Wanderlust Chronicles - Episode One

    
           I'm going through one of the roughest patches of cabin fever I've had in a long while. I just feel like I have got to get out of here. The worst thing about that is I have less than no money to do this with. So if staying here is my only option I've decided to re-live the biggest trips I've taken in the last year or so. I'm not going to post all the pictures (there are literally thousands) but maybe 3 for each won't be overdo-ing it. I mean, I'll try to keep it under control, but I make no promises. Oh yea, and I'll be going in reverse, so backwards in time...cue twilight zone music.

The Semi-Professional Triangle Player (or Planes, Trains and Automobiles) - Road Trip to DC

              So one of my best friends is working in DC at the capitol. She's been living there for over a year now without a car. So in April she decided to come home to Arkansas, get her car, and then drive it back out to DC. Her mom didn't want her to go by herself so she called and asked me if I would be willing to ride out there with her and then fly back after spending a day or two in DC. She said everything would be taken care of as long as I could pay for my own meals. Now I like to think I have a few wild hairs but I haven't done any superbly spontaneous things in quite some time. Still the next morning I was in the car ready to hit the road. Let me just say here that road trips are a big step in a friendship. One of two things will happen, you can bond deeply and strengthen the friendship ten fold, or you can learn how crappy their taste in music is and the deafening silence for hours on end will remind you just how little you have in common, bringing down your union like the crucial block in jenga game. My friends, on the whole, things could not have gone more wrong. Little did we know that the day we would try to leave the entire state of Tennessee (which is the majority of the drive) would flood (God: 1, Mae and Elaine: 0). 

This was day two (after most of the flooding) but the traffic was still crunk.

Gas station-guarding Tiger saying whats up.

              We were detoured from the highway FIVE times, and even the roads we were re-routed to had fast, deep currents of water pouring across them (which we unfortunately did not get pictures of because we were frantically trying to keep her car from getting swept down-stream, but trust me, it was the craziest flooding I've seen in person). Most people would think we would consider this trip a fail...but we had the time of our lives. We laughed, we cried (mostly from laughing), and we screamed bloody murder while forging rivers like we were on the damn Oregon Trail. It was seriously intense, and although we took over 11 hours to get to our first destination (which should have been 6 hours away on a regular day) and talked to handfuls of cops in the rain, we remained positively jolly about the whole thing. 

Elaine is a master of the air guitar arts.

              The next day ended up going off without a hitch and we saw World's Largest Guitar, Foamhenge, and some of the most beautiful countryside in the States while going through Virginia. When I got to DC I toured the capitol building (which I was escorted to via the underground tunnel which connects it to other buildings - how La Dee Da!) and lots of museums (the Native American one was my favorite) and road my first train on the way to the airport in Maryland when I basically got out of her car, pivot stepped, and came right back home. 

I must own some of these before I die.

                                                                                                                                            

  Modern Day Totem Poles                      Gas Can with Hole Punches

In the native arts gallery there was this awesome series called Strange Comfort by Brian Jungen.

I really like the tribal masks made out of sports stuff. (Especially the air jordan one!!!)

             If someone had told me that DC would have much worse humidity than here in the South, I would have never believed them, and I would have been so so so wrong. It was so thick I felt like I was swimming through the air. Let me tell you, after about the fourth museum on foot I was no pretty site to behold. At night we would sit out on the porch (it was just slightly cooler than indoors because their AC was on the fritz) and we'd watch trannys (she didn't exactly live in the safest part of town lol) chase other boys down the streets soliciting them. I'm always so surprised that they are much more catty than most women I know. It was also really entertaining to see how their look would change from day time to night time, what a transformation. Now be assured, I don't really have anything against them (save my complete dislike for all clear plastic heels). You know, different strokes and all... It was just all kinds of fascinating to me. The one (openly) cross-dressing man (I'm not sure if he's taken the surgical plunge) that lives in my town is almost a celebrity...its just so rare around here.  Anyways, even with how crazy our trip out was, I have to say that getting there was much more fun than being there. For how terrible it should have been, we had a truly amazing time driving out there, and now I think we can safely say that our friendship is Road Trip Proof...but I guess we kind of knew that already. I sort of love her to pieces.