End of the Road
We spent the day in Kingston, Ontario, visiting friends and eating Steph’s Grandma out of the house; on the way home, Steph stuffed herself behind the wheel one last time. ”I can’t believe we haven’t had one scratch on this car. Or a ticket.” she said, knocking on the dashboard.
Well, thaaaanks a lot. The next day, as Steph slept in her bed in Toronto, Kelsea and I hit a stand still about 30 minutes outside the city. The phone truck behind us did not. It clunked into the back of Betty, jolting us forward and leaving two dents that look like claw marks, or perhaps vampire fangs, on the rear hatch. No real harm was done, and no insurance claims filed, but the bump had an ominous feel, like something had begun to change.
We made it to Syracuse without any more hiccups, and after our nap in the parking lot, the house welcomed us with open arms. They gave us a room, offered us food and feeling bad that she didn’t make a bigger hooplah about our ending, Jennifer Siracini, director of development, called in the 24 hour news station to document our final casseroles. We explained that this house was special because Jennifer originally inspired the logistics of the trip. We explained that we’d made the same two or three casseroles all over the country, that we wanted to do this to say thank you to everyone that helped us. But when asked about the best part, about the biggest thing that we took away, I flubbered and mumbled. How could I answer this question in under an hour? How could I reduce all the phenomenal
people, ridiculous living conditions and personal changes to a couple sentences? I’m still trying to figure it out. Check back in a few weeks.
An hour later, we left six casseroles steaming on the counter and took our last meal outside on the screened-in porch. The sun set over the Interstate and sirens whined in the background as Kelsea and I spooned poppy seed chicken casserole off our plates. I felt at peace and my mind was quiet, which, for anyone who knows me, is a really..really…big deal. I had expected an emotional overload. But as I emptied my plate, I much preferred this ending.
Some things never change, and Kelsea and I woke up at 2:30 the next morning to see Harry Potter. It made me cry and it woke me up. I drove straight through to New York without a single cup of coffee and twitched around my apartment all night long, unable to sleep and thinking “What will I do next? Unpack my closet? Clean the oven? Write a book? Buy a couch?” This attitude lasted until Kelsea left and I found myself alone at my desk for the first time in two months. It was weird. I heard the police sirens, the children playing at the school next door–all of the normal things, the city things, still happening, still moving. But I was just sitting. With focus and disbelief and a sense of contentment that I have not felt in a very, very long time. I suppose this is what happens when you do the things you are supposed to do. When you follow your gut, no matter the credit card bill or the idiocy. I don’t regret a single thing that has happened over the last two months, and I cannot wait until the three of us can get together and do it again.
And Taylor Swift? Still playing.
Stay tuned tomorrow for a final thank you, a final wrap up and what’s next to come.
We Lost Something in Canada
On Friday afternoon, we took off for Canada, land of wildflowers and ambivalents, with 4 goals: change the oil, stop at duty free, make it to Toronto by midnight and coerce Stephanie into abandoning her life and staying with us forever. How did we do?
1. Oil Change Driving through Michigan, land of spare parts and bankrupt automakers, one might think it would be easy to find a cheap, quick oil change. Not so. After two exits with Starbucks, Fiber 1 bars, post offices and gas, we began to lose hope in our chances of finding liquid oil to ensure Betty’s smooth transition to Canada. Leave it to the WalMart atlas to save us.
Yes, indeed, about two miles before the only WalMart in Michigan with a Tire and Lube Express, Steph remembered that our atlas chronicled services offered at different stores around the country. She found our locale on the map, matched it with the cities in the front directory and lead us to an oasis of a WalMart, hidden in a forest off an unmarked highway. That’s about four miracles in a row.

VERDICT: Success
2. Stop at Duty Free In need of face wash and…other things…we approached the Canadian border around 11 pm hoping the duty free would still be open. But, alas, we did not see it, so after paying a highway toll, Steph decided it would be a good idea to ask the two security guards in combat boots in the middle of the road where we might find the duty free. Which meant that hours after explaining how to go through customs so that we did not get pulled over, we got pulled over. The two American guards poked around our car, asking about “that thing on top” and offering to write “we have weed” on the side of our car, so that Canadian customs would stop us. We giggled and chatted for about five minutes, and I learned that customs guards on a Friday night are just as bored as the guy working at the bowling alley. We all need someone to talk to, right?
VERDICT: Fail
3. Make it to Toronto After one Tim Hortons stop and two wrong exits, we pulled into Toronto around 2 am. And I’ll be honest, all I noticed were girls in really trashy outfits. But the next day, I saw the city’s beauty and charm. It’s like a little New York, which means you can live in Brooklyn and still walk/ get cabs to the Lower East Side. Despite the 3-week and counting garbage strike, the streets ran clean, and everywhere you looked, people sat on patios, smoking cigarettes, sipping on coffee
and catching up with friends. To counter the four hour walking tour we took to see all of this, we dined that evening at The Fat Belgian and stuffed our faces with burgers, mussels and grilled calimari. Did I mention we were going to Kingston the next day to inhale Steph’s grandma’s peach cobbler? Yeah…about that…Canada’s pretty nice.
VERDICT: Success
4. Coerce Steph to abandon her life Though I’m sure the idea of another 7 hour car ride held a lot of appeal, we could not pry her away from Toronto. She sent us off with a delicious home-cooked dinner party (oh, how we have changed!) and woke up at 6 am to pack the car. And I really can’t say any more, other wise this blog is going to become the most cliche piece of mush you’ve ever read. Suffice to say, leaving sucked.
VERDICT: Fail
West Coast Photogs
So. I’ve been terrible with updates lately. We went to Canada, and they don’t have Internet there. That’s a lie. They do. I’m just getting tired.
But we do have exciting photo updates! Vegas, California, Oregon and Seattle for your viewing pleasure. Stay tuned tomorrow (I promise…ok, fine, by Friday at least) for real-time posts on Chicago, Canada and Syracuse. Here’s a teaser:
Wild, Wild West
Small Town Livin’
Yesterday, Betty broke. We’d spent the day flying through Nebraska, pushing 80 and trying to negate the state’s existence. The landscape never changed, but the atmosphere in the car sure did. All day, white smoke seeped out of the air vents like a giant Ghostbusters’ failure, and near the town of Big Springs, smoke also started to ooze from the speaker and the air bag. I turned off the A/C. Immediately, smoke billowed into the car and something sparked in the vicinity of the air vent.
We screamed, pulled over, Googled “smoke is coming out of every vent in my car,” and called daddy. In that order. He diagnosed Betty with a faulty heater coil and told us it would probably cost a lot of money.
But if I have learned one thing on this trip, it’s that three 20-something girls in a car with Tennessee license plates have a certain pull when it comes to mechanics, electricians and anyone dealing with technology out of our supposed realm of understanding. Don’t even bother commenting that this is anti-feminist. I know very well it is. But if your car broke down in the middle of Nebraska, and you didn’t have any money, you, too, would put on a ball cap, roll into the nearest tractor store, smile and say that smoke is billowing out of your car.
We rolled 50 feet down the highway and into Big Springs Equipment, Inc., a place where tractors with wheels the size of my body littered their stock yard, and Peanuts the pug sits queen (if I owned Peanuts, her name would be Rolly Polly). In the back, we found Butch, an older man with a ball-cap and glasses and the dirty jeans and t-shirt of a farmer, wiping his face. 
“Hello?” Steph said. Butch looked up, his tanned face looking like he hadn’t seen girls in here in a while. “We have a question. Our car is leaking, and we wondered if you fixed cars or maybe new of a repair shop near here?” Butch put his glasses back on and blinked.
“Well, what’s wrong with it?” he asked, pronouncing his r’s like w’s.
“Weeeelll,” I said, “There’s this white smoke blowing into the car, and when I turned off the A/C, it sparked out of the air vent.”
“A spark!” he looked like we told him we’d seen a crop circle. We shrugged.
“Alright, well let’s take a look at this.”
In two minutes he, too, proclaimed we needed a new heater coil and instructed us to drive Betty around back by the shop. Back there, two other men in mechanic outfits lay on their backs under a truck, and as Butch cooled our engine with a fan, we all sat around chatting. We learned they’re all family, are the only repair shop within 20 miles and that Butch is trying to sell a Jetta that he bought for a blonde who ran off 30 days later. They learned that we’re on a road trip, keep nectarines and snow peas in the back of our car and used to drive tractors when we were little, though now, we live in cities and are heading to Chicago.

“Live in a city and headed to Chicago?” Butch raised his eyebrows, whistled and leaned back on his heels. “Man. I feel sorry for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Country’s for me” he said, and shook his head. “If you can’t walk out your house and kick your horse in the ass, drink a beer and piss off your deck, then you ain’t livin’.”
Butch clipped our heater hoses and refilled our coolant, checked our oil, wiped down the car, put a traffic cone on top of Betty, got in a water fight with Stephanie and, in the end, charged us $10. We gave them $20 and a bag of candied pecans.
Later that night, we rolled into North Platte, NE, Buffalo Bill Cody’s hometown, county seat of Lincoln County, and home of bizarre, anachronistic Blockbusters that don’t have movies made after 1993. This was an issue, since we needed to see HBO’s latest vampire creation, True Blood, in order to make it through the night. The helpful clerks happily referred us to–gasp–Movie Gallery, where we got a membership just to rent episodes 8-10.
“OK, I have to tell you something,” Steph said. “We’re on a 12,000 mile road trip, and we got addicted to this show in Seattle, and now we rent it every night.”
“Oh, I watch it,” the clerk said,
lowering her head and her voice, “I get it.”
We snapped up our movie and–boom–went next door for a $5 pre-made, yet delicious, cheese pizza from Little Caesars. Then–boom–3 minutes down the road Holiday Trav-L-Park for Campers, where we got a 20% discount–5% for paying with cash and 15% for AAA. The campground, part of a non-profit organization of parks offering the “best accomodations in America,” had a pool, wi-fi and flushing toilets all for $14. Boom, boom, boom.
Nebraska, though incredibly dull, also turned out to be incredibly easy. Tune in tomorrow to see if Iowa proves as amiable. And also whether or not we find a crop circle.
Brokeback Betty
After somehow completely missing Grand Teton National Park, we pulled into Jackson, Wyoming, a tiny town where cowboy meets couture (Mind you, I said Jackson. Jackson Hole is the resort area immediately surrounding.) The downtown consists of chi-chi shops, outdoor tour companies and building facades that look as if they have not changed since 1872. Stage coaches clop around the town square, and the Cowboy Bar offers saddles instead of bar stools. And the arches leading to the town park? Made entirely of antlers.

By the grace of God, we stopped in Jackson on the 4th of July. If you have never been in a small town during Independence Day, then you might as well be an ex-pat. Livingston, MT had already started their celebration when we rolled through on the 2nd, and by the time we reached Jackson on the 4th, festivities were in full swing. Officials had blocked off the town square, families picnicked in the park, everyone had an ice cream cone, and little kids danced in the street in full cowboy get-up.
It was darling, but unfortunately, Wyoming is a very big, empty state, and we had a very long, lonely drive ahead. I spent the first 5 hours hungry but clueless as to what I wanted to eat. We had bread and jerkey and cheese and yogurt and crackers and carrots and fruit and oreos and Fiber 1, but they all sonded so gross. I sunk into the back seat, while outside, a thunderstorm threatened to beat Black Betty to a pulp.
We stopped to get gas in a town with a handful of trailers, no traffic light, the gas station, and across the street from the gas station, mecca. Also known as an ice cream shop. The nutrient I didn’t know I needed. I walked across a dirt road, to a parking lot full of beer-bellied cowboys sitting on their truck beds slurping ice cream out of waffle cones. Everyone stared as I walked by, staring the stare you only get in a small town where residents know you don’t belong.
The ice cream store shared space with the law office and the coffee shop, and offered a handful of tables for what seemed like the entire population. I waited in line and, when my turn came, ordered one scoop of Cookies N’ Cream. The young woman behind the counter handed me a cone the size of my face.
“$1.98, please,” she drawled. The royal blue polo stretched over her belly matched the headband stretched over her ponytail. I handed her my new debit card, one with my picture on it. She swiped and took a second look.
“Where you from?” she asked.
“New York.”
“Oooh,” she said. “Reason I know is we don’t have credit cards like that in Wyoming. What’re you doin’ way out here?”
“Oh, I’m on a road trip,” I said. “With my sisters.”
“What, they didn’t want ice cream?” she asked, as if she could not understand that such a being may exist.
“Oh, um, I don’t know. They actually don’t know I’m in here,” I smiled. “Gotta get away some times.” She smiled, her brow a little furrowed, as I handed her the signed receipt and bounded out of the store, approximately 5,000 times happier than the era Before Ice Cream.
We spent the next 6 hours driving through a Wyoming thunderstorm, consuming the treats we’d purchased at the gas station (including P.S. I Love You) and gaping at the double rainbows that appeared over the highway. Around 10 p.m., we sputtered into a gas station outside of Boulder with an empty tank and very full bladders. I sprinted to the doors, at 10 p.m. on a Sunday, mind you, only to find them locked. Closed for the 4th. In fact, the only thing open on Independence Day seems to be
Wal-Mart; are you surprised? Nope, neither were we. We purchased dinner–three cans of beans and two gallons of water–and headed back to Betty, so we could find a hotel.
Unfortunately, three blocks down the road, Betty lost it. For the past week, she’d whined every time we turned her on, and now something smelled like butt in the back seat and vapor oozed out of the air conditioning vents. The windshield fogged up so badly that Steph couldn’t see, so we pulled onto a dark, deserted road and flicked on the hazard lights, while we tried to figure out whether hot or cold air would make the steam go away. We decided on hot, and the car quickly become a cesspool of rotting food and filth. We plopped ourselves on the hood of the car and ate beans from a can, watching fireworks in the distance while we waited for the steam to evaporate off the inside of our windshield. Happy 4th of July!















