To brief those not in the know (everyone but my mom) I was privileged enough to be the Editorial Intern for the American Horticultural Society’s magazine, The American Gardener for the first 6 months of this year. That was a lot of specific info for one sentence, so take the second to read it again slowly if you feel the need. The AHS has lots of great programs for gardeners around the US and I urge you to click that link and look a little more closely. Now, some of you hear the word intern and bile starts to rise in the back of your mouth from that time you sat around a hastily-made cubicle for a whole semester and paid nothing for work that was never going to be used. But never fear! This was a whoa-useful internship in which actual responsibility was bestowed upon my shoulders and writing (that I wrote, just to be clear) was printed to be shown to the world. On top of that ice cream mound, I got paid. For an intro-writing gig (which is a desert of unpaid, under-appreciated BS) this was killer.

The offices were on the property of River Farm, which is a goooooorgeous portion of what George Washington used to own back when he was still alive and such. It’s right off the Potomac River and one can crane their head due north and catch a glimpse of the Washington Monument and the Senate building on a clear day. There’s a large house where all the events are hosted (mostly weddings) and where all the HR/Membership ladies work. Off to the side, above the barn I suppose, is where the true magic happens, over in the Publications building, or “Pubs” if you want to be cool

I got to work on two issues, which you will never see unless you are an AHS Member or my mom/aunt. I have a few articles posted on my writing portfolio, which you can see a link for on the bottom left of this page, or here if you’re super lazy. I was surprised to be sort of the only one on staff who wrote consistently, though this wasn’t a set rule. David and Viv are editors, Mary lays out the mag and the big articles are outsourced by gardeners around the US. I suppose if you are making a magazine aimed at the entire US then it makes sense to pool from writers around the country. Maybe that’s how more magazines than I think work, ie, with a staff of mostly editors who gather content from an array of writers. Anyway, I got to pitch stuff, research it and write about it and then get a small paycheck every other week. I think I already typed this above, but for intro writing gigs this is pretty sweet.

The staff of The American Gardener is quite small. Just three other people for most of my tenure. We have David Ellis, Capt. of the ship, Viveka Neveln was the Associate Editor, who I probably got closest with, and Mary Yee, the Art Director. Everyone was really nice, and different in their own little ways. David was a bit of a DC father figure (though I am sure he’ll be horrified to read that) telling me about all the cool sights to see around the area. He has been living in the area and working at the AHS since I believe the nineties. Viveka was closest in age to me, so the greater bonding seems pretty obvious to me in retrospect. She started in the my same position nine or so years ago and was offered a job at the end of her tenure. Mary was a little reclusive back in her corner office but was quite down-to-earth when you got her talking. Plus everyone let me bust into their offices on an hourly basis to ask questions and always greeted me with a smile. Towards the end of my tenure, Charlotte was brought on board as the social media guru and was super pleasant as well. Above was my office, and I will never have such a view again.

Clockwise from top right, David, Capt. of the Ship, myself, Mary, Charlotte and Viveka. All BFF-material.

As far as everyone else, there’s only about 10 other people who work at the AHS in general. A head president, an HR lady, a few membership gals and an event coordinator. That’s Ping to the left, a membership gal and Sylvia to the right, the Horticulturalist.  I’m not really sure what Sylvia and I are doing.

Whatever my supremely limited working experience is worth, I think working for smaller companies is where it’s at. Sure, you’re almost certainly going to get paid less and the ladder for growth is more like a step stool but the family vibe is something one cannot put a price tag on. I was for sure closer to some people than others, but everyone there was my BFF pretty early on.

I also made some extra cash covering a few events happening at River Farm. These turned out to not quite be worth the money, though to be clear I would have just been reading at home. River Farm makes some extra cash allowing events, mostly weddings, to be hosted at their river-front establishment. So naturally, they need someone at the front desk of any event to ensure no one burns the building down and such. I could get paid time and a half to sit at the front desk and tell everyone, twice, at a wedding where the one set of bathrooms were. Easy money, right? Sort of. These are 10+ hour days, and rotate between supremely boring and whoa stressful. When something goes wrong, like a blown fuse, the best friend of the bride, always angry, always drunk, comes looking for me. It’s also hard to sit down the hall in a chair listening to everyone have fun for several straight hours, especially someone so prone to feeling sorry for themselves, like your truly.

That was kind of my time at the AHS in a nutshell, which is south of DC and actually south of Alexandria proper, pretty off the beaten path in a cool way. I arrived in the area during the second week of January and just left during the first week of June. A very nearly almost exclusively enjoyable experience, and who could ask for more in a job?

Whilst in the area I stayed with old UF pal and family Christina Heddesheimer (of old-time Sweet City Action fame) and that went just fine. Really nice people, that whole family, and quite gracious of them to let some red-haired ogre stay in their home for basically a half year. As I type this, I realize I don’t have many images of my time there outside of the AHS and that’s kind of a drag.

I did a ton of hanging out with another old UF pal, Cody Samet-Shaw and his lovely wife Amy. No pictures, sorry. Cody is a runner and overall active type so we did some runs and roamed around the National Mall. Hmmmmmm, what else? I don’t want the brevity of these past paragraphs to underscore my time with the Heddesheimers or Cody, but nothing is coming to mind specifically to write about just now. I got a lot of experience cooking for other rustling up a family dinner ever Friday or so with the Heddesheimers.

As a quick side here is some fun stuff from the AHS plant sale. Fun hats, cherry blossoms and a few ornery alpacas were the highlight of that weekend!

That’s about it though. I did a lot of alone time in DC. I read maybe two books a week, took a fiction writing course and wrote about two drafts of a story I will hopefully pick up again someday (alsoooooo within the writing portfolio). I’m getting to be more and more like my Dad every year, and my interest in making friends just wanes. It’s so much effort now! I used to think finding girlfriends was a lot of effort (which is now considered very nearly impossible) but just people to hang out with are hard to find. I suppose this is one of the many “perils” of being single. Oh well

I also ran a marathon with brother-extraordinaire Bret and played in a fun floor hockey league, in which you run around in shoes instead of skates. I did make exactly three friends I will probably keep up with over the years, to varying degrees. Ping was hired at the AHS in some sort of membership role and we did a lot of stomping around town together. Maria, I met at a karaoke night and we also did some stomping and Steve Hug and I carpooled to floor hockey together. We only hung out once outside of floor hockey but good lord, he is one of the funniest monkeys I’ve ever spent time around. I’ll hear from him the least but I cannot wait to be back in DC in the next ten years and have some lunch.

That’s it for now. I am back in Tampa with my folks, gone after ten years in Austin and around the US. In August I want to start in Mexico City and make it as far south as I can. This is also the last blog I will make here; I am putting money into a new theme and combining a new blog with a slick-looking writing portfolio for the next few years of my life. My plan, albeit riddled with holes and not super-well thought out, is to take an trip into a foreign land, write about it, come back and get another writing/editing/web design-ish job. Sometimes, companies hire someone to run a blog, do the research for the articles, write/research, post them, make the blog look slick, and I think that would be a cool job.

But, I got the rest of my life to get jobs, and only a small window to spend money thoughtlessly and travel.

More to come! But it will look different…

Heading into that Empire State, I tried to set up a few friends to stay with so I did not have to load into Lewis’s place for the entire month, but those girls ended up being super flaky so I was w/him for the entire month, which did not prove to be a problem. Lewis is a sommelier at Quality Meats and I unfortunately saw very little of him throughout the month and his roommate Victor mostly did his own thing and was there very little as well. There was a lot of time I had to myself at their place which is never a bad thing, in fact, I probably spent too much time around the place playing Lewis’s Taylor Big Baby acoustic than I should have. It’s the same acoustic guitar I had so I was missing it, ya? I have an electric, acoustic and a bass living in Austin…who knows how I will ever get those back?

Ok, let’s cut into the meat. NYC wasn’t for me. In fact, I hated it to a level. I am so glad I went and do not want this paragraph to reflect any ungratefulness towards Lewis but that city was not for me. If I never go back, that is just fine people. The city is incredibly cramped and unbelievably expensive. There’s no room to move around! I rarely saw the sun, I blew through my month-budget in about a week and the subways as a main source of transportation were nothing short of depressing. You would be flabbergasted (and I try to limit that word to only a few times a year) by how tiny Lewis’s apartment was and how much he paid for it. You meet people who just have to go and be a part of that [NYC] action, which is completely beyond me. I met plenty of strangers who seemed poor as hell and no doubt paid out the nose for closets to live in, and I wanted to scream at them, “Move to Florida! Move to Texas! Move ANYWHERE else!” The appeal of that city sailed clear over my head.

Now that I’ve gotten some bitching out of the way, I had a pretty good time. I went to the Metropolitan, the Cloisters, Coney Island, the Central Park Zoo and Katz, among other things. Probably the best part of the trip was catching up w/Garth, who my last roommate in Austin, along with Ryan Simmons. Garth grew up here in the Big Apple, but hadn’t been back since he moved to Austin in the early 90s. He was staying w/a friend of his dad’s who needed someone around to go to doctor’s appointments with and just in case something went wrong. Most (and by that I mean all) of my friends turned out to be total flakes and Garth was the one guy I caught up with on a regular basis. We did some museums and had a pretty good time stomping around the city.

A gloomy view down into Coney Island…

The Metropolitan Art Museum I had been to before. I’m not super into unfunctional visual art but the people watching at these high-end art museums is always awesome. That’s the wrong reason to be at a museum! Forget you…I do what I want. What was really cool was The Cloisters, an offshoot of the Met way way uptown which featured medieval tapestries and door frames. That probably sounds like the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard, but hear me out. They had door frames, built into the building itself, that were 1500 years old. How they got them there (on a large boat probably) and how they built them into the walls (very carefully probably) is beyond me. They also had the oldest known deck of cards that we use (four suits, set of 52, face cards all that blah) in existence. All of it was pretty cool I thought. Not a lot of art exists from 2000 years ago. Deal with it.

The other cool thing that everyone has done but I am going to write about anyway is the American Museum of Natural History. Pretty up my alley as far as things go. Lots of dioramas of animals of similar genus straight chilling. This was one of the many events attended with old ATX partner-in-crime Garth, who came to The Cloisters too and is awesome. Anyway, I wish I had some suuuuper deep things to say about the museum but I don’t. It was cool, and you can pay what you want to get in. So go and give them $1 like I did if you’re ever in the city.

What ended up being a quite informative yet slightly depressing afternoon was the visit to Ground Zero. In a country where we one-up the hell out of everyone else, something like five or so new buildings are being built to replace the original two. Sept. 11 happened when I was in tenth grade and I can remember sitting in Driver’s Ed when a teacher came in to tell us some planes slammed into the World Trade Centers. Honestly, at the time I didn’t know what the twin towers were and it didn’t really mean much to me. It never did actually. I lived 1000+ miles away. I didn’t know anyone who knew anyone effected. Life went on and it just became something people “remembered”  once a year. Maybe this sounds callous to you, but when something horrible happens that doesn’t directly effect you, you sort of just move on when the press does. But wow, being there. REAL. Just, WOW. There were tons of clips of people calling from the hijacked planes, dads talking about their lost sons, 1000s of missing posters up all over the city in the aftermath and just WOW.

Maybe the single most emotional ten minutes of the past 10 years was the enormous room covered from head to toe w/photographs and newspaper clipping and race bibs and just any momento of anyone lost. It was so sad friends. There where boxes of tissues and these two older ladies and I just cried together. Eesh we all just lost it for a few minutes. I’m tearing up now. It’s easy to just forget all the people lost where just as special as anyone of us. Most poignant NYC afternoon. Where the original towers once stood are two pit-like waterfalls as a memorial. I hate using words like “reflective” but the whole experience make you see yourself differently. Go there if you find yourself in the area. It’s real real REAL.

So that was NYC. Lewis, who is as mentioned a TOTAL BOSS put me up in his Brooklyn bachelor pad and Garth and I stomped around town a fair amount of times. I was at the time disappointed not to see any of my other friends there but life as a current hooked me up w/the golden oldies. Below that’s Lewis in the subway with me, Garth with the straw hat and LEGO Batman with the cape. Three (LEGO Batman included, duh) great friends and I wish them all the best as we stumble down our separate paths. Sheesh, I’m tearing up again…

Happy New Year to all my friends where ever you might be! I luff all of you… Don’t do anything dumb like drinking and driving or giving $ to the Catholic Church! If you need a ride call me and I will drive the necessary 100′s of miles within minutes to give you a ride.

More to come!

However, I was pretty quickly swooned. Chicago takes you in, flashes you w/it’s pizzaz and shine and before you know what’s black or white you’ve paid two months rent and are wondering what the hell just happened. I already did a blog post when I first came here, so I will only get into this for those just joining us now. I only planned to go steady with the city for a bit, Cover Riot Fest for the Monarch Daily, break a few hearts and be out before the month of September. A good house w/new friends and a nice spot to make mine caused a stay that ended up being a little over two months long. For a hot minute I thought of staying for good, but alas, the road calls. I can travel right now, so why on earth would I want to stay in one place? In the sage words of Stefan Brown, “I could stay, but I’m traveling right now.”

At 8-9 residents and about 5k sq-ft of space to dance around, Warren Blvd did me well. I had the upstairs living room as a bedroom and think I did alright with the place.

So to tell the end of this story right at the beginning, I have left, am currently on a greyhound from Boston to NYC. And as a side note I am really hungry and slowly getting grumpier. What factor is really scary here is I don’t have anyone to bitch at. Hmmmmmm.

Six weeks ago I thought I was staying. Two weeks ago I thought let’s leave at the start of the December. Then after a talk with old-ATX-roomie Ryan Simmons, I decided to leave as soon as possible. I told him I wanted to get into NYC the same I did into Chicago. Rather, wanted to live there for more than just a stint and see what the city was all about. Go live in Chicago for 8 weeks and bike everywhere you go. It’s a great way to see what a city is all about. I want this for NYC too. I went once in college and know I would never want to live there, waaaaaaaaaaay too claustrophobic. But, 600 million-ish people live there so some cool stuff must must be around ya?

So off I am. The Steevers, my mother’s sister’s family, were kind enough to allow me to keep Nancy (my fox of a ’01 Corolla) in their garage in Medfield, a suburb of sorts to Boston so I won’t have to worry about her vulnerability in the streets of NYC. I left Chicago around 11pm on a Monday night, bound for Cleveland so I could see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and then off on my final leg towards Medfield, about 16 hours of driving all together.

Also in Cleveland is my old UF peep, Gloria, who was in carillon studio with me back in the day. She is, an absolute angel. Someday I will win some metaphorical lottery and get to marry a girl like that. Purely, lovely. In serious contention for the prettiest girl I’ve ever met. Inward and outward. She’s also working towards a Ph.D in the middle of med school, and getting the entire thing funded w/a living stipend for herself. Try reading that sentence again and not feeling like your life isn’t going anywhere. The R&R Hall of Fame was ok. Really it’s just a bunch of junk but there are some movies worth sitting through. The Stones are about to be 50 as a band (!) and the entire top area is devoted to them, and there was some great vintage footage of them chilling out and being cool in the 60s. Though, I’m pretty into all that old music and still thought it was pretty eh. Though I has spent the previous night driving from Chicago to Cleveland and was spending the day escaping to my car for periodical naps. As a result, I was in a pretty bad mood for most of the day and may be understating the presentation of the R&R Hall of Fame. Though, both guitars below I spent a tween-hood admiring: the white tear-drop Vox belonging to late, but founding rhythm guitarist for the Stones, Brian Jones and the combo electric guitar-electric mandolin as used by Robbie Robertson on and off, but most notably in The Last Waltz, a simply fantastic going-away show for The Band, a must see, really. Right below is a link to the The Weight, from the show mentioned. You can see Robbie with the half-mando right off the bat.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, located right on the tip of Lake Eire in Cleveland, OH.

Also in between destinations was Niagara Falls. I had a day to drive from Cleveland to that of Medfield, MA, where I was leaving my car w/a cousin for the break. I didn’t want to get there super late in the night (though when I arrived it was pretty apparent no one would have cared) so I spent no more than an hour at the falls. I don’t think I can type anything better than what these pictures can offer, so we’ll leave it at that. Though, as a small note, it was an interesting perspective to simply gaze across a river and say, “Oh hey, there’s Canada!” The large spire you see just below is a Toronto mainstay. 

That brings you up to what I’m doing now so let’s hop back for a hot minute. Not much to report from the rest of my time in Chicago. I thought I was into this certain lady. Things (shockingly) didn’t really materialize and I wish her and her puppies the best. I had TONS of fun hanging out with cousin Lucy on many an occasion and shout out to her quite-cool roomies as well, Isaac and Michaeljit. I also exercised more in Chicago than I had in the past…I dunno, six years combined? As stated in these parts before, Stefan is an absolute athlete and it rubbed off. I wake up and  do crunches and push-ups, go running at least three times and a week and bike around tons. Go me!

The final hurrah was a little going away thing I hosted at Warren Blvd. It got pretty wild and in every good way. There were stuffed peppers, craft beer, a spades tourney and everyone learned how to roll cigarettes. I usually dislike blogs with all words or all pictures but there were tons of great images that night so I am going to lay them all on you.

Love all the great friends I made in that slightly-dumpy-but-shining-in-many-other-ways city.

Ethan, Banke, Julie, Brendon, Sam, Isaac and of course Stefan: Thanks for the laughs, you have a lifetime friend and keep the wings spread wide.

Outside of a restaurant in Cleveland, pretty funny I thought….

More to come…

Stefan, old UF pal, was the capt. of this ship. He had read (and stolen) the book from the library of how to do this and had an idea of how things were supposed to pan out. I was his trusty first mate, unless you prefer a cooking metaphor to a sailing one, whereas I was his unfailing sous chef.

Cob is easy to make. We got some clay from a friend redoing a house. It’s pretty hard to work with at first but with it you mix sand and water, thus completing the mix. We did it over a large tarp, but I supposed there are a lot of ways to skin a cat. Pile some clay into a tarp, pour water and sand over it and begin jumping and running and stepping up and down bare-foot on this pile until you have some gloppy, yet pretty malleable mix. The book probably got into specific amounts, but in the end you have to add more sand and water than you think so just start low and move up. You want it to be pretty sticky though. You’ll know when you have it right.

We were pretty DIY about it, so I am positive you could put some money into this and make it’s appearance more presentable. We didn’t care though. Functionality or Death! we sometimes chant from rooftops. A new friend of mine Beatrice has a lot she let us build the oven on and kudos to her for being so awesome.

So, we need to build a brick column about 3′ in diameter and probably a little over 4′ in height. We scored some bricks from Bea’s neighbor, Todd, and in two or three sessions mixed some cob and crudely (but not too crude, mind you) built the column up. Stagger the bricks as the layers go up (rather, the next “ring” of bricks above is rotated slightly to more evenly distribute the weight) and make it as high as you like.

Once we have the column done, the next step is filling it in and topping it off. Bea (unfortunately for her but more fortunate for us) lives about 30 yards from a train track. Why would anyone ever do that you ask. Well in Chicago, trains are everywhere through the city and someone has to live by them. Anywho, the edges of the track are littered with cement debris and the rocks that make up a railroad track. We filled the column with larger rocks and then dumped a few wheelbarrow full of small rocks to fill in the gaps, making layers of cob going up.

This next step was the most interesting part of the whole process to me. At the top of the column (which in turn is the bottom of the oven itself) we read it was wise to put a layer of glass bottles there, which serves as insulation while the fire is going. Because it’s a dome, the heat that shoots up out of the fire it directed back down into the column. The layer of glass bottles traps some of that heat (the air in the bottles rises in temperature). With a good layer of cob between the glass and the floor of the oven the glass will hopefully not shatter and play a solid role in keeping the oven temperature high and constant.

Once we rose above the lip of the column, we flatted it out with cob and carefully placed some thicker, more-square bricks that a friend of ours gathered he called “patio pavers”. For whatever reason someone knew (probably Stefan, b/c he read the book) that these types of bricks would be suitable for what would eventually be the floor of the oven itself. From here, we shape the dome, which is a sort of light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel for this while project.

Make a pile of sand, which represents the negative space inside the eventual oven. We’re going to build a mound, then build cob over it, then wait for it to dry, then dig out sand and voilà you have an oven! We got a little lazy and didn’t want to fork out the necessary $20 for good sand and used dirt from the ground around us, to our eventual dismay. The issue arose when the dirt mound sunk down while the top cob dried. Perhaps dirt is more porous than sand and loses more volume as it dries? Really I have no idea why but the mound sunk when it wasn’t supposed to. We were supposed to use sand and we didn’t. It’s not super difficult to draw a few conclusions from this. Use sand.

We then covered the mound with yet another layer of cob, gave it a week to dry out and dug out the insides. That was it really. Not too bad, ya? If a group of monkeys in street clothes w/day jobs can build one you can too.

This I should have brought up earlier, but an oven must be more-or-less covered from the elements. If the cob were to be rained on it would get wet (big surprise, I know) and lose its form. This is the step we’re at now and currently a tarp lives over ours. I’m keeping my eye out of sheets of scrap metal to fashion up as a roof of sorts.

All that’s left to do is mix up a few doughs, invite friends over and cook some pizza. Add a little whiskey to that mix and it’s perfect. As a closer, we ended our night playing a game of truth or dare which culminated in Stefan jumping on and off a moving train out back on a dare. Like I said, he’s the captain of this ship.

The oven ended up being a little smaller than we had anticipated, and we were only afforded enough space to cook little personal guys. Remember, use sand and not dirt and it won’t shrink on you. Anyway, the night was a huge hit and the cob oven a success. Thanks to new friend Bea for supplying the space and Stefan for trail-blazing.

This has been the last 7 months of my life, in one single paragraph. It’s been all awesome, lonely, fresh, dull, heart-wrenching, toe-smashing, back-massaging, dynamite-exploding and soul-pumping all at once. A “character-building experience” as someone’s uncle always used to say.

This whole blog was created to document that if you are new here and want to look around. I would give you a guided tour but it’s completely unnecessary. None of these doors are locked.

Anywho, I came quick into the city of Chicago to cover Riot Fest for the new blog I have been getting pieces under, The Monarch Daily. A friend of a cousin got me in to cover the event and that I did. I think the pieces turned out great, check out Friday here and then the rest of the weekend here. I’ve been blessed to work underneath a great new editor, the fabulous Miss Gabriella and have gotten a bunch of great pieces in and about Chicagoland since. I know is link city right now, but everything is I’ve written for the Monarch Daily is here.

Though I’ve been here barely a month there’s so much to go over! You know, I’m just going to start with this past weekend move backwards to the weekend I arrived here. I’m really excited about everything that’s happened. EEsh! Ok, chill.

This past weekend I hosted my lovely pappy, Mr. Robert Stanford around town. My equally lovely cousin, Miss Lucy Hall, who is from my mother’s side, put us up in her Bridgeport place. My dad can be hard to read. And by that I mean he is absolutely impossible to read. He’s down for anything which can prove difficult to determine what exactly he wants to do. I imagine unicorns are extremely agreeable and he is about this agreeable. There is a careful procedure of questioning that eventually tricks him into accidentally telling you what he wants to do. This comes from years of tailing around with my mother, who is stubborn as a mule but with the decisiveness of a fox. Lethal combination. “My way or the mother-fucking highway” is actually an original quote from my mother.

We found his old stomping grounds from childhood days first thing off the plane. Rupert (pappy’s nickname of sorts) moved away from Chicago in the sixth grade, sometime in the mid-60s to spend the rest of his upbringing in Richmond, VA. After that to the Garfield Park Conservatory, which I had been to two days before and just knew I had to take my dad there. He’s quite the green thumb so massive glass buildings hosting exotic plants is pretty much way up his alley.

I had a planned (and borrowed an extra bike) for a pretty active weekend but my pappy is having some foot issues and had suddenly  been put into a boot. He could take it off, but I could tell he was ok with a little less walking. So we just drove more than planned, which was fine. We also never once paid for parking. In your fat face Chicago!!!

Day 2 of pappy-time started out w/Chinatown, which, if you’re not hungry or apt to purchase tiny trinkets, may not be the place for you. The highlight was the city library located on the drag. Next was little Italy (this paragraph sounds UBER touristy, I know) where we found a pretty bitchin’ place to get some pastrami sandwiches, walked around, stumbled upon another public library and spent another thirty minutes looking at some books.

Cousin Lucy, who is HEAPS of fun to be around, was in tow most nights. I can’t remember a single name of a restaurant we ate at to save my life, but all was delicious: Deep-dish pizzas, way-too-much fine Chinese food, great fajita plates and cookie-dough ice cream. She has great roomies too, Isaac and Michaeljit (Michael-geet) who were all quite nice to let us descend on their place for a weekend.

Final Day, Saturday. All day was at Lincoln Park: They have their own conservatory their too, a pretty rockin’ farmers market on Saturdays and the nicest free zoo I’ve ever seen. Rupert only takes close-up pictures of plants for later identification. He’s a mad scientist trapped in the body of a retired chef  turned gardener/teacher-by-night. After that was a drive out to Riverside, a Chicago-suburb where my old high school friend Dan Maguire co-runs the the Quincy Street Distillery. I had seen him the previous week the Chicago Craft Spirits Expo, but since we’re moving backwards, you don’t know that yet.

I know this picture quiality kind of sucks, but it’s the only one we got together, so you’re stuck w/it.

The time in Chicagoland before that was mostly busied up by work done for the Monarch Daily. Since we’re working backwards (isn’t this fun??) last Thursday was my covering of Maps: Borders, Bodies, Memories, a photo exhibition for Filter Fest, a yearly photography expo—for lack of better word—here in the city. I like to take zillions of pictures to document what’s around, but as a fine art form I don’t really get into it. I had dad/cousin in tow so we were there enough to get what I needed for the piece. A very cool exhibition, but I don’t know how actually inspired I was by it. The previous day Monarch Daily got me into the main event of the Chicago Craft Spirits Week, which was an expo proper. Vendors set up all over the place pushing samples of their product. I don’t really drink any liquor, but the people watching was supreme. This is also where I caught up w/old-thyme high school superstar, Dan Maguire, who has already been brought up. He rawks, as they say.

Also in the past schedule of events that already happened was a visit to the Indiana Dunes State Park. The state of Indiana is right around the bend of the lake and apparently Michigan isn’t far from the city either. Lake Shore drive in Chicago is a lot like Bayshore in Tampa, FL, my hometown, because a road/exercise trail extends down a body of water. This is fresh water and Tampa Bay is garbage water, but the parallel is clear. What’s coolest, is towards the southern end of both trails one can look North and see a miniature view of the city. What’s even cooler is the Chicago skyline from Indiana Dunes looking like it belongs inside of a snow globe.

Before we wrap up at the start of my stay I want to outline my SPECTACULAR living situation. I was only planning on staying for a week or two, but the vibe is so nice I just contributed a little rent for the month of October. I’m crashing with Stephan Brown, another old comrade, but from UF. He’s an athlete, supreme drummer and a soon-to-be “fuck-your-shit-up” lawyer. He’s an incredible influence to have around. The story is kind of long, and this post is getting even longer, so we’ll say a fortuitous situation got him into our place. It’s a huge row house in East Garfield Park, which I think has tons of character. In the house—and there’s ample room for us all—is myself, Stephan, Brennan, Julie, Banke and Isaac. Three people will be on the lease and three of us will take up extra space (ie, in no actual bedrooms) and add some padding to the rent due. Everyone is so awesome, and I simply pick up more work an the ole TSLCI to account for rent. I’ll be here for at least a month, maybe the rest of the year…?

SO! If you’re still reading, maybe you should rethink your free time. I kid, but kudos to you for powering through this behemoth of a post (Hi mom!). The ticket that got me quick into Chicago we’ve already mentioned, but was a FB post from cousin Caitlin looking for a writer to cover Riot Fest, which had a nice lineup. Free festival? Published piece? Chance to make a connection?!? Of course everything was pushed out of the way to get there. The images above are from the wrestling stage at Riot Fest, which was about as much fun as the rest of the festival put together. The links to the stories are way above this blog post, if you missed that, but I had such good time. I’ve already gotten four pieces and I haven’t even been here a month. I forgot how much fun this is to cover events (and, of course, to get in free). I think I hear people sometimes get paid for such things.

More to come!

When we last chatted, I was leaving Ann’s cashmere heaven in Kila, MT for the western delight of Deadwood, SD. This was another B&B gig, second yet, though first in the states and I was excited for all the history in the area.

The gig ended up being only ok. I was to help clean rooms and after the first go-around the wife got kind of mad at me for not cleaning a bathroom well enough and making the bed like “some kind of bachelor”. She was a tad cold after that but oh well. Her loss, per my mother. So, there!! The husband was a charm to be around though, nerdy in a really appealing way. He was pretty well read and could talk shop about some science fiction, which I always appreciate. He was down-to-earth too, never trying to one-up me about literature, and seemed interested in getting to know me. That last point is rarer than you might think. At one point I texted him if a certain set of sheets were ok to use and he texted back Go wild with your bad self. Awesome. It would have been cool to take a road trip with him and leave the wife behind to run the B&B, but that wasn’t happening. The 1899 B&B (which is the year it was built) was a side gig, they both ran what seemed to be a really successful advertising gig full time and were quite busy. The wife may or may not have dug me around, but I rose above, as they say. 

This hail fell down 20 minutes after the sun was out 110% and melted after the sun came right back out. Weird, huh? Go figure, SD.

I kind of forgot to take pictures of the house while there, but I did take a few choice day trips that have pictures as friends. I have found if I don’t take out that camera day one and start snapping pictures it takes a while to get it out. For whatever reason, this is strangely analogous to my issue of never putting away clean laundry if it isn’t folded immediately when it comes out of the dryer. It’s late, quit judging me…

First off was Mt. Rushmore, in Keystone, SD, a mere one hour away from the B&B. The mountain itself was, well, just some heads on a huge rock face and pretty underwhelming as far as things go. It’s also much smaller than you might think. I mean, it’s a beast and hundreds of feet tall, but waaaaayyyyy up that mountain from where we stand it’s smaller than I thought it would be. I mean, look at that picture right there, my head is almost the same size.

Too bad they roped a piece of trash like National Treasure 2 in w/something classic like North By Northwest.

There was a nice trail running in front of the mountain with all kind of facts about this and that. In case you didn’t know, the four presidents featured on the rock face are, from left to right, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and ole Honest Abe. They represent aspects of this country and its growth. It’s been a few weeks, so don’t quote me, but George represents the founding of the US, Jefferson for the expansion of the US (think Louisiana Purchase), Lincoln for reuniting the country and Roosevelt for the preservation, as he got the national parks idea into motion.

There was info about the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum (what a name, right?) and the process he and his workers went about building this piece. It was all quite informative, but as always people watching became my favorite activity of the day. This is a huge stop for tourists all over the US and the world. I get in the habit of talking to everyone I can these days (travel by yourself for 6 months and you will miss having people around) and met a good number of families on US-wide road trips. Foreigners of all kinds were everywhere too, so I got myself a buffalo burger, parked myself by a thoroughfare and just watched some weird people. A great afternoon. I try to keep racial generalizations to a minimum here at Hey Hunter, but to go all “the hell with it”  between you and I for a hot minute: the true Asians (as opposed to Asian-Americans) tend to dress w/the craziest colors and fashions, European men always tuck their shirts in and are pretty business about it, Hispanic families are large but move efficiently due to a mother hen not taking any shit from anyone and Americans are ironically the most bored with what’s going on around us. These are my findings. Reporting from the front lines…

The second to last day there I fell in with this super cute French couple on holiday and we adventured off for a day together. Somehow I didn’t get a single picture with them (running a great blog here, I know) but Helene, Samir and I did some pretty rad stuff. Our first stop was a taxidermy museum run out of the side of a gas station. It was all real/super exotic and totally built out of the side of a Texaco. Ha! After that we found a military museum out of the Ellsworth Air Force Base in Box Elder, SD. Lots of old planes, informative plaques and tons of old people. Good stuff. The last stop was the buffalo museum in the town adjacent to Deadwood, which outlined the the short and swift decimation of the buffalo at the hands of the white man. It was depressing…but informative as well! I had SO MUCH FUN (and I’m someone who hates all caps) with Helene and Samir that day though. Our falling in together was pretty serendipitous and we spent the whole day just laughing and prying into each others way of life. Samir was Algerian, but raised in France and Helene was French through and through. I wish them all the best in life and thereafter.

My last day in Deadwood was a day trip out to Jewel Cave National Park, which is pretty much as fucking cool as it sounds. Things got pretty dark, damp, claustrophobic, but never not fun! Plus our tour guide was pretty cute, which never hurts:) I think I am going to let these pictures speak for themselves. Pictures, speak thy mind!

From there was a super short (like three days) stay w/Kimberli in Cedar Rapids, IA. It was so short b/c cousin extraordinaire Caitlin Steever hooked me up with free tickets to Riot Fest Chicago if I would cover the event for her friends blog, The Monarch Daily. Not only are concerts cool, but I love to cover things like that so jumped at the chance for a published piece and a press pass. Kimberli in Cedar Rapids didn’t care, she knew that this was a pretty sweet deal so off to Chicago I went.

I’m actually covering two more things this week and am having my pappy visit at the end of it. Don’t quote me on this number, but can you believe he hasn’t been to this city since the early 60s?!?! Paul MaCartney was good looking then! Once things settle down I will build an awesome Chicago post full of sugar, spice and everything nice.

Until then old friend…

Still friends?

My first visit to Montana was to stay with Ann, who runs her own cashmere company she gathers from her quite-bountiful goat farm, again, 76 of those bleating bucks and does altogether. If you’re like me, I didn’t know that cashmere came from goats, but honestly never gave where it came from a single thought to begin with. Quick trivia, a buck is an uncircumcised male goat, like a stallion to a horse, but a circumcised male goat is a wether, like gelding to a horse. Then a female is a doe, like a mare to a horse.

Ok the kids. The really small ones are so cute, it is literally impossible to worry about anything in their presence. I tried really hard to fret on something, but I couldn’t. I’m not sure who of the smaller goats was a “kid” per say, and not some tween goat, so I will just focus on the small white one who I spent lots of time staring at and chasing around to hold. Whitey, who, wait for it, was all white in color, was simply the pinnacle of adorable in my imagination. In fact, he raised that ceiling by miles. He was a little larger than a cat, would get excited and do this bucking around the yard and when bleating (a goat/sheep’s call) would sound almost like an actual human child. Heart breaker, all day. In fact, most of the goats would never shut up but have really interesting noises. It wasn’t super loud or piercing, like a chicken/guinea, but the sort of background noise that was soothing. You know how those weird people buy CDs of the ocean or river sounds at Target or something? I would buy a CD of goat noises, find the “Kids Only” track and put it on repeat, living the dream. I suppose that makes me even weirder than the previous weird people I was just making fun of…

Ann has names for all of her goats and a great relationship w/the little buggers. You might think that’s hard to remember 76 names of similar-looking creatures, but to Ann they are her kids, to use the term more literally than I have been. She talks to them just like I am talking to you right now. And no, I don’t mean she writes a blog post that she later hopes her goats will read, I just mean her dialogue w/them is comically casual. Oh! Well don’t you look comfortable. Bart, get out of the broccoli! Ya dumb goat! Orville, quit being a bully! This farm was a gold mine for a classic sitcom involving one woman and a bunch of ornery goats. You would watch it, trust me.

Further, let me make a case for goats as farm animals. Their milk is much better for you than a cow’s is. Think about it, a cow is feeding her calf to grow into a 700 lbs beast, whereas a goats usually don’t ever weigh more than a 100 lbs. This makes the fat content much lower. This principle also transfers to the meat content, which tends to be much leaner than cow meat. Further, goats have a much shorter gestation period than cows, meaning more kids! Do a little research if you like. I found goat products are usually much better for you than of a cow.

Ann’s property was super rural. One of my more secluded gigs yet, no doubt. The town of Kila, which totaled to only a street w/a post office and school, was over thirty minutes away. There was a long, wavy road to make your way down, then a gravel country road (that just killed my car) that was about five miles deep as well. I wouldn’t mind living off the beaten path, but it was much too secluded for my tastes. If Ann had ended up being an axe murdered, she would have had no problem disposing of this city kid. Though, to be fair, if I had been the axe murderer, I could have pulled if off w/o much trouble as well:)

But Anne was so cool. We hit it off right away and I knew I was going to be fine here. She may even be my favorite person I have met in my HelpXing adventures. She was funny, chill, didn’t talk all the goddamn time and was quite engaging to be around. Fun gal no doubt. She makes her living (or rather, is in the process of doing so) by selling the cashmere she gathers from her goats. It seems like a pretty lengthy process from goat’s hide, then spun into yarn, then crocheted into a design worth wearing, but ann does it w/ease. She has a huge de-hairing machine that somehow separates the unwanted hair from the from the “oh, so soft” cashmere. Also, she gave up showing her cashmere years ago because she told me she was bored with winning.

My main reason for being there was to help Ann w/her thinning project. She has about 20 acres all together, but was only thinning about 5.5 acres of it. This included cutting down live trees, de-limbing them, and putting them into slash piles. This may sound damaging and immoral to you, but thinning a forest helps to deter forest fires and allows the remaining trees to grow better. It’s so helpful, that the state of Montana will cut you a fat check just for doing it. It has to be done by a certain date, so that is where I come in. Spending five hours a day piling brush can be quite therapeutic, zoning out covered in sap, the sound of the chainsaw patiently lulling you into some dream state. I forgot how much I enjoy totally mindless manual labor. And it’s exercise the whole time, which I normally absolutely hate doing.

I asked Ann the best way to get sap off your skin and she says, let time pass. Nice.

Down the hill of Ann’s property was a nice couple around my age helping out w/the thinning going on around the property in exchange for rent. Daniel, a bit older than I, Hanna, a bit younger than I, and their genuinely cute cute baby Piper Rose. I’ve never seen a baby who smiled so much. Also weird, this baby had a very deep look within her. They said she had an “old soul” which was totally fitting, but I was thinking something along those lines b/f that term was even introduced to me. She would look at you and you could tell she knew something you didn’t. Or rather, that she knows something about you that you didn’t know. It was a really strange vibe but not in a threatening way at all. It would be interesting to meet her 20 years from now. I can tell she will be quite pretty.

The last exciting item of business was Glacier National Park. Slightly disappointingly, I saw no glaciers. Seeing those isn’t exactly a day trip I was told. However, I did see w/o question the most beautiful scenery of my entire life on the drive in. It was called the “Driving-to-the-Sun” road, and aptly named at that. Carved out of the side of a mountain and overseeing canyon dips miles wide, it seemed like one could see clear into Canada. We had a baby w/us so couldn’t do anything serious as far as hikes go, but that was fine. We got in a nice 6 miler down a ravine and back up, so I was happy we got to do a little bit of sweating.

Actually, that’s not all! I almost forgot about the super-friendly polydactyl cat that was there. That’s a cat w/extra toes, which isn’t too big of a deal, but the Ernest Hemingway House in Key West, FL, is known for breeding these types of huge-footed felines. That said, there’s a decent chance (maybe? maybe not…) that this guy’s lineage traces back to the sandy tourist-filled beaches of Key West. If so, he, or rather his parents and parent before, have come quite a long way from South Fla all the way up to Northwestern Montana. Poor guy did a lot struggling so I could get this quite-boring picture of his paw. But this is proof he was there dammit! Also, you may only count five pads there and wonder why I just wasted your time w/this paragraph, but remember that cats have their “thumbs” down below, conveniently covered up by my index finger. Totally worth wrecking this cat’s afternoon.

Thanks again to Ann for hosting me, I had SO much fun at your place. I shall return someday to see your progress around the place which I am sure you will achieve. Good luck w/the the business and those ornery goats! 

Now off to the 1899 Inn located in Deadwood, SD, which sounds pretty promising as far as working gigs go.

More to come!

There I was on the back of some ATV at the mercy of the 13-yr-old driving. From my vantage point, clutching the rear support, I can clearly see the warning label that states this vehicle is never suitable for more than one person, no one under 16 should operate & the driver should always wear a helmet. We’re zero for three on the rules & clocking 37 mph. I’m thinking about ditching my iPod so I can use my left hand for proper support, but after five years of precious music compiling, it seems worth the risk.

From another vantage point we probably look pretty funny. ATVs are pretty huge & James is a skinny youngster. Imagine Barbie jammed into the front of Ken’s Jeep. Then there’s me on the back, naturally as uncoordinated as they come, barely holding on as the hillbilly teen from hell tears across potholes as if some avalanche is closing in. It’s hard to tell if he’s naturally this reckless or ups it a few notches when a wide-eyed city slicker comes through.

Either way, bury me w/my iPod.

My first visit to the weirdly-shaped state of Idaho was the stay w/the Meyer family in Kooskia. W/me in tow is none other than Keyne “Big Momma” Stanford, who I scooped up in Spokane, WA & together we made our few-hour trek into the countryside Idaho. The Meyer family is made up of 8 kids, w/a 15 yr age span – just like my mom – who is one of eight too (formerly, Mary rest her soul). Each of the kids is confident/delightful & the older ones especially took us under their wing w/farming tips & family lore. They really enjoy Keyne’s similar sibling situation & inquired how they were disciplined. Stories of spanking w/a ping-pong paddle (rumor has it that my Grandma’s name was labeled on it) or a hairbrush or whatever was close by brought smiles to my mother’s face as this old-fashioned discipline is not frowned upon in this house either.

After a quick tour of the farm, the first evening we were taken to a country potluck of about 40 people. The whole thing was a little awkward for us, as the only people we “knew” there we had met about three hours ago. My sister Claire would have just died. Ha. I forgot to ask why later, but in the main room where we gathered had about 10 queen-sized beds all lined up in a row. Maybe the house moonlighted as a orphanage? An elderly woman played the accordion & we were taught, of all thing, the Virginia Reel. We of the Stanford/Kennedy crowd all have our roots in VA:)

The farm is hilly & careworn w/the comings & goings of such a large family. They have a few turkey tractors here, which are small, movable structures that turkeys (or chickens) live in. One would move this structure around to allow the grazing animals to feed in specific locations only, while they also spread out their manure for fertilization effects. Google it, it’s a great concept. There are also ducks, chickens, roosters (a blonde one’s personal mission – to wake us up at 5 a.m. w/a dozen consecutive cock-a-doodle-doos, the rat) & pigeons which get released daily. Marian, the eldest of the Brady Bunch kids, lets us do a little milking, then proceeds to effortlessly tenfold our five-minute effort in a matter of seconds w/her superior method. I dug the goat milk but I could tell Keyne was holding out for her cow stuff back in the city.

Keyne mostly helped Elizabeth (the mom) in her huge garden – weeding, planting, watering & harvesting. What a treat just to pick & eat tender raspberries. The ladies picked all the kale to clear it for a new crop and mum juiced the leaves. We would shake the wild plum tree – plums the size of cherry tomatoes – gather the little guys, juice them & make jelly. They had hundreds of cans in the back room, mostly jellies & such.

We fit into our gender-specific roles pretty well here. Again, Keyne in the garden/kitchen & me outside w/the dad (Jim) on some carpentry gig. The men (besides me, who is probably not considered 100% A MAN out here) are never ever seen in the kitchen & the women never work w/tools or build anything. Jim is the patriarch of the family & his word is law in a way you have never seen. The kids wait on him bringing him water/food & whatever else he asks for. There is never a please, a thank you & he never needs to repeat himself. His opinions are those the entire family restates. He carries a handgun at all times & is very outspoken about his faith/politics. One weekend the whole family gets stomach flu, one by one; Keyne & I eventually succumb. The day Jim gets it, the whole farm shuts down & the coveted videos entertain the kids who otherwise never watch TV. They just LOVE The Beverly Hillbillies, which I think is pretty dated, but I gathered the mom likes those old-fashioned views for her kids. They ate it up, even though they had seen every one what seemed like a number of times.

This raccoon, otherwise minding it’s own business, was shot & killed late Saturday evening. There are no current leads to the murder.

The youngest kids are extra fun. Hally, the one-year-old, pictured to the left, is quite active for someone that young. I didn’t think much of it, but my mom seemed nothing short of amazed that someone so young had the run of the entire farm to herself, toddling out to the garden or sauna to find her parents. How different her experiences & motor skills must be compared to a toddler growing up in an apartment. The three-year-old Amanah, we noticed had super-short bangs & we kind of knew why (she cut her own hair) but didn’t want to ask as fashion doesn’t seem important way out here. The five & seven-year-old boys (Barack & Talon, great names) we almost never see as they fish all day in the pond up the road. What a life.

We grow very fond of the 10-year-old Margaret, who tells long (but cute) stories punctuated w/ “and guess what happens next?” & won’t move on until you’ve guessed at least three times, though that’s usually a rhetorical question. She & I moved wood one morning and I was right below my capacity for the lifting & noticed she was having a hard time too. Apparently I am only a little stronger than this ten-year-old girl. I’d also like to note here I beat every older child in arm wrestling, albeit mostly girls. I’ll take it. 

Marian, the oldest -far right in the picture above- hopes to become either a chef or a midwife (indeed she’s attended the births of the younger siblings & knows all the birthing language) someday unless she “gets married early” she says. My mother noted it’s hard not to think such a bright, attractive, mature young lady could have a brilliant career. Whatever those kids do, they just need to leave Kooskia & Idaho for a few years. They have great parents no doubt, but only a small selection of view points survive on that farm.

We probably didn’t work as hard as we could have w/the flu cropping up all week, though everyone had it at some point so they were understanding when we did. In fact, Keyne got a cake but was so sick on her birthday (happy 57th Keyne!) that we only got a quick pic w/the cake before rushing off to the airport. We did appreciate the way the whole family embraced us city slickers & hope in turn we were able to somehow bring in the outside world to such a hardworking clan.

Plus, Keyne didn’t flee East via Greyhound day two on the farm, which means brother Bret owes me $20 cash:)

My next set of BFFs was the kindly folks of the Blades Homestead, aka Adria, Josh and the handsome twin-baby superstars of Arlen and Ewan. These are friends of the post-before-last Hunter Homestead. Those past hosts took me on a choice beach trip to the Pacific and these new hosts were their friends who met us there. I brought up I was interested in coming to stay, since I knew they were interested in hosting and the rest fell into place:) Their property hosts a huge garden and I had the privilege of occupying a tent overnight in the thick of it all. Slept like a baby.

Adria is a photographer and Josh runs a landscaping business around Victoria. There was a framed picture I noticed of a radiant/pregnant Kirsten Hunter hung up at the Hunter Homestead and I found out that Adria took the picture. I like things like that. Full circle stuff…it makes the world go ’round, no?.

Josh runs what seems like to me a dream job. He works outside everyday (check), is his own boss (check check) and gets to exercise some creativity while helping the world grow (fat check). He has two employees and I had the pleasure of working w/one of them for an afternoon. Josh is really easy/fun to be around, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that his employee was too. Sebastian and I were joking around w/each right away and shared a lot of similar experiences in college (Canadians only use the word college to talk about what we think of as a technical college. They say say “university” when we say college) and life thereafter. Paralleled vices/virtues.

My work here was around-the-house/garden help. The real noteworthy project was the tire-made stairs we spent about two days completing. I had the only hand in day one, using the coveted b-day Ipod mix to push me thru 7 hours of in-the-sun labour. I did this on my own volition of course, sometime you just get into projects and have to finish it! Day two was led by Josh, who had great ideas to add tiers up the sides of the hill, thus flattening portions of land so he could put in some plants. It looked pretty slick I must say.

Thanks to Adria for contributing some of her work of the Blades’ garden. Photo credit to the left. Check out her work sometime.

Now I am in Seattle w/the great Cameron Hypes until Monday, when I will pick up momma Keyne in Spokane, WA, and head to Kooskia, ID, for a week of farm fun. This will be her first time to the West and her…57th b-day is this Saturday:) Can you believe I talked her into coming way out here? The Stanford-family adventure starts tomorrow!

I miss all my friends in Texas, Florida, New York, Colorado and elsewhere further.

More to come!

This is place is right out of movie. Or even a dream. Or MAYBE a movie within a dream?!?! That seems more ethereal. It sits on top of a mountain, due south the Pacific Ocean dips between two more mountains/huge hills/whatever into a river form below with the white-tipped Cascades Mt chain keeping guard over it all way in the distance. Even though it doesn’t seem like good business practice to me, the HelpXer are allowed to stay in the suites when the room is available, as opposed to the room above the barn. I got to stay in Suite One only on my first and DANG I didn’t get any pictures of the one. Someday, when my peak salary hits, we can then multiply that number by ten, and then maybe, maybe, I could afford to stay in this room. Classy joint.

Also w/me HelpXing was a really cool Aussie duo, Kym and Luke. Because the joint got pretty busy, we all relocated to the room above the barn and got pretty close working together all week. And these guys had really good work ethic. We all know us Americans can be a little on the lazy side so I had to be in top form. It was mostly Luke and I working together fixing up the HelpX room in the barn throughout the week, as Kym helped out cleaning rooms in the B&B. Way to break down those gender stereotypes Prancing Horse.

Luke and I worked pretty hard all week. We used long iron pikes to break up stone to widen a mouth of the newly-installed septic tank outside the barn. I felt like Paul Newman from Cool Hand Luke. We also completely flipped the HelpX room above the barn, painting every painstaking inch and getting all the mechanics working around the room. We joked for days we wished we had gotten some before-and-after pics of our work. This room was a God-forsaken shed when we showed up, now it’s a hillbilly-approved God-forsaken room.  Any lady would be lucky:)

Al is one of those country dudes who has (or had) some serious money at some point and his life and loves to collect [junk], and you can see a great view of that into what we put in the room. He had well over 100 beer light advertisements that went up in bars back yonder and we preceded to cover the walls in them. Just…fantastic. Al also owns a classy amarillo (spanish anyone?) Ferrari sleeping in one of the garages. I like to see he’s committed to the name of his B&B.

Even though we got worked pretty hard at this gig, the food was great, we ate together for lunch and dinner, which was a first among my travels and everyone there had a “pretty bitchin’ sense of humor”, as they say.

LOOK at this nothing-short-of-legendary VHS collection

They brewed their own Prancing Horse Pilsner (which was branded to match the company but wasn’t ever given to customers, which I found confusing) that were passed out with dinner. We would all talk about the problems in our home countries and laugh about the different ways we said and experienced the same words. The Aussies share all kinds of slang with New Zealanders (Kiwis) and Canadians, all because of the British. You can see it in the currency, the flags and (kind of, but not really) the governing bodies of these countries/continents/MASSIVE land masses. Australia is bigger, but go look at Canada on a map. It’s much bigger than you think it is.

We had one afternoon off (which I kind of had to fight for) to go out and have some fun. The Aussies had been there for almost three weeks so had seen this and that, but I wanted to get to a bit of the area. It was nothing super special -a little time on the ocean coast then a walk around the lake next to the B&B on the way home- but the three of us had a solid time. They’re really good people, the Aussies, w/o a doubt some of my favorite to have met on this trip. We laughed and teased and conspired like old friends. Hopefully I will run into them in the future sometime. I know Luke wants to travel more so perhaps I will proposition him for a planned trip abroad in the future…? All I really know right now is I want to travel more and not settle down. The in-betweens are flexible. Make some money??? Flexible.

At least the second-most awkward photo in this travel blog

And just while I’m thinking of it, 91.3 FM The Zone is a fantastic radio station broadcasted out of Victoria, BC. I heard exclusively songs I didn’t know but loved all the time. Check it out if you’re looking for new jams. No doubt they stream online.

Lastly, the farm structure underneath the hillbilly room we stayed in was pretty sweet. There were three sassy horses, two good-natured pigs and an almost-comatose cow w/her calf. That last pair was cute in a weird way I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit.

That’s it Malahat, BC! I head back into the city of Victoria to stay w/Adria and Josh Blades, who are friends of the Hunter Homestead that I met on a choice beach trip.

More to come!