...after a long pause...

OK, it's been a while, so let's get up to speed. When last we spoke I was either standing beside you, or I was standing some way away from you and we spoke through our telephones. When last I updated this blog I was in New York City. There I was staying with my old friend, Eric. There was music, trivia, banter, walking, new friends, dogs on people, clothes on dogs, coffee, and chess. It was a good eight days.

We left NYC with a high-school history teacher who taught in Manhattan and lived outside of Binghamton. It was a Friday afternoon and so we were stuck in traffic with all of the other commuters trying to get back to (or alternatively, escape from) their real lives for the weekend. a few minutes into our long ride she told me that she knew I was a vegetarian. "You have that smell" she said, "you smell like my son". I'd never realized that there was a particularly vegetarian smell, and I'm certainly not able to identify it. When we got to Binghamton she offered her floor for us to sleep on that night if we wanted to wait until the morning before trying to hitchhike north to Syracuse. It was nice of her to offer, but we already had a ride. An old friend of mine had kindly agreed to drive the hundred miles to come and get us. Our ride was waiting when we arrived in Binghamton, so after coffee it was on to Oswego.

We spent exactly one week in the greater CNY area. As always, it was good to see family and old friends. In that time I was able to visit most of my favorite places and people. It was late October then, and the trees in the Adirondacks were just past their prime but still very colorful and beautiful with the scent of fall rich in the air. I remember being a younger man and having to wear a snowsuit before Halloween, but this year it remained warm enough through the end of the month for us to take a last late night swim in the Great Lake. In addition to swimming and hiking I had the opportunity to do some skateboarding at a great concrete park, to visit my favorite restaurant, to make a bit of extra money painting, and to go on a date (what!?). Priming ceilings has made my some of my hair prematurely white.

At the end of our stay in CNY we hadn't been on our bikes in more than two weeks and were looking forward to getting back in the saddle. Our bikes were still in Shreveport, and so we began looking for a ride south. We talked about hitchhiking, and joked about walking to whole way, and were happy to find Mike, another post-college 25 year old wanderer. Mike was leaving Brooklyn and heading to New Orleans, and was happy to drive way out of his way to Syracuse to pick us up. Syracuse, it turned out, was not really as great a deviation from the route as it might sound. Mike planned to go from Brooklyn to New Orleans, but his route would take him almost everywhere, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky to Colorado. It sounded crazy, but I had no place better to be.

Fortunately Ben and I got along really well with Mike. He was much wilder than either of us, with more of an interest in partying and such things, but was funny and smart, and knew a lot about bugs. Honestly, I miss him already. In State College we visited a friend that Mike had made while traveling in Greenland the previous summer. Taylor, Mike's friend, showed us around the city and then to a party where we lost track of her. Most of the time at the party I spent waiting in line to use the bathroom, but suddenly "Invisible Touch" began playing and I gave up my spot in line so I could shout out the words. Before I made it to the bottom of the stairs the track had been skipped. I found Mike and Ben and shortly afterwards we left. State College, PA, you're too wild for me.

The next day we got a late start. At 3pm, after waffles, coffee, and learning that our place to stay in Kentucky seemed not to be working out we hit the road for Chicago. Ben was excited to see Kayla again, as was I, and Mike was looking forward to seeing the city. We arrived late and so didn´t have time to do much. The highlight of the night was when I saw two people wearing Waldo costumes. It was the Saturday before Halloween, and they'd been at a Waldo-themed party. I wondered if it had been at all weird to be at a party where everybody was dressed identically, where there were only Waldos, if it felt at all like being at work at the kind of job where everybody wears identical shirts and hats. They told me that it was disorienting to see so many set of stripes moving around but that otherwise I was making too much of it. That's how I like to remember Chicago.

I spent the following morning drinking really good coffee in a cafe that I'd become familiar with on our last trip through town. We spent the afternoon playing at the park on the shores of Lake Michigan and left town in the early evening. We gave Kayla a ride to Decatur, where we dropped her off at a cheap motel. I´m not certain what her plan was, but it was fun to hang out with her during the ride. After that slight detour we drove straight through to Boulder, arriving around 2 pm.