We left Philadelphia on Saturday morning in my car.  Jenna had been out very late at a farewell party thrown by her co-workers.  It was truly touching to see what an impact she's had on her workplace.  Jenna is a thoughtful, careful, and kind person, and it's evident in how sad her colleagues were to see her go that these qualities show up in everything she does.  I left earlier than her, but neither of us got enough sleep.  In Kingston, we met up with our friend Elysia and had lunch at a really excellent, cheap Salvadorian restaurant.  We made it to the N by dinner-time.

The weather wasn't so great while we were in the Adirondacks, but it was really nice to read and spend some time with my parents.  We had a great time.  Although I'm sure I've gone more than six months without seeing my parents, it feels different to say goodbye to them on the cusp of this possibly-dangerous venture.

Jenna and I both got an opportunity to drive the van on the rainy and deserted roads of the Adirondacks.  It demands attention; you can't zone out while driving it.  Because it's so tall, it's vulnerable to crosswinds, and the handling feels more "analog" than the Subaru station wagon I'd driven during college.  I found it to be kind of fun to drive once I relaxed and got a feel for it.

The van does have some problems.  A few of the electrical systems only work when it's plugged into an external power source.  We know these systems worked in the past, so there's either a switch we can't find, or an element in the wiring (maybe the power inverter) is bad.  The appliances that don't work include the ceiling ventilation fan and the auxiliary air conditioner.  The good news is that our first move is north, and judging by the weather we've encountered in the Adirondacks and in Boston, we won't be needing the fan or the A/C.  The heater works.  We might see if we can do without, at least for a while, to spare ourselves an expensive trip to an RV specialty mechanic.

On Monday, our van packed and ready, we left for Jenna's hometown of Sharon, Massachusetts via Google Maps' "avoid highways" route.  This was advantageous because it was fewer miles at lower speeds, which equates to better fuel efficiency.  It was supposed to take 5 hours and 40 minutes; it took 6 hours and 45 minutes.  The van is slow.

Today, Jenna and I watched Fresh Prince episodes while doing laundry.  Jenna had plans to stay overnight with friends in Cambridge.  I drove her to the train station, and then went to hang out with my good friend Dan, who's moving today to Northampton.  We walked in the woods behind his house for a few hours.  I hope Dan will be a lifelong friend.  I value his conversation and company greatly.  After he left, I went back and talked graduate school and psychology with Jenna's parents.

Already I finished Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and am now well into The Dispossessed. 

Jenna and I are trying to leave Philadelphia at 8:30 tomorrow.  We're stopping at our alma mater for a couple hours in the afternoon before proceeding to The N.  The N is a collection of cabins on a lake in the Adirondack Mountains where we're meeting my mom and stepdad.  My mom's family used to spend time there in the summer when she was a little girl, fifty years ago or more.  Most of the people who stay at the N  have, like my mother, two or three generations of memories there.  We'll be staying with them through the 5th, when we trade my station wagon for the van and drive to Jenna's family home near Boston.

The last week has been a lazy flurry of saying goodbye to friends, packing things up, buying supplies, and burning CDs.  We are tying together the loose ends of our lives here in Philadelphia.

I think we've done pretty well at getting outfitted and packed.  The car is full, and our room is empty, which is a good sign.  I know it's too early to declare a total victory.  There's still plenty of time for an "oh shit" realization that we left, I don't know, the tent or something behind in Philadelphia.

Most of the problems we've run into have resulted from procrastination.

Last night I almost had a stroke trying to find my passport.  It turns out that it had accidentally gotten packed in with some stuff I took home the other week, and luckily I managed to get in touch with my mom before she left to meet us in the Adirondacks.

Some of the things I bought haven't come yet, which is a bummer.  I'm down a couple books, which, unfortunately, aren't worth the cost of having them mailed to me at some checkpoint down the road.  We're also leaving more of our things in the apartment than we probably planned to.  My roommates can have them.

We bought some things on the internet - sleeping bags and bear spray, I think - which we had mailed to Jenna's house.  Will those come in time?

I ended up taking different clothes than I planned on.  The aluminum cookset still hasn't come - but the backpacking stove my mom lent us has a pot and pan.  I didn't check in with my insurance company to double-check that they sent the settlement money to Jenna's house - they didn't (I guess that's mostly on them, though, since I'd talked to them about it).  I don't know if the forwarding address I'm setting up will redirect the check to Massachusetts in time.

I didn't beat Secret of Mana :(

The expected moment of clarity still hasn't come.  Maybe it will sink in on our way to the Adirondacks that we're now homeless and we're actually doing it.  For months, it's all been little steps, small processes that are culminating in this weird adventure.  I don't have traction on this experience yet.

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.