USA Tour Part 2: The Middle

After Portland, I started heading east. The most exciting part of my road trip was that I had a woman here knit a beautiful red-yellow-green (as in the Bolivian flag, not rastafari) thing with dangling hats, people and a llama to hang across the windshield of my car. My batteries were dead for the whole road trip, thus no photos of the decoration nor of the Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado scenery.

Once in Denver, I kicked it with Duncan and his crew and spent a day in Boulder hiking. Food highlights include Mexican food, falafel and fattoush from Jerusalem, and breakfast at Dot’s Diner.

Then Dunc and I started east, again. We ended up in Springfield, Illinois – my hometown – at my dad’s house. Unfortunately Duncan brought back a nasty parasite from Guatemala so I failed to introduce him to the culinary wonders of Springfield, which are the Horse Shoe and Cozy Dog. He also missed the fruits of my dad’s amazing BBQ skills, but not me.

The next day I gave my high school buddy Becky a call to see how she was doing and she told me she had just had her baby. I got to meet the squishy Sylvia Shiloh (who wasn’t named at the time) less than 12 hours after she was born. That seems significant.

My sister Jessica and niece Sofia came up to visit with Pops and we practiced saying “Emmy.” “No, dammit. Not Elmo. Emmy. Emmmm eeeeeeeee. Emmy.” She got it after a week. She’s a genius I swear.

She even knows where her mom’s mouth and cheeks are.

Sofi knows where noodles go too.

After a visit with Becky, Cedric and Sylvia, we drove down south to Murpheysboro to Jessica’s house.

Despite warnings that there were no berries due to the great “Easter Freeze of ought 07” we decided to take Sofi blueberry picking. There really weren’t very many berries, but it was still entertaining. Sofi really liked putting them in the bucket even though I explained repeatedly that she could also put them directly into her mouth.

no hat.