Sunday, May 30, 2010

Tripping on the road

I'm in Portland. I seem to remember seeing a friend's bumper sticker that read "Keep Portland Weird". I was intrigued. Anything that people want to keep weird sparks my interest. And now I'm here. And it doesn't seem all that weird. And, yes, I've started the last three sentences with the word 'and'. What are you going to do about it, punk?

Road trips are amazing. I'm feeling very lucky and privileged at the moment for a couple reasons:
  1. Ever since I was little, my parents have been taking me on road trips. I've driven to Disneyworld, over twenty of the United States and seen more US State capitol buildings than many, many Americans (in theory, that is. I haven't actually seen any statistics but I've been to quite a few. Today, I went to Washington's capitol in Olympia.).
  2. I've never been truly hungry.
  3. I've always had a safe, warm place to sleep.
Homelessness sucks.

On another note, I was driven across an entire state today. A big one, not one of those tiny ones you have on the East Coast.*

I'm going to go because it is late and I am tired but I will hopefully write again soon. Thursday might not work out because I think we'll be in the Olympic Peninsula then (hooray for lavender farms and vampires) which means we'll be camping which means no internet but I'll do what I can. If not, you can most likely count on my next post having some road trip pictures.

Q for comments: Have you ever been on a road trip? (my definition of road trip being a trip that you take, preferably with your family, by car usually to more than one destination with the purpose of going on a slightly planned, slightly spontaneous adventure.)

*Did I ever tell you guys about my idea to get the US to go from 50 states into, like, 25, simply by merging the little ones and the ones with practically the same names? I know it sounds impractical and would probably be a useless waste of money and energy, but do you really need a North AND South Dakota. And Rhode Island? Really? That's like saying Manhattan should be its own state. Manhattan has approximately .5 million more people than Rhode Island. Think about it. Where's the sense? And could you just amalgamate New England? Let's end the confusion and suffering. Or not. This has gone on long enough (this tangent, I mean, not confusingness of 50 states)

2 comments:

Renata said...

Nope. I'm saddened by this a little bit actually. Spontaneous adventuring FTW. I've been to Milwaukee quite a few times, but always with a purpose. (That purpose 9 times out of 10 is Cubs v. Brewers games...)

And yeah, I've thought about that before. I'm guessing it would piss people living in those states off, though.

Vita said...

THE LITTLE STATES ARE MY FAVORITE <3

They are sooooooooo cute. Why would you ever want to merge them together? Also, most of them have a larger population than the physically large states. Rhode Island (teeny) has a larger population than Wyoming (big). Tiny Massachusetts is the thirteenth largest state, population-wise, AND it's more populated than the large state of Washington. So no. It wouldn't work, and I would cry.

I've been in the car for an extended period of time... like twelve freaking hours... but those had designated destinations, not really road trip things. We're hoping to go on a road trip after senior year to visit our friend who's moving to Massachusetts but who knows how that will work out.

Have fun in Portland though! I've always wanted to visit there. And Washington... and most of the West Coast in general.