Journey to the East - Part One

I have about 6 weeks of catching up to do on this blog, I am writing this on my 3 day train journey (yes 3!) all the way from the East coast to West coast in Olympia, Washington. Since I have so much to cover I will try to keep it short or shorter than normal.

So as soon as I left Yellowstone I was headed straight for Minnesota to meet my friends Johanna and Jordan, who I had known from the first few weeks of Yellowstone, in Morris where Johanna goes to college. Jordan actually lives 6 hours away, working at an ethanol plant on crazy 12 hour night shifts while completing college through an internet system. However, he had not seen Johanna in a while and when he heard I was coming, decided to drive the long journey for the weekend.

I was driven to Bozeman by my manager, who was taking the assistant manager for a day out on her birthday - I thought I would miss my Greyhound if I got on the slower Xanterra bus. The ride was somewhat uneventful due to the darkening hours. Although, it was a very different social scene than what I was used to, a diverse crowd but with few kids and one guy with a tattooed teardrop (apparently the gang enforced symbol to show you have taken a life). That is until I transferred at Billings and hung out with a group of 3 young Minnesotans the whole ride, my ear for different American accents seemed to kick in when I heard one of them pronounce their state as “Minessooodaa”. Fairly soon in we had to stop and transfer buses in a town where a luminescent Christian cross hovered over us on a black hill. The door kept opening on the motorway, apparently due to there being no air pressure. This also meant that when changing buses we could not get our bags from the bus and were told by our new hostile driver we would receive them 12 hours later at our destination. I had to go on borrowing my friend’s clothes for the whole stay; luckily she’s very tall as I could only pick up my bag when I got the bus to leave.

My long term memory is slightly scrambled, which is rare for me, but I’ll try my best. First off we briefly visited a state park where apparently the Vikings had come before the colonialists and left a carving in a stone. This detailed how there had been a fight and they had been slaughtered except for the guy who ran off and carved the stone – sounds a little dubious to me, many people think it’s a fake. I’m not sure why the Vikings would leave their only trace in the centre of America either. We mostly hung out but did things like rock climbing on the university facilities, rode bikes up to the universities farm and single power generating windmill (it’s a very rural place), chilled out with her friends, watched some films, explored a barn, drank Johanna’s homemade hard cider and to top it all off made an excellent 3 course vegan meal, the syrupy pecan pie was a favourite. I hadn’t been able to cook and hadn’t come across a decent tasting meal in 3 months at this point, so everything tasted heavenly and the joy of cooking sprung forth.

My next stop was Chicago, a city to be explored alone, something I had never done before. While there I had visited the Art Institute, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Navy Pier and had mostly hung out in Chicago’s Cultural Centre. Chicago was to me a city smaller and with more charm than New York, less daunting and overwhelming. I stayed in Greektown in a hostel above a big Greek restaurant called the Parthenon. It took me lots of trouble finding this place, even though it was right near the Greyhound station, I went I am sure up almost every wrong street in all ways before I found the correct one, with 80 or so pounds of luggage in tow. When I did find the correct one I passed it many times, there was no sign for the hostel just the restaurant. Eventually a guy working there saw me with my luggage walking around and whistled me over to the hostel; not a friendly man but he got me in nonetheless. The hostel was very clean and good facilities including free breakfast, unfortunately there was one frustrating guy in the room who had been there a week and insisted on talking to new hostel mates loudly at 2am. He would talk about how much of a genius he was and his famous friends; apparently he knew the Walgreens pharmacy owner and the builder of the Sears tower and someone or other.

Before coming here I hadn’t really the slightest of plans. I had spent a lot of time planning my travels to the east and where I would stop off but not exactly what I would do in these places, I was following a plan and I didn’t think much about what was happening next. So I did a lot of wandering and exploring, I am sure I walked more miles here than in any one day in Yellowstone, my feet scorched at the end of the day. I’ll tell some notable little things –

· The over ground railway skated above the streets and when beneath it a great bellow and roar ensued of grinding steel wheels on hard tracks and took over all the senses.

· It is called ‘The Windy City’ for a reason, in the fall of autumn’s leaves I was often caught up in miniature leaf storms, struck and slapped by natures hand all over.

· The Art Institute is a delight, especially on free night, it was a museum of grand scale and so I visited barely the nooks and crannies, but I stood in awe of this art – a lot of very famous pictures too.

· The time when a ‘homeless’ man scammed me. He came up joking about me scanning over a map of America ‘You lost?’ he said, or something like that. ‘No’ I said, I thought he just wanted a friend at that naive moment, so joked along. He moved on to beg for money for a burger, just a few bucks. So I got out my wallet and found the lowest a 10, he offered me change so I handed it over and he took a few dollars out and handed me 1. ‘I’m homeless, I’m homeless. C’mon man.’ ‘Fine, take it’ I said not wanting to bother with his tricks. I turned with a scarlet face and found him attempting to apply the same trick to almost everyone in the park. I felt guilty because for sure he was now saving up for drugs or something. The next day a man asked me for money hawking me on the street, ‘no sorry’ my instant reaction was. I turned a few seconds later and saw a red, white and blue arrowed jacket. I had recognised it and then I realised seconds later when I placed it, it was the one hanging on the homeless man the day before. He was the same guy who had scammed me previously.

· On the way to Good Will (thrift store) I passed Oprah Winfrey’s studio, abundantly dressed with CCTV cameras and Oprah’s face. I looked at getting free tickets but read it was extremely hard; people were practically spilling their guts out over the internet to beg for them, but that would have been a truly American experience.

Next it was Greyhound again to Rochester, NY to visit Mary from Yellowstone, in the same friend group as Johanna and Jordan. I made a Canadian friend on the ride; we talked for hours in mid-night until a passenger sharply shushed us from behind – an awkward happening. They informed me that Rochester was actually the number one hotspot for homicides in the U.S, what a splendid statistic it was to learn; thankfully I was out in the country about 40 minutes away. I was to spend my first real Halloween here and go on my first American trick or treating expedition. I dressed up as a zombie soldier, face paints and all wearing her green winter coat, while she wore my big denim jacket and dressed as an 80’s punk rocker with her mum’s big 80’s glasses. We went to a State park near her house; it was a long winding canyon with three big waterfalls and a train bridge above. It reminded me of Yellowstone although with more trees. She had to go to college for most of the time so I hung out in the library a lot and got some business sorted.