It's over!

Thanks for coming along for the ride, everyone. Once either one of us is in a place with a fast internet connection, we'll finally post those long awaited pictures... It just might be a while.

Meanwhile, here's a mysterious one for everyone to ponder. Guesses?

It ain't over...

Boy, have we got a lot to tell you. Seeing as much of the news involves Will, he's going to have to tell you about it, but suffice it to say, the roadtrip continues.

After Arizona, I hit up:

-Vegas
-San Diego
-LA
-Paso Robles
-Hearst Castle
-Highway 1 through Big Sur
-Ventura

Then I met up with Will in Bolinas, CA and travelled up to Boonville (in California's Anderson Valley) for Christmas. We continued up the coast, stopping to see Redwoods and one of Will's fellow Watson fellows outside of Bend, OR. We explored Portland, WA for a bit, spent the night in Seattle and now we're in Victoria, BC.

Here's the news from my end: I've pretty much decided that I want to live in Portland, at least for a bit. The biking scene there alone is enough to keep me interested. Hopefully I can find work in that scene...and it is quite a scene.

So, if any of you have Portland tips/connections, speak up!

csl

The end of the road?

Some of you may have noticed that our updates have been...sparse. That's because I've been in Arizona and Will's been in Aspen. Originally, the plan was for me to spend a few days in Arizona while Will sorted out some business and looked for a post-roadtrip job.

Two things happened:
-I became a familiar face in Arizona's alternative architecture community.
-Will got a job in Aspen that starts immediately (details to come...).

So...it's over. Will took the apartment. I got the cats.

That's not to say we won't continue to update now and then, it's just less likely to be in unison.

Ecosantaliesin

I'm not sure what happened, but there I was sitting next to Glenn Murcutt, when the dean of The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture asked me to introduce him to the director of the Ecosa Institute (who was hosting Murcutt).

Then, last night, Paolo Soleri gave me a christmas card and a hug at the Arcosanti holiday party.

I went to the Grand Canyon.

I spent 5 hours and $1000 in a VW dealership.

I also fell in (unrequited) love.

It's been a really fun couple of weeks. When I get a minute, I'll explain all of this. I've got to go fire up the Arcosanti sweatlodge. Arizona! Who knew I'd like the place?

csl

Ski-Bums

This is Joel.

He works for the Aspen Times.

Basically he skis everyday before work and writes about whatever cool story he digs up.

The first day on the job his boss told him "If it's a Powder Day no one comes in before 11:00 a.m."

The second day his boss told him "Why don't you take a couple runs before you come into work tomorrow"

It's a good job.

So we do a fair bit of skiing around here.

The days are sunny, the snow is fresh, life is hard.

Sunshine-Sam

Yes, neither of us know what to say either.

B-Day

Celebrations didn't stop at Turkey-Day. Two day's later my little sis turned (gasp!) 24 and we celebrated with cake. If your wondering why Molly is so pleased with her cake, it is not onlybecause Cynthia Wayburn's Poppy Seed cake is the best Birthday Cake in the know Universe, but also because in the process of blowing out the candles she created a fireball made of powdered sugar. It's been a long time goal of ours and we finally succeeded!

wmr

Turkey Day

Needing a bit of family, food and freshening up we headed to Aspen for Thanksgiving with Will's family. The drive there was the starkest landscape we encountoured on the whole trip, high, dry country and lots of empty roads. We stopped at Grandma's (the cafe), which definately had a prime location, the food though. . . well it was a good thing we had Thanksgiving to look forward to. The food was plentiful and the pies beyond imagining.

Denied in Vermont

Well, I didn't get the internship at Yestermorrow. They had a heap of applicants for only four positions and I was waitlisted, so that was an ego boost, but apparently it was not meant to be.

The exciting news is, if I skip out on Christmas at home, I have no reason to be back in New England in January. So that means I'm officially looking for a job out West. At the moment I think I'd like to be in the Pacific Northwest, but I'm up for just about anything (except this town in Utah where I'm sitting right now).

Ideas?

csl

Bisonman

He's coming...


















...and he's not wearing much.

Why Wyoming?

It's on the way to Colorado from the Badlands. hmmmm, not really but we wanted to see The West and figured the home state of Dick Cheney was a good place to start. So we headed for the hills or rather the foothills of the Wind River Mountains and camped out in the snow for two nights. Sunny warm days, long nights by the fire having deep meaningful conversations about well, mostly girls. Another Sauna. This time it wasn't so roasty-toasty and we learned that a snow covered rock floor tends to suck the heat away pretty fast.

Lander Library

We rolled into Lander, Wyoming about 2:00 am. Carl slept and will sat wide awake for 6 hours in the drivers seat unable to overcome the effects of a 20 oz super caffine coffe drink which had guided us succesfully through the night. Next day we checked out the NOLS headquarters shopped at Carl's words "The most beautiful Safeway I have ever seen" and updated the blog at the library. As you likely have observed we didn't get much done and were easily distracted. Mr. Octopus did enjoy the stories though.

Bad Bad Badlands

After being denied in Minnesota, we opted to drive through the night to the Badlands. The driving was windy, snowy, and deer-filled.

We hiked down into a canyon and plopped our stuff up on a bluff. In our explorations, we discovered bison poop, bison bones,...and a few bison. They're very big, and easily confused with trees at night.

Speaking of scale, we were both baffled by the scale of this landscape. Some things that look small are big and many things that look big are small. The landforms are so widely scalable that we found ourselves pointing to them all the time and saying things like, "Wow. I have no idea how big that is."

There was also singing.

At night we cooked up some of the sake we bought in Chicago and drank it right out of the pot. This kept us warm for further explorations. Our return from these explorations brought us over the ridge of some enormous mountains that were probably only 30' tall. We woke up covered in frost.

Our second day was ambitious. The whole landscape, with its horizontal stripes, is so obviously sedimentary, that from a good vantage point you could see how buttes far, far away were on the same level or plane. So we climbed up to the highest plane we could find and looked across to where the car was parked a few miles away on the same plane, a dot on the horizon. We didn't look at the car much, though, because there was plenty of other stuff to see. Bison, weird land shapes, enormous/small mountains... We lay in the big gold grass there for a few hours churning out Wall Drug postcards, sunning, napping and reading. The decent was an adventure as the land, with its mind-bending scale and flimsy materials, is much like a movie set. Muddy excuses for rocks tumbled down the cliffs with us as we scraped and scrambled our way down a narrow slot to the land below.

After packing up, our hike out was in the dark and our navigation dialogue included debates over what was a bison and what was a tree. We played it safe and never found out.

22 mpg?

We've had a few questions about our fuel economy...as in, "why is it so bad?" For those of you who haven't noticed, we're crammed into a little car with 115 horsepower that most people think gets amazing gas mileage, but doesn't. Normally it's just shy of 30 mpg (which isn't really that great), but we've been averaging around 22 mpg and somewhere (it felt more like nowhere) in South Dakota, we bottomed out at 19! This is not good. Here's what we think is going on:

VW GOLF 2.0 E.P.A. HIGHWAY FUEL RATING (31 mpg.)
+
EXCESS WEIGHT (400 lbs.)
+
SURFBOARD (coolness factor of 7.3...7.4 dragohertz of drag)
+
BOX ON THE ROOF (dragacious coefficient of .83 millibars per mile)
+
EXTRA-LEGAL SPEED (mean cruise setting of 84 mph)
=
HUMMER-LIKE FUEL EFFICIENCY

So that's our theory. It's scientific fact.

Fuel stop 11 (3187 mi.)

Gillette, WY (Note headwear. We are now officially in "The West.")
Flying J
11.20.2005
$2.19/gal.

289 mi.
22 mpg.

Taco Hell

If you ever walk into a Taco Bell where all the customers are standing around the counter by the "Pick-up" sign, while the employees wander around mumbling "itllbeabouthalfanhour..." Just leave. That's what we did...even though we really wanted some authentic Mexican food, gosh durn it!

Fuel stop 10 (2898 mi.)

Kadoka, SD
11.19.05
$2.34/gal.

244 mi.
19 mpg. (ugh.)

Fuel stop 9 (2654 mi.)

Sioux Falls, SD
Flying J
11.19.05
$2.05/gal.

285 mi.
20 mpg.

Denied in Minnesota

Our floor to sleep on in Minnesota didn't work out.
She wasn't home.
Lesson: call first.

Wi-Fi at the Flyin' J

Carl here, checking in from a truckstop on I-90 just outside of Sioux Falls, SD...
This post is kind of a placeholder. We'll bulk it up and allow it to multiply later, but just to keep everyone in the loop, here's the deal:

-went up to the 1000 Islands where I've been living and took a rainy boat ride and had a delicious dinner.

-got one year older

-took a pointless but enjoyable 2 hour detour in Toronto.

-had a lovely exchange about fruits and vegetables at the border crossing near Detroit.

-ate a tasty dinner in Detroit and afterwards we were delighted to find the car still parked, with surfboard, wheels and body panels still attached.

-booked it to Chicago where Nate & Emily were generous enough to let us crash on their spare bed with only hours' notice.

-wandered Chicago (I took some architecture tours).

-went to a show at Improv Olympic

-saw a fascinating exhibit about Vietnam vets at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

-booked it to Minneapolis to surprise a Watson friend of Will's, only to find that she's in Madison (a few hours behind us).

-attempted to purchase food at a Taco Bell that is unlikely to remain in business.

-listened to a LOT of This American Life (thanks Kremberg!)

-bought a lot of gas (some for under $2! Yee-Haw. We've decided to upgrade to an Escalade.)

-kept driving, ended up here in Sioux Falls with Will fast asleep and me ready to pass out.

So that's our deal. Next chance we get, we'll turn this into a fun/link/picture-filled pile of posts for your reading pleasure. Until then, g'night.

csl

Fuel stop 8 (2369 mi.)

Owatonna, MN
Marathon
11.18.05
$1.99/gal (lowest yet!)

319 mi.
24 mpg.

Fuel stop 7 (2050 mi.)

Belvidere, IL
Mobil
11.18.05
$2.18/gal.

308 mi.
22 mpg.

Carl won.

Carl won. We went to Chicago. Leaving Detroit at 7:30 p.m. we still were planning to wander the streets through the night and sleep in the parks by day, but the -15 C temperatures convinced us that we needded to find someone we knew from Chicago with at least 40 square feet of floor space. Nate Hogan and Emily Wanderer were the lucky winners of our rather last minute brainstorm, and so we slept in a cozy appartment on West Division street despite not having been in touch with our hosts since graduatation 2 years ago. Carl took two architechture tours and then took Will on an architeccture tour. Will clearly got the best deal. Then we rode the 'El,' ate turkish food, visited the House of Glunz (America's oldest wine shop since 1888 selling medicinal and sacramental wine during prohibition), and finished of the evening at the improve olympics.

Next morning we spent two hours at the Museum of Contemporary Photography looking at photographs of Vietnam vets coupled with vivid description of their tours of duty.

Motown

I have never seen anyplace like Venice. The same goes for Detroit.

What's left of downtown shows evidence of the city's former grandeur, but it felt as though 1/4 of the lots were vacant, now filled with parking lots (for who?), trash, or both. Some empty lots have fences around them to prevent cars and trash from collecting and/or catching fire. I couldn't help but think how great it would be to move into and fix up one of the city's great old buildings. Too bad there's no money to be made there...

So we stopped for dinner, insisting on finding the most questionable looking bar possible (we weren't successful, the place was quite nice). Then we got back on the road, a krautcar amongst America's finest.

A survey

Crossing into the US at Point Edward, we found out that the Department of Agriculture was doing "a survey on what foods people bring home to their families for holidays." Imagine that acronym (and you know there is one)! So we showed the little lady in the big parka our tomatoes, our bread, our cheese, our granola and, though we didn't pull it out of its cooler, Cynthia's butter...

Cynthia's butter:
Will's Mom read an article about Animal Farm butter and got so excited about it that she insisted that we get some in Middlebury (the only place where it is sold) before leaving, so we're driving cross country with a cooler full of fancy butter, making sure it's ice is fresh and that neither of us eats it.

Anyway, our border crossing was mercifully gentle. If we'd had to unpack the car...

Fuel stop 6 (1742 mi.)

someplace in "the middle."
11.16.05
$2.19/gal.

294 mi.
22 mpg.

Fuel stop 5 (1448 mi.)

Mississauga, ON
Petro-Canada
11.16.05
$0.854CDN/L ($2.73USD/gal.)

302 mi.
22 mpg

a detour/un détour

I couldn't resist getting lost in Toronto. My excuse was "we should buy groceries." Turns out we didn't need groceries and Will wasn't hungry, but I sure did enjoy that peameal sandwich and enormous bottle of milk I bought at the market. So I showed Will around Toronto, mainly by getting lost, and then got back on the road.

csl

Escape from New England

With sand in our hair from the night before, we hopped on the Grand Isle Ferry to Plattsburgh where we bought us some groceries. Not long after a lunch of tomatoes, goat cheese, and some lacking bread on the shores of Tupper Lake, we were in Clayton.

It was dark when we pulled in to the Brabant's house. Jan was expecting a kayak delivery, so we helped him unload the boats when they arrived. The next day was a rather drizzly and ugly one but, determined to make the most of it. After lunch with Greg Lago and Will Salisbury at the Kofee Kove and a visit to my old place of employment, we borrowed an official Greene Structures work boat and I did my best to show Will around the 1000 Islands. We circumnavigated Grindstone with stops at one old place (our house) and one new one (my favorite all-glass barn/house on Grindstone).

Stephanie Weiss and Andy Greene whipped up the tastiest dinner (and group of people) we could ever have dreamed of. Aaron, Gussie, Schuyler, Maris, Bowditch, Jeremy, Eliza...it was great. Little did they know, it was also my birthday party!

The next morning, I installed "the ultimate car integration kit for your ipod" and, with our ultimate music blaring, headed for Chicago...

Fuel stop 4 (1146 mi.)

Star Lake, New York
Nice N Easy Grocery
11.14.05
$2.42/gal

371 mi.
28 mpg.

MSK VT

Perhaps the greatest achievment to date of this trip has been the assembly of the Mobile Sauna Kit (MSK). MSK in hand we found a gravel bar below a small set of rapids on the New Haven River and set to work. The wood was on the green side but with lots of coaxing and fanning with pizza boxes the rocks slowly began to glow after 5 or 6 hours. The night was warm, calm and moonlit.
The last session was hot enough to drive us both out of the Sauna, heads spinning for a lengthy submersion in chilly waters.

Fot those interested parties, building your own MSK is inexpesive, fast, and will last for at least two saunas. Ours consists of two tarps (one medium, one large), 5 pieces of p-cord, a 21 in. saw, a snow shovel, and various insulation mostly consisting of Carl's 7 pound -20 degree sleeping bag for people over 6'6''.

Details

Location: South Lincoln, VT
Sessions: 3
Number of people: 4
Duration of rock warming: 6 hrs
Quality of swimming hole (1-10): 7
Estimated temperature: 3004 degrees Kelvin
Lesson learned: Two words: "Dry Wood"

The ice and the alpine

Saturday was Sunny.
Burch, Carl, Kendra, Gracie and Will climbed Camel's Hump.
A rouche moutone and one of four mountains in VT high enough to have a small patch of alpine vegetation at the top.
The way up was icy and the way down was rather slippery.
Carl has a bruised bum, but he calls it a war wound.
Pear cake from Anne Knowles on top.

Fuel stop 3 (774 mi.)

Hancock, VTHubbard's General Store
11.11.05
$2.49/gal.

396 mi.
29 mpg.

Vermont's most popular tourist destination

As a flatlander, I'd been there before, three times...but as a native Vermonter, my friend Aaron had never even seen the place, so while we waited for the Mad River Valley's Macintosh Mad Scientist to fix my ipod (which went for a swim), we made the pilgrimage to Waterbury and took the Ben and Jerry's factory tour. Not be negative, but since I was there last, the price went up, the samples got smaller and the "moovie" got lamer. But those samples were tasty as ever. The highlight, however, was certainly the flavor graveyard. I really respect the humility it requires to make light of failed/retired products. Perhaps Ford has a whimsical graveyard in Dearborn where graves are marked with witty epitaphs about the Edsel, Merkur, and Mustang II...

csl

La casa de Kendra

This is Kendra. She lives in a little red school house. As far as we can tell she spends her days taking care of the collie, Gracie (who though sweet has a strong fear of abondonment and so prefers the car to going on a walk with us), and practicing and teaching yoga daily. Oh yeah she also works as a model and occasionally does grunt work for her friends.
She graciously let us spend a week in her house near Hinesburg. There we ate pancakes with whipped cream and spent time on the inversion swing (usually the swing before the pancakes).
So far Kendr'a house has provided us with the most comfotable beds of the trip for Carl and perhaps of the past year for Will.

...no one understands him but his woman.

He probably should've just brought his band, but for some reason Middlebury wanted him to speak at Mead Chapel... Issac Hayes was supposedly there to speak about social issues. Instead we got aimless, sometimes unintelligible, reminiscing. We heard about Stax back in the day, what went platinum, what they played for an encore one night in 1971, how he wrote the theme to Shaft (it, like the lecture, took a little over an hour). Highlights included Tim Spears' introduction ("please welcome this baaad motha"), Hayes' greeting to the crowd ("Hello Children"), stories about his childhood in Tennessee, his response to a question about his decline in popularity ("I never lost my groove."), and watching a camo and Carhartt clad family approach him afterwards to declare their love for his work. I love Vermont.

csl

The God of Organic Beer

We picked a good night to eat at Weybridge! Out of the blue, six packs of Wolaver's in hand, came Morgan Wolaver, producer of more than half of North America's organic beer. He lives down the road in Cornwall and someone in Weybridge was interviewing him for a "project." It was a tasty dinner and we learned a lot about the beer industry. Many thanks to the folks at Weybridge for putting a few alums up for the night (and letting us use your washing machine).

Fuel stop 2 (379 mi.)

Stowe, Vermont
11.5.04
$2.46/gal.

379 mi.
28 mpg.

Happy Birthday Gigi (and Will)!

We celebrated Gigi's 25th birthday at Blake Whitman's family home in Stowe. Though her birthday was actually weeks ago, Will's was that very weekend! Anyay, she didn't expect me, Will, Burch Fisher or Ditty Steele. It was quite a surprise. The weekend included piles of food, piles of people, and piles of ipods. Gigi took pictures of them all. The weather was amazing, too.

Brace yourself.

I finally figured out how to put pictures and links in a post, thanks to my good friend, gracious host, and go-to technology advisor, Tyler Kremberg.

On Friday, Tyler will be interviewing for a job doing computer stuff for America's Finest News Source in New York City. Good luck Tyler! Now, brace yourself for a bunch of pictures...

csl

Weird houses of Vermont

I've seen some delightfully strange buildings these last few days.

It all started with Blake's place at Stowe, a late 50's a-frame that slept 20 comfortably and was designed around a 20' long banquet table moved here from an estate in the Alps. Wild.

Then Architecture Table organized a great tour of some of the Mad River Valley's craziest architecture including work by David Sellers and Jim Sanford. I was really lucky to be in town for that.

The final stop on that tour was at Yestermorrow Design Build School in Warren, VT. I'd applied for an internship there from January until March and I found out during this visit that I've been waitlisted. Four applicants have been offered the position and two have accepted. Keep your fingers crossed!

The next day, Will and I went up to Wolcott where, in a field, we met up with Dick, one of his old friends from the Center For Northern Studies. Seeing as Wolcott is right next to Hardwick, and Dick seemed to know the area like the clutch on this tractor, I asked him if he knew where Peter Eisenman's "House II" was. "You mean the Frank Lloyd Wrong house?" he asked, laughing. Turns out Dick had rented the place for some students years ago. "It was a house where you worried about your cats." he said referring to the "voids" (read: holes) Eisenman left in the floors in his practicality-be-damned attempt to bring Chomskyblather to 3D form. A few years ago I read that a Dutch couple bought the place, but I couldn't get near it. Well, I saw it. Check that one off.

Hearing I was interested in architecture, Dick invited me to see his "tower house." Standing in a field at the edge of dense Northeast Kingdom forest, I couldn't imagine what he was talking about, but Will and I followed his muck boots through the woods and up a narrow path to a weather-beaten stack of rooms towering out of the ground like the trees around it. There was a ladder up the side to provide an alternate means of egress, and access to rooms and decks without interior ciruclation (stairs). It had burnt (as some of the similarly crazy original Prickly Mountain houses did) and has since been taken over by woodland creatures. It, like the man who built it, has gone "back to the land." A L.L. Bean thermometer indicating what ski wax to apply still hung on the tree outside the kitchen window.

It excites me to think that so many of these mysterious and personal structures litter the woods of Vermont. It may not be a particularly good thing, but it fascinates me just the same.

On my way home, I stopped in Johnson, where I:
-Checked out some art
-Admired some plaid
-Learned about yarn, roving, batts, and felt

csl

Tin Pan Caravan w/ Anaïs Mitchell

Sure was great to see Anaïs play again. While Will was at Dartmouth, I was lucky enough to catch her playing with her new crew. Four singer-songwriters, four guitars, each taking turns. It was an interesting concept and one that I hope works out for them. Aside from doubling up on obligatory songs about leaving lights on for one's love, it seemed to work quite well. I wish Will could've been there. There was also delicious cookies and cider.

A Bit of the North

Behind us is Bear Swamp, a little piece of the boreal forest. Its down the hill from the Center for Northern Studies, my little known other alma mater. It was good to see the a few of the profs and sleep in their office, even gave a talk in class the next day.

Vermont 71997189

Before


After

No. That wasn't a temporary license. Vermont just doesn't require photos on licenses (certain Vermonters don't want Big Brother to know what they look like). The letters started to fall off of my old license, so I picked up a new schwanky photo one at the Springfield DMV.

Note:
-don't send mail to either address on either card.
-I look ridiculous in my picture.
-I am now 5'9", no longer 5'10".

csl