We didn't end up backpacking at all, unfortunately.  I woke up with a stomach bug, which Jenna started feeling a few hours later.  It seems to just have been a 24-hour thing, but the result was that we were in no shape to hike.  So, we're just going to try to do the hike in Iceland without the benefit of overnight experience.  I feel pretty confident in our equipment at this point, and if we can't make it for four whole days, then I guess we'll do it as long as we can and catch a bus back to Reykjavik.  It's not remote, it's not dangerous, and I need to remind myself that I'm probably getting my jimmies rustled for no reason.

To catch up: before we left Pennsylvania, Jenna and I were conscripted to pick blueberries with my mom and step-aunt.  The three of us together picked like 24 pounds in a couple of hours and it was a lot of fun.  Later in the week, my mom took Jenna and I to Pittsburgh, along with my step-sister, Gwen, for the purpose of partaking in the joys of Kennywood, western Pennsylvania's biggest and best amusement park.  We were treated to a really remarkable meal at the deceptively humble-looking Coriander.  I feel like it takes a lot to impress my jaded Indian food sensibilities, but I was impressed with the expansive regionally-divided menu, especially the Indian Chinese section, constituted by Chinese food as interpreted through the Indian subcontinental palette.  Probably in my top 5 Indian meals.  Kennywood was fun, and since we arrived early on a weekday, it was relatively uncrowded.  It was cool to spend some time with Gwen, who I don't see very often, and my mom also seemed to have a really good time.  Kennywood has built some new rides since I was there last, notably the Sky Rocket, which takes all of 11 seconds and goes from zero to 500 mph in 2.6 picoseconds and puts you through 15 loops, or something.  It was real cool.

We drove to Jenna's place near Boston a few days later.  I've been working on a short story, playing video games, and reading A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava, incidentally one of the finest pieces of fiction I've ever laid hands on.  Jenna's been vegan-baking up a storm - challah (regular and pesto), apple cider donuts, hamentashen, scones.  We've been getting the last of our shopping for Europe done here, as well.  Jenna's friend Mariana accompanied us to Nantasket Beach last Thursday.




It was a strange day to go to the beach - the coolest day in a week at least, and kind of gray. On the plus side, it was much less crowded than it would've been on a nicer day.  We all swam a little, despite the less-than-tropical water temperature.

Jenna's parents took us into Boston to see the Institute of Contemporary Art.  A lot of the galleries are closed for renovation right now.  They gave us each an extra ticket, but with us leaving on Tuesday, it's unlikely we'll see the rest of it.  There was a non-permanent Josiah McElheny exhibition on display, and a couple of permanent galleries open, where picture-taking was prohibited.  McElheny's whole thing is an obsessive interest in infinity and astronomy, represented principally through the use of glass and mirrors.

Josiah McElheny, Early Modernism Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely.  Count the skinny jeans reflected in the frame.

McElheny's Drawings and Photographs for a Chandelier, 1965.  This is not my picture; I was unable to get decent photos of this piece, but it was on display at the ICA.  I liked the complex-yet-clean diagrams on the top quite a bit.

Jenna and her mother, Tracey

I cut off my dreadlocks last night.  After months of debating with myself about it, I decided I was being stupid about the whole thing and just did it.  I'm not sure if I feel better about it or not.  I've come to realize that I want to impress someone with how punk I look much less frequently than I want to interact without an off-the-bat handicap with normal people.  I've never been interested in the same things as those around me, but giving visual expression to this feeling of difference isn't what punk means to me any more.  At least, it's something I want to be able to put away sometimes (besides my tattoos, with which I'm still happy).  Anyway, I have a job, an apartment, shower regularly, and don't drink - who am I kidding by looking like a squatter?  I wrote a post on my personal blog a while ago about my former habit of being absolutely filthy, and how it related to my psychological inability or unwillingness to partake in the ordinary pleasures of life.  I think that dressing punk is another symptomatic expression of this neurosis.  I've spent a lot of time wearing spikes, sometimes literally, to guard myself against - well, I'm not sure.  If, by looking different, I avoided putting myself in the misery of social interaction, then I risked nothing and lost nothing.  This isn't very healthy, of course, because risking nothing, you also gain nothing.  In this light, cutting my dreadlocks off is part of a long thaw, wherein I end up looking like a real boy, rather than a Mike Brodie subject.


Huge shout-out to this vegan Nutella-type-stuff found in the Shaw's kosher foods aisle.  It truly is a bright morning.

Briefly, we taking a two-day hiking trip tomorrow - the first time for Jenna and I.  To be honest, I feel that we're in over our heads with the four-day hikes we have planned for Europe.  We should have done this sooner, but things didn't work out in our favor.  Anyway, we're doing it now, with impossibly huge full packs, supposedly representative of the equipment we would take to the Laugavegur hike.

The question, to me, is this: if we didn't pack for multi-day hiking, how much easier would it make the rest of our trip?  The answer, I'm unhappy to report, is: not much.  We could dispense with the camp stove, sleeping pads, and tent: maybe 10 pounds of stuff, spread between the two of us (for the purposes of the backpacking trips, we also have food, but we wouldn't be carrying this around from city to city, so I'm not considering that part).  True, our packs would be less bulky.  Somehow most people backpack through Europe with regular backpacks; I don't think that Jenna or I have anything extraneous, and yet it's a struggle to get everything into our super-size packs.  I've even looked through suggested packing lists for hostel-to-hostel student travelers, and, if anything, we're carrying less stuff than recommended.

We'll see how tomorrow and Wednesday pan out.  I really want this aspect of our trip to work, but I may have procrastinated too long, or overestimated my skill and strength.  I'm still really pulling for our hikes to work, but I want to balance it with realistic expectations of what I can (and am willing) to carry around for the next three months.

More about our visits to our respective homes to come.

Nothing represents America like men with facial hair driving cars into each other at speed.  Recognizing this truth, Indiana, Pennsylvania's civic leaders wisely planned a demolition derby to celebrate Independence Day.  It was an orgiastic display of raw hydrocarbon power, a defiant showcase of our nation's willingness to take rugged individualism to its reckless extreme.  A no-rules, no-strategy expression of all the brutality implied by motor transport.  The demolition derby forsakes all notions of restraint and economy - we don't donate cars for cancer research, not in my America.  It was a beautiful spectacle.

I didn't get a chance to photograph it, but the hood of the car read "TEAM JESUS."  I'm not even kidding

We've spent our time in Pennsylvania planning for our trip in Europe and watching the Discovery Channel.  On Monday, Jenna and I worked out a loose itinerary at Caffe Amadeus, Indiana's high-end coffee shop, which is, bizarrely, outfitted in Baroque Austro-Hungarian decor and constantly filled with the symphonies of Mozart.  It's the sort of wildly unorthodox establishment that could only arise from the earnest, dedicated, and disparate passions of a true eccentric.  Indiana is lucky to have it.  The planning was not easy going, but we persevered well into the afternoon, and crossed a lot off our list.  By the time we left I think we hardly wanted to punch each other in the nose at all.

On further investigation, we decided that we aren't going to attempt the full Tour du Mont Blanc.  Primarily, it's too expensive, but I have the the additional complication of veganism.  Most hikers eat and sleep in the chalets along the trail, which serve quaint, meat-laden alpine cuisine.  Coq au vin and hot toddies being not much of a draw for me, I would have to rely on the unlikely hope that the towns along the route offer plant-based freeze-dried or vacuum-packed food.  Besides, our time in Europe is limited, and spending almost two weeks in the Alps would rob us of time elsewhere.  We're thinking of doing a four-day segment of the Tour, from Courmayeur in northern Italy to Les Houches, France.  This guy (David Preston) did this hike, in the more-favored clockwise direction, in 2003 (at age 60+).  His pictures are staggeringly beautiful, which makes me excited.

The Iceland flight worked out even better than expected.  Elysia's coupon code gave us not one, but two round-trip tickets.  We are thinking about doing a four-day hike there, Laugavegur.  It might not be possible, because we'll have to gear up for cold and wet weather (even in August), which might require packing more clothes than we'll want to schlep around continental Europe.  Additionally, our schedule leading up to the hike leaves little time to recuperate from jet-lag, and we might be exhausted.  We booked hostels in Reykjavik for the first and last nights.  If we decide not to attempt the Laugavegur, we can CouchSurf there.

Our Megabus tickets to Amsterdam and our first WWOOF stint, about 50 miles out of the city, are booked.  A 20-hour ride of guaranteed misery will convey us to the land of wooden shoes and lax social mores after we spend a week with my aunt and uncle in Edinburgh.  Our next hurdle is finding a CouchSurfer to host us for a few days in Amsterdam proper - we've sent out a few requests, and as yet have no replies.

I spent much of the day yesterday making cashew cheese, a massive food-science undertaking, and considerably expensive to boot.  My efforts yielded a really decent product, however, and I'm pleased overall.  The difficulty and price were both affected by my choice - utterly confusing, in retrospect - to make about two pounds of "cheese," half of which went immediately into the freezer.

It's one thing to recognize that traditional macho-masculinity is a fraud, and another thing entirely to be able to accept that, on a day some men are wrecking cars into each other, you fucked up the process of homemade non-dairy cheese.

Giant manta rays are amazing. They look like nothing a human mind could reasonably conceive of, save childen's nightmarish creations of the strange thing pushed into the dark in their closet, or under the bed. So cool. Also the vampire squid.

Aram and I are sitting in his mother's condo in Pittsburgh after a very long and really quite productive day of Europe-trip-planning, watching Planet Earth. Not only is there a television here (quite the novelty in itself, as neither of us has ever had a television in any house we've lived in since graduating high school), but there is free OnDemand, and most importantly, there are many, many episodes of Planet Earth. It's comfortable here. Both of the chairs we are sitting in lean back, and have a place to rest your feet.

Coming home to a house is strange but welcome. It's not my house, but I am making myself at home here. It's very nice, and Anne welcomed us to feel at home here while we're staying here (just a few days for fun) while she's in Montana. Even though Aram and I were only on the road for about 12 days, it felt like quite a bit longer. I think partially this is because our days began early and felt full, which is a good thing. Coming home to the van did start to feel familiar, in a way. Unfortunately, I didn't develop quite the fondness for it I think I might have, had it not caused us so many problems.

The fullness of days is something I've started thinking about. Like Aram has mentioned, this disappointment of a beginning to our trip was so very devastating in part because it was hard to feel as though we had taken anything away from it-- a lesson, perhaps, or a certainty of how to improve upon things next time. The failure felt pointless, and as if we had gained nothing from it. This is a difficult feeling to come to terms with.

However, recently I have begun to see some of the positives I can take away from this experience (besides the obvious of the beautiful places we did get to visit, the places we swam and hiked, the people we spent time with). Several times when the van broke down, we were, as mentioned, kindly allowed to spend the night parked in the garage parking lot, next to the mechanic. We had to be up and out early so work could begin. Similarly, when we were sleeping in the van in "unofficial" places, we tried to wake up early and get out and begin our days.  We spent all day walking, moving, seeing things. Seeking out places to swim, or even just a pleasing place to set up our camp stove later for dinner. On the days we hiked, we hiked hard, sweating in the heat and climbing fairly steep inclines. We cooked food for ourselves that was good for us and simple to prepare, but tasted so delicious after a full day of movement, of activity. The time we didn't spend moving we spent writing for this blog, and reading.

The point is that when I went to bed, I felt like the beginning of the day was far away, like I had filled the day to a point of personal satisfaction. It has been a little jarring (and even sad, perhaps) to realize that this is basically an unfamiliar feeling, and one I think I've been after for quite some time, but have been unable to even come close to capturing.

I used to be a very lazy person, I think-- at least in the realm of physical activity. I liked to go out and walk around, and I certainly enjoyed organizing things and doing things, but 8th grade rec basketball was the last time I liked moving around, and even then I think I was self-conscious of sweating. I also had a really, really terrible haircut that made my face look like a potato which my cruel family somehow neglected to talk me out of, and my glasses were always a little bit crooked. Playing basketball in them most likely didn't help. I refused to wear sports goggles because I deemed them "uncool" (as if I was really held at such an esteemed level in the first place), and I was too much of a wimp to figure out contacts. The point is, I think I liked basketball, but I never felt comfortable. The result of this was that I spent all of high school hiding in theater, not really a theater kid, but not really comfortable anywhere else.

I got vaguely interested in fitness and health a short while after I got very interested in cooking. I joined a gym, but it still felt unnatural, like I was forcing something. I started running less than a year ago-- that felt good. Unexpectedly good. And then, on this trip, I realized something. I want to spend my days moving around. Hiking all day, walking around all day-- this feels good. It must seem like such a stupid revelation, but to me it is a very important change. I feel good sweating, and I feel better sweating

This trip to Europe gives me another place to challenge myself to just fill my days with movement, activities, to feel like I've earned my sleep when night falls. I think I let my job, and the way it made me feel (namely, utterly and completely emotionally drained) allow me to slip into a kind of sad, submissive existence that I am not altogether proud of. Yes, I went out and did things, but mostly I just sat around.

I think I understand now what I want that isn't that. I'm excited to take this trip, but more than that I'm excited to learn more about the things I'm interested in-- traveling, hiking, exploring cool and interesting places, things I want to photograph, things I want to remember. I want to write more and read more. All of these things I will do during this trip (and more! working, farming, learning about food and agriculture and canning and building things), but the point is that I want to learn how to continue doing them when I return. I want to be more proactive with filling my days with projects. I want to feel proud of what I've done at the end of every day.

This is something which I guess I sort of "knew" in an unconscious sense before we took this van trip in that I knew I wasn't really happy most of the time, and that I felt dissatisfied with my life. I liked hanging out with friends, but that was all I did. I worked, and I hung out with friends. My job made me tense, anxious, and sad (though all the wonderful people I worked with made me feel quite the opposite), and when I got home I desired nothing. I had no creative energy. But that was as far as my understanding of myself went.

So, I am happy to feel at last that I can name something tangible that I took away from this van trip, even though it was ultimately a failure. I understand now why I felt dissatisfied with my days, with my life before, and I understand what I want out of it now and in the future. It's the simple thing of filling my days with things I am proud of. During this trip, that might mean hiking, seeing new places, meeting new people, writing and taking pictures, keeping up with this blog (a little better than I have been! I admit the depressing circumstances had me feeling silent for awhile), reading and thinking about what I'm reading. While we're WWOOFing, that means working hard all day at whatever task I am assigned, and doing my best. It means in my free time going out and exploring the area, interacting with my hosts and other workers, being social, sharing the things I know and trying to learn from other people.

When we return, it will mean coming up with projects for myself. Continuing to read and write. Learn to actually play my guitar. That kind of thing.

Man I guess it's kind of pathetic, to simply have the ambition to have ambition, but for me, it's a good start. Understanding why I felt unhappy and knowing what I have to do to change it-- that's great. I'll take it, in any case.