Seattle Blows

Well I rolled into Seattle again and I drove around calling Tay Tay and Audrey but neither of them picked up their phones and I didn't want to inconvenience Eric and Lacey again so I decided to say screw it all and I came down to Monmouth where my cousin is and it was a very good decision to come here instead. The other sad thing is that me being an idiot I lost my ID which so far has not stopped many places from serving me booze since I have taken to carrying around my birth certificate and my social security card. So I sent back home for another temporary ID which should come in the mail. So yeah that's all I got now.

Sad but Happy

So my camera bit the bucket (heh a combination of bit the bullet and kicked the bucket) so on the whole picture thing you are screwed unless other people along the way have cameras and they take the pictures and send them to me. I have been in Pullman and I am now at the end of a wonderful stay with some wonderful people. I am heading back to Seattle and the really good news is that Cousin Kirsten is now back in Oregon so I will be heading there and hopefully hanging out for a long time down there.

Goodbye Montana

So I left Montana and heading back in the lovely direction of west. Adrien and Jess were so much fun and so nice to let me stay in their apartment for so long and me not really doing anything helpful while I was there. I had a blast seeing the Bozeman and getting to hang out with some riv kids down in the big sky state. I made it to Pullman WA because CATI Bischoff is here and I get to hang out with her. So far it has been awesome and I have been kinda couch surfing between her place and her fiance Tom's place. Also sadly I need to fix my camera because to turn it on you have to use pliers and that is just a pain in the ass. More to come stay tuned... (Don't really stay tuned just come back)

Bozeman Montana

So I made it to Bozeman Montana pretty sweet. I called up Adrien and he let me stay at his apt with his lady friend Jess who is awesome. I got to Boze and then within 20 minutes I was here hanging out and getting ready to go off to a bar called Molly's it was fun and I played a lot of pool. Here are some pictures of the next couple of days they were fun and filled with playing many games.

Left to right Jess, Adrien, and Flipper he got the name cause he walked in while they were watching jaws or something about 4 years ago and he said oohh flipper I love this movie.

Tyler Goodnight

Adrien with his shirt ripped off by two ladies. (not as exciting as it sounds)

Derek one of there friends or Chewbacca

Connie or Consuela

Montana drive

Montana found the mountains

Big Sky, it was pretty cool

Pictures

Cool Lake/River in Oregon

They have no Mountains

They lost them

Where could they have gone?

Traveling to the Boze

So driving through northern Oregon and Eastern Washington is the most boring thing ever EVER!!!! Also anyone who didn't grow up with mountains everywhere how did you live? I would have died or moved as soon as I could but then I guess that's why you are in Alaska now. Good choice people good choice.

Cameras are hard to use

So I just realized that I have not added any photos in a couple of really long posts so heh heh. Cameras are just so hard to use. I met up with Mr. T and my step brother Matt (Mr. T is Steve Templeton for the non community folk(he is Matt's dad(it's a long and rather complicated tale that I don't want to tell ask someone who knows me if you really want to know))) that was a lot of (()) which always is rather exciting for me to do. So it is very early in the morning and I am getting ready to head off to Montana which should take me quite awhile because I don't think I will have a tailwind the whole way. It is funny that when I do have a tailwind I can actually make the speed limit other wise I just get to see the blurs of cars passing me. Anyways Mr. T bought me dinner twice and quite a bit of beer and let me sstay in his and Matts hotel room so thank you very much to him for all of that. With how damn hot it is down here I can not say thank you enough to letting me use the air conditioner. It is funny how hard it is to maintain a temperature without some sort of eletricity.

I deem Eugene Oregon cool but to hot for me right now. Matt moves into his apartment soon so I will come back and stay with him then but until then I will go north and find a climate that suits me a little better. I also only have my two pairs of black shorts and those are starting to smell and I also look more like a homeless person then I ever have before. I kind of want to get really hoboed out and go to a soup kitchen. I probably wont but it would be fun.

Olympia and more

So I swung down to Olympia from Seattle. This was a cool little town where I got a amazing cup of coffee and moved toward the fish tail brewery. After this I drove up to the Evergreen college and talked with a very cool lady about grad school there. This campus was so cool it was like being in south east Alaska. It was about as home as I could feel without actually being home.

I then started down the road to Eugene Oregon because I plan to head back up to Olympia at some point before it gets to cold up there. I would like to spend some more time in Seattle area but I needed to get back on the road before I got all soft. So I drove like a madman through cities (which house some cool people who are always offering help with directions whenever you ask) cities I have decided are the most confusing things ever. Why people decided to become so numerous that they would need a madman to design some of the highway systems is beyond me. But that is not the story today.

I rolled into Eugene and called my step brother Matt who turns out will not be getting into his apt (abreviated for covy folk) until next week and was about 4 hours away or something like that. I found a cool guy who directed me to a place to park and a sweet brew pub. After having a great couple of beers and one of the best burgers I have ever had (a kobe burger with blue cheese) I walked back to the bus. I walked up to a couple of older men to ask if they could advise a better parking area than on the street and they waved me off and turned around pretending I was not there. I was mad and I thought about doing some rather passive aggressive way but I asked God to give me the patience to overcome this and I didn't do anything and I walked to the bus and got all ready to go to bed. On a bathroom break out of it one of the old men named Niche from Russia came up and asked what my question was. After a long very nice conversation the man who waived me off, reapetedly apologized and they both set me up with places to park for weeks on end. They also happened to be Orthodox and recommended a church to go to this Sunday. This is why God is a mjor theme here because he showed me the goodness of people and helped give me a push to go to church this Sunday. It was really nice and I fell asleep about as happy as I could be.

This morning I went to a Starbucks and a very nice man helped me out by letting me use his phone and telling me where to watch the football game (which Matt is going to so I'm going to hook up with him afterwards) and enjoy myself with the company of others. So I am off because the second half of the game is hopefully about to start and thats the only part of a football gamethat I really care about anyways.

Photo

Thought I would post this one cause it was the last one of me and Crow and Tigerlily

Little Things

So I made it to Seattle and it is huge. Kind of scary how big a city can be. People keep telling me that the city has stopped or not started as I'm driving but to me it all looks like one giant city. Well I put this one up to say for starters that my cousin Eric and his wonderful wife Lacey are saints literal saints. They put up with me getting lost in the city and driving out of the city then back in to try to find their place. Then they blew up an air mattress and fed me at midnight. They are amazing especially since I just surprised them and said I was in town at about 8pm last night. So thank you to them.

In the last post I forgot to mention a few things. One is that Crow left me with an atlas guide of America and so now I am no longer driving around blind. Also in a thrift store in Canada I found a cassette of Peter Pan and so while listening to it the bus became Tigerlily which is very exciting for me to finally have a name for my home on wheels. So today I'm just hanging out and doing laundry and taking a very needed shower. I think that there might have been something else but I'm sure that it will come to me later.

September

Ah where did the time go. Just yesterday it seems I was still in Alaska cursing the rain and hydroplaning through most of the damn state. That was really exciting except that I had left the attachment for my stove back home and so I got really sad and decided that I was just going to eat pistachios and drink white russians so I did and I was very happy when I woke up. I then went and found Crow in the middle of my second day and he came all the way through Canada with me and is here now in Bellingham where he will take off for Ohio on a greyhound. He hitchhiked from New York to Alaska and was heading back down. The dude has been hitching for 5 years and had some sweet stories to tell.

Through the Canadian border they didn't even search me I was rather mad. They just asked to see my id and birth certificate THATS IT. As mentioned above I was irate and I wanted to tell them to search me but I decided just to call it good. Through Canada which by the way is fucking huge. I had to use the curse word because behemoth just doesn't cut it. It was amazing though to see all of the little towns and here people talking in silly Canadian French and saying all the stereotypical words like about and a all the time.

Next interesting stop was the hot springs (I got the part for my stove this day) at Llyard or something like that. They were sweet I got there around 9pm and it was so nice to just soak in the gross smelling water and listen to these drunk Canadian frat/hockey players go on to each other about how many splashes of water in the face they owed each other.
(Very drunk and slurry)
"No see you splashed me twice so I get to splash you once"
"Nooooo cause you splashed me so we are even"
"We aren't even you splashed me twice"
-splash-
and then it would start again. I laughed very hard till they noticed I was laughing and then I had to move away cause I did not want to get splashed in the face one bit. Then back at the campsite I found this cool group of people who I spent the rest of the night with around their campfire one of their names was Robin and I can't really remember the others names.

Then from there Crow and I took off and drove late into the night when we came upon to Swiss gentlemen who had started a campfire at a rest area. We asked them about this and they said it was the perfect place because since no one else ever made campfires there firewood was in abundance. So I got to talk to them about everything under the sun and I think they will be coming to Alaska in the winter next year in order to get in some good old fashioned skiing.

Then the next day was spent in a mad dash through the first sunny day and warmth in the freezing cold bus which was now a delightful not below freezing late into the night and huge trucks with their bright as the sun brights which they turn off right after they smite your eyes and make you blind. The cool thing is that I found a whole bunch of cool tapes both on the way and before I left so this whole night was spent listening to the New Testament on tape.

Today we finally made it back into America and Washington no less the very best president besides Teddy. So here I am in Bellingham at a Borders Books waiting to call and find out my cousins number to surprise him so I can park in his neighborhood tonight. Cheers I made it through Canada alive.

Canada has no internet

These were some Swiss boys I meet at a rest stop and they had started a fire so I hung out with them. Also on the far left is Crow who I picked up coming into Canada
Burgers (Crow again)
The Lake from Series of Unfortunate Events this thing was huge
Cool sign place I can't remember what it was called.
Just a cool shot during a bathroom break
Phantom Bus
Sweet view in Haines Junction also before I saw the large on the picture post options
A cool stop going through AK