in the winter not being able to run 1 1/2 miles without stopping to walk, completely winded and incapable. I slacked off for some periods, I worked hard for others, I felt inadequate and incapable and strong and ready all at once, but it's over! I've been training since Christmas, really, I only started running at Christmas, but it's over today! (not running! just the race I started running for). I finished the Broad Street Run (10 miles) in 1:55:06, with NO WALK BREAKS! This is a very, very big deal for me, as the longest run I had gone on prior to this race was 8.3 miles, and the longest I had ever run in one go without stopping for a walk break was only 6.5 miles. I had an average of about 11:31 minute mile, which is much faster than my usual 12:00 minute mile, and I think I negative split the race (my dad was tracking me and said I picked up the pace pretty continuously from mile 3 onwards)

I am very happy with my effort and time today, and the race itself was really fun. It was very hard at times, but I went through periods of feeling really bad and then feeling pretty good and strong. My lungs and chest felt very capable and strong the entire run, which was awesome. My legs were very sore by the end and even now my knees are quite sore, but I know it'll pass. Gotta get some ice on them!

I am going to keep running. I will be trying to run as much as I can on our trip when we are in safe areas, and building my strength with hiking and other activities. Based on our plan/trajectory, we will most likely be in California by mid September of this year. I have a wonderful aunt who lives out there who is a serious runner (much more serious than me) and I am going to ask her to do a half-marathon with me if there's one around her area around that time! That's the next goal. She just ran one recently so it won't be a huge deal for her but I would love to run one with her! But for now I'm going to ice up, rest up, drink a bunch of rye, and have a great dinner tonight. I'll rest a week before running again probably! I am incredibly sore. But man it's worth it! I feel awesome.

In van news, I sent basically the last of my stuff home with my parents this weekend, who came from Boston to see me run! I am now down to really just some knicknacks, the clothes I'm taking in the van, a few books, and the clothes I need for work between now and when we leave. We also have decided on a farm in Michigan we're going to work at from about June 30th to July 21st. I talked to the mom and the daughter and they sound like lovely people and the farm is going to be great to work at. It feels really nice to have that kind of set in place.

These super-long workdays are killing me.  The crazy thing is, when all's said and done, my check-stubs say I work less than 60 hours a week, which is way less than what some people work regularly.  I'm not sure if I'd be able to keep it up indefinitely, and I'm glad I don't have to find out.

Jenna and I have been getting in contact with WWOOF farms in Michigan, for late June or early July, and in Washington and Oregon, for early September.  I think we've got our first stay booked, but until it's less tentative, I'll hold off on posting details.  The prospects are exciting, and having almost two months free of gas, rent, and food costs makes this sojourn seem more manageable.

Jenna and I have talked a lot about food in the van.  I'm vegan, and Jenna is vegetarian.  What can we eat that is cheap, reasonably nutritive, requires minimal cooking and preparation, and stays good without refrigeration for extended periods?  This is obviously a pretty difficult list of requirements, and there are almost no foods that satisfy all of them.  We do have a refrigerator in the van, but since we won't be plugging into RV sites most of the time, I doubt we'll have enough battery reserves to run it for very long.  Instead, I think we'll freeze Blue Ice packs when we have access to a freezer, and use the fridge as a cooler.

I think that we're going to find out what does and doesn't work through practice.  It's tough to tell in advance, but here are some of the foods I think we're going to rely on in the van, in addition to some basics (spices, salts, sugar, a couple basic sauces/bases, flour, coffee, oil):

•  Fresh fruits and vegetables.  We just have to be judicious and buy only what we can eat in a day or two.  The best types will probably be fruits, salad greens, spinach, carrots, and celery, because they can be eaten raw.  Onion, garlic, yams, corn, and potatoes can be kept unrefrigerated.  We'll eat a lot of dark leafy greens like kale and swiss chard, because they're very good for you and require pretty minimal cooking.  Tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, peppers, eggplant, cabbage, beets, and squash will make less frequent appearances. 
• Vitamins.  Off the top of my head, I think we're going to need calcium, vitamin D, acidophilus, probably iron, and generic EmergenC packets.
• Dried beans and lentils.  By using various types of beans, I'm hoping to keep from getting too sick of them.  The major downside is that reconstituting beans requires the forethought of soaking them for hours.  Lentils require much less time, and can pretty quickly turn into soup bases.
• Instant rice.  Crucial for our situation, because it doesn't have to be boiled for very long. 
• Peanut butter.  Keeps indefinitely, lots of protein, delicious.
• Jelly. 
• Canned foods.  Chickpeas, especially, but probably also canned beans as instant taco-stuffers, vegetarian baked beans, refried beans, green beans, tomatoes, canned spinach (if I can learn to stomach it), duck-style seitan, peas, and corn.
• Nutritional yeast.  I put this on every damn thing.  Lots of B-vitamins and it's delicious. 
• Whole-wheat pasta will probably be an occasional treat, at best, because even spaghetti has to boil for three or four minutes, plus then you have the issue of what to put on it.  Jarred pasta sauce only keeps as long as it's sealed, and then there's more in the jar than you can use on one pound of pasta.  Canned sauce has similar challenges, plus, ugh, canned sauce.
• Rice noodles, on the other hand, can be put in not-quite-boiling water for like a minute and a half and they're good to go.  Could probably whip up a somewhat passable peanut sauce with peanut butter, soy sauce, Hoisin sauce, water, sugar, garlic, and hot sauce, none of which need to be refrigerated.  Add broccoli (cooked with the noodles?), onion, and bell pepper and you have a stir-fry.  Alternately, by preparing a simple broth with miso paste, you can have a basic noodle soup.
• We may use more "exotic" grains like bulgur and quinoa on occasion.
• Clif Bars.  A single Clif bar and a piece of fruit is usually enough for me for breakfast, and they pack 10g of protein each (20, for the marginally more expensive Builder Bars), and if you buy them in boxes, they cost like $.75 each.
• Jenna will probably eat yogurt, and maybe goat cheese on occasion.
• Instant oatmeal.  Fibery, filling, cheap.
• Vegetable broth in Tetra Paks.  This makes sense in case we're somewhere without access to municipal water, and can't/don't want to use the van's tank.  You can use it to cook rice or beans in, and it only improves the flavor.  Even pasta, in a pinch.  Coffee, not as much.
• Instant soups.  While I'm sure we'll eat a little Nissin Oriental ramen, I'm thinking more of health-food-store soup cups, canned soups, and Annie Chun's-type noodle bowls.  These are more expensive, but are also a little healthier (depending on the product).
• Tortillas.  Mushroom tacos, tempeh tacos, bean tacos.  Sometimes I just heat them up with peanut butter on them.
• Whole wheat or multigrain bread and bagels.  We're especially partial to the hippie-dippy and surprisingly cheap sprouted-grain loaves available in Philadelphia, but I'm not counting on being able to obtain similar products in, say, North Dakota.  
• Tempeh.  It needs to be refrigerated, but it's too healthy to ignore.  Can be cooked over a fire, or sauteed.
• Tofu, for use in stir-fries.  Same deal as tempeh.  We'll probably spring for processed vegan sausages and hot dogs once in a while, for cooking over campfires.
• Snacks: dried fruits, nuts (especially the Emerald brand cocoa-roasted almonds), trail mixes, Peanut Chews, Tings, Jolly Ranchers.