Farewell, my lovelies

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

Looks like you guys had a bitchin time

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A side note; Mr. Eater of Language grew up and went to college in Tucson, and said he has NEVER seen storms of that magnitude, ever in his life.

Cram, perhaps one of these road trips will involve coming and harassing you, one of these days! I have family in Vermont I'd like to visit, and an East Coast Discordian Tour might be in order.

Arriving in Reno, we were pretty happy and relaxed. Nothing terrible had gone wrong the entire return trip, and we still liked each other after nine days in confined spaces... maybe even better than we'd liked each other before. Hungry and chronically sleep-deprived in the parking lot of the Reno Motel 6, Mr. Language took my hands and looked deeply into my eyes. "What if I was your boyfriend?" he said. "Do you want to be my girlfriend?"

We celebrated by going out to dinner at the Peppermill coffee shop, which looks like this:



The inside is confusing, and the carpet is rainbows and planets, in a motif reminiscent of a small child's bedsheets.




The rest of the trip really only had one major highlight, although it seems wrong to say that considering how breathtaking and memorable the land in northern California and southern Oregon is. Oh, wait, it also had an inexplicable jello ring:



And hours of talking about life and hopes and Important Relationship Stuff beside miles of train track winding up through amazing mountains and valleys.

OK, so. The major highlight. A ways north of Reno, wonderfully, inexplicably, was this:



A tree, you say? What's so interesting about a tree?



What the hell? It's covered in shoes!



SHOES!




We looked it up when we got home, and apparently this is some kind of Americana. "Shoe trees" appear from time to time in various places. No one seems to really know exactly what the shoes mean, but in this case most of them had messages scrawled on them in Sharpie. Many messages were cryptic, but one stood out, "$23 tip on a $35 bill - bought me new shoes".

Some hours and a few stops later, we visited Crater Lake, which Mr. Language of Souls had never seen before, and then, worn out, took the final leg of the trip home, and slept.

The end.

[Juana]

Sounds like a hell of a time! Storms down there are fantastic.

[Jenne]

Hm!  Never heard of a Shoe Tree, except one of those you hang on the back of a door to hold 'em.  VERY COOL!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I hadn't either! It was neat.

I want to emphasize the helplessness of being stuck in Bishop by sharing its location on Google Maps. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=bishop+CA&sll=36.808465,-116.776005&sspn=3.060859,5.943604&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Bishop,+Inyo,+California&ll=37.162505,-118.271942&spn=0.761707,1.485901&t=h&z=10

Death Valley on one side, Yosemite on the other. The CLOSEST city, in terms of drive time, is Carson City 3.5 hours away, and it's not really a city. Reno is the closest city, a little over 4 hours away.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

WOW!! 

[Don Coyote]

The best parts of CA are the ones in the middle of nowhere.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The best parts of CA are the ones in the middle of nowhere.

If you are talking about the parts with no people, I agree wholeheartedly.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Here are a few more pics of the trip from Mr. Language of Souls' camera:

Hey, there is a stain on my dress! I am dismayed.


Getting wet in the City of Shasta:


Somewhere in California:


That fucking bedbug motel. As horrible as this place is, our night there was also the first time we had really bangin' flat-out awesome sex:



Bedbugs! AUUUUUGH!!!


Bishop Coins is where we found St. Gulik. Later, we had a couple drinks at Rusty's and watched some chick (who was hot but scary in a cracked-out way) dancing, all by herself, facing the wall.



Admiring St. Gulik in the coffee shop, which was called the "Looney Bean". A few minutes later I went into the bathroom and found that someone had vomited into the sink.


The Church of Religious Science is SPOOKY.


We found something unforgettable in a gift shop in Death Valley!


Immediately after placing the offering at the Wall, I felt a strong urge to GTFO.


At the Desert Museum, The TINIEST OWL IN THE WORLD!


I just realized that I was wearing the same dress when we returned to Bishop after completing the trip.
Behind the Thunderbird (we should have heeded the warnings):


Trying to get some random guy to take a picture of us in front of the laundromat. Commentary by Eater of Souls:
Look! We've completed our quest!

Did you take it?

I don't think you're pressing the button...

Hold on, let me check...

All you have to do is press the button on the screen...

<my boyfriend is a fool, and he's not even my boyfriend>

ok, ready!


(We leveled up that night, if you know what I mean)

[Triple Zero]

what is it with your photographs btw, Nigel? all of them (except perhaps the last one of the storm) have the same look to them, very saturated/vibrant colours, vignetted, they look beautiful. Is it the camera, something with the lens, why do they all look like that? Is it that vintage camera that you were so jazzed about a while back, maybe?

Perhaps horribly, it's an iPhone app. It mimics the camera I bought (the Argus 40) especially if I use the John S "lens" and the Ina's 69 "film", which are my favorite settings.

Perhaps also delightfully, the thing I love about the app is that it mimics the use of a vintage camera to the point of taking forever to "warm up" and to "develop" the film, which leads to a sense of having to be careful with each shot, as there will be a significant delay before you can take another. The best thing is that I don't have to drive out to St. John's and spend a small fortune getting it developed!

hihihi that's awesome, cause every time I saw those pics, I kept wondering how hard it would be to reproduce the effect with some computer graphics filters and every time I sort of figured "nah, there's probably something about the lens or photo paper that captures the colours in a way you couldn't possibly extract from a digital image cause it got lost between the bits"--which is probably true. in some sense.