Day One: Travels With Sharley

We have deemed Day One a success. We went to bed last night incompletely packed, sunburned, and muscle-sore (thanks, basketball in the park!) but woke up this morning with a few hours of sleep under our belts and just enough energy to shuffle to the car, scoot the car into the traffic circle, and plop ourselves onto the fabled Pacific Coast Highway. All of this, and only 2 hours off schedule!

As we passed through La Cochita (a little house-cluster a few miles south of Santa Barbara), Mike said: "Why would anyone even try and argue that anything's better than California?" And, though I may be singing a different tune at the end of our Mike-and-SharTour, I have to agree. We're only about halfway through the state and we've already seen a head-spinning display of diverse and spectacular beauty. From the muddy, muddy slopes of Malibu to the coastal wineries and lettuce fields... we're not unaware of how lucky we are to be Californians. Look at what 6 and a half hours of good hard driving can show us!


The reason for staying in Salinas, of course, should be obvious: it's Steinbeck country. After checking into our hotel, we went straight to the National Steinbeck Center and paid our discounted ticket rate (friends, don't ever throw away your student ID cards!). What a cool place. The main exhibit, of course, is about John Steinbeck's life and work, focusing on his ties to Monterey County. The Center's only 10 years old, and the exhibit is modern and innovative to prove it.

The real gem of the Center was the exhibit tying in to Salinas' choice for The Big Read, a national event trying to bring literacy back into American culture. The book is Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and there are many really cool events going on here, including a program wherein participants name and defend the one book that they would save. At the Center, there's the Walking Through the Book exhibit, which artistically portrays scenes from the book while highlighting the importance of knowledge and free thought in a highly awesome way.


Today we listened to: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (Modest Mouse), Going Somewhere (Colin Hay), "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade" by The Decemberists, and "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show (thrice).

Mystery ask-us-about-it-when-we-get-home words for today: "giant painted people"

Don't forget to check out Mike's blog: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

On Shoes

When I was very small, I wore very small sandals. My favorite zori were light blue ones, with a rainbow and the word "Hawaii" where my very small foot slipped in. When I got a little bigger, I would always dread the coming of fall, when I would have to stuff my feet back into their school shoes again. And, crushed together and unable to breathe, my toes would whimper all day until I came home and let them free. It wasn't just me, either: I used to close my eyes and listen to the sound of people walking by, knowing that when I heard a slap-slap on the ground I would open my eyes to a brother, a mother, or a father standing over me. Zori meant family, freedom, and a chance for my toes to show their personality. By extension (to my naively dichotomous mind), shoes meant strangers, confinement, and forced conformity.

I walked across the dried lava fields in Hawaii, wearing my zori down on the rough stone until there were holes where my heel could feel earth. I wore sandals around Mono Lake, careful as I walked not to tread on flies or to splash in briny, shrimpy water. I don't wear them when I drive, but this is only because I drive barefoot. I am barefoot in my apartment. I am barefoot when I sing onstage. I am barefoot as I run across grass.

This is all to say: I am packing shoes on this road trip. Specifically, I am packing the Converse I bought to keep in my locker at work, the ones I tied on and took off with my clock-ins and -outs. It is time for them to be dusted with the dirt of freedom. And, though my toes will long to wiggle no less in the chilly air of North Dakota, I cannot bear to lose one of them because of their foolishness. They are important to me, so I will lock them away, like a dozen-or-so little Rapunzels.

Exactly like that.

We are here! We are here!

So, I think it's safe to say I was having an off night (more on this, almost assuredly, will come in a later post). Mike, being the awesome that he is, dropped the road trip itinerary he was typing up and swept me away to go see Horton Hears a Who!, which I've been eagerly anticipating since I first saw the teaser trailer before The Simpsons Movie.

For those unfamiliar with the Dr. Seuss book, the set-up is basically as follows: Horton, a happy-go-lucky and 100% faithful elephant who has previously hatched an abandoned egg, now comes to the rescue of the tiny inhabitants of Who-ville, a town entirely contained upon a speck, which in turn resides on a clover flower. Also, for those unfamiliar with the Dr. Seuss book, shame! Shame! Hissssssssssss....

Fellows, the movie was awesome! It wasn't just funny and silly and heart-warming and all the bare-minimum things you'd expect from a movie with Dr. Seuss's name on the poster. It was also really beautiful-- blending the art of Dr. Seuss with the realistic elements of computer animation into something new and utterly delightful. And the funny and silly and heart-warming parts definitely went above and beyond the call of duty. There were several scenes that had me cracking up (particularly, for some reason, the ones involving Seth Rogan's Morton), and tears were threatening on at least two other occasions.

All in all, I think one of the things I loved most about this movie was that there wasn't a Central Theme or a Grand Lesson. Pro-lifers have been co-opting the line "A person is a person, no matter how small" for their own purposes, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that this wasn't really the Ultimate Focus of the film. The story and the characters within champion individuality, imagination, friendship, and faithfulness. But I felt like the point of the movie can best be encompassed by a phrase like "Be good" or, maybe, "Be the best you can be at being who you are." Towards the end of the movie, Horton gives his thanks to everyone who's been involved in his journey. And he thanks his best buddy (for sticking with him), he thanks the mayor of Who-ville (for always believing in him), and he thanks his neighbors (for caging him and poking him with sticks). I like that, in this movie, there are no villains. Only folks doing their best at being who they are, playing their part in the story to the best of their ability. Even Horton, the hero of the story, is just being who he is: after all, an elephant is faithful, 100%.

Anyway, this movie is fantastic. It takes a great story by a genius of children's literature and it makes it, somehow, into something more. What more could you ask for?

Road Trip Planning: Seeing the Forest, Seeing the Trees

Wow... nine days to go. Mike and I have been completely overwhelmed by the vastness of the experience we're planning for. It would be hard enough if we were just planning routes and finding lodging. But we're acutely aware of the fact that this is a once in a lifetime kinda trip, and we have no idea when (if ever) we'll ever be back in some of these places with time to explore.

So we've been spending pretty much the entire week (not an exaggeration, actually) with our lappys open, making lists of all of the "must see" places we'll be going through. And, friends (or, more likely, friend), there just aren't enough hours in the day. There are parks, lakes, forests, and waterfalls. There are libraries, museums, monuments, and walking tours. And theaters, and concert halls. And sports complexes. And hundreds of uncategorizable random things that aren't even counting the things we'll find as we drive by them on the highway. Did you know that Salem, MA has a Wax Museum of Witches and Seafarers? Not that I at all wanna go, but still...

Without seeing any of the South, and while only seeing half of what we want to see and spending only two days in New York, our trip is going to take more than a month.

Can you believe this country?

Reason #Billion that this road trip is gonna be off da hizzle!

Mike just did a Ticketmaster search for events in Portland while we're in town. And! Guess what's opening the night before we get there?

Tickets: purchased. This is going to be the best thing ever! EVER!!!!!

If you're not familiar with Too Much Coffee Man, this is really your loss. He now exists mostly as a webcomic, but he started out as an indy comic, first self-published by Shannon Wheeler, and eventually picked up for a few color issues by Dark Horse. And he's awesome. He's a superhero of sorts (in that he wears spandex and occasionally interferes in other people's lives), but mostly he's just weird. When you add his friends Too Much Espresso Guy and Too Much German White Chocolate Woman with Almonds into the mix, you know it'll be an adventure.

And might I add that Mike is the freaking awesomest? He was so excited to tell me when he found this that he was giggling like a little kid. And you think it's because he wants to see a tenor sing TMCM arias? I doubt it. Reason #1 that this road trip is gonna be off the hizzle: best co-pilot ever.

I read a book!

I know I shouldn't sound so stoked about it, but boy am I. I think of myself as a Reader, and when weeks (months?!?) pass between books, I start to feel a bit antsy. And I don't know whether working in a bookstore caused me to avoid books in my free time (I hope that's not it, but I've known too many ice cream-hating Cold Stone employees to rule it out), or whether it was working in general that robbed me of the time or drive for reading, but it's been a while. I've been reading the weekly comics, but I'm not actually sure what my last book was. Yuck!

Oh, but all that has changed now. It's been almost exactly a month since I left my job at Borders, and I have finished a book!!! And, appropriately, the book I finished was yoinked on my last day of work, carried away from the store in the same bag that held my nametag lanyard and the assorted papery contents of my mailbox.

As a side note: there are many cool things about working at a bookstore. There are many lame things as well, but I think the cool ultimately outweighs the lame. And one of the mega-cool things that helps to tip those scales is the bookcase of promos in the manager's office. Borders gets metric tonnes of free books, movies, and CDs specifically for giving away to employees, so they can better recommend these items to customers. We're not just talking about romance novels and Wine for Dummies DVDs, either. Publishers won't send the huge releases, but many of the middling ones come in and wait to be yoinked by mild-mannered booksellers who become voracious book-readers in their off-hours. As I was cleaning out my mailbox, I found a coupon for 2 promos from the office that one of my supervisors had given me months ago for being so awesome. And, in Joe's office, I found an advance reading copy one of the books I'd been eyeing on the new hardcover table since it'd come out. Gold!

The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff, snagged my eye initially because of its interesting cover design:
And the blurb on the back of the book was enticingly vague, promising mystery, murder, ghosts, romance, and even a literal 50-foot-long lake monster. All revolving around a graduate student's search for some family secrets in her small New York town (modeled after Cooperstown). Sounds cool, doesn't it?

I read the last 75 pages of the book last night and I have to say I'm highly satisfied. It was an engrossing read, both because the characters were so sympathetic and because the mystery was so compelling. The main character, Willie Upton, returns to her small town after leaving her Stanford graduate program in scandal. And when her mother reveals that there are some secrets in the family tree, Willie starts digging through the town's library, uncovering some seriously weird skeletons in some seriously oddly-shaped closets. The Monsters of Templeton is deliberately genre-bending, but in the end I'd probably call it mostly historically fiction, with some fantastical trappings thrown in for spice.

It's Lauren Groff's debut, and, especially as the various threads of the plot are first being set up, this is obvious. Even the plot blurb in the back of the book screams MFA grad. A wiki search just told me that she's got another novel on its way; I look forward to checking it out.

Now... time to browse the (newly alphabetized) bookshelves at Casa de Higabascio for something new to read. I'm back, baby!!

A note on travel readings!

One of the things I always look forward to excitedly when there's a vacation on the horizon is, as my parents used to say, reading until I go blind.

When I was a kid, my folks would go on long road trips every August. My dad still marvels at how my brother and I were, at very young & squirmy ages, able to enjoy 6 hour car rides through the blazing desert in a VW van with no air conditioning and no music. Our secrets to success (I'll give you a moment here to grab some paper and a pen): a blanket hung up to block the sunlight streaming through the windows and stacks of books to pore through. The occasional mother-mandated gaze out the window did little to slow the voracious digestion of stories from every genre, consumed in great quantities. I have a strong memory of driving through Death Valley (DeathValley.com's slogan: "Hot enough for ya?") and getting a bad nosebleed which ruined my brother's Calvin & Hobbes book. I read Heidi in one long jaunt through Northern California and consumed a Danielle Steel book one year when it was the only book the owners of our rented Mammoth condo had left on the shelved. And the picture at the top of this blarg is of me looking for even more books in a used bookstore in Eureka, CA.

Luckily, Mike and I share a love for reading in interesting locales, which is why on our honeymoon we packed a suitcase entirely with books. Our upcoming road trip is going to be a literary adventure as well as a geographical one. And I'm particularly excited because since my last road trip I've developed an appreciation for the rather apropos genre of travel writing.

Working at Borders gave me a different way of thinking about books, especially in terms of shelving locations. So let me point out that the books I'm interested are probably not going to be found in the bookcase at the end of the Travel section, right across from the Natural Healing shelf. My favorite in the genre is The Narrow Road to the Interior by Basho (specifically the Sam Hamill translation), and is shelved in poetry. Other than that, there's the Kerouac's classic On the Road and Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage. Need I mention Dave Barry Does Japan? I didn't think so.

What I love so much about these books (besides the deep existential satisfaction of reading a book about travel while traveling) is seeing how people much cooler than I transpose their unique and creative worldviews on new places and situations. It's obvious that no two travelers will get the same experience out of a trip. What's really fascinating to me is how a traveler shapes his destination and his encounter with it. How different Craig Thompson's time in Morocco would have been if he had been writing haiku instead of chronicling his experiences with a sketch book! I read these books and can imagine, even for just a moment, how the authors would have traveled in my world.

So yes, I'm excited to take these fellows along with me as Mike & I roam America. Hopefully they'll chip in some gas money.

Why I will Most Likely Begin Blarging Again.

Hello! It's been a while! I've aged literally months since last we spoke. But you-- wow. You look just the same. What's your secret? I mean really!

Now that the small talk's out of the way, let me tell you why I'm here. Mike and I are about to embark on something that's equal parts fantastic, horrifying, and unbelievable. I'm calling it Mike-and-SharTours for now, but I'm sure I'll come up with something better before we leave.

But I digress. Let me help you picture what I'm talking about, using a picture:

There, do you see?

Yes friends, from March 31st until April 30th, we're going to be on the most bitchin-est road trip since Kerouac roamed the streets of America. Plan on reading a lot about it as we plan and accomplish it with the greatest of ease!