May 19, 2001 - Lacrosse, Wisconsin

I left Winona in the morning and crossed the Mississippi to visit with my dad's high school friend, David Block. We had some lunch, I helped plant and tomato plant, and I pretended not to stare at his underage daughter and her friend prancing around in bikini's.

(not pictured: underage girls in bikini's)

Later in the afternoon I took I-90 to I-94 through Wisconsin and arrived at my Aunt and Uncles in Chicago. Well, technically it's Vernon Hills which is just north of Chicago, but you know how everyone around there says they're from Chicago even if they live like 2 hours from the city. It's a drive that I had made a hundred other times, but I think that may have been the first time I did it by myself.

May 18, 2001 - Winona, Minnesota

I slept in that morning and woke up in a panic. I rushed through the last few preparations for my trip while frantically trying to finish up cleaning the house. Then I put my dog in the car and left the house I grew up in.


After dropping off the dog I had two quick chores before setting off. First was a haircut because I'm horribly, horribly vain. The second was a teeth cleaning. I hadn't been to dentist in about two years at that point. It was unpleasant. Enough said.

 (That was the only hub cap on the car and it stayed on despite my best efforts.)

My first stop was Winona. The original plan was to drive down Hwy 61 along the Mississippi River, meet up with my high school friends the Raymond Twins and stay with the overnight. Naturally it didn't go quite as planned. The drive down was great. The weather was gorgeous, the trees in bloom and I had the top down and the radio blaring. I didn't think it could be a better start.

When I got to Winona my bubble was burst. Bad. The Raymond Twins had inexplicably decided to go back to White Bear, from which I just left. To this day I have not gotten a satisfactory answer from them about what happened but it turned out for the best. I was pretty pissed about the incident. (Later in the trip I had the opportunity to spend time in New Orleans with another friend which became legendary. All I had to do was bail on the Raymond's 21st birthday celebration in Phoenix.  It was an easy decision to make and the right one.) Anyway, the Raymond's weren't home but their roommate Lisa Lucky was.

(I swear to god, that's her real name.)

Lisa didn't drink or party at all so instead we picked up a friend of hers and drove up to the bluffs to hang out. It's an incredible view up on the bluffs, one of many I forgot to photograph during my travels. According to my old trip notes I was very impressed by the local college kids drinking out on the streets at 1:30AM. I would probably have less tolerance for that sort of thing nowadays. That night I slept in Rheanna's bed, something I had been trying to do for years, although granted it was not quite the exact circumstance I had hoped for. The next the morning I got up early and left for Lacrosse.

 (Not really what I was hoping for.)

The Night Before

It was a beautiful spring night and because it was the last night we would be living in that little house on the lake we had a great big goddamn party.

(Just another average night)

Why was this night different from all other nights?

On this night I told everyone that they would each be allowed to smoke one cigarette inside. I had steadfastly refused to let anyone smoke a cigarette inside the house for years. People who weren't even smokers lit up that night. Except for that it really wasn't any different from a bunch of early twenty-somethings partying. We got drunk, we got high, we jumped in the lake, we stayed up too late and I'm pretty sure that some random people hooked up too. Good times.

I mostly remember the smell of lilacs though. I was acting kinda funny that night. My on again/off again crush for Colleen was back on and I was jealous of her hanging out with anyone else. I was also nervous about leaving home and worried if my trip would be a success or failure. And I was worried about my dog scruffy staying at with my dad. Even when I was up in Duluth I had never been away for more than two or three weeks at a time and I just wasn't sure how he would handle it.

Cleaning and packing were furious that afternoon and the next morning. I thought we had done a decent job but later I learned from my mom that she was furious at the condition we had left the house in. Sorry mom, I was 21 and I did my best at the time.

Preparations

I will be trying to publish these post on the original dates from the trip. Since I started my trip journal in January during the planning stage but didn't leave until May there will be some more time until the next post. But come May they'll be fast and furious.

Most of my musings from that time have little or nothing to do with the actual logistics. What I do remember preparing for though consisted of emailing and calling friends and family with potential dates that I would like to stay with them. I did make a small note in the journal about having issues with some family members from my mothers side which turned out prophetic since the only person from that side I ended up even seeing was my Aunt. Anyway, it was all rather complicated and I had to change my plans with people fairly often as dates for my stay up and down the schedule changed convenience for people.

For my birthday the preceding fall I received a digital camera, and then for Christmas I got an IBM ThinkPad. That spring I purchased the last piece of hardware I felt I really needed: a BlauPunkt stereo/CD player for my car. I also had to gather dial-up numbers along the route for my ISP, update my car insurance, gather emergency gear and camping equipment for the road, and begin packing up everything from the house I was living to be moved by the day I left on my trip.

Finally, the last piece of planning was almost by accident. Sometime in the fall my dad heard of a new new product for treating psoriasis. I've had it all my life. At some point in high school I found a really effective treatment but during my freshman year it was temporarily outlawed by the FDA. During the next couple years the psoriasis spread almost unchecked across my body and in a large part it severely affected my social life. After hearing about this new product from my dad I jumped on it and began treatment immediately. It wasn't quite as effective as the old product but it did the trick because by the time I was ready to leave the psoriasis was almost totally gone. It was a huge improvement from just a couple months earlier and it gave me a major boost in my confidence which was going to serve me well.

It was a good thing I had started the initial planning in early 2000, otherwise I would not have completed it all in time. I was young, unmotivated, and drunk most of the time.

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

What could have possibly compelled me to drive over 12,000 miles around the United States for over 2 months by myself in a red convertible? I was a 21 year old college drop out delivering pizzas in my hometown. Most of my friends had gotten to study abroad in cool places all over the world and I was jealous as hell. I knew I would be going back to school in fall (and would drop out again, but that's a different story), and I knew sometime that summer my roommates and I were getting kicked out of the house we had been renting from my mother so she could sell it. So it seemed like a good idea at the time...

(alcohol may have been a contributing factor in the final decision too)