If I were to ask you who has worse gas, Mark or myself, who would you choose?

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Thanks to Waterslidegate last Thursday, Mark and I had to spend the whole day attempting to defuse the situation and missed out on a quick trip to Minneapolis. We were going to head in there around 1pm, stay until 8 or so and then get on the road to the Badlands. But of course that didn’t happen…

Instead we camped out that evening at some blaaah KOA, twenty miles outside of the city and watched the vice presidential debate online, we also ate Thai food and Chipwiches so it turned out to be a good night. The next day we woke up late as always. Mark thinks it has something to do with the T@b because we can never seem to get up earlier than 9:30, and most of the time it’s after 10. We blame you Wanda the T@b, for being too comfortable. Check out was at 12pm so of course we were late doing that as well and eventually we were on the road and looking for some breakfast.

So this is where it begins: Eggs benedict (with no meat, thank you) is my favorite food, EVER. We began this road trip on September 1st, it was October 3rd and I hadn’t come across any eggs benedict on the trip thus far. Mark found a Chowhound review on some eggs benedict meals in Minneapolis and everyone seemed to love Al’s tart and lemony hollaindaise sauce over at Al’s restaurant. Looking at the review on my iPhone my mouth began to water “TO AL’S WE GO!” Oh no! Al’s closes in 20 minutes! So I called ahead - “Aaaaalll’s Breakfast!” said the guy on the other end.
“Hi, what time do you guys close?”
“1pm but if you’re on line by 1 you will get food.”
“A line?”
“Yes. A line.”
“Do you have eggs benedict?”
“Yes best eggs bene in town. See you soon, Katie.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Al’s knows all.”
We somehow arrived at Al’s before 1pm. I think because the fear of me whining all day if I didn’t get those eggs bene fueled Mark to drive like I’ve never seen him drive before. We made it past twenty minutes of traffic lights in five minutes, WITH Wanda in tow. I didn’t even have to help him find Al’s “THERE IT IS GET OUT GETOUTGETOUT!” He opened the passenger door and shoved me out. Leaving me in his dust. Would I ever see him again?

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I don’t miss living in an apartment at all. Of course there are things I miss about having an apartment, like having a place to go to the bathroom or showering more than once a week (just kidding, I showered less than I do now when I had one). So I’m trying to think of ways to extend this road trip. Of course that means extending money, which seems to be impossible somedays. On a road trip, 3 days = 1 week. So when I think about three days ago, it’s like I’m thinking about last Tuesday. I don’t even remember what I did last Wednesday! Wednesday was practically a month ago!!!

Every state has it’s own accent, which is GREAT. Right now we’re in Wisconsin, where they say ‘backpack’ and pronounce the ‘a’ like the ‘a’ in ask - a backpack. Once again we’re not too close to the city, this is because either there are no campgrounds close enough, or we cannot find one close enough with Wifi. Not having the internet is a pain in the rear and I’m thinking about just giving in and signing up for a measly 5gb of upload/download bandwidth.

Mark and I have this problem called “We live next to New York City”. So we know most of what there is to know about NYC and expect all cities to be as great as it is. But no city is like New York City, and I found this painfully true in Boston the first five times we visited. Finally I realized that maybe Boston isn’t 1/8th as awesome as New York, but for Massachusetts, Boston is pretty great and has it’s own little flavor (and accent). But then we experienced Cleveland and all my hopes of enjoying a city for what it is, were smashed. We recovered from Cleveland in the countryside of Illinois for a few days and finally ended up in Chicago, from last Friday to Sunday.

I was in a good mood when we headed out there on Friday. Chicago and the surrounding areas are flat, so when you’re driving into the city you can see it from at least 10 miles away. That combined with the Metra running along side of our car, driving down some highway and I had a feeling Chicago might be more exciting than those other Non-New York Cities. “WOW! It looks like New York City!” Once we got to another section “Hey! This looks like Boston!” Then it looked like Philadelphia and Baltimore so I figured maybe Chicago is just Chicago.

We arrived at the Chicago Diner, a vegetarian restaurant. We were served tasty food by a bunch of hipsters who I suspect spend a lot of time looking in the mirror to look like everyone else (but guys, to your credit you all look good).

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I woke up with a pit in my stomach and I’m sad this last night in the apartment was spent sleeping Mark-less for four hours on a sheetless bed. Friendships, relationships, left-over food and house plants. These are all things I get rid of long after they have been spoiled and are no longer a positive force in my life. We’ve lived in this apartment for the past three years and four months and I’m not happy about moving out of it today. Sure, I’m about to embark on the greatest journey of my life (seriously, only thus far, because I know we’ll have plenty more after this) with the greatest love of my life (seriously, only thus far, because in a few more years Mark be an even greater love of my life!) I have never done anything like this before! We road tripped up to Montreal last winter and stayed in a very nice hotel courtesy of my father’s exorbitant Holiday Inn points (yeah that’s right, my dad has lived in a hotel for over a year and now we’re rich in Holiday Inn hotel stays!) But besides Montreal that’s the most I’ve ever really ventured out before. Okay, well Italy too, can’t forget about that Italy trip last November. But this road trip! Holy smokes! We’re giving up our awesome apartment in an awesome neighborhood where we just recently befriended awesome neighbors and now, it’s all going away! Because we’re going away. And instead of thinking “Well, I surely won’t miss the holes Raider (neighbor dog) digs in the backyard. And that creepy shed no one uses because it’s been taken over by cats and mold. And the ant problem, ooooh the ant problem. And how we never had smoke detectors, what was our lazy landlord thinking not giving us smoke detectors?!” All of that, it doesn’t bother me, and it hasn’t for weeks now. Instead I’ll miss the long sun room where Mark and I kept our desks and computers. And the way Mister knows every hiding space in this place yet we’ve blocked as many of them off as we could (like under the couch, jeez that was a trip the first time we realized where he was hiding!) Our big orange living room, I hate orange now! But I will miss it. The kitchen, the backyard and the super strong flush our toilet has. Not to mention allllll of the memories we’ve had here. My closest friends haven’t made this any easier on me: “I don’t even live there and I have so many memories from the Forest St. apartment,” says our pal Kate. And Brian, when I told him we were moving out, all I got were “So many memories in that place.” A friend I have been having rough times with said she missed Mark and I most of all during past month we’ve been apart because of memories we had in this apartment. Darn it! You’re not making this any easier on me. It’s really great to hear that friends will miss this place too. I don’t know if I’m coming back to Montclair, but hopefully not having a place to come back to will force us to venture on and find another place to live, another state I hope.

Mark and I moved here when we were very unsure of how our future would look in three years and four months, yet here we are, taking on not only the biggest journey we’ve ever taken, but the biggest project (that’s right, this website). Last night I couldn’t go to sleep because I couldn’t imagine keeping up with all the features this site will have, but dang it! I’ll be posting those photos and blog posts daily for the entirety of this road trip even if I have to spend 8 hours a day doing so! I know I won’t though. We’ll find a middle ground and post things quickly, entertaining things you’ll all love and I’ll feel good after these next three and a half months are up and we have every day documented. This must seem crazy to you, but for some reason I want to be able to look back on everything I’ve done in my life and remember. That’s why I’ve done stopkatie.com for so many years, and why I’ll have some other project after this (probably stopkatie!) to obsess about.

In true Katie fashion this website is not completed yet, therefore you won’t be reading this until after we’ve arrived at our first destination. And in true Mark and Katie fashion we’re probably not leaving until well after 12pm today. We still have to move some stuff into the dining room of the house I grew up in. That pit in my stomach I had when I first woke up, it’s the same feeling I had on the first day I moved into college. Soon enough, college turned out to be one of the best times of my life. That is what this road trip is going to turn out to be. Except I’m not starting this one out with an argument with my mom and then have her leaving my dorm crying because I was living 40 minutes away and she’ll miss me. Trust me, once I was in college it was happy days in that household (and in my dorm room).

Wish us luck!!!

Okay, let’s be honest. Katie and I worked until we exploded last night. My eyes quit me at about 2:15 am. Katie muscled her way through web design until 3:30 or so. Her body gave out, but her mind refused to take a break until long after she pulled the blankets over her eyes. When our alarms blared at 6:30 am, we barely had the strength to open our mouths in disbelief.

“Rawwggurgggle…humph.”
“Wha?”
“Huh?”
“Cancel…U…Haul.”
“Huh?”
“They…will kill…us…”

I called uHaul to cancel our reservation. Surprisingly simple. The operator was very understanding, and no cancellation fee was charged. More sleep immediately commenced.

We awoke a few hours later to great news. Matt Buckman called us about the Tab RV. He wants us to visit Indiana, where the Tabs are manufactured, to pick up our very own Tab. He’ll also treat us to an extensive tour of the factory, where we can learn all kinds of juicy details about how a Tab is made. He said that our unit won’t be ready for another week or two, so it looks like we’ll be braving the first days of our journey the good ol’ fashioned way: sleeping on the ground. Well, maybe we can figure out how to make a tepee.

I’m so gosh darn excited! Every minute that passes gets us closer to our road trip. Right now I can only imagine. I can only imagine.

Tomorrow we move. We’ll stay at the apartment even after all of our stuff has been moved, though. Yes sir, we’ll be here until the going-away party on Saturday. Are you coming to the party? You’re invited.

Tomorrow is the day to get the moving truck. It’s reserved for pickup at 8:00 am. The original plan was to get the uHaul at 6:00 am in West Orange — that’s the information I specified in the request form, anyhow. An impolite operator called me this afternoon to confirm the reservation for 8:00 am in Maplewood. Listen, I don’t even know where Maplewood is. I’m stuck going there, though, because it’s the closest place uHaul could find with a good quality moving truck.

To make this moving task more difficult, the Garden State Parkway refuses to allow trucks to touch its asphalt. Unfortunately, the GSP is the only route I know that leads to Katie’s house. Thank goodness Google Maps has an “avoid highways” option. Otherwise I’d have to overcome my phobia of paper maps. I’m frightened of any one piece of paper that can be folded and creased 30 times but still won’t fit in your pocket. Now that I think of it, I don‘t hate them all; topographic maps make me giggle when I run my finger across the mountains. Can’t do that on the internet.

I’m a little frightened to see the apartment (the apartment that Katie and I have called home for the past 3 years and 4 months) in its naked state. We’re slowly stripping it of the nuanced personality it has developed with us. Once we’re gone the apartment will absorb the personality of the new tenant. Physical structures are so unforgiving that way. They’re adaptive. They’ve learned to move on quickly after a break up, I guess. I know I’ll think fondly of this place for the rest of my life.

I suppose it’s time to get some sleep. Here it is almost one o’clock in the morning and I’m typing away restlessly and incoherently. It’s time to drop off to Dreamland. I have to conserve my energy for the big move tomorrow.

Goodnight!

I’m getting ready for bed when thoughts of Wanderful come waltzing into my mind. I’m pleasantly surprised, because my thoughts don’t usually come to me so gracefully. Most often, I have to go into my mind and capture my thoughts: I nab a few of them at a time in a net, then sift through them and see if I can make sense of anything. It’s a tedious process for everybody involved. So when thoughts actually come on their own will to my notice (Waltzing, no less), I gladly offer them my assistance.

A case for Wanderful:
If I don’t pursue my dreams, my life becomes as bland as the National Board of Education’s recipe for pizza (where do those cafeterias find so many rectangular toppings?). Wanderful.us is the biggest dream I’ve dared to chase. All I want to do is discover the life around me — the places and people that I have never taken the time to get to know. I have up until now been neglectful of their presence, their individuality, their significance. What kind of civilized person am I? It’s time to change my selfish outlook.

Thoughts of the upcoming road trip alternate between excited and nervous and scared and hopeful. Oh, jumbles of feelings. Snippets of imagined scenarios flash through my mind and I think, Wow, that’s going to be my future!

Today I quit my night job waiting tables. Before I left, Marisol handed me a cryptic looking note. It was written in Braille. Luckily, Wikipedia has a nifty chart depicting the Braille alphabet, and I was slowly able to translate it. “May your odyssey be embellished with perpetual beauty and creativity…”
A better blessing is difficult to come by.

My reveries are turning into realities. I’ll do my best to detail them here and keep them alive. Wanderful is my place to record the best experiences of my life.