as "the road" by cormack maccarthy and it was bleak and kinda depressing but it was really good none-the-less. now i am reading two books, "cross country" by robert sullivan which is about just that. he has travelled across the country some 30 times in his life and he's writing about it. i also started "the brothers karamazov" be dostoevsky which i have wanted to read for a long time.
g it a little bit but it was almost perfect. i rode my bike (finally a good biking day!) down to the river and sat along it's banks for a couple hours writing a letter and journaling and watching 
people and their dogs. the clouds were really fluffy and awesome. i rode around and took a few pictures and went to the library and walked around downtown. it was a very nice afternoon."being a parent is like your heart leaving your body and walking around out there."
oad, on the way home. this morning was really beautiful in western virginia/west virginia/pennsylvania. it was raining and i turned up the air conditioning and put on a swea
tshirt and drove through the fog. it was great. the rest of the drive wasn't that exciting but it went by fast. there is this song called "in ohio on some steps" by limbeck that was put on a road trip mix made for me. i like the song a lot so i thought that i had to find some steps in ohio and sit on them and listen to that song. so i did. and that was that.
...sunset in indiana...
uperior hwy one than california's) to columbia, going through savannah, georgia. the florida coast is beautiful, lined with expensive houses with private beaches, just the place i would never live. savannah was about four hours from orlando and i was looking forward to spending a little time there. unfortnately, it was 100 degrees and i was dehydrated so after walking around for an hour, i couldn't stand it anymore. at left is the only picture i took. i walked along the river front and had some gelato and walked around a few streets. it's a beautiful city and i would definitly like to spend more time there at some point.
bout everyone (important) in columbia so we were always running into people he knew and i met many that i will not remember if i ever see them again. he took me around to his usual hang outs: a coffee shop, a tattoo parlor (where i awkwardly stood having my chest piece examined for quite awhile by one of their artists), a piercing place, and a community house of sorts where we attended a metal show in their living room. it was fun, though i can feel very uncomfortable around lots of people i don't know, in large part because i am not a conversationalist at all so unless someone approaches me and starts talking, i kinda just sit there. and (sometimes) i'm okay with that. i did really like a couple of his friends inparticular so it was cool to hang out with them.
outside pretty mis
erable. so we went to the state house, to continue in the vein i began in topeka. the south carolina capital is a weird place, very different than the other two i have been too. it's much more closed up and protected and pretty small. we went to the state museum and saw an art show by an artist named edmund yaghjian which was actually quite wonderful. the museum also has a lot of south carolinan history and stuff from the civil war (being the state that started
the thing) and lots of other cool stuff. he treated me to a wonderful sushi dinner which was much appreciated. and we went to the greenville county mountains (the appalachians) where it was at least 10 degrees cooler which was nice. it was really 
hazy but beautiful none the less. we walked around a bit, drove around a lot of winding roads, and enjoyed a roadside waterfall. it was a nice trip. it was nice to have someone to do stuff with in south carolina. i will say that i saw enough maury to last me the rest of my life, and poo on the video store for not having the movie we wanted right when we wanted it, and i have a knack for sitting in "the dog's spot" but at least they seem to like me. i think that about sums it it up; i don't think i'm forgetting anything...
lando wasn't all horrible, niles took me to a really great park that looked like where the lost boys lived in "hook."
it was pretty awesome. i went back there a couple times. i went to the orlando science center and saw the "body worlds" exhibit which was crazy, weird, amazing. i wandered around a lot, wrote some letters, slept, and watched "the godfather" trilogy. those are good movies. i did go to the beach one 
day and that was fun, but it was weird. i haven't swam in an ocean since i went to hawaii...three years ago-ish. it's salty! and the sun was intense; i got a sunburn, of course. i'm much more of a pacific-northwest beach person and that whole surfer town, long white sand beaches, palm tree thing just isn't my scene. but it was beautiful, and the first time i've been to the atlantic since i was 13. so that's fun. after a few days there, i was ready to not be doing stuff alone all the time. i love doing things by myself but i don't like it when i have to. niles is fun and good company but he was busy and i felt after awhile, like i was a burden. he was very hospitable though.
cities that proclaim to be the frog capital of the world, the buggy capital of the world, the cajun capital, the duck capital, and the crawfish capital, it has the longest bridge over water in the world (at 24 miles over lake pontchartrain), and is the only state without counties (it is separated into parishes). it is also home to the largest fresh water basin in the world and that is a lovely sight. a long section of the freeway is almost completely over water, swamps with trees growing out of it and grasses above the water line. there were a lot of storms we drove through, with some very brooding clouds. it made for slow traffic but beautiful scenery.
ived and checked into the hotel/condo timeshare place my dad got for us and it was so fancy! it was much nicer than we had expected. so we looked forward to sleeping in those nice big beds after staying on love seats in texas. unfortunately, we didn'
t actually do much in new orleans. our only full day there, neither of us were feeling very well so it wasn't until the evening that we got out and walked around the garden district. the houses are big and beautiful and there are beads hanging from most of the trees, remnants of mardi gras passed. and then because of the heat and lack of food, we did not go farther. it was such a beautiful city, the parts i did see and i definitly would like to go back.
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