Curt wasn't kidding about his oatmeal-making robot! Despite my screams at having beady little robot eyes about an inch from my face when I woke up, it was kind of cool that the little feller let himself out of Curt's suitcase at about 5 am and started whipping up some quick oats for us.

Better driving day today. We all agreed that the best first stop on our trip was the Pez Museum just outside San Francisco. Curt is most excited about the road trip and is drawing a freehand map of the US as we drive. It looks kind of like a medical device that's been attacked with a hammer, but then we're only in like day two. Jocelyn is tracking how many different state license plates we see, as well as the number of cars with a headlight out. This data harvesting seems to have put an end to the early battles over the radio, and knowing this is so great that I can't even be upset about both my companions informing me that I'll have to do all the driving on this trip, which will slow us down considerably.

Now listening to: "Decatur" by Seam

Photo by Adam "Rampage" Meltzer via Flickr/Creative Commons

If you remember, the point of this accursed road trip was to pick of two of my friends to come work with me on Otis H. Basketry's new "bread power" project. Curt and Jocelyn are fraternal twins who founded the high school's Evil Robots Club in our sophomore year. They still make robots in their parents' garage; I'm not sure how often they come out of the garage, actually, but Otis wants to see if bread will yield more electricity if a robot adds the yeast, so off we go. Curt built a special robot with a chef's hat as a gift to Otis, which looks sharp. "It can cook, too!" he said, as he packed the bot into my trunk. "Robot oatmeal is gonna me your savior."

A lot of adjusting to do. Neither of my new travel companions has ever been out on the road before, and I've usually traveled alone, so I've been able to set the A/C and the radio to whatever I like. Now, we have to cooperate, which means I can't just put on public radio. Jocelyn had three new CD's to sample, while Curt insisted that the only way to start a road trip was to listen to his new 21-CD set of Great Speeches of the 20th Century. So we made our way down 101 listening to William Faulkner accept his Nobel Prize.

Now listening to: about twelve things

Photo by Don Solo via Flickr/Creative Commons

Car shopping with my mom today - Otis H. Basketry is paying for the car, but she wanted to see how good a deal she could get just the same. So after about 49 hours of looking, thinking and, finally, being unable to think any longer because we'd spent too much time looking and thinking, we finally picked out a car. "I'm still not sure about the drink holder," she'd say, and then wrangle a deal to get $4 off a muffler replacement in the next 80 days or something. It's actually pretty sweet, so I shouldn't complain - a new Honda Insight should set me up nicely for the return trip. Which has to start tomorrow, if I'm going to get back to New Hampshire on time.

Now listening to: "Eileen" by Keith Richards

Photo by Tom Raftery via Flickr/Creative Commons

Home sweet home - er, well, home, anyway. Most everything is the same as it was 13 months ago, when I first drove out to New Hampshire. One thing that's changed: I'm apparently a minor celebrity now, for keeping the blog. I got interviewed by someone from the local paper, as well as someone from the local cable access show (best question: "is disco music affecting weather patterns in New Hampshire too?")

Aside from working the press, I got to spend plenty of time with my folks. Throwing parties is their hobby - they once threw a week-long block party including rides for Casimir Pulaski Day, which I thought was purely a Chicago holiday. For the return of their beloved son on America's birthday, they threw a rollerskating party. I tried desperately to turn it into a Roller Derby party but no one wanted to elbow each other into the lawn down the street. Ah well. My folks kept subtly hinting that there must be some way that I could do everything that I'm doing now (with the same exact people) but here in California instead of "all the way out there." I gently explained that the world couldn't handle Otis H. Basketry, bread visionary, in a Fourth of July skate party.

Now listening to: "The Days of Wine and Roses" by the Dream Syndicate

Photo by barriebarrie via Flickr/Creative Commons

Alrighty, now we're back in familiar territory! My family spent a lot of vacations in Portland, so there's very little chance I'll end up in a kayak wondering how I got there. To be absolutely sure, though, I rented a bike for the afternoon just to get a little fresh air, and I made sure I'd know where I was by riding in concentric circles (er, concentric squares, I guess). Sadly, I got lost anyway. But I asked for directions instead of building a message in a bottle out of gum. I make some goofy mistakes, yes, but never twice!

Now listening to: "Do You Take This Man" by Diamanda Galas and John Paul Jones

Photo by Salim Virji via Flickr/Creative Commons

As anyone who's read this blog knows by now, I have to look on the bright side when it comes to my many misadventures, if only to keep from crying over them. So instead of wondering how the heck I went from testing different kinds of gum to being stranded in a kayak somewhere on Puget Sound for three days, I'm going to be glad that I got stranded with my pal Hiro and not some of the less pleasant company I've had on my trips. Yes, I couldn't figure out where the heck I was, but I wasn't, for example, getting accused of working with aliens to oppress the citizens of New Mexico, like I did last summer. Misery loves company, and if the company's good then maybe the misery won't be so bad.

Which isn't to say, of course, that what we ended up doing wasn't just as weird as our accidental Alaska trip last summer. All I remember is trying piece after piece of the gum we bought on Sunday, and then I was sitting in a kayak that had beached itself... somewhere. According to Hiro I'd been yelling directions over the sound of the water, and then inexplicably adding the names of constellations as a suffix. "Hard left to catch the current - Andromeda!" We stopped when we got too tired from taking too many hard lefts. "Then," Hiro said, "you wanted to send a message in a bottle, only we didn't have a bottle so you tried to make one out of gum." The message contained in my gum bottle was "NO MORE LOBSTER PINBALL." (Hiro: "What is lobster pinball? Is that a sport you play in New Hampshire?") We set the gum bottle free, in the hopes that someone would find it and find a way to us. It promptly sank (eventually a lobster will see it and go "We play pinball?") and were forced to walk back to civilzation, where we swore never to chew that much gum in one sitting again. After a day of resting and recharging, Hiro took me to a shop run by a friend of his, where he bought me a special, custom-designed "No More Lobster Pinball" t-shirt. I'd be honored if I knew what I was trying to say!

Now listening to: "Right On" by Marvin Gaye

Photo by cleverdame107 via Flickr/Creative Commons

My (hopefully) one deliberate stop before seeing my family in California is to hang out with my Seattle-based buddy Hiro, who lived with my family as an exchange student and now designs video games for a living. His newest idea is a variation on the game "City of Heroes," where you play as a superhero or supervillain and go on missions. His version is called "City of Hiros," where your character and every other player you meet look like him.

Hiro's a lot of fun, even though the two of us accidentally got on an airplane and was stranded in Alaska for like three days when we met up last summer. So far the only odd thing that's happened is that we met up at the Seattle gum wall; then we went gum shopping and bought like 200 different kinds of gum. I'm resigned to the fact that some ridiculous thing or other will happen when the two of us get together, but as long as I don't end up on a plane, how bad can it be, right?

Now listening to: "Right On" by Marvin Gaye

Photo by le_don via Flickr/Creative Commons

Bonners Ferry calls itself "Idaho's Friendliest City," and after this morning's breakfast, in which I ate about 379 pancakes, I can now refer to myself as Idaho's Fullest Tourist. At the end the server asked if I wanted anything other than the check; I said, "Roll me to my car," and she wasn't sure if I was joking. Heck, I wasn't sure if I was joking.

Easy drive to Spokane, where I did not eat lunch or dinner due to the "Don't eat too much rule." One of my friends in high school had a parrot, and the parents had taught the bird to say "Don't eat too much!" so he and his sister wouldn't over-snack. This became such a running gag at school that we got thrown out of the lunchroom for a month for saying it all the time. I'm heading back to my hometown in California for the 4th of July, and there's a chance I'll see my friend and his parrot - here's hoping the parrot doesn't also read blogs.

Now listening to: "Montana" by John Linnell

Photo by NDomer73 via Flickr/Creative Commons

"Occasionally a visitor may be fortunate enough to see a black bear, a moose or an elk," says the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge website. In lieu of any of those, I saw the most fidgety nature watchers who ever hiked a trail. If one of them saw a bird, they'd turn with a start and go "Oh, bird," breathy and with the stress on the "oh" so it came out like OHbird, or OHbutterfly. Then they realized there were bugs, and it went from OHbird to OHmosquito and OHbeeBIGbeeflyingRIGHTBYME. There were six of them doing this at once, each one sort of hopping as they yelped - very Monty Python-esque. OHMarcus hiked the OHtrail as fast as he could to get some OHpeace and OHquiet, until it was time to head back to the OHhotel.

Now listening to: "It's All In My Mind" by Teenage Fanclub

Photo by NDomer73 via Flickr/Creative Commons

Long driving day today - tomorrow I want to visit the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge - so I caught up on my podcasts. Diane Rehm and Stacy Keach! At a rest stop I saw a car with for sale signs all over the windows. "Runs well," said one window. "Nice looking," said another, and it was true, but if it wasn't I guess they wouldn't write in "kind of ugly" on the car, would they?

Now listening to: "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison

Photo by Seattle Ray via Flickr/Creative Commons