Last MInute Travel Money

I've felt pretty torn on whether or not Darling and I would work in Virginia. Both my Mom and brother have offered to pay our way back to Austin for Baby-O's third birthday, so we have no fear of getting stranded. Our weekend in Columbus basically drained our bank account, however, so not working means facing five pretty tight weeks of vacation and then returning to Texas broke.

An unexpected job offer through a family friend has now changed the nature of the dialogue. It's no longer a matter of whether or not we will work, but whether we can find something more enjoyable and convenient than what we may well have just been offered. So I've contacted an ex-employer and plan to make more face-to-face inquiries over the weekend.

I've felt pretty stressed out about the itinerant lifestyle for the past couple of weeks, but the idea of having some income is such a huge relief that I almost want to add more destinations to my journey before completing our loop! A weekend in New Orleans, maybe?

Heading East

Had a crazy fun weekend with my brother and his family in columbus. The zoo on Friday, an indoor waterpark on Saturday, and a children's science museum on Sunday. In a couple of hours we will be heading towards my beloved blue ridge mountains!

Thanksgiving 2012

On my way to Columbus in the next fifteen minutes! Following my Thanksgiving tradition, it didn't occur to me to shop for the Tofurkey until the day before. There was no such thing in Ann Arbor so late in the game (except, perhaps, at Whole Foods, which I just couldn't manage to get to by bike after exhausting all other options in town), so I picked up a sort of holiday roast. Since I've spent the last seven years eating tofurkey non-stop from November to January, it's kind of a relief to try something new. This is by far the most laid-back holiday I've looked forward to since my marriage, out-of-state travel aside.

Hope everyone else is getting plenty of rest and celebration in!

Thanksgiving 2012: The Week Before

Happily settled into Ann Arbor for a few days before leaving Michigan. I hopped back onto my back and remembered why I was so grumpy the last time I rode here: Ann Arbor is hilly! I don't think I had to change gears once the entire time I was in Detroit. What a strange way to be spoiled.

I spent today at the library catching up on my writing. I seem to be happiest about 5 pages short of my daily goal. Every once in a while I go a few days without writing at all, fall 20 pages behind, and have to write like crazy to catch up. Then I imagine that I'll keep up that momentum and actually get ahead, which is enough to put me off writing for another three days!

Our first full day in town I looked at our hostess's beautiful collection of cookbooks and then went to the grocery store with a list and a budget. I got everything necessary for at least two good dinners and our standard breakfast (two eggs, butter, and toast). Our standard breakfast should be the significantly cheaper oatmeal, but...well, it isn't.

Hope everyone else is having a mild week-before-Thanksgiving. 

Hopes and Expectations

Darling and I have all our rideshares and crashpads arranged for the next week or so. We'll be heading south to Ann Arbor tomorrow, East to Ohio on Thursday, enjoying Thanksgiving with my brother's family, and then heading on to the coast to our old home in Virginia.

I don't know much what to say about our time in Virginia, except it occupies a hazy spot in my heart close to Texas. Leaving one for the other in 2007 was one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever done. For years our lives rotated on returning for brief visits. We jokingly urged friends to hold their weddings and give birth to their babies within weeks of eachother so we could attend every important event, and they were strangely obliging.

We haven't been back in years, though, and both the pain and obligation have worn thin. So going back and kind of ressurecting that energy is a little scary to me, particularly being pretty much homeless at this point in my life.

A big part of me wants to settle back into our little mountain home, rebuild the life we once had there, crawl into a comfortable chair and spend another three years reflecting on the lessons of the past several months. The rest of me knows, however, that Darling and I have kind of sort of just gotten started on our travels, and settling into Virginia for more than a few months carries unrealistic expectations. So I will be happy to simply see my friends again, maybe drop in on my old haunts, and look forward to Texas in 2013.

Poliwalk the Politalk

While I'm super happy that President Obama maintains his post, my eye has been on the smaller side of legislation.

I spent this morning at Detroit city hall making a case for a stricter definitition and enforcement of the "nuisance abatement," law, preferably one that puts responsibility on the banks (many foreign) that evict individuals and leave houses empty, unlivable, prone to fire, and an open invitation into the neighborhood by gangs and other violent individuals.

When someone is evicted in Detroit, a dumpster is dropped in front of the house a day or two before a bailif shows up to trash any posessions still in the house. The dumpster advertises to the world that the house is on the verge of being uninhabited. Trucks circle the house waiting for a safe moment to abscond with the furnace, doors, copper pipes, and anything else that can be sold for scrap. A house is rendered unlivable within half an hour of being abandoned. In helping a woman pack her stuff to leave a house in such a situation, we had a man walk through open doors and straight into the basement to dismantle the furnace while we were still there. When told to leave, he simply said, "okay, but leave the back door open." Obviously, we didn't, but this is an all-too-common occurance in areas where police simply do not respond.

I was there to support a friend who fights this vicious cycle full time, and am excited to work with him more next spring. I'm also grateful he introduced me to the exciting (in a boring way) world of city politics. We were fortunate to witness another case involving the water treatment plant. Apparently while understaffed last year, the plant went through a brief period of non-compliance. The staffing matter was resolved and the plant has been exemplary ever since.

In response to this brief scare, however, a consulting company stepped in to take the problematic water treatment plant off the city's hands. For the handy dandy price of 47 billion dollars, the consultants offered to obtain legal ownership of one of the city's most valuable assets AND fire 80% of employees (privatization is just that efficient, you know)! Because no one else had the sense to request a giant pile of money for this absurd disservice, the city did not put the contract up for bid.

If paying a corporation almost 50 billion dollars to "fix" a service that isn't broken while increasing the already phenomenal rate of unemployment in an over-burdened city isn't tempting enough, the fact that the private coproration is under investigation by the EPA is just icing on the cake.

Amazingly, the city counsel members did NOT respond too all this information with high fives all around and cheerful acceptance that they had a no-brainer for once. There was nothing positive to say about the proposal whatsoever, but they posponed the decision for another day. Half the council tried to push for an immediate decision against the the idiotic proposal, the other half reserved any judgement whatsoever and wanted another few weeks to "think it over."

It was kind of amazing to see happen in action, and makes me fairly certain that politics might be a fun game to play for someone with a dry sense of humor. Maybe next year...

Sunny Weekend Update

I spent the weekend house-sitting in the city. It was nice to have some time alone with Darling, cooking for two, and taking walks along the river. We helped with a neighborhood cleanup project and painted our friend's porch while we were there. One day it was actually warm outside and I was able to walk around in short sleeves and enjoy the feel of the sun on my skin. At the river we saw hundreds of Canadian Geese resting just north of Bell Isle, as though doubting whether or not they should continue on their lengthy trip.

Even though I was within an easy ride of two very reliable dumpsters, I spent $30 on groceries. I made a pasta alfredo, a split pea soup, quesadillas, and spicy carrot tacos with refried beans. Back at heartquarters this morning I made two large cheese pizzas and drank most of a pot of coffee. I measure my most successful days by how much food I produce :)

A dear friend convinced me to attend (and speak at) a city council meeting tomorrow morning, and then I insist that this is it for my activism in Detroit until next spring.

I've written over forty pages of my book. I'd rather it was much more, but being about 25% finished with my rough draft feels good. I want to have something to show my mentor from college by the time I get to VA.

My Faith

**Oftentimes I start a post like this, write for 45 minutes, delete everything, try and focus on my real article, and end up not publishing anything at all. Right now I post too rarely for those sort of shenanigans.**

Although I am an Athiest, my mom has a most-annoying habit of referring to me and Darling as "the best Christians she knows." It annoys me because the traits she associates with Christianity are, to my mind, HUMAN traits, which can be shared by any person of any religion. Of course she's my Mom and I love her and refrain from putting undue stress on my Christian family members, because they care about my soul and that's sweet, so I don't argue the point.

I was humbled when the woman co-leading the beautiful Shabbat ceremony I attended two weeks ago, and with whom I have been acquainted for some weeks now, told us the story of her own faith and mentioned that my husband and I fit the bill to be a very good Jewish couple.

I was downright giddy when one of the monks we're staying with referred to what Darling and I are doing as "preaching." In my liberal life, "preach" is a bad word. But the brother told us how St. Francis and his posse would go sit on a hill with the people, and then leave, and the brothers would ask, "why didn't we preach," and Frank said, "we just did."

Some Catholic stories have a lot in common with Buddhist koans, by the way.

One of my new friends said my practice of Atheism is very similar to her practice of Quakerism. Same beat, different drummer. I guess a major difference is that I don't mind what happens after the concert.

I've heard the critique that atheists are very pretentious. I was once asked, "How can you to think that this is it?" The implication is that I think that we humans are born, grow up, get old, and die. The implication is that this is a terrible trial we are put through, fraught with temptations and doomed to Armageddon.

I find it agonizingly pretentious that THIS isn't enough for most people. And this is everything, and it is beautiful.  This is only happening once, right now. And when it's over, something else will be happening. Right now there are desert skies full of stars, maple syrup on pancakes, newborn babies, dolphins, fresh-brewed coffee and chocolate chip cookies, massive and steep hills you can ride your bike down and feel like you're flying, a hundred thousand amazing books waiting to be read, deep caves you can enter and hear total silence, turn on a lantern and see beautiful formations a half mile underground, hotels at which you can take a shower and watch cartoon network all night, warm fuzzy hats, deep snowdrifts, warm fires...I don't need to believe in something other, there is to much in this that I can't even begin to take in.

And yeah, there's a lot in the world that is absolutely wretched. There is rape. A lot of rape. There is murder. There is terrible, terrible injustice. There is slavery. There are natural disasters that take millions out of their homes and lives are never the same. There is drought and starvation. There is a desperation that I have witnessed on the road that is very basic and terrible. There are women evicted this August with small children who have nowhere to go, no one to help them, and it will snow any week now. There are young boys killing on the streets - the streets I've taken to walking - for a hundred bucks. There are generations of boys in prison. There are generations of boys in the military. I'm neither blind nor stupid. And I still say, for them and me, that this is enough.

Suffering is something I would like to be eradicated. I do not think that suffering is written into the book of Man by any omnipresent being of any conception, and should not be taken for granted. I think that when we take responsibility for suffering, we become powerful enough to ease it.

I also think that global peace is possible. Writing that last bit makes me cringe a little, but I can't tell you how many people I know who honestly think that immortality is possible, in a literal sense. That is one thing I neither want nor expect to come of humanity's progress. I find the life cycle to be a simple, predictable, and beautiful thing. Let me live long enough to grow old, and I'll do my best to be satisfied when the last breath comes.

Caring For Cast Iron

I've encountered two types of people who use cast iron:

1. Superstitious zealots. These folks own cast iron, stainless steel, and often some teflon pans. That's because the cast iron is for very specific use and must undergo particular care...typically guests aren't allowed anywhere near it. The ignorant handling of anyone besides the superstitious zealot will destroy the precious non-stick seal and can't be repaired until some unleavened pig lard has been obtained under the light of a full moon in February.

2. Anyone who has lived an extended period of time in a co-op. Cooperative houses tend to amass beautiful collections of cast iron because hippies are more likely to purchase a fifteen pound skillet than pack it when moving out. The shorter lifespans of other types of pans are inherent in group houses, also, and it's the stainless steel pieces that get forgotten at potlucks. Ultimately, cast iron is used for anything and everything at every meal. Because no individual will demand responsibility over the daily dishes of ten other adults, everyone (generally) shares the responsibility and the voodoo-style care of cast iron falls to the wayside.

My house has a very simple set of strategies for caring for cast iron which kept pieces beautiful, non-stick, clean, and vegetarian:

* Give your pan time to heat up on the stove before putting food in it. This is a good idea with stainless steel, also, because food is best cooked at a relatively steady heat. Do not crack an egg into a cold pan unless you want it (poorly) scrambled.

* Anything can be cooked in cast iron, including tomato sauce. The acid in the tomato sauce will break the seal. That is not the end of the world.

* Wash your cast iron. Don't use soap if you don't have to, but clean it. Soap is much less damaging than scrubbing.

*Do not soak your cast iron under any circumstances. If something won't come off with soap ad water, fill it with both, bring it to a boil on the stove, and wash it while you still have to hold the handle with an oven mitt. This shouldn't be common.

* When the cast iron is washed, put it back on the stove and put a low heat under it. Add a dribble of high-heat oil (not olive oil), and tilt the pan as it heats to spread the oil over as much of the surface as possible. When the pan is very hot, but the oil is not smoking yet, you can wipe the excess off the pan with a rag. If you save this rag nearby, you can use it several times. Eventually you can even just run the oiled rag over the very hot pan for this insta-seasoning method. But I wouldn't keep the rag for more than a few weeks, and it won't ever be clean again. I would prefer to keep the rag in the refrigerator to keep it from going rancid, but my house did not and we never had a problem.

* It's worth saying again not to soak cast iron, and not to leave it to drip dry. Even if it doesn't need a new oil, it needs to dry through and through. I think it's probably the effect of leaving cast iron wet, above any other infraction, that leads people to think that proper care and maintenance requires divine intervention.

Rideshare Success

Okay, transport panic over. As usual, craigslist rideshare came through for me. Not only do I have a ride from Michigan to Ohio in time for Thanksgiving and then a ride from Ohio to Virginia the following Monday, but the total cost is less than half what I would pay for the bus or train. AND Darling and I get to hold onto our bikes, which is such a relief. We were on the verge of putting one up for sale so we could afford to ship the other back to Texas.

I'm settling a little into our current living space. I've been baking bread every other day or so and cooking dinner almost as often. We have acess to good garden produce, particularly carrots and leeks. I'm doing a lot of writing in notebooks, hoping to have a rough draft of at least 12 short story/chapters chronicling this Summer's adventures by the end of this month. I'm eager to move on, eager to see family and bid our temporary family of three months goodbye. At least temporarily.

Transportation Rant

The American Travel Industry should be absolutely ashamed of itself. I'm entirely convinced that the entire system is designed to convince people not to take long trips.

One might imagine that the competition between Amtrak, Greyhound, and megabus would be enough to push one of these companies to be halfway cooperative with consumers. One might even imagine that competing with the airlines and car rental companies would be incentive enough to provide a halfway decent experience. But no. Not.At.All.

Megabus looks like the most affordable option, but suffers the severe drawback of being absolutely useless. One can not travel from Columbus, OH to Cleveland, OH, even though both places have Megabus stops. They have apparently summoned the ghost of Henry Ford to lead their company, "You can go anywhere you want, as long as it's Chicago." I can only imagine that it's pure sadism that inspired the builders of megabus.com to include an application that tells you where you can go, but no way to work out how to actually get anywhere.

When I finally found a workable route with megabus, even a direct trip (from Detroit to East Lansing), the Greyhound tickets were actually cheaper. Which is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

If Megabus accepted bicycles they would win me over, demented routes and price weirdness notwithstanding. NO ONE will let you bring on a bike unless it's entirely dismantled, and both megabus and greyhound count that as your checked luggage. So bike tourists are largely out of luck.

I've heard claims, even from other cyclists, that Amtrak accepts bikes. In my experience it can be challenging to bring any checked baggage at all. I don't understand how this is variable from station to station. A train either has space for suitcases or it doesn't. I don't know what happens when a layover takes you off a train that accepts checked luggage and puts you on one that doesn't. Are you expected to just throw your suitcase into the bin and go on with life? And then there's the fact that trains are twice as expensive and as often as not take twice as long to get anywhere. All for the privelage of having access at a dining cart where one can spend $20 for a plate of pasta.

If it weren't for Darling's hurt back, we could probably bike to Columbus from Detroit faster than we could get their by train, AND we'd get to take all of our luggage! That does not make a great deal of sense, friends. I'm crossing my fingers for a rideshare response, now, and hoping for the best...

November 2012 Net Worth

Since the last time I posted my net worth, I have travelled over a thousand miles away from home, dipped my toes in the hot springs of Arkasnas, taken a dip in Lake Michigan, camped in one of the scarier hoods of Detroit, been one of the scariest things in one of the scariest hoods of Detroit, earned a permaculture design certificate, slept outside six out of ten weeks, destroyed two air mattresses, ate well over five pounds of chocolate rescued from dumpsters, gained and lost as much weight myself, helped plaster two strawbale houses in two different states, learned to captivate small children with stories, made more friends than I could possibly keep up with, learned a lot of ways that the Catholic church is really super awesome, and survived a high speed collision.

Maybe you've had as many intense experiences since the last time you posted your net worth, but within a three-month period? You'll have to forgive me for my lapse, the first since May of 2007.

August I had - and spent - an absurd amount of money. September I spent the last of my availalbe cash on groceries and the second air mattress. October I went the entire month without spending a penny until the car accident spun me into a panic and I called in my emergency fund. I then purchased a new shirt, paid for gas back to Detroit, bought some beer, purchased groceries (the nearest grocery store has a compactor), and otherwise frittered away some cash. I have a total of $408.92 to my name.

I owe $2,244.75 to the student loan company. That brings my net worth to -$1,835.83.

My goal for November is to get safely to Virginia and maybe - MAYBE - find a way to make some more money over the holidays. If I'm going to track my net worth after all, it would be nice to watch it actually grow. Oh, and I'm writing a novel for National Novel Month.