PICTURE BREAK

Southern Michigan.

Our most excellent host in Ann Arbor - Whitney

Lost pet in Appalachia

Day 5

Welcome all to the first submission written by Emily! I have enjoyed Andrew's recounts very much and wanted to jump in and join the fun.

Ann Arbor is a fantastic place. We first noticed the greenery - lots of grass and trees - and then the wind. It was a blustery day and our frisbee throwing was thwarted.

We drove to the apartment of our first couch surfing host (a person who offers up their home as a crashing pad for the weary traveler and introduces them to their native land) and were amazed (!) and happy that she is a sweet, interesting, and laid back University of Michigan student about to enter her last year as a sociology major. No axe killings in sight, it seemed. In fact, we spent the first hour talking and finding out about the dealings of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The stuff in the car was starting to swell and dismantle, so Andrew and I devoted about 30 minutes to squashing the rebellion before changing out of our traveling gear and heading to a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant downtown.

The University of Michigan campus is breathtaking with its massive trees and Gothic church-like stone buildings. The downtown area surrounds the campus, and that's where we found shops, coffee houses, and our tasty restaurant, where wine was half price per glass on Tuesday nights. Lucky for us! Much to Andrew's silent dismay, I quickly found the most feminine wine in existence - a sparkling pink that I will never recall the name of, and he was recommended a great red that went well with our yam fries, salads, and charbroiled tempeh and couscous dish.

After dinner, we met up with one of my Teach for America friends also visiting Ann Arbor with his significant other, and we sat in a coffee shop for 2 hours trading traveling tales and murmurs of Romeo and Juliette raps (he taught high school English last year).

Feeling a lot exhausted and a little embarrassed at our desire to head to our sleeping arrangements at 11:30, we made plans to meet Ryan and Lauren the next day, returned to our couch surfing venue, and tried to figure out if it would be rude to pull pillows off the two distant couches so we could curl up on the floor together.

Day 4

I didn't expect to enjoy a full day of immobility during the first few days of our trip, but hanging out in Canton turned out to be a great idea. Aunt Cathy had urged us to visit a giant flea market off Rt. 619, so we navigated the Taurus through Ohio's maze of ice cream shops and got to the market by mid-afternoon. I bought some strings for Emily's guitar... and nearly bought a baby chihuahua who was sleeping in a crib, tucked between boxes of cheaply-priced produce. The puppy's mom told me that all his shots had been taken care of, but there were just NO way we could take a dog across America. We left.

"If you had bought that puppy, I wouldn't have received any attention from you for the rest of this trip," Emily noted as we walked away.

Back to the car, back down Rt. 619, and back to Rick & Cathy's place. They had just gotten home from work and were clearly tired, but decided to take us on a driving tour of Canton anyway. Such nice people... Halfway through our sightseeing, we stopped at a restaurant located inside an old horse stable. Emily and I are realizing the difficulty in traveling across America's culinary landscape as vegetarians, but the stir-fry was good. The company was even better.

Tomorrow: Ann Arbor. It's a 3.5-hour drive if you take the interstate, which means we're giving ourselves 5 hours to tackle the backroads of Ohio and southern Michigan. Ann Arbor will be our first Couchsurfing experience, so we're very excited about that. Then it's on to Chicago (home of the only all-vegan fast food joint) and... well... we don't know where we're going after that. We'll see. If I don't update this thing in several days, it means we fell in love with Ann Arbor and decided to seek permanent housing in the abandoned stacks of some U.Michigan library.

- Andrew

Day 3

The alarm on Emily's phone is the shrillest sound this side of Enrique Inglesias' falsetto. We kept hitting the snooze button, but the phone eventually succeeded in getting us out of bed. After deciding against Red Carpet Inn's continental breakfast (which, for the record, only consists of coffee and Hostess Honey Buns), we packed up the car and headed north for Ohio.

Emily's relatives live in Canton, the former home of such illuminaries as Marilyn Manson, Macy Gray, and President McKinley. If you head a few miles north, you'll reach Chuck Klosterman's former stomping grounds in Akron. And no matter where you go, you're sure to be surprised by the number of ice cream shops that dot the Ohio landscape like so many blades of grass. We counted several before pulling into Uncle Rick and Aunt Cathy's driveway.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing with Emily's relatives, all of whom are quite nice and hospitable. We tossed a frisbee in their backyard, played in their creek, got attacked by their killer plants (dry nettles?? I need to Wikipedia that), ate their lasagna, and slept in their Tempurpedic-padded bed. It was a good day, so we decided to stay another night before heading to Ann Arbor.

- Andrew

Day 2

The good news is that we woke up early. Our intentions were good; we were going to pack my stuff, load the Taurus, eat breakfast with my parents, and leave before the afternoon.

Much to Emily's delight, though, I took as long to pack as she did. This was mostly due to the VERY IMPORTANT PROCESS of selecting CDs for our trip. 100+ discs and two iPods later, I was comfortable with the music selection.

We left at 2:35 p.m. After stopping by AAA to pick up some free maps and guidebooks, we took Rt. 250 to Charlottesville and walked around the U.Va. campus. We hadn't really eaten lunch, so we also stopped by Martha's Cafe (the makers of the crabcake sandwich that I consumed 5 times/week from January-April 2005).

Emily took the wheel and we continued heading west down 250. Past Staunton (whose architecture reminded of The Goonies, which I think is set in Eugene), past a number of rustic roadside shops, and into the Blue Ride Mountains that occupy the western half of Virginia.

Those mountains were steep, and we quickly learned that the Taurus does not do a good job with steep climbs. It does, however, avoid deer with admirable dexterity and maneuverability. We eventually emerged from the mountains unscathed, unfazed, and excited to be in West Virginia.

The rest of that drive was a convoluted straight-shot to Parkersburg, where AAA was offering a cheap rate on a hotel room. We made it by 1:00 a.m. and passed out in the HUGE bed, whose bedspread smelled of burps... but whose pillows were surprisingly plump for a hotel.

- Andrew

Day 1

The updates came quickly on Friday morning.

At 10:40 a.m., Emily called to say that she was late for her appointment with a throat specialist in Wake Forest. Half an hour later, she called again; the specialist was NOT going to take out her tonsils until August, which meant we were free to leave for our trip. At 1:00 p.m., Emily called to say that her car was still at the body shop and would not be road-worthy until Tuesday.

So that settled it. We were going to leave the following morning, we'd be gone until early August, and we were going to take my car. I left for Henderson, NC, planning to pick Emily up and take her back to our launching-off point in Richmond.

Packing sucked. There's no way to prepare for 6 weeks of tight containment in a Ford Taurus, other than to pack every item of clothing you own. We laid everything out on her bed, and I tried to limit my naysaying. It was hard.

"You're packing your swimming goggles?"

"Yes - got a problem with that?"

At 11:00 p.m., we'd thrown her belongings into the Taurus (which, incidentally, has yet to be named) and gunned it for Richmond. We arrived at 1:00 a.m., were greeted by a series of growls and barks from my parents' miniature pinscher, and went to sleep.

- Andrew