By this Author: mormolyke

When we're not roadtropping across America, Matt works as a web programmer, and I'm a Benjamin Franklin fellow finishing up a Ph.D. in music composition at the University of Pennsylvania. I've blogged about this before: one of the dirty little secrets of being a music Ph.D. is that after a few years of studying music fulltime, most of us find ourselves listening to less and less music outside of school. I got to a point where I couldn't stand listening to music in the background anymore while I worked, did chores, ate, or drove. It's hard to say exactly why this is the case, but it's something to do with losing the ability to turn off the part of the brain that analyzes each piece, and at times being so saturated with music that listening to it feels too much like work. There's also something grating about listening to music when there's a part of your brain that is trying to compose; it's as though a voice in your head is yelling, "Shut up! I'm trying to do complicated math, and listening to these numbers is making me lose count."

The one consistent exception that I didn't mention in the blog entry I linked above is that I love listening to American Routes, a public radio show that is ostensibly about jazz, blues, and roots music, but occasionally branches out into other eclectic genres of American music. It's hosted by Nick Spitzer, who, as I just discovered from the linked bio page, is a Penn alum who used to run WXPN. Although we have Sirius satellite radio, we've listened to more American Routes than anything else while on the road; they have a terrific archive of past shows that you can stream from their website. Matt's iPhone handles the streaming, and it's plugged into the aux input of our car stereo (although it's apparently playing havoc with his "unlimited" AT&T data plan. "Unlimited." Pffft.). It's the perfect Great American Roadtrop Adventure soundtrack. Sometimes I get out my mandolin and jam along for hours while Matt's in the driver's seat.

I was interviewed by a fellow grad student at Penn a few weeks ago for a paper she was writing about the way composers listen to music (she's also a composer and has also experienced the phenomenon I describe). I mentioned the fact that I listen to American Routes, and we were trying to dissect why I can do that. After a couple of moments batting around theories, I suddenly came up with: "It's music without the bullshit." I'm not sure I can define what that means more clearly, but saying it out loud, I realized it felt absolutely right. It's music without the bullshit, and I can listen to it without my brain even trying to find the bullshit. Happiness.

Right now, I'm sitting in Basin Street Station, and since we've listened to so much Amerian Routes, we're trying to figure out if it would be creepy/weird to go to Tulane University and try to find the American Routes office so we can leave a donation and gush at them a bit. Is that weird? It's probably weird.

One of the more adventure-y aspects of our roadtrop is the question of where we'll be bedding down each night. While we have a couple of necessary pre-bookings along the way -- such as the hostel in New Orleans where we stayed in 2002, and campsites in the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone -- most of the time, we're effectively winging it. Do we find a campsite for our compact wheeled space capsule, or boondock in a parking lot somewhere? Or do we cave and grab a motel room so we can shower and stretch out? It's actually been pretty fun figuring it out each day, and I'm glad we didn't plan every stop.

The first night, we lived on the edge, and caught some unwanted attention for it. I had originally jotted down the name of an RV park in Cape Hatteras, but, buoyed by the excitement of beginning the trip and turned off by the cost of the RV park, we chose a different route. We knew we wanted to climb the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse early the next morning before heading to Asheville, so we thought, why not just head down and see what was there? We found a large parking lot near the beach that was completely empty, silent but for the crash of waves on the beach, and pitch black -- except for occasional flashes of lightning to the south, and the piercing light of the lighthouse itself, less than half a mile away, spinning its beams into the night sky. It was somehow a bit terrifying, but a stunningly beautiful experience -- if I had that night over, I wouldn't have parked anywhere else.

Unforrrrrtunately, it turned out that the carpark belonged to the surrounding national park, and at 7:30AM, we were awakened by a loud rap on the Magnum window. I startle awake even in the most familiar surroundings, so the sudden knocking immediately sent me into paroxysms of loudly squawking "SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!" that I'm sure made an impression on the park ranger standing outside our car. Matt struggled to pull on some pants and find the car keys so he could open a window (yet another reason I still prefer manual winding windows) and face the music. The music turned out to be a brief lecture from the poor ranger about how trashy the Outer Banks would be if everyone just slept wherever they wanted, and a hilariously cheerful Matt countered by showing him our National Park Service Annual Pass and handing out one of our roadtrop.com business cards so the ranger could learn all about our epic trip which had just begun.

We were let off with a warning, which handily makes a sweet souvenir of our stay:

The second night, we found a Super 8 in Knoxville, TN. We were originally planning to find the hotel we stayed at when we roadtripped to New Orleans in 2002, but as it turns out, A LOT has changed in Knoxville in the last ten years. We had a vague idea that it was the Holiday Inn, but the area has evidently come up, because the Holiday Inn was $150 a night, and we weren't going to pay that much on a hunch. The Super 8 five miles away was all of $40.

Day three, we crashed with Dave and Charlene, but the next night, we had our first legitimate Walmart boondocking experience (we had previously made a hilarious failed illegitimate attempt during one of our pre-roadtrop jaunts). About half of all Walmarts around the country allow overnight parking by RV's and other camper vehicles -- if you google around, you can find a list of which ones do and which don't. The important thing is to always call ahead to check, out of courtesy and because each store has the right to change their rules whenever they want. The Walmart outside of Savannah was super laidback about letting us park -- there was an RV and a truck already in situ when we pulled in at around 1AM -- and they had a security guard patrolling the lot, so we could sleep in complete safety.

We did the same thing a couple of nights ago on the way to Miami, but at a Cracker Barrel in Deerfield Beach. The official Cracker Barrel company policy is that overnight parking isn't allowed, but we already knew from reading blogs that, in practice, most of them are fine with travelers who ask to stay. We waited until after we ate dinner and had a long conversation with our server about gas prices and electric cars before raising the question, and without pause, the friendly manager said, "Sure!" He didn't even need our assurance that we would come in for breakfast in the morning before we trucked (well, station-wagoned) out.

Other nights so far, we've stayed at cheap motels - our only stipulation is that the place we choose should look at least as presentable as motels on the X-Files. Believe it or not, there are many, many motels out there that are so dank and seedy, they make X-Files motels look like resorts. Some of them give me a serious Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe.

Last night we camped in Everglades National Park. I had done my research, so I knew that our greatest challenge at the park would be biblical plagues of mosquitoes. American mosquitoes provoke some gnarly histamine reactions when they suck my Australian blood, so I had brought defenses: an Off lantern, mosquito coils, and plenty of DEET spray. I had also whipped up some custom-fit flyscreens for the Magnum which attach to the outside of the car with sewn-in neodymium magnets (strong enough that we could drive through the park at 55mph without them blowing off).

It was a good thing we prepared. Jesus Christ. I was bitten a couple of times mounting the flyscreens at the visitor center parking lot, which had a low density of mosquitoes; the campground 40 miles deep into the park was so full of clouds of mosquitoes, I didn't dare leave the car. Matt went to use the bathroom (stumbling over a camper who had pitched a tent in the men's bathroom in an attempt to stave off the bloodsuckers), and even he came running back as quickly as he could (Matt barely reacts to insect bites, as proven a few years ago during our Egypt vacation, when I was COVERED in excruciating bedbug bites while he appeared completely untouched).

I'm looking forward to our future overnights. We have some more stays with friends lined up, more national parks, and a log cabin in South Dakota.

Well, well, Florida. Aside from an amazingly run of bad luck trying to find a decent wifi connection (first world problems!), we have had a pretty damned awesome time here so far. Remaining activities: camping in Everglades National Park tonight, and a drive out of the state toward Alabama tomorrow.

On Wednesday night, we found ourselves a surprisingly decent cheap motel right across the street from Daytona Beach - I think it was called Budget Inn Express. The rooms and exterior were newly painted, and it was run by a South Asian woman who had scented the lobby like spicy incense and curry, so I was sold. Oh, and it was only $40 per night. What. I continually find it difficult to accept that RV parking and camping is routinely around the same price as a cheap motel.

Thursday morning, I took my turn in the driver's seat, and the first place I steered the Magnum was out onto the beach. Yes, Daytona is one of the few places in the USA where you can actually drive on the beach itself (for $5 per day). It's not quite the international speedway, but that didn't stop me thinking about all the money I fondly fed into Daytona USA arcade machines back in the days when one would actually leave one's house to play video games in dedicated venues. The beach speed limit was only 10 miles per hour, but that beats standing in front of an arcade game.

Then it was off to our first true nerdgasm of the roadtrop: Kennedy Space Center. I think one of the reasons Matt and I work so well as a couple, especially when traveling, is that we shared the same obsessions as kids; we each went through phases of intense interest in Ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, and space. I was lucky enough for my space fascination to carry me all the way to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1994, where I spent a week at the NASA Space Academy earning my Level II NASA wings. It was a very cute experience, in retrospect: a kind of crash course in the very, very basics of being an astronaut, full of hilarious cultural clashes and 14-year-old hormones run amok.

So going to the Kennedy Space Center was a bit like being a kid again, especially since the park is kind of geared toward kids. Which is fine; if you want a return to living in a country with a decent space program, you probably have to start by inspiring the next generation to actually give a shit. I found my moment of shivering awe in the Apollo/Saturn V facility, where we were treated to a three-screen documentary about the launch of Apollo 8, ending with a bone-shaking recreation of the actual launch (they had some pretty boss subwoofers in the theater). I was actually choking back tears when it was over, and it only got worse when we exited the theater to find ourselves in an enormous pavilion containing an actual Saturn V rocket.

I don't agree with Ayn Rand's views about nearly everything, but one exception is that I too feel fiercely proud of humankind's greatest achievements. (The difference is that I sort of feel that the greatest achievements of all are the result of many people working together, you know, collectively - a feeling that seems to be shared by all the astronauts in every documentary, who rush to lavish praise on the 100,000 nameless people on the ground who make each mission possible. Sorry, Ayn, this is not really the work of solitary misanthropic geniuses.)

The next day, we finally made it to Miami, a city awash in the colors of the 1980's that I have secretly wanted to visit since Miami Vice (though the pop culture reference we kept making as we were driving around was GTA: Vice City). We swam in South Beach, where the lukewarm and gorgeous waters are so clear that when two $20 bills accidentally floated out of Matt's shorts, he found them both on the sandy sea floor within five minutes. For dinner, we ate delicious Cuban food in Little Havana, and afterward drove around the fairly impressive downtown area.

If I can whinge for a minute, I have to say that Miami's inner-city highways are a confusion of utterly terrifying spaghetti roads, and our Garmin seemed determined to try and kill us. "Take ramp to highway [whichever] on right." OK. Note that the highway is comprised of ten lanes full of Bentleys and Ferraris traveling at 70mph, but our Magnum has a pretty great 0-60, so we make it easily. "In 300ft, take exit on left." WHAT. YOU WANT ME TO VEER THROUGH FIVE LANES OF SPEEDING SUPERCARS AND TAKE A HAIRPIN TURN EXIT IN 300FT. WHAT THE ARRRRRGHH--

Today, after checking in at Everglades National Park to make sure there are available campground spots, we drove through the Florida Keys to Key West.

I am pretty sure Key West was created to give me somewhere to retire. I am obsessed with cats and chickens. Key West is obsessed with cats and chickens. I hate the cold winters of the North East. Key West is frost-free. I love a city with a huge LGBT scene. Hello, it's Key West. I like to be able to see the ocean now and then. Water, water everywhere. The only sticking points of retiring here one day are the cost of real estate and the unfortunate consequences of hurricanes. This is why I need to become stupendously rich and also learn how to control the weather with my mind.

Oh, once again, we have time-lapse videos from Day 6 and Day 7:

And of course, there are pix aplenty at pix.roadtrop.com.

I created the new subdomain pix.roadtrop.com, which redirects to the Flickr set where we'll be uploading photos by both Matt and me. Matt just uploaded some of his, taken by his flashy digital SLR, so you should definitely head over and take a peek.

We're also in the process of adding music to several time lapse videos we've been creating with our GoPro as we drive, so stay tuned.

When we first decided to take this roadtrop, I thought 35 days was a pretty decent length of time to spend on the road. It became clear as I dove into planning, however, that if we really wanted to do it properly, six months might have been more appropriate -- but there was no way we could afford to leave home and jobs for half a year. So it goes that some of the cities we visit are basically pit-stops; we can get out of the car for a few hours and walk around, but we can't really soak it up or take the time to live like a local.

Nashville was one of those towns, but I'm happy we dropped in. We first spent about half an hour walking up and down Music Row, which felt like a soon-to-be-artifact, especially after the classes I took this semester, which focused on new developments in copyright and the cultural changes precipitated by the internet. Maybe twenty years ago, I would have been seriously excited to see the names of the big record labels and their hulking art deco styled studios, but the complete dearth of other passers by and the frequent "For Lease" signs made me think ghost town. Sandwiched between the studios are plenty of lawyer's offices; I predict the whole street will be nothing but law firms eventually -- the lawyers who got fat and rich preying on the companies that preyed on the musicians.

Nashville: Greeted by a pianist near Music Row

Our next unplanned stop was the Frist museum, which we initially entered for the purpose of gulping down some air conditioned climate and to avoid a possible storm (which never appeared *thanks, Inaccuweather*). One of the you-win-some-you-lose-some aspects of living in the NYC-Philly megalopolis is that art museums everywhere else seem so cheap! Wow, are you kidding me, $10.50 for both of us to enter!? AND there was a sweet exhibit on the theme of (extremely creepy) fairy tales, that was not only right up my alley, but contained artworks by some of my creeptastic favorites, like Charlie White and Patricia Piccinini.

We avoided the Country Music Hall of Fame, though I'm sure it would have been kind of interesting if we'd had more downtime, and strolled around the downtown district, with its music-themed everything, and bar stages already alive with various performing country bands at 2PM. It was cool to see. Even though 90% of country music isn't my thing, I wish we could have hung around for night time, when I bet that whole area is popping.

Nashville: Batman

Nashville: A band on every floor of the bar

Nashville: Matt checks out a walking map

Nashville: Matt is surprised that Nashville is actually pretty neat

Other highlights: I found a Goorin hat store - I've been buying their hats online for years (the two hats I've worn so far - see pix - are both by Goorin) but they don't have an outlet near Philly.

This photo is from a shitty tourist store, but I have been thinking of buying a shitty straw cowboy hat. For shits.

We closed out Nashville with a trip to the estate of Great American Brilliant Asshole Andrew Jackson, known as the Hermitage, which is idyllic and gorgeous as long as you don't think about all the slaves.

The Hermitage: Matt in Arcadia

There were neat animals there too.

The Hermitage: Cat and rabbit Mexican standoff

The Hermitage: Cat stares at rabbit

The Hermitage: Rabbit ignores cat

The Hermitage: Turkey and his horse friend

That evening, we hit the road again and made our way back east to Atlanta, Georgia, which Matt had always been interested in visiting. It was a total joy to stay with friends Dave and Charlene, who have known Matt since he was about 15 when they ran an ISP in his hometown of Shrewsbury, PA. They are seriously some of the most awesome people we know (along with their Baltimore-dwelling daughter Melanie, also a friend that we don't see nearly enough). They stuffed us with so much breakfast six hours ago that we haven't eaten since, and they're about to take us out to a barbecue joint that I'm sure will be ridiculously delicious.

Dunphys hanging with Lesters

We weren't too sure what to do in Atlanta at first, because we totally forgot that CNN is based there.

Atlanta: We're at CNN!

Atlanta: Wait a minute, what are we doing at CNN!?

OK, so it's not like we like CNN, at least not the stream of garbage it's sadly become in the last decade or so. But Matt has worked at newspapers, and I worked in TV news for a couple years in both Australia and the US, so there's still something kind of cool to us about going to check out CNN's main studio. We took an hour-long tour by a great guide named Brandon who took one of our Roadtrop business cards and checked out this website on the spot; it was interesting to Matt because he hadn't really seen the inner workings of a TV news studio before, but for me, the interest was in how freaking inflated everything was from the environments in which I used to work. Everything and everyone in it was functionally identical, but BIGGER and MORE and FLASHIER and SUPER-EXPENSIVE. Studio 7, their flagship space, has about $12 million worth of equipment in it, including 100-inch interactive touch screens and five $300,000 robo-cams and a crazy body-mounted steadycam that I honestly thought was a bit pointless -- but it was cool.

Brandon? Brendan? CNN tour guide dude.

Atlanta: Fake master control

Atlanta: Quality journalism from HLN

Atlanta: Fake studio

Atlanta: CNN journalists diligently scour Twitter for breaking news material

Atlanta: CNN courtyard tilt-shift

The tour even included a ride on the longest free standing escalator in the world.

Atlanta: The longest freestanding escalator in the world

Atlanta: View from the escalator

Atlanta: The globe at the top of the giant escalator

But I still think all of that was eclipsed by the sight that greeted us as we first entered the building:

Atlanta: RAINICORN!!!!!

We are so happy for Pendleton Ward and the runaway success of Adventure Time. We were both plugging the hell out of his short online before the series was picked up by Cartoon Network, and whenever we catch episodes (usually in random hotels since we don't have cable), it seems mainstream success hasn't dulled the writing. Super yay.

Atlanta: CNN and I are twinsies

I am excited beyond belief that we're leaving TOMORROW. I've had my head down for a few weeks finishing out my last semester of coursework, but the weeks (months) of planning I indulged in earlier have me feeling pretty relaxed the night before we head off.

One of the reasons this trip is so awesome is that it marks ten years of Matt and I traveling together - through life, and literally. A decade ago last month, we roadtripped to New Orleans, and on the way, we fell in love. Since then, we've managed to get away as often as we can.

April 2002 New Orleans
The original. It really was the trip itself that convinced us to give in to our attraction and venture into a crazy intercontinental relationship. I'm not one for supernatural beliefs, but it was like the entire universe was telling us, shouting at us, to be together. Photos available on Facebook and Flickr.

December 2002 - January 2003 Australia
The trip during which Matt proposed, and an opportunity for me to show Matt around famous parts of my country I hadn't actually visited myself. We witnessed some crazy bushfires in Canberra, and much else besides.

August 2003 Seattle
An internet meetup!

January 2005 and June 2006 Pittsburgh
I don't think I have any pictures online from our impromptu New Year's Day drive to Pittsburgh from Harrisburg, but the second one was for an epic Nine Inch Nails experience complete with an obese stripper.

May 2005 Coachella
Another internet meetup, and a chance to see Nine Inch Nails at a festival in the desert. Photos aplenty.

August 2006 Australia
Matt and I return to Australia so that I can say goodbye to my (step)dad, and he can meet my father for the first time. Also the first time I chopped all my hair off for a trip.

October 2007 Niagara Falls
I drove Matt there for his birthday to see the Video Game Orchestra (and a great big waterfall).

September 2008 Los Angeles
This was a really special one. We renewed our wedding vows in Malibu on our fifth anniversary after making it through an annus horribilis.

May 2009 Phoenix and Sedona, AZ
Matt scored some super-cheap airfares, and we got away for a weekend.

June 2009 Schuylkill Sojourn
We kayaked down the Schuylkill River for seven days in Matt's new Advanced Elements tandem kayak.

December 2009 - January 2010 Egypt
Our last really big trip, and our most exciting so far! I'm glad we were there before Arab Spring, but I yearn to go back one day. Although I could do without the female genital mutilation and the bedbugs.

April 2010 Red Hook, NY
The Gonzales Cantata was performed at Bard (photos by Kendall Whitehouse).

April 2010 Minnesota
We attended the SEAMUS conference (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music of the United States, or as I affectionately refer to it, the Beardo Conference) and hung out in Minneapolis for a weekend.

May 2010 Kansas City
My choral work "What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?" was performed by the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers, but it was also an excuse for yet another internet meetup.

June 2010 and June 2011 Waterford, CT
Two years in a row, we attended the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference. This year we have to miss out because of the roadtrop, but hopefully we'll be back in the future.

June 2010 Asheville, NC
A spontaneous drive to see Matt's grandpa. We'll be swinging by again in a couple of days!

January 2011 San Antonio, TX
Another Gonzales Cantata performance which we turned into our first trip to Texas.

January 2011 Boston
Puppet Pandemic!

April 2012 San Francisco
We really only just returned from this trip, but I've written so many papers since I returned, it feels like a lifetime ago. Yet another trip for a performance (of "Omaha Beach" by Chanticleer). I kind of love turning performances of my compositions into excuses for hopping on planes - since I'm not even the one performing, it's so low pressure!

This list by necessity only contains trips for which we had to drive more than three hours or fly. It would be impossible to tally up all the daytrips and vacations we've taken to New York, Baltimore/DC, Gettysburg, Philly (when we didn't live here), Delaware Water Gap, Appalachian Trail, etc., etc. If you notice a big gap between dates, it's likely we went to a bunch of those places.

Anyway, that's all behind us. This roadtrop has been on the cards since at least 2004, so I have years of anticipation to fulfill. Right now, I'm just kind of thrilled that Matt's home from work, and I'm home from school, and we're going to be in the same space 24/7 for 35 days.

So, craziness. A couple of months ago, I reported that we were lucky enough to snag a campsite in Yosemite for Memorial Day weekend in the few short minutes before they sold out completely. Shortly afterward, we also entered the Half Dome lottery.

Half Dome is a great big rock. Maybe it's the most famous large rock in America? I come from a land often defined by a very large rock in the center that I've never actually seen in person and certainly never climbed, but for some reason I decided that perhaps we should try climbing Half Dome, despite the fact that it kills people. Like, holy shit, quite a few people. Enough people that I started to have second thoughts, and then figured I should let fortune decide; because Half Dome was becoming (even more) dangerously crowded, the park service recently implemented a lottery system for permits to climb it.

So, we put in an application and waited. And on Friday, we were told that our application was granted.

Oh, man.

Since I am a giant scaredycat whose mild vertigo seems to grow a little stronger the older I get (this happens to a lot of people, I've heard), I have ordered us some climbing harnesses and via ferrata sets, and damnit, we are going to use them. I don't care if we look ridiculous. I grew up wearing an oversized orange stackhat while riding my bicycle; I can take it.

I thought at first that we could invite friends along with us, but no, it turns out the permit is for just the two of us.

Wow, I listened to all the lyrics in this song for the first time, and damned if it isn't about this very roadtrop. Obviously, Bill Withers is (a fabulously wealthy) clairvoyant and is speaking directly to me.

Less than four weeks to go now until we leave for the big journey. The end of my semester is approaching, with its requisite deadlines and procrastinated workload, so this may be the last time we do a sleepover test run in the Magnum.

On Saturday, we were in Central PA for our friend Tony's birthday, and since there are far more state parks out that way than there are closer to Philly, we decided we wanted to stay overnight. Unfortunately, all of their campgrounds aren't open until the second weekend of April, so we had to seek other options. Was it finally time to try boondocking in a Walmart parking lot?

Also unfortunate: neither of the York Walmarts allow overnight parking. But we decided to try and see what happened. Worst case scenario, they would just kick us out, right?

They did. After about two hours, at one in the morning, we heard a sharp rap on the window, and a mall cop told us to clear out. ("There's a Holiday Inn around the corner." Uh, yeah, not really the point.) I suppose she was alerted to our unconscious presence, despite the sun shades we use to block the windows, by the rivers of condensation on the panes. We finally found a spot in another strip mall where a few other cars and at least one truck were also boondocking, and slept undisturbed until daybreak.

We spent most of Easter Sunday at Gifford Pinchot. It's quite pretty.

Other things we tested out:

The Cooking Rig

The MiFi wireless internet. Hooray, I can surf the web on my laptop in a forest.

Matt and I took another test run of our sleeping cabin on wheels this weekend, with a trip down to Delaware. Initially we were hoping to see NASA fire some rockets, but it became clear on the way down that thick mists had rapidly descended, and I began to worry there would be nothing to see at all even after we woke this morning.

Fear not. We always find something to see. True, visibility was so low that we couldn't see the ocean, but on the way back up the coast, "Prime Hook Wildlife Refuge" caught our eye, and we ventured in to take a look.

Wow.

Prime Hook scenery

Heron at Prime Hook

Every misty cloud has a silver lining.

I was idly browsing the National Park Service website this evening, as one does when one is obsessed with planning a giant roadtrop, when I stumbled over this page:

Ohhh, holy moly! How is it possible that I did not realize that, on the same trip during which we are visiting not one but two Space Centers, and for which I have purchased the first telescope I've had since I was a kid (an Orion SkyScanner I nabbed on eBay), there is a beautiful solar eclipse occurring? Imagine my ecstasy when I realized that we are going to be in *exactly* the right place at *exactly* the right time (if we pace ourselves)!

On May 20, we will be traveling through Arizona from New Mexico to Utah, and in the early evening, we will be somewhere around Canyon de Chelly National Monument. The annular eclipse begins at 6:30PM. Perfect.

I just picked up some Mylar to make my own solar filter. We already have a T-ring attachment for Matt's T2i, so expect lots of pictures.

Lists are fun. For example, I have a packing list that I've been working on obsessively for literally months now.

Today I felt curious about how many states we'll be driving through on the roadtrop. So I compiled a list.

1. Pennsylvania
2. Delaware
3. Maryland
4. Virginia
5. North Carolina
6. Tennessee
7. Georgia
8. Florida
9. Alabama
10. Mississippi
11. Louisiana
12. Texas
13. New Mexico
14. Arizona (twice)
15. Utah
16. Nevada (twice)
17. California
18. Idaho
19. Wyoming
20. South Dakota
21. Minnesota
22. Wisconsin
23. Illinois
24. Indiana
25. Ohio

Only 25 states! For a five-week tour I was expecting the number to be higher. Then again, that's an average of only 1.4 days in each state. Damn, I guess I moved to a big country.

T minus ten weeks today! Preparation is going very well. I have now ascertained that we'll be able to take the roof rack off the Magnum, since all our luggage will fit easily under the bed; this will probably save us a couple hundred bucks in gas thanks to reduced drag, believe it or not.

I am experimenting with having a pixie cut so that I won't have to brush my hair on the road, but it turns out, no, my hair needs brushing no matter what. It's very fine, and there's a lot of it. Too much of it; it always takes twice as long as the typical customer for me to have it cut. I kind of adore having super short hair, though. I might just settle for wearing spiffy hats in the morning to tame the bedhead.

One of my developing concerns about this roadtrop is bears. Stephen Colbert knows what he's talking about. Bear in mind (bears on mind) I grew up in Australia, where there are no large predators out in the bush, unless you are a baby and count dingoes (I'm going to hell, by the way). It's astounding to me that Americans become hysterical about our spiders and snakes when in this country, there are BLOODY GREAT BIG THINGS WITH TEETH AND CLAWS THAT EAT YOU. Hello. Also, you have plants that cause people to break out in hives just by touching them, and they're everywhere, what's up with that?

Anyway, back to bears. My own hysteria was awakened after I bought and read Yellowstone Trails: A Hiking Guide.

At the very start of the book, the authors launch into what seems to me a huge section dealing with the threat of bears, which contains such sage advice as "Bears are unpredictable. Avoid meeting one in the backcountry." I understand that there are crazy people in the world who might actually seek out a bear instead of avoiding them (see: my favorite documentary, Grizzly Man), but to me this is kind of like getting a horoscope that says "Avoid making mistakes today." Here's where things get really interesting, though:

PLAYING DEAD
Leave your pack on. Lie on your stomach. Interlock your fingers over the back of you neck and bring your elbows up to cover your face. You pack offers protection for you back, leaving only your buttocks and legs exposed. The bear may bite and scratch you, but you must remain still and silent. This sounds incredibly difficult, but many "ordinary" people have done it. People who have played dead and been bitten and scratched by grizzlies have told me that they weren't aware of any pain during the attack. Once the bear leaves you, don't move, as the bear may be watching you from a short ways off, looking for signs of life. Continue listening, and only move when you are sure the bear has left the area.

So, apparently if you are being eaten by a bear, you should do everything you can to squash your survival instincts. Let the bear have a bit of a nibble. Whatever, you didn't need that buttock anyway. Oh yeah, if the bear is eating the person you love most in the world next to you, just, you know, just lie still and don't say anything. Easy. His body will be in such an extreme state of shock that he's not feeling anything anyway, so just let it be. Bleeding to death? Wait until the bear leaves. That might be a while. Oops, you're dead. Easy.

But before you think that maybe bears aren't so bad - they are just enforcing the rules in some bizarre Mother Nature-adjudicated game of Sleeping Lions - read on:

If the bear enters the camping area while you are asleep and pulls you or one of your party out of the tent, this is the time to fight back. Do not play dead in this situation. This is one of those extremely rare situations that have occurred periodically in Yellowstone and other areas in bear country. The person being attacked usually isn't capable of resisting the bear, so it is up to the rest of the group to distract or deter the bear. I would definitely use my pepper spray. This is a volatile stituation and everyone is in danger of being injured, bit without help, the person being dragged off will almost certainly be killed.

Well, shit. I am not sleeping in the woods. Nope. And I may need to take a Valium before hiking anywhere. And I'm buying some bear spray and an airhorn and a little bell, and maybe some tactical weapons and full plate armor. And maybe I should take up bear blasting.

See, I'm sure some Americans work themselves up into similar froths about our spiders and snakes. The thing is, I can kill a spider with my foot or a quick squirt of fly spray. Snakes bite once, usually out of fear, and then they generally fuck off into the undergrowth so you can immediately tourniquet your wound and head off to a hospital. They certainly don't sit around a couple dozen yards off waiting for you to try to move so they can attack you again.

BEARS.

This is still not dampening my enthusiasm for this trip. I'm just taking into account the fact that I might be eaten by a bear, that's all.

I bought a new four-inch foam mattress for $80 on eBay. I was thinking about sourcing one secondhand on Craigslist, but then recalled a very unfortunate incident involving bedbugs that occurred when we went to Egypt in 2010. Just thinking about it still makes me crazy. With the help of a cheap electric carving knife, we cut the foam down to size (39"x71").

Remains of the foam mattress

Foam is kind of gross to sleep on by itself, so I pulled out some upholstery material I have lying around that I can't even remember buying (it must have been an awesome deal, because it's horribly seventies-licious and I have a LOT of it; I think we used it as a drop cloth in Downingtown at some point) and whipped up a cover today. I wanted to be able to take the cover off to wash, but I didn't have a giganto zipper, so I made do with some of my corsetry supplies.

I was pretty excited to install the finished product in the Magnum, especially since it's a gorgeous day which doesn't even warrant the use of a sweater, let alone a coat.

Here it is with just the sheets:

And here with the double-sized beach towel I found at a bargain price, multi-purposed as a blanket. I love terry cloth blankets -- they're mostly a Chinese thing, and I grew up with them -- but they're next to impossible to find in America, so I have to make do with gaudy branded creations marked down on sale.

Magnum bed by Lacoste (not really)