Ride Home

Here's a quick documentation of my ride home. Pretty scenery, and an eclipse upon arriving home.

The weird deserted hotel from across the street  of my bus stop

Hills 

 Water 

Bridge

 getting into Portland

Reflection of the eclipse

Day one of the Adventure

Surprise, surprise, I didn't take any pictures from the road.

But, no worries little people, I redoubled my efforts upon arriving in Seattle.

Here you have what I had:

building that looked cooler in real life (dagnabit my lack of camera mastery). 

 part of a underwater scene mural

Another part of that mural 

Some of the street signs are on the corners in the ground 

 Another example (and a glimpse of my new shoes)

First picture from Pike Place Market. The first of many "neon" sign viewings.  

 Shellfish at the market

 Lil' clams

 Flowers at the market

 I'm tellin' you. They love neon in this town

 Or garish signs at least

 My pants and my shoes on "vacation"

 This is when I was figuring out if you could take pictures through view finders.

Down at the dock some detritus and a ship  

Some neat column sculptures 

 Another in the series of "columns"

Mural at the hostel

Pacific North West

Tomorrow,

I'm going to Seattle. I'm leaving Portland at 12:30pm. I'm getting there around 3:30pm. And I'm leaving the next day at 2pm. I'm super excited. It's about time I got to explore the Pacific NW. Thankfully, the Bolt Bus finally came to the area and started giving cheap rides to Seattle.

On my list are 1) Theo Chocolate because when Katelyn was in Seattle she procured some chocolate from them for yours truly, and it was phenomenal. Shout out Katelyn for getting me awesome things from the places that you go.  2) Pike Place Market. 3) a ferry ride- preferably to Bainbridge Island because I used to live on Bainbridge St.

If you have any last minute suggestions let me know (I know, I know, it's a last minute post). AND! I'll try to take some pictures for you lovely readers.

Best,
Rachel

P.S. I may have canceled friend dinner but some of those dishes are still gonna happen and soon.

Getting back attchya from Chicago

Allright, here's to posting to you all from Chicago again.
Every time that I'm here, I'm pretty sure you get a post from me. You can thank Amtrak's ridiculously long layovers for that. Still I'm thankful to get off the train and find a comfortable place to relieve myself as well as to update you on my life as of late.

Here it is. Last week Delaware and a couple of walks through springtime

Jack in the Pulpit. bitter and peppery unless cooked I believe.

This past weekend New York, NY and the visiting of some very intense museums.

pretty sure I take this picture everytime I'm in the American Museum of Natural History. You can't deny that it's Tight. Giant squid fighting whale (Whatup?!).

Even though, everything in the Financial district of Chicago (which is at least where I assume I am) is closed on Sundays except for some random tea shop, the area is still convincingly city-like and for that impressive. 

I'd love to come to the real city (not just the tall business buildings part) some day with a real Chicago friend. Shout out Natalie who will someday lead me around the streets of Chicago. Also, shout outs to my Mom and Dad who hooked it up in NY from getting us a hotel to stay in with their mysterious hotel points and finding tickets to my first Broadway show, to helping me carry my huge load of stuff to the train station on Saturday. You guys are awesome. 

Small Wonder (yeah, yeah, yeah)

I feel as though I must have used the title before. I know, it's not original, but I'm trying to go to bed. Here's a quick run through of  Delaware since I've been here (2:50 this afternoon)

 Napkins in the Thai restaurant we went to for lunch

 My mom with the spoils from the Thai restaurant.

Fortune I got from the Thai restaurant's "Chinese" fortune cookies

 Castor plant seed pod

Pretty much I got in via the Greyhound bus to Philly (first trip by greyhound and honestly not as bad as you'd expect from all of the negative feedback I've heard over the years), rode to pick up my older sister at the airport with my parents, met up with my older brother and sister in law to eat dinner, and ended up at home where I grew up, to chill with the immediate family. It's nice to see most of them. Shout out to Katelyn who can't be with us right now.

Train Fat

I went for a 15 minute run today and it was one of the hardest runs that I've done in a good long while. I see you, thinking "15 minutes, that's nothing". and not even a week ago, I would have agreed. That was before I gained all of this train fat from sitting on the train for just over three days in a row. That's over 72 hours of straight sitting people. My body is not used to moving anymore. Fortunately, I'll be hitting up a "Poor Man's Yoga" class this evening as well. So, hopefully we can get things back into working order. 

This train ride was a strange'un. In some ways I expect a cross country train to be filled with antiquity loving, beautiful hipsters, all wearing retro shoes and sunglasses. Besides followers of the scene, I expected patient, elderly travelers who drink their fill of overpriced wine in their sleeper cars and romance one another like they've just fallen in love. Suffice to say, my expectations were not met. 

This cross country train was all business. At least on the first leg of my journey, most of the people that I encountered were either coming or going to Wilson, ND. There were men going there with guaranteed jobs working where the oil is being drilled. There were people rushing there in hopes of getting jobs pertaining to the oil boom and there was at least one person who was commuting to Wilson to work as a waitress. Word on the tracks is, there's so much money to be had in North Dakota that people can afford to buy cars after working for only a few months. People are getting jobs as drivers, station builders, and  pipe layers. even gas station workers are supposedly getting about $18.oo an hour in Wilson. 

It's a strange thing to become an accidental part of a migrating flock. I felt like we were doing something that Americans have been doing forever. In the past we were going to pan gold, or to pick fruit. Instead, of heading west, Now we were heading to the center to drill oil. Luckily, the first leg of the train wasn't overly crowded so it wasn't hard to come by sleep and a good stretch during this bit of migration.

The second leg, from Chicago. was far more crowded and less migratory. By that leg, I was over trains and ready to get home and take a shower. Now, if you read my last post, you know that I am home with Mamaw and my older sister, clean showered and ready to do some yoga.

Here are a few pictures from the journey.

We actually did get to leave the train sometimes. Here on layover in Chicago 

Blue skies and sunshine are a magical thing coming from Portland in the winter 

 A bit of fencing at the Milwaukee station.

In the flat brown stretch. There was a lot of this. 

Frozen River

Every once and a while the flat lands gave us some busted dumpsters, buildings, and cars.

Snow in a way that we never see it in Portland.

Turn up the heat

So, it's cold again. We ran out of oil last week and it seems like it's gotten colder every day since. Today, we're getting more oil which will be good for the next five days that I'm here. Then the room goes over to Sauce, my roomie who lives in a RV outside our house.

I'm excited to go somewhere with guaranteed heat. Even, if it's not the very warm kind. Bring it on Richmond. I'll be back via the train on Feb. 1st. 4:50 p.m. estimated arrival time.

Birthday Dinner

I forgot to take pictures of the food!! I was so overwhelmed by the company. Sorry guys, you'll never get to see the delicious things that we consumed. However, I do have some pictures for you (not that you didn't already see them on Facebook). Shout out to my friend Jon who took these beautiful pictures.

Natalie, an awesome friend I've made in Portland

A bit of the party in reflection

Me and my friend Marika who I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before.

Birthday cake time.

The candles were in the shape of a heart

This week I also went to a GWAR show which was awesome. It was this crazy metal show played by dude's in costumes who acted out crazy little dramas where they destroyed monsters and such spraying "blood" into the audience. Everyone was covered in pinky-red when they left the show.

Also, San Francisco update: I'll be flying to the bay area on Sunday the 20th and coming back to Portland late on Thanksgiving evening. This is all possible due to a super cheap flight I got to take me there. And, it's awesome because I'll get to see both of my sisters since my days there overlap with both of their stays. I'm so excited.

All day fun

All day bus pass inside the book I'm reading now

(a collection of short novels by John Steinbeck)

Today, I woke up late to see posted on the house's white board 3 all day bus passes. So, I decided to go on an adventure to St. John's a little town on the north side of Portland. Now, a few hours later and just a little bit car sick I am here to tell you about it.

Pizza

Old School place I had pizza at.

Little Bike carriage that I saw when I got off the bus

signs like these always make me miss people or places

Shout out Katelyn (whose birthday was yesterday)

Burning ball of excitement.

Like a small sun.

A very small but hot and excited sun.

That's how I feel right now.

I am on fire with excitement.

There are so many things to look forward to.

Landing in Philly and getting lunch with my friend Matt, going home and seeing my Mom Dad and brothers, getting to see my sisters and get ready for Jon-Mike & Jackie's wedding, Wedding!, Mamaw!, Uncles from all over, Mom's birthday, Riding in a car, Richmond VA, Friends, Family, Friends, and back to the west coast.

I am currently waiting in the airport and writing this blog. I have started to send out my Facebook feelers and text alerts. I can not wait for the east coast and me to be one again.

Hope you all are sleeping soundly as I type.

Not a lot but not so little

I don't have a lot of info to give you guys today.

I've been working for the past three days and I'll work for the next two. That's good news. I am growing a little tired of being at Slappy Cakes but it'll all be worth it when I'm not behind on money when I come back from the east coast.

Other than that, the weekend is my time off from running and I started a new cross stitch that makes it almost impossible for me to go to bed at night. Hopefully I'll get to work on that on the plane. I would like to find some time to get one more color thread to use before I leave but if I don't I think it will be OK.

Tomorrow I'm looking forward to work in the morning, and three and a half beautiful miles in the evening and maybe some thread shopping somewhere in between there.

Hope you all are doing well. Looking forward to seeing most of you loyal readers in just a few days.

Tax Return

I'm getting my tax return shortly. Well, I just got my VA tax return in the mail and am waiting on my federal.

Since I first found out how much I was getting back for my tax return I started planning what I was going to do with my money. Was I going to save half of it and use the other half to buy new clothes and a new pillow? Perhaps I was going to buy a dresser, and some hangers. Maybe I was about to splurge on a membership to a rock climbing gym. All of those were ideas that I had batted around a bit. I might even want to replenish my greatly diminished earing supply with some of that tax money.

But then I realized my tax money is already pledged. I'm going on vacation to CO this year and that's where my tax return is going. It's pretty nice because it costs almost exactly the amount I'm getting back to fly to and from Colorado but I can't use any of the money for anything else. Is it too greedy to wish I was getting another $400 back from the government? Maybe but that doesn't stop me from dreaming. Oh a membership at a climbing gym... what a dream.

Still, I'm pretty psyched for some good travel and fun family time. That will be really nice. I'm actually looking forward to some of that later this month for Jon-Mike & Jackie's wedding. Yay! travels! I've been pretty homesick for the past few days and it'll be really nice to see those of you on the east coast and the east coast itself later on.

Hope you all have some fun plans in your near future. That's all for now.

East Coast! East Coast!

Today I did a big thing and applied for food stamps. It's possible that I won't qualify but I also just spent a bunch of money on air fare to get back to the east coast- so I probably will- and that brings me to the fun stuff!

I'm coming back east! I'll be flying into the Philly area on March 23rd 2011 and staying in DE for my brother's wedding on the 26th. Then! I will head on down to good ol' Richmond, VA to stay from the 27th to April 1st (Which just happens to be the birthday of a very sweet lady I'll be kickin' it with)

So, if you'd like to see me during this time get on top of things because this is a limited time offer.

Hope you're all having a great day. Thanks for reading.

Katelyn's back from Kenya!

Just a quick shout out to my most loyal reader being back from Kenya so she can read my blog again! haha! yeyah!

Also, Katelyn, glad you're back safe and sound after some harrowing travel and hope that you had a killer time in Kenya.

Love,

Rachel

Return to Portland

I'm back in Portland. It turns out that it takes forever to fly to and from Portland, OR.

Thankfully, however, my day of travel was broken up by a really great lunch with my parents!! I found out at about 8:00 am that I had layover in Philadelphia on my way back west from Augusta, GA. Upon notifying my dad about my flight itinerary we decided to meet in Philadelphia. Luckily that was my longest layover and I had a few solid hours to spend with them. I'd like to say now. Thanks Mom & Dad for lunch, snacks, and my birthday gift! All are/were greatly appreciated. And seeing you made my day (maybe even my week).

Other than that sweet moment of happiness, most of my travel experience involved me falling asleep with my mouth open on planes and waking up very, very thirsty. Still, eventually, I returned to what is now my home town of Portland, OR and what I found surprised me. The weather was beautiful. I caught the MAX train back into town and from there rode a bus home. All in all, I got the the airport in Augusta, GA at just past 9 in the morning EST and arrived home from the airport in Portland, OR at around 2am EST. It was a long day.

Layover in Chicago

coming into Chicago on the train

The sunrise in Indiana this morning

West VA yesterday afternoon

sandwich with yellow squash slices on the side that I made on the train.

view of Chicago from a little sitting park that I sat in for a couple of minutes to talk to Mamaw.

I'm currently on layover in Chicago. At least I think it's called layover. I'm waiting for my next train right now anyways. I've ventured a couple of blocks into Chicago and think that it seems like a very beautiful city. (Kathryn I totally back your Chicago decision from what I've seen). I'm hanging out in a Panera and I'm trying to give you all a quick update before running back to the wireless train.

Sorry this post is so rushed. Hope you all feel much informed.

Going West!