USA Tour Part 1: The Great Northwest

The USA is the best country ever. I refuse to debate this. It just is.

My recent USofA tour cemented this belief. Though I won’t try to convince you, these next few blogs should prove that the United States of America surpasses the awesomeness level of all other nations.

On my trip I got to see most of the people I love in the world. And I put a funny Bolivian hat on them and took their picture. This project occurred to me late late late on my last night in Olympia. Thus I completely missed some important people and the camera battery died on another. I'll try to be more thorough the next time around. In December?

I’ve tried not to edit out too much of the background so as to provide a bit of context to the hat photos.

This one of me for example, was taken in my Moms’ kitchen. That’s my mom doing dishes behind me.

While in the greatest country in the universe I also ate a lot.





I started my trip in Miami, visiting Julia and Joseph who are the best hosts in all of Miami, and they aren't even southern. I spent my first few hours back in the states forcing them to watch me drink water FROM THE TAP with ICE and giggling every time I flushed toilet paper DOWN THE TOILET. We ate THAI food and drank GOOD BEER. I went to the beach and saw a yellow H3 and listened to new POP music. I LOVE THE USA. I was too busy marveling at the wonders of the USA to take photos, unfortunately.





Then I headed to Olympia, WA where I attended 3 BBQ's in 2 days, danced, toured the coffee shops, ate fistfuls of kale and collard greens, drank a lot of beer, partied in a garage, went to a punk rock show/breakfast at Henderson’s house, fell in love with a small talking robot, biked to the river on the one sunny day with Anna, went on a date, missed several sunrises, practiced my abbreves, celebrated fathers day with Lawless and Damien, watched the seals from the bridge, hung out with all the best people oly has to offer and generally rocked out.













I stayed at Abby's den of rugby players, and she took me to potentially the best gayaraoke night of my life. It was eye-rubbingly boring until nine straight kids took the stage and wailed out the most amazing karaoke version of Metallica's 'Master of Puppets' possible. Now usually I think that all karaoke songs should be 4.5 minutes and under (thus eliminating 'Paradise by the Dashboard Lights') but this 8 minute+ song was incredible. Head banging! Mic stand guitaring! Howling! But that was just the warm up. Abby then dedicated a fist-pumping rendition of "Wanted Dead or Alive" to me. Me! No one can ask for more than one incredible thing to happen in any given karaoke night but I got two. Then there was some drinking and dancing and party crashing and another lovely sleepless Oly night.


In the Great Northwest I didn’t just party. Oh no, I made myself go visit grad schools and met with some students and faculty. It was scary, but I feel like I know what I need to do now. First I drove to Vancouver (UBC, SFU) and ate Indonesian food, then stayed with my Conway buddies (the farm is so beautiful, I picked strawberries for breakfast with EW), on to Seattle (UW, falafel) and then back to Oly (Korean, pizza, the aforementioned BBQs, pho, diner food and so much more).

From Olympia I went to Lake Quinault on
the Olympic Peninsula to visit Jessica and Mike. We went to the stunning Ruby beach, for a couple hikes in the woods and chatted with everyone when we went to 'town' (a cafe, post office and laundromat).









In Portland I got to ride a beautiful daisy yellow bike borrowed by Jill from her buddy, who also cooked us a fab vegan feast at the church Jill lives in. We saw a terrible rendition of Steve Martin’s ‘Picasso vs Einstein’ play in Vancouver, WA and leap-frogged by a stressed out business man, who chuckled. Jill and I picked berries and ate something like 4 amazing breakfasts in 3 days.


On my last night in town, I went a BBQ at Megs’ house (star of the evening, grilled apricots stuffed with blue cheese), drank a fancy box of wine (which we killed by space baggin’), and played some cut-throat 4-square. Now that is a fine sport. Again, I did not sleep. But I did get to drink lots of good coffee and redo a farewell; swapping a sleepy, semi-awkward goodbye for a well caffeinated, sunny one. Then I drove to Denver.












I really didn't sleep much for a couple weeks. I'm glad that (A) not being in college (B) passage into my mid-later twenties and (C) Bolivia have not destroyed my capacity to deprive myself of sleep for days on end.

And be happy about it.