over and out.

because kristin has been such a busy little bee lately, and because mariel’s sister was leaving early this morning to go back to school, we decided it might actually be in our best interest to just head back to the city last night! and that we did. we made it back by 230, actually. it gave mariel a chance to see sophie, and all of us a chance to avoid annoying traffic. and there were actually a surprising amount of cars on the road! not great drivers, yes, but enough to keep the drive less sketchy than it could have been. and, by the way, if you’re in the market for a road trip between nyc and dc, definitely do it at night, because I95 is basically all construction. no joke.

oh, and sorry to disappoint, but there aren’t any pictures from that leg of the trip. bummer, i know. but it was nighttime! and not very interesting! seeing tolls again was pretty exciting, though. and more than one house at a time on the side of the road… but aside from that, it was all red bull, all the time.and now we’re home!

it’s been fun, kids. it really has. we all appreciated your awesome comments throughout the trip, and i really hope that you guys checked out the flickr pictures i so diligently posted, and enjoyed looking at them as thoroughly as we enjoyed taking them!

and remember, keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.

“What an excellent day for an exorcism.”

in the morning we managed to collect ourselves and get out of the house by 8-ish so we could start on our drive to washington dc. it was only about 4 hours to get there which basically seemed like nothing at this point, and the drive definitely flew by. lucy’s friend kristin lives just outside of the city, so she recommended going to the georgetown area for lunch, which we did. we found a lovely french bistro and had probably some of the best food of the trip. seriously, none of us could shut up about it.

lucy’s french onion soup and cappuccino:

mariel’s chicken caeser:

alyson’s mushroom and swiss omelette:

so good.

that little area was very cute. very cute. unfortunately, museums generally close too early, and the one we wanted to go to was no exception. so we took a couple of pictures and headed back to the car. we went to the hirshhorn museum (part of the smithsonian) and saw a cool exhibit that was all about dreams vs reality in the form of film. very cool. and dark. we bought some artsy things at the gift shop before they closed, and then realized we had missed an entire floor. their basement level is now dedicated to contemporary new artists, so that stuff was really great, too. there was one artist, mary coble, who had a piece up that was truly remarkable. click here to see an article about it. there were some other videos and some great sculptures (a wheelchair with a bike attached to the back of it, for example), too. the museum overall was actually pretty great.

but then it closed and we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves, so we hung out on museum mall, a grassy area with a carousel and… grass. but it was really cold out (or it was to us, as we’d been experiencing 80 degree weather for the past week and a half), and we had a few hours to kill before kristin got out of work, so we decided to go to the movies! mariel STILL had never seen ‘juno’, and it just so happened to be playing an hour later right near us, so we hooked it up. she liked it.

and then we met up with kristin in “chinatown” (i put that in quotes because technically that’s the name of it, but it did NOT smell bad, and i did NOT get creepily approached by 57 people trying to sell me discount prada, so i don’t really believe it…) and after getting tooootally denied by the tapas place we originally wanted to go to (who closes at 930??), we ended up going to a thai place nearby. we were literally the only people in the place, so it was creepy and nice at the same time. and the dinner was delicious (have i said a bad thing about a meal so far? hmm…).

kristin very generously gave us a ride back to our car, and we said our goodbyes to her AND to the city.

the original plan was to stay at kristin’s house overnight and drive back to new york today, but we decided to switch things up a little bit again. just to keep you guys on your toes.

long day, short post.

we had about 14 hours of driving to do to get to chapel hill, so we had to leave around 6, but not without going to cafe dumonde first. we stopped by the famous cafe and got cafe au laits and beignet (ben-YAY) for the car. pretty awesome. it’s donut-shaped fried dough with MORE powdered sugar. mmmm. so we drove and drove and drove. seriously, through at least five states… louisiana, mississippi, alabama, georgia, south carolina, and north carolina. okay, six. so even crazier! when we left in the morning there were even more of those crazy long/low bridges, but now it was pre-dawn and foggy as hell, so it felt like the opening to some slasher road trip flick.

maybe you won’t get the full creepiness from this, but it was weird. those posts are for the bridge that they’re building right next to the one we were on. weird. but what was NOT weird was the super awesome bbq joint we stopped at for lunch.

fried green tomatoes!

the place was pretty cool, my grilled cheese was de-lish, and the trading post next door apparently had a born-again christian table setup in the corner. nice.

that was pretty much the only exciting thing that happened that day, until we actually got to chapel hill. mariel’s uncle and his family live there, and we happened to come visit right during the whole college basketball deal. it was craziness. we dropped our stuff off at the house and then went to a bar closer to town, where people were going inSANE over this basketball game. it was to decide if the tar heels would go to the next round, or the “final four”, as the kids call it. they did, for the record. but people were screaming at the screens and stomping their feet so hard i thought the entire floor would cave in. we were on the second floor because the first was a partially-joined mexican place. mariel decided to go out with her cousin and her friends, and lucy and i went back to her uncle leigh’s house because we were about to pass out in our enchiladas. but on the drive back to the house, leigh was explaining to us that as soon as the game was over the cops flocked out to patrol and block off streets and monitor the bonfires that would soon be set in the middle of the street.

i wonder what would have happened if they had lost!

beignet, done that.

so where did we leave off?

we left austin pretty early because we knew that we’d want to get the full new orleans experience. and we certainly did. the drive from point a to point b was actually pretty interesting, too, especially compared to what we’d been driving through previously. it was boring boring dirty south for a while, but then all of a sudden we were driving on these extremely long, extremely low-lying bridges that were just about skirting various bodies of water (mostly lakes, i believe). we saw some abandoned/destroyed houses along the way, but i think we were all a little surprised by how few there really were. we go stuck in some ridiculous traffic in baton rouge, but otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing. smooth SLOWER sailing.

we had made hotel reservations for new orleans before we left the austin hotel to make sure that we ended up in an area that we were all comfortable with (aka, not sketchy), and we decided to splurge a little in order to do that. so we drove right up and did a little valet action (ooh la la) at the lovely sheraton hotel, which just so happened to be right at the edge of the french quarter.

so when we finally got through the hoopla of getting to the room and whatnot, we prettied ourselves up and headed out. we had gotten recommendations from a handful of people of places to check out, and on our way to those locations we stopped for dinner on chartres and happened to get the best waiter eveeeeeeer. super fun. he enabled our drinking for a while, and gave us a couple of gay bar options to check out, so after we were finished taking pictures with him, we headed on our way.

we stopped at pat o’brien’s on our way (which was one of the recommendations) and got a hurricane for the three of us, which was basically just fancy jungle juice, watered down. but we had some nice photo ops in front of the blazing fountain we were standing near. and then we found the apparent “gay corner” of the french quarter, and watched some boys in thongs dance on the bar. hilarious.

by the time we walked out of there (around 11), the streets had been blocked off and there were people EV-ERY-WHERE. it was pretty much complete madness. i’m still on the fence if it was the remaining spring breakers or if it’s really just like that all the time, but i’m leaning towards the latter. but it was super fun, and we saw people trying to get beads, and lucy and mariel got awesome giant plastic cups (with drinks in them, of course), and we just hung out on the balcony of some bar with a live band watching everyone. we finally stumbled home around 1230 and went to sleep. for four hours.

business in front, party in back.

dear faithful readers,

i’m terribly sorry if you have felt neglected recently. i’d like very much to update the blog as often as humanly possible, but sometimes the conditions just do not allow for it. conditions such as 15-hour days of driving, the french quarter, and the tar heels making it to the final four.
i promise that i will post the awesome (and they really are) pictures of our adventures as soon as i can. in the meantime, rest assured that we are all alive and well (if not completely exhausted) and headed to washington dc tomorrow morning.

love,
trons

“We’re from Texas! We like things big!”

a little jim gaffigan for you.

but we did have BIG day today! so big that we need two posts in one day just to cover it! like i wrote earlier, we had some wonderful muffins for breakfast… and then later for lunch! erin sent us off with a deLISH plastic baggie filled with pita sandwiches and muffins and nutritious cereal bars and a banana. mmmm.

proof, erin. thanks again!

it took us a tad bit longer to get to austin than it would have to houston, but it was totally worth it. the drive was pretty much okay. naturally, fifteen minutes after i thought to myself, “weird that we’ve only really hit traffic in la…”, we hit traffic. but not normal boston or new york deadlock traffic. little pockets of traffic, instead, right by on and off ramps. very strange. but regardless of that, we made our way down texas pretty easily. and no tickets this time! and we got ice cream! in the spirit of funny mariel-eating-things pictures, here’s this:

and because of the wonderful snacks we had today, we didn’t take our usual hour-long lunch break, so we actually made it a little faster than we normally would. which gave us plenty of time to explore downtown “weird” austin.

we got to this little strip area on 6th street that suzie recommended, and walked up and down trying to find some authentic tex-mex. on the way, we found homeless people, souvenir shops, big trucks, and probably about 37,489,234,783 bats. give or take. GROSS! when we were in one of the souvenir stores we saw a ton of magnets and tshirts and other kitschy things that had bats allll over them. not real bats, obviously, but illustrations, photographs, etc. and we were wondering what the HELL was going on with all of this, and we definitely found out the hard way as we were making our way down the street.

first of all, the sidewalks are COVERED with bat poop right under the generally lovely trees. secondly, they look like birds at first so you don’t think there’s anything creepy or gross going on until they’re swooping waaaay too low for comfort. and lastly (and most importantly) they are so ridiculously loud! if i knew how to put videos on this, i would post the one that lucy took just so we could treasure the shrieking madness of these creatures for ever and ever.

but we finally found a great place called manuel’s on congress street that was super good. lucy got “the best margarita in austin” AND “the best mole in austin”, so she was clearly riding high the whole time. mariel got chicken, and i got a stuffed pepper thing i was really embarrassed to try and pronounce for the waitress.

tomorrow: new orleans!

ps: you can click here for the flickr pictures from today, aaaand the link also has a permanent home in the little blog list to the right of the post. it’s called “road trip flickr”. just in case i forget to attach the link for you.

(trail)mixing it up

hi everyone! this is going to be short because i’m pretty much exhausted after all the excitement, but we are, in fact, changing things up a little bit. the new route destinations are now austin, new orleans, chapel hill, and dc.

erin’s lovely mother made it VERY clear to us that staying in houston would suck big time, but that austin would rock our worlds. and then we got the ok to stay with mariel’s uncle in chapel hill, nc, which should be great, because we loves houses. seriously. but that’s the only big update!

otherwise, it’s been all fun and games up in stillwater! we woke up without an alarm yesterday, which is the first time that’s happened since we left for the trip, so that was pretty awesome. we went and got coffee at aspen, then came back to erin’s to jump around on the trampoline and discuss our plans for the day. and we landed on… awesomeness.

first we cleaned up ladybird8000 (yes, we named the car); gave her a nice thorough “premium” wash, and then vacuumed the crap out of the inside. miraculously enough, bernie (yes, we named the bee that’s stuck to the windshield wiper) totally stayed with us! and it’s a good thing, too, because lord knows what we’d do without him. then we dropped by sonic for some crazy lemonade concoctions:

for those of you who don’t know, sonic is actually BETTER than fast food, because you park next to a menu and speaker, and yell in your order, and they bring it right out to your car for you. intense. then we brought the drinks down to boomer lake to walk around and enjoy the weather without looking at it through dirty windows. from there we did lunch at mexican joe’s:

that’s right.

and obviously stopped by the antique mall, too, where we bought some awesome necklaces, matchbooks, and salt and pepper shakers (lucy, mariel, and alyson, respectively).

after that, we obviously napped because antique shopping is exhausting, and when erin’s mom got back from work, we skipped out to the grocery store (actually, two of them. walmart sucks.), and the liquor store (they let you make your own sixpacks!), and magically, an hour later, a delicious salad and risotto and cheeseball appeared! perfect.

then erin took us out on a sort of makeshift pubcrawl, which was hilarious and apparently “token oklahoma”, and we got to meet her best friend, who was hilarious and apparently “token oklahoma”, as well! overall, it was pretty great. we got to hear some (not) awesome live music, play some pool, make fun of girls with boobs up to their necks, and generally just drink beer and have a good time. and obviously we finished up the night at short stacks for country breakfasts. at 2 pm.

perrrrrfect.

we were still obviously more than ready for the muffins erin’s mom made for us this morning, though. of course. and now we’re packing up and heading to austin so we can explore all the stuff suzie (erin’s mom) recommended to us! and obviously to buy steve an awesome new belt buckle. obviously.

“your registration? hurry up meow.”

BUSTED PART TWO!
br>

oh, mariel… but i will say this: i’ve been in the exact same position before. texas cops LOVE flying over the median with their lights flashing. when my sister and i were driving from arizona to boston, we (i) got pulled over for speeding, and the guy that nabbed us (me) came flying out of nowhere across the grass of the median. scariness. and now the same thing has happened to poor mariel! in her defense, we were driving 10 to 11 hours yesterday and we just wanted to g-d get there. and the guy was nice enough; kind of robotic with his “you were going to fast i’m going to issue you a citation i’ll be right back with that” all one sentence action. but otherwise didn’t hassle us too much.

that action went down in amarillo, tx, which is basically right in the middle of the panhandle, which means it was a perfect time to stop for lunch, which means we went to….

CRACKER BARREL! and i know what you’re thinking. you’re thinking, “trons, you crazy! who likes cracker barrel?!”. and to that i respond, “I DO!”. on at least two other road trips, i have been promised a stop at a cracker barrel, and yet those trips concluded with no cracker barrel! sad! so i made mariel and lucy promise me that we would stop, and yesterday the stars aligned and that promise was kept. it was pretty phenomenal. i got the grilled cheese and a raspberry lemonade, which mariel thought was crazy because wasn’t the point of going to get their much-famed comfort food? unfortunately, most comfort food is packed with chicken and/or steak, but i did end up ordering some cornbread, too, which i think made everybody happy. especially me. check out the flickr page to see awesome shots of me with a menu.

the rest of the drive yesterday is kind of a blur (like most of the rest of the trip by this point), but i do remember passing into central time, and seeing the western hemisphere’s largest cross (also at the flickr), which is held quite dear in my heart since i’ve passed it on basically every other major road trip i’ve been on.

then we passed through oklahoma city (pretty quickly, but it seemed nice!), and arrived in stillwater around 730. we met the fam, and erin’s mom made us some incredible guacamole, so we all sat around outside, talking about the road trip and drinking beer and eating delicious snacks. then we decided to go out for dinner, so we got some take-out thai and stopped at a bar on the way home to play pool. i, very unfortunately, had left my camera in mariel’s car, but we did get a couple of polaroids of that, so you can see those when we arrive back in brooklyn, next monday.

it’s really weird to say “next monday” like that, to be honest. we’ve had basically no concept of time since we left on this crazy adventure. the only things we really knew about dates were st patrick’s day and easter, and even then we weren’t completely sure about what days of the week they were. but i guess now that we’re getting closer to the end, it’s easier to comprehend an actual sort of timing to things. bizarre.

but anyway, we hung out at this bar, where there were ZERO cowboy hats in sight. i was really bummed out about that. but hopefully we’ll catch some sightings tonight, at tumbleweeds, where they apparently have split the bar so one side is a hip hop club, and the other side is square dancing. i’m ready for it, though.

look for an “adventures in stillwater” sometime tomorrow!

“three horns never play with long necks.”

for those of you who don’t know, that’s a quote from a lovely tale called “the land before time”. the first one, not one of the apparent twelve sequels.

today was a day of ups and downs, guys. emotionally, i mean. the drive itself was ridiculously flat and boring. but we did see these guys, which inspired the title:

but otherwise, it was pretty straightforward with construction and people who don’t know how to change lanes, etc.

we dropped by geronimo to see the world’s largest petrified tree (i’ve seen bigger), and then stopped at “chili kicks on 66″ for lunch, which was pretty awesome. we’ve actually been purposely avoiding eating mexican food for the past two weeks for exACTly this reason. because mexican food in the south is way better than in north dakota or minnesota. and that was a pretty solid choice, because this food was delicious.

and then three hours later we were at the urgent care room in santa fe! yeah, that’s right.

sad face for mariel! boo major temperature changes. boo elevation. BOO ear infections. boo. but she’s got some super pills now and is doing much better.

tonight we’re heading into santa fe to check out a few places per mariel’s friend’s recommendations. and then tomorrow is our nice long stroll over to stillwater, oklahoma, for some more awesome aib time with the lovely erin t!

check out the flickr picturs from today!

and thanks to everyone for their awesome responses to the polls! we’ll take your answers into deep consideration before making any major future decisions.

kenyans on top of kenyans?!

no, silly! CANYONS!

you are so jealous right now! check out the flickr stuff here because i don’t even know how to describe today. and the pictures themselves won’t even do the whole thing justice! but give it a shot anyway.

we got to the grand canyon national park

around 11 this morning (although that picture is technically from on our way out this evening), parked the car (NOT on the street because they tell you not to even though soooo many other people did), and walked to the shuttle bus, which was totally free, thank god, because it cost $25 to get into the park. but they have like three bus lines (red, green, and blue) that go in loops throughout the south rim of the park, so we were hopping on and off of it all day. and then we took these awesome, super fun pictures of ourselves:

AND THESE ANIMALS!

tomorrow, the plan is to go to santa fe, new mexico. mariel’s friend ian was raving about that particular area and how fun it is, so we probably going to leave early in the morning so we can hang out around there and see all the cacti and mexican gift shops and whatnot.short post tonight, kids! but we do have two surveys to conduct that have been on our mindgrapes recently.

POLL #1:
would you rather…. have sex with bill gates for $7 million, or steve jobs for $3.5 million? i know this is going to be really hard for you mac lovers. it was hard for us, too.

POLL #2:
mariel doesn’t have a middle name. her last name is reiter. do you think her full name should be a) mariel ghost reiter, b) mariel paperback reiter, c) mariel winona reiter, or d) a completely different one that you can think of?

and if my mother is the ONLY ONE who responds to these poll questions, i’m going to be wicked mad. i’m talking to YOU este, ross, steve, chad, and all the boston friends!