Road Trip – Page 2 – Open (Open (Close)

Pilgrimages

September 9, 2009 4 Comments

All I want in life right now is a road trip. Seven years ago (wait, what?) my roommate Emily and her boyfriend and I used our spring break to drive from New York to Chicago to Memphis — and all of those years since, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me what the happiest picture of me is located, because I knew I could immediately point them here.

Jurvis was away for a week, so I went through all of our closets and hiding spaces, and tried to dispose of anything I owned that I didn’t actually want or need. I burned all of my CDs to my iPod and dropped them off at the door of the Goodwill. I went through paperwork, old shoes, books and magazines. Five grocery bags of useful things I didn’t actually use, two garbage bags of detritus I had simply allowed to accumulate.

And I tried to create a semblance of the life I wanted to lead, to clear the cobwebs and fill a scrapbook of everything I had liked.

Full roadtrip album: here.

Road Trip

Flea Market Finds

July 20, 2009 1 Comment

Jurvis and I visited his family in Connecticut this weekend, and when other plans fell through (ocean! summer homes! sunburns!), I went with his sister and parents to the weekend Moosup flea market. It was the second flea market I’d ever been to; also, the first in around ten years.

First score: the Agfa Optima Compura.

It was listed as twenty dollars. I have haggled just once before in my life at the age of twelve; this event was unsuccessful in lowering the price of a rusted tin lunch box, but was very nearly successful in causing me to flee the city in shame. I put on a determined face.

Oh hello new friend. (Larger.)

“. . . I would give you fifteen dollars for this,” I said. (Best to keep it simple.)

“Okay!” they said.

The wee, Chris-Ware-like faces are my favorite part. (Larger.)

The bad news is, it may or may not function as a camera. The good news is, I found out what the “magic release button” does (that’s literally the technical term), and I want one, everywhere.

Second score: some book by John Updike I apparently should have heard of. Fifty cents. (I can’t believe I didn’t try to talk her down from that. I was on a roll! I’ll give you forty!)

This is probably like that Sting song (Larger.)

It was nestled in a box of bodice-rippers. I think someone was tricked into reading something good.

Other things flea markets can offer you: the complete collection of The Babysitters’ Club books, a Rice Krispie Treat maker, porcelain teddy bears in top hats, ancient televisions, decorative mirrors, somebody else’s robe, pizza.

Dear Diary, Road Trip

Postcards From Danbury

July 9, 2009 No Comments

The Fourth of July is wonderful, because it makes us all feel like children. Children who drink and endanger their lives with fire, but still, a variety of children — and everything is awe-inspiring, and everyone is invincible, and there are only board games and rice krispie bars and a pontoon ride around the lake at night, snuggled under blankets and cooing “oooo. Ahhhhhh.”

Full album from Wisconsin adventures here.

My cousins are currently scattered around the continent (with one representative in Japan: he joined us via Skype), but we decided to have our own family reunion last weekend. Some of them I’d played with endlessly as children; some of them I’d never met, but all of them felt like strangers at first. Even Elizabeth, Rob and Colin — I hadn’t seen them since I was ten or twelve. Who were these strange adults? Why did they somehow look so familiar? Paige and I pulled up to Gate 6 at the MSP airport, and I waved my arms out the window like an octopus.

They all smiled and came running — partly because there had been a security breach and they’d been standing there for hours, but also because it was wonderful to see each other again.

We all crammed in the car, headed North.

Road Trip

Postcards From Block Island

May 22, 2009 No Comments

We’d taken a Friday ferry in and had spent the evening chasing a glow-in-the-dark frisbee on the beach, the ocean pushing in and pulling away, wet stones rattling like long-buried skeletons. Everything was quiet and fading except for us. I disappeared briefly through the tall grasses to explore a pile of discarded bridges in the hazy parking lot, taking pictures of soda machines.

Every morning and night a translucent white fog would envelop the island, and I would declare to no one in particular “isn’t that beautiful?” or “why don’t we buy that abandoned lighthouse” or “I’d paint all the doors red.”

Full album of Block Island adventures here.

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