When all the parts equal more than the sum

Packing always takes longer than you think it's going to take. I've found that, ironically, the better pack-rat you are, the worse packer you are. This is because if you truly excel at storing your belongings in a given space, you will not be able to accurately assess the amount of time it will take to re-pack said belongings into small containers, because they are so well hidden within said space.

I didn't finish loading everything into my car until about 7:30am on Saturday, which left very little time for sleeping since I had to show the room to a potential subletter (no dice) at 9:45am.
Immediately after the open house presentation I hit the road. I wore my special driving socks.
If you're planning a road trip and want to get the most bang for your buck, upstate New York, along the I-90, is your best bet. I went through Whitehall, Ticonderoga (home of Fort Ticonderoga), Saratoga (home of Benedict Arnold's boot), Schenectady (home of Synecdoche, NY), Erie Canal, Syracuse, Seneca Falls (home of 1st Wave Feminism), Rochester, and Buffalo (home of Antonios Dimoulas). If I had more time, I would've detoured to Niagra Falls and the state capital. It's a haul to do in one sitting, but it would make for an awesome weekend retreat.



I divided my trip into two days and spent the night in Ohio. I don't know if every Red Roof Inn does this, but the one in Cleveland gave me a coupon for a free breakfast from Burger King when I checked out. Score!

Indiana punishes people for driving across their state.It cost about $10 to drive laterally across the Hoosier state. It was literally highway robbery. Had I known that would be the cost, I would've paid to have me and my car loaded on a plane and flown from Toledo Express to Midway, just to spite that eyesore of a state.

You can't really tell from this picture,...but one of the visitor centers I drove past housed a Red Burrito which, for the uninitiated, is horrendous. It serves the worst Mexican food/food I've ever had. I have no idea how this chain exists. It's hard to imagine that a Mexican fast food franchise that serves lower quality chow than Del Taco can keep it's doors open. I guess it makes sense that you can only find them in the middle-Midwest where the greatest culinary triumph of the last 6-centuries is corn on the cob.

You know how there's those KFC/Taco Bell combination restaurants? Red Burrito is what KFC and Taco Bell would be if, not just their addresses, but their menus were combined, and then sluiced with mayo.




Eventually I made it to Chicago. My new domicile.

End of Days

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This town could be your life

The thought of living in South Royalton, Vermont makes most people uncomfortable, but really, when you think about your day: getting up early, zoning out when you should be tuning in, wandering through grocery store aisles, pretending to be friends with people whose name you don’t know, staying up late – that’s just what life is, and South Royalton doesn’t inhibit that. A town half the size of SoRo wouldn’t inhibit that. If you hooked up feeling sensors to a Cleveland street vendor and Ashton Kutcher, and measured their general sensibilities and attitude throughout their day, it would probably be the same for each individual.

People, particularly young people, use their place of residency to augment their personality, not unlike brands. Whereby, an individual will use a certain sneaker brand to express to others the person they perceive themselves to be and the person they hope to be perceived as, an individual will also use the city or town they live in to express to others the person they perceive themselves to be and the person they hope to be perceived as. A kid buying a pair of Emericas to let others know he’s into skating, or generally into skate culture, is not unlike a kid that moves to New York City to let other people know he’s gritty, or cultured, or famous, or whatever, man.

In fact, it usually acts as a crutch. When I was living in New York, I used to love going back to Phoenix and telling people about my New York exploits, but it usually wasn’t stuff that I was really doing, it was just stuff I as a person living in New York got to absorb from others as my persona. My brand was more about proximity and less about personal effort exerted.

In truth, anywhere in the (western) world, you can fall in love, and subscribe to Netflix, and follow American Idol. People get way too hung up on what their place of residency can offer them and never think about what they can offer their place of residency, or better yet, what they can offer themselves. I’ve yet to meet a place I didn’t find a way to have a good time in. This may be Cleveland, Ohio talking, but if you’re truly rock n’ roll, then everywhere’s a stage, dude. The world is your oyster because that’s all your world is.
All a muncipality is is the people that reside there, and a community of several hundred people in their 20s from cities around the world turns South Royalton into a microcosm of the cities those people came from.

It really just goes to show that we're all the same. Not just from all the United States, but various nations, students conglomerated in this small Vermont town, and wouldn't you know, they all enjoy excessive drinking, dancing to shameful music, lighting stuff on fire, and having sex with each other. Who would've saw that coming? Certainly only our generation, in our unique geographical location could truly communally enjoy something as abstract as boozing and screweing, like we do. Sure in big cities they participate in that sort of obscure conduct, but in a rural town like ours? Get out of town! There's no way kids in Ithica or Hanover or Gainesville are drinking copious amounts of hootch, shimmying, building a fire, and then later fornicating.