Man, those Cameroon pastry guys are something else. I thought my chocolate Pop Rock turnovers would blow their minds, but they put together this caramel-filled thing that blew my mind - literally. Instead of sleeping in and driving back to the US, I stayed up all night, ate about 23 of the caramel things and apparently spent the morning roller-skating through downtown Montreal screaming out lines from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Patrick, one of the Cameroon delegates, brought me back to the hotel at lunchtime and put me to bed, with me screaming "Violet, you're turning violet, Violet!" the whole way.

Feeling better now. Will cross the border tomorrow. NO SWEETS FOR DINNER, people, and this means me.

Now listening to: David Crosby, "Music is Love"

(Photo by caribb via Flickr/Creative Commons)

In hindsight, I probably should've crossed the border last night instead of this morning - the wait wasn't really that long, but I was hungry and so it felt long. (Also shouldn't have eaten the whole pie on the way to Burlington yesterday.)

But I made it to Montreal, and I only missed the opening remarks of the Bread Expo. The exhibition floor was full of cool inventions and ideas. Bread-based wallpaper glue, turning stale bread crusts into playground equipment for needy kids - this place had everything. Otis is gonna blow everybody's mind at next year's expo! There were a few protesters outside chanting "yeast makes waste," but I guess every movement has its detractors. Fun fact: the keynote speaker at the conference was Youppi!, the mascot for the Montreal Canadiens!

Feel like heading back to the US via New York state tomorrow. Or maybe I'll stay here awhile - some delegates from Cameroon invited me to an all-night bake-a-thon, and I'm in charge of pastries. Bet they've never tried chocolate Pop Rock turnovers before.

Now listening to: Love, "August"

(Photo by caribb via Flickr/Creative Commons)

On the road officially now. Heard a really neat story on Morning Edition about a little cafe in Michigan - it was about how having the cafe helped people in town deal with the slow economy, but instead of thinking about hard times I got to thinking about pie, so I stopped at a bakery along the interstate and got a pie to go, clearly not thinking about how I would eat pie while driving. Spent most of lunch cleaning blueberry goo off the steering wheel. Yeah, this is how I remember being on the road - confused, covered in food and listening to public radio.

Otis H. Basketry asked me to go to the 2009 Bread/Tech Expo in Montreal, so it's north I go! Stopped for the day in Burlington; my friends and I went there for First Night events on New Year's Eve, and I managed to get stuck in between two buildings, which I can't explain to this day. I was due for a haircut, so I stopped at a local place and asked for my usual "layered, but short all around" look. Apparently this is one of those regional terms that means something different in Vermont than at home in northern California, so I got a leveled haircut, with the left side about two inches taller than the right. I had stairs in my hair. Raced over to a department store to buy a Flowbee and even things out. It looks less like stairs and more like concrete after an earthquake. I hope hats are allowed at this conference.

Now listening to: Jefferson Airplane, "D.C.B.A. 25"

(Photo by B-Tal via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Bill, my landlord, and some of my Viva Bread Party friends decided to give me a big send-off before I hit the road. Bill is an interesting dude: originally from Nova Scotia, he came to New Hampshire in the 70's to realize his lifelong dream of becoming the top handmade ventriloquist dummy producer in northern New England. That sounded like the coolest thing ever when I started renting a room from him last August. Then I spent ten months in a room covered in unfinished wooden dummy heads, with their eyes rolling back and forth in the dark night sky, penetrating my thoughts, deeper and - er, well, anyway, he's a really nice guy nonetheless, and he's a fantastic pinball player, so we all went to the FunSpot in Laconia for most of the day. Turns out we missed their annual world video game tournament by one day - even so, we spent a lot of time trying (and failing) to beat the Frogger world record. I got the KISS pinball machine to play part of "Rock and Roll All Nite," but otherwise I was pretty awful.

Burritos all around for dinner, and then back to packing. I'm pretty sure I'm going to see Tetris shapes in my sleep. This might have a silver lining - maybe my bags will be packed and organized nicely this time instead of sprawled out across the backseat of the Prius?

Now listening to: Tom Jones, "It's Not Unusual"

(Photo by Walsh)

God help me, I'm going back on the road.

The last year has been, um, complicated. I made it to New Hampshire after a summer-long road trip - also quite complicated; it ended with me being chased around Concord by a man who wanted to attack me for accidentally tripping him with a cheese doodle. I hid in a parking garage, but Craig (the cheese doodle victim) called his friends from California and they surrounded the place. For eight days. Besieged in a New Hampshire parking garage by a dance troupe, for eight days. I don't know exactly how I got out of that whole deal, except for being airlifted to a hospital and being force-fed Sun Chips until I could rejoin the Otis H. Basketry campaign - which, by the way, got a grand total of 72 votes in the presidential election. The man is clearly ahead of his time, although his ideas about using pastries to fix the foreclosure crisis AND the auto industry would have saved the country a lot of money.

That's not to say Otis was slowed down by the election - if anything, he's got more ideas on using bread to solve the world's problems. He's even hired me for one of them: I'm a technical consultant for a new "bread power" project that will make enough energy for a thousand homes from a single marble rye. Being a History of Disco major, engineering isn't my strong suit, but I have a couple techie friends back in California who might help. They build robots in their garage that say rude things. Otis got venture funding somewhere and he wants them on the team.

The only catch? The venture funds don't arrive until the end of summer, so we have to do everything on the cheap for now. Which means he can't afford to fly them to New Hampshire or pay for their moving expenses. Instead, he's sending me to drive to California and bring them back by August.

What I'm packing: lots of clothes, lots of music, my new DSLR camera, a couple loaves of bread. And my auto club's number is in my cell phone's favorite numbers. What I'm not packing: cheese doodles.

I can't believe I'm doing this.

Now listening to: Mission of Burma, "Max Ernst"

(Photo by ky6r)

After thousands of miles, state after state, successes and, um, "learning experiences," wisdom gained, innocence lost, it was time to wrap up the road trip of a lifetime and take my place in the grassroots of the Viva Bread Party and Otis H. Basketry's history-making campaign. That was the idea, but it had to wait until I could find my way out of the candlepin bowling marathon in Rutland, from which I woke up at 9:30 (first day of work was supposed to start at 8). Drove hard toward the highway until I realized I was still wearing my bowling shoes, so I had to drive back. The bowling alley gave me a trophy for playing "the most consecutive candlepin games in a row without drinking", isn't that cool?

Finally got to New Hampshire and training outside the State House at lunchtime, where all was immediately forgiven by the organizers. "Marcus, here's your canvassing partner," said Bill, the regional something or other. "He's from California, too... small world, huh? He just finished up an entertainment job for the summer and he'll be with us - or, actually, you, for the next few weeks. Craig? Are you around?"

Small world indeed - Craig walked over to Bill and me. He looked familiar to me and vice versa; he figured out who I was before the reverse could happen, and this turned out to be a bad thing.

"You," Craig bellowed, "you! Cheese doodle! CHEESE DOODLE!" Oh my God, it was the dancer I accidentally tripped up in San Francisco with a cheese doodle! I stammered out an apology, but it was drowned out by "CHEESE DOODLE! YOU'RE TOAST, CHEESE DOODLE!" He chased me down Main Street until I took refuge in a bathroom somewhere near Eagle Square for the next six hours. He was gone when I finally poked my head out. Headed to the store for snacks, and am now canvassing the state for maps of good hiding places.

Now listening to: Johnny Cash, "The Man Who Couldn't Cry"

(Photo by tschörda)

A pilgrimage to Rutland today - as a diehard fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I had to visit the town where my favorite episode, Time Chasers, was filmed. They make a lot of jokes at the expense of the filmmakers and the Vermonters - jokes the MST people freely admit are unfair, but are funny nonetheless. I got to see the airport where the time-traveling planes take off and land, and the hotel where the characters "visit" in the "future," and I might have seen the school that doubles as the villainous CEO's headquarters. Ate a lot of soup here, though that wasn't in the movie.

Then I got into a monumental candlepin battle with a couple of the locals. We must've played a dozen games, each trying to outduel the others - too tired to keep bowling, but too proud to stop before the others. None of us know who won, by the way.

Now listening to: Joe Strummer, "Johnny Appleseed"

(Photo by VTscapes)

The forecast says rain mixed with rain followed by more rain - if I can't walk amongst the natural splendor of northern New England, I'll drive right through it. Which apparently takes twice as long as if I'd gone back south and driven a U shape around the area. It was worth the time, though - really pretty up here. I think I saw a moose but I might have just remembered the "Northern Exposure" rerun I caught on cable last night during my espresso-bean-fueled confusion. Stopped for pastries at a really good bakery in New Hampshire, and stopped at a dairy farm in Vermont that let me sample like 43 different kinds of cheeses. I was getting full off cheese samples and still they offered more. And since it was good, I tried more, and then bought like 12 bricks of cheese. Guess what my new coworkers will be getting as welcome presents on Saturday?

Now listening to: Joni Mitchell, "Amelia"

(Photo by druojajay)

More rain. Once the election is over I'm opening up an umbrella and raincoat company here.

A milestone: set foot (er, tire) in New Hampshire for the first time today! Caught just a little of New Hampshire Public Radio - I heard the beginning of an interview with the guy who wrote about being a waiter but lost the signal in Maine. Stopped at like four chocolate stores along the way, including the one that's home to Lenny the Chocolate Moose. Made a big mistake in eating a bag full of chocolate espresso beans and then having to wait for a lane at a candlepin bowling alley. Being on a major caffeine and sugar high is not an ideal state of mind when they turn on the cosmic bowling lights. At the moment my limbs move of their own accord from time to time; I can still speak, but once I get going the sentence just keeps going and going and it's almost impossible to finish unless someone interrupts me.

Now listening to: Nick Drake, "From the Morning"

(Photo by Sonya Carlson)

My obnoxious cousins tried to put one over on me today, but failed miserably. They, almost certainly aided and abetted by my uncle, gave my cell phone number to the local "morning zoo crew," who attempted to give me a patented "zoo crew wake up call" with loud sound effects and Barry Manilow music. Note that "local" here means local to them, back in California, where it was approximately 6:08 am. The call came to me in Connecticut, at 9:08 am local time. So the DJs are congratulating themselves for waking me up, until I point out that "I'm in Connecticut, on Eastern time. I've already had breakfast, done some laundry and listened to Morning Edition." I then heard a bike horn that sounded suspiciously like a swear word and the line went dead. Guess they'll have to go back to leaving long and ridiculous voice mails on my phone now.

Gloomy day - apparently it's been raining in most of New England for about 40 days and 40 nights, so driving was a little slower and brakier than usual. Good stop in Providence, RI, to see Nibbles, the world's largest bug. Let's hope the big frog statues in Connecticut don't figure out that there's a giant bug in Rhode Island, or they'll hop the border for a snack. (Don't think I don't know that all of you are shaking your heads at my dumb jokes!)

Boston was too rainy for a duck tour on the river, so I stuck with indoor stuff today, most notably the New England Aquarium and its penguins. You know how you can buy those videos that have a fishbowl on them and you just watch the fishbowl and it's very relaxing and hypnotic? Well, train a camera on penguins and make a DVD of that, it's a guaranteed million seller. Or at least a guaranteed one seller. I think I was there for like four hours.

Now listening to: Buffalo Tom, "Birdbrain"

(Photo by debaird)