PDX-EUG-PDX

Casper picked me up at the Portland train station on May 4 and we promptly headed to Eugene. There, we stayed with a friend of Casper’s and his wife and roommates. They took Salem for us! This means our beloved feline has a warm, cozy bed to sleep on all day and doesn’t have to endure another summer on the road. In cat years, he is in his 90s. It was well past time for his retirement.

Eugene was: gorgeous weather; being hobos again; sorting and packing the car; a stroll through a peaceful pioneer graveyard; exploring empty U of O classrooms; seeing lots of sights from Casper’s childhood; lots of sleep for me; getting to meet/reconnect with one of Casper’s old friends; a wonderful event (speaker, Q&A, comedian, meal) put on by the U of O Islamic student club.

After three nights there, we’re back in Portland. And we freakin’ love Portland. As we do outdoor yoga, have picnics, read novels to ourselves and poetry and newspapers outloud, shop at New Seasons and Fred Meyer, see tons of gorgeous funky people I keep saying to Casper, “So how much do you love Portland.” “So much,” he says. “So much.”

I have been working hard on launching my art website, Ignorant Art. It’s the first time I’ve ever put my art up for sale. Nothing there is over $5 and postage is included. Help me spread my beauty/creativity/insights with the world!

What we’re working on:

• drinking plenty of water
• posting more artwork to Ignorant Art
• visiting Portland friends, new and old
• inventing and utilizing new and strange ways of communicating with each other
• organizing photos from the past year and a half
• posting those photos to this blog
• living in the moment

We’re back!

Our winter hiatus from travel is nearly over and we are just about ready to start this blog up again. We’ve spent the colder months burrowed in a small, cozy room on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound. A 20 minute ferry ride from West Seattle, we’ve spent most of the past six months on the island and inside our house.

I believe we last left off as we were leaving Bozeman, Montana. Of course, that was over at a different URL so those posts aren’t on this blog. However, we’re sticking to this blog now. I think. I guess. We’ll see.

We had a lovely time in Bozeman last fall and then took our time driving to Spokane. We spent a lovely day on a secluded mountain trail somewhere really high up in Montana or Idaho. Absolutely gorgeous.

That was August or September 2011. We spent a month in Walla Walla, Washington, living in my parents’ basement. They have two puppies who we are absolutely in love with. My paternal grandma had a stroke and died while we were there. My sister flew up from Texas to attend the funeral so my whole family (plus Casper) were in the same house for a few days there!

We left in October planning to travel the West Coast down to Eugene at least. We spent a week or two visiting my dear friend Sean in Chehalis, bopped down to Portland for a day to pick up a friend who was looking for a ride to Seattle, and then headed for Vashon Island.

Our plan was to spend a few days on Vashon visiting some of my old friends from when I was 14 and 15. We spent a week in our car near a lovely Seattle library doing writing work so we could afford the ferry ride to the Island.

Once on the Island, it was about a week before we decided to take the room they had available. It measures something like 14′x10′ and has lots of storage-like shelves up high. The walls were kind of beat up so we painted them boldly with quotes and art and the like during our stay. It very quickly became a cozy little home for us. We called it the Bunkernest.

Our roommates started out being Ben and Cosmo, folks I know from when I was younger. It’s a four bedroom house. A guy named Matt joined us November 1. Kyle kept sleeping on our couch while walking from town to a house south of us so in January he decided to move in. He sectioned off half of the living room with beautiful tapestries and I’m not actually sure what he was sleeping on for a bed back there… Brian, a friend of Kyle’s, started sleeping on our couches regularly sometime in March, I think. An older couple, Heather and Thom, took Matt’s room when he left in February.

As of April, the four bedroom house was home to seven housemates, one couch friend, three cats and over a dozen computers.

Right Now: Octavia
For the first time in a year and half, Casper and I are apart for more than a week! I’m in Wisconsin with my sister and he is back on Vashon.

My sister became known to the Vashon household because she stayed with us for a week after getting knee surgery and then at other points as she was flying to and from Texas. On the last visit, she was thinking she would need a second round of surgery so I offered to drive to Wisconsin with her to take care of her post-op.

We spent a few days with our parents in Walla Walla, picked up her dog Oso who was staying there, and then up to Spokane to visit our brother. The car, a rickety little thing named Antonia who has been through some stuff, was packed to the gills. I had a backpack and a bag and the rest was Jess’ worldly possessions and dog.

One of those possessions was a yurt she built. We set it up the first night on the road at some BLM land outside of Billings. It was easy to set up but bloody cold. We ended up in the same sleeping bag and full of giggles at 2am as we froze our asses off.

We hit the road at daybreak and managed to get all the way to the Twin Cities. It was, like, a 12 hour driving day. Jess did most of it; she’s a rockstar. We spent the night at an apartment in Minneapolis where some of our childhood friends live, though we didn’t actually see them at all because we got in after midnight and then slept in late.

In the past week, we’ve been housesitting outside of Menomonie, Wisconsin, for some old friends (actually the parents of the people with the apartment mentioned above!). It turns out Jess just needs a lot more physical therapy and not surgery so we’ve just been enjoying ourselves! This has included eating delicious gluten-free things that Jess makes, setting up her yurt in the valley where we grew up, yoga and tea on the front porch, talking about how cute her dog is, andmore. We’ve also been working a bunch on her midwifery business stuff – business cards, advertising, medical forms, licensing, tools of the trade, etc.

Right Now: Casper
I am leaving Wisconsin on May 2. Casper has been a rockstar, judging from afar, about getting our car ready for the road, our belongings packed and the bedroom walls painted. I am taking Amtrak out west and will meet him at the Portland train station on the 4th!

The Plan
The plan now is to do the West Coast. Anyone who has been told of our “plans” before, though, know how much these things can change! We go as the wind blows us, seeking bliss and adventure.

In our future: Portland, Salem, Eugene. We want to spend time on the coast, in ghost towns, on friends’ couches, and deep in BLM land. We’re excited to be back to moving again. Those four walls on Vashon were a comfort but by March were starting to feel like chains. We want to be away from people for awhile, not living in community and living instead by our daily whims.

And this fall? Europe. One way ticket, friends. I am so excited my feet have trouble staying in the socks they aren’t wearing! So far, I know how to say “yes” and “no” in Icelandic and am feeling really good about my future plans!

The existence of this blog…

Hey folks. We’re in the middle of moving this blog over to our own URL. More posts soon!

We’ve transitioned! We’re at theworstisover.info now! With more freedom! And with ads! Your clicks = our income! Hurrah!

Our domain was giving us trouble. We’re hoping to move back to this blog soon. And then we can start documenting our current adventures…on an island, in a full house, with lots of life.

Madison

I haven’t really written about Madison, I suppose. We were only there for a few days and it was pretty hectic emotionally, but I’ve been wanting to say a word about some of the folks we stayed with down there.

A week or so before we got to Madison, I looked up what Food Not Bombs action was happening in the area and got in touch with one of the folks who is starting it. Madison used to have a group, but it’s just being re-started now. It was so great to sit with a group of organizers! There was an agenda, checklists, people volunteering for different jobs… I miss that! I haven’t organized for years!

After the meeting, we all walked to a church that gave out free bread. Two of the organizers, Kristin and Jackie, offered to share their apartment with us for a night and we were quite gracious. One of our couch surfing hosts had flaked on us and we were not looking forward to more cold nights in the car.

Farm animals need love to!

Jackie, originally from Virginia, was living on Kristin’s couch and both work at the Heartland Farm Sanctuary. We never made it out to visit (Casper was busy puking the day we were supposed to go out there), but we wanted to tell people about it anyway.

Their mission is to “provide care for farm animals in need, nurture people through the human-animal bond, and foster respect and kindness toward animals and each other.” Pretty rad, right? They run a farm animal rescue, not just saving cats and dogs like a humane society, but horses, cows, sheep, goats and more! They also tame and find homes for feral cats, lead barn tours and educate folks about human treatment of animals.

Here’s the info Kristin sent me about it:

“We were founded in 2010 by Dana Barre when she came across this staggering fact: Wisconsin is home to more than 35 million farm animals, but does not have a single dedicated farm animal shelter. With nowhere for abused and unwanted farm animals to go, Dana was determined to create a safe haven that they could call their own. At the same time, Dana saw the possibilities for helping special needs and at-risk youth through contact with rescued farm animals, and teaching kids to treat all animals with compassion and respect.”

Check them out at heartlandfarmsanctuary.org and visit if you’re in the area!

We Love Libraries!

The Winona public library.

We do, we do! Unfortunately, we have spent so much time in so many as of late that I am having a hell of a time remembering each individual one. And I want to! So, hopefully, it’ll become a common subject of my photographs.

In Cincinnati, we mostly went to the Corryville library but would occasionally branch out (no pun intended!) to the Clifton and Main libraries. On our way to Chicago, we spent several hours at the Michigan City library. In Chicago, we somehow never made it to the main library, but visited at least two other locations. In Milwaukee, there were two we visited, depending on what neighborhood we were in, and in Madison just one – but we loved it dearly.

In the area I grew up in, we went to the Glenwood City library and the Boyceville library. I know the librarians at both branches and surprised them when I showed up out of the blue!

It’s not just wifi that attracts us, though that offering is essential to our travels. We have two laptops, but only one connects to the internet. While Casper is online, I have done everything from making stencils, sewing, reading, and painting in the car to reading magazines, books (sewing, palmistry, astrology, short stories, poetry, picture books, psychology/mental health, the DSM, travel guides to the Midwest) and newspapers. I’ve also worked on my journal quite a bit in libraries: gluing, taping, writing, sketching, etc.

Casper tends to find a comfy spot with a newspaper or the Atlantic and read, though he’s started also dozing off in these spots. (The similarities between him and my father continue to grow…) When I’m online, he also works on his tarot project, watches shows/videos on the other laptop, and finds books on symbols, esotericism, Golden Dawn tarot, etc.

We can be weird in libraries; they can’t kick us out and the employees don’t stare much even if we’re looking particularly disheveled. They usually have maps for the local area and event flyers. Plus, they have bathrooms. And we both have a long history of adoring, appreciating and attending libraries. As Thomas Jefferson said, we “cannot live without books.”

St. Paul/Minneapolis: Before Sunset, Before Sunrise

From Before Sunrise.

The next morning, Casper was slightly hung over and we headed back to Andy’s. Casper slept while I went online. In the evening, we ate dinner with Andy’s family and then had a magical evening.

Awhile ago, I found this amazing quote on Tumblr that I promptly reblogged. Andy saw it, commenting that the movie it was from – Before Sunrise – was amazing. Andy also mentioned that Before Sunset, the sequel – released and set nine years after the first one – was equally amazing.

I hadn’t heard of either of them. I downloaded the first one and it sat in our to-watch folder for a few months. Finally we got around to watching it and it blew our minds! We highly recommend it to everyone out there. It’s exquisite.

We had the second one downloaded and ready to watch when we arrived at Andy’s but hadn’t gotten around to watching it yet. Per Andy’s suggestion, on our last night at his house, the three of us watched both movies, one right after the other.

It was the night of the lunar eclipse. Before starting the movies, we all three stood in the road and looked at the full, rising moon. Casper noticed that, since the moon was close to the silhouetted horizon, if he bobbed his head just right it seemed as if the moon was bobbling about in the sky. I dismissed this as nonsense, but then Andy started doing it and I gave into peer pressure and we all stood bobbing our heads, bobbing the moon.

The three of us settled down on the living room couch and watched Before Sunrise. In it, you get so invested in these two people’s lives, and it ends so vaguely. It ends with an agreement that neither the characters nor the audience are sure will be kept.

It made me feel like my idealistic and realistic selves were battling each other out, trying to decide what happens to these two people after the movie ends. Where is the line between cynicism and realism? Between romanticism and idealism? How do we ever know whether this time, this moment, is an exception to the rule?

And, if we decide that it isn’t, if we decide that our idealism is blurring into romanticism, how do we live with ourselves if, later, we realize it was an exception? That’s what the sequel is about.

Near the end of the second movie, I was readying my heart to break. People talk shit about fairytale endings, but, man, those apathetic-indie endings leave my heart a mess! I was bracing myself but then I realized the movie wasn’t going to break my heart. While relieving, this also meant that they had to end it sweetly and the only way to do that, I assumed, was sappily. I knew it was going to end well, but I was now bracing myself for disappointment instead of heartbreak. I was sure there was no conclusion in the world that could properly end such an epic, emotional, raw movie.

I was wrong. There is. Watch these movies. Seriously.

After, we stayed up about an hour more, talking.

St. Paul/Minneapolis: Ian

Casper and Salem enjoying a morning at Andy's.

The second day at Andy’s, we did a lot more lazing about. I feel kind of self conscious about how much time Casper and I spend sleeping/lazing/cuddling. I don’t think of us lazy or unmotivated. We just enjoy a hell of a lot of downtime. Mostly, I’m nervous about what our hosts – couch surfing and otherwise – will think of us. Anyway. That’s a mind-thing that I’m still working on.

We slept a lot, played chess on the deck, read to each other from The Intellectual Devotional (which I first saw at Andy’s and, by the time we left, had ordered my own copy online), spent time online, etc. The house was empty most of the day and we had a key. It was a really wonderful set up and we’re very grateful to Andy’s whole family.

That evening, we were hoping to meet up with Casper’s friend Ian, who just happened to be in town for the Netroots Nation conference. Ian is the pissed off gay blogger over at OneAngryQueer! We went into Minneapolis – about 20 minutes from Golden Valley – and then to St. Paul to visit the Mississippi Market, a natural food co-op that I had heard much about but had never been to. Growing up, our neighbors ran a CSA and their drop off spot was at Mississippi Market. It and the Hard Times Café was pretty much all I knew about the Twin Cities before this trip.

We did some shopping, played cards in the car, and then drove to Ian’s hotel. He was out and about so we waited in the lobby until he came back. We were all pretty sleepy, but he and Casper shared a (large) bottle of wine and stayed up past midnight. We texted Andy to let him know we would be staying with Ian that night – he was supposed to have a roommate in the hotel room (sponsored by the conference) but didn’t so there was a free bed.

And oh dear gawd it was comfortable.

St. Paul/Minneapolis: Food at Andy’s

Until I met Casper, I had a hard time eating any food unless it was mostly sugar. Pretty much everything made me sick. It wasn’t just dairy, or gluten, or whatnot. It had no pattern. I have since realized that it was caused by my stomach being tense. My meds have helped that symptom of my anxiety, but Casper’s love of food and eagerness to feed me well has made me want to enjoy food.

With his help, I’ve tried cheeses, breads, meats, and more that I had never consciously eaten. I used to eat sandwiches by taking them apart, eating each ingredient by itself; all the flavors together were too much for me. Growing up, I was famous for eating plain pasta and plain rice (sometimes with a little salt, but no oil or cheese) and plain bagels. Now, we’ve learned that bland, processed carbs cause a serotonin boost and, therefore, many depressed people become attached to pastas, rice, etc just like me.

This is the only food related photo I could find... This is me eating a mango in Madison, pantsless.

Casper lets me eat how I want, but he encourages me to combine flavors. He suggests savory instead of sweet; seasoned instead of bland. Sometimes he makes fatal errors – the spices and oil he feels he must add to any pasta has several times made it inedible to me – but, mostly, he is revolutionizing my idea of food. I used to say that, if I could, I would give up eating all together and just take nutrients pills. Casper is making me love food.

Happy Solstice!

A blank-out poem I did a few weeks ago. Blessed be, friends.

St. Paul/Minneapolis: Andy’s

Walking to the Hard Times Cafe on a beautiful day.

After we drove Mar to Duluth and left our couch host’s house, we spent a lot of time at the Hard Times Café and slept in our car near a park about a mile away. We slept incredibly well – much better than we expected and much better than we had during previous car-sleeping attempts.

One morning, Casper and I spread out our blanket in the park on the top of a rise so we could look down on the lake. We did yoga and I said hi to all the dogs that passed by. Casper always does more yoga than me and I waited for him to finish by lying face down on the blanket for quite a while; that kind of stillness, peace, un-anxiousness is new to me.

Right across the river from the Café was an amazing head shop called the Hideaway. It’s in a funky little neighborhood, kitty corner to a laid back library and next door to an occult bookstore. Inside, there were more glass pieces than I have ever seen. Lighters, too, and cigars, incense, hookahs, jewelry, hippie clothes, and all the related paraphernalia. They had a good selection of herbal incense, too, at prices lower than anything we have seen in Cincinnati, Chicago, Madison, or Menomonie. We have become fans of the King Cobra brand.

The occult bookstore grabbed Casper’s attention and we visited twice. The first time, I wandered around with him and had us leave well before he was truly satisfied. The second time we went, I sat outside and worked on my journal while he spent a good half hour in there with books on esoterica that even he had never seen before.

After a few days living in the car, we drove to Golden Valley and stayed Andy, with a friend of mine from Camp. He lives with his family – a mom, a dad, two sisters, and an incredibly adorable pup named Brownie – in a cozy house that his parents have been in for over 25 years. I knew his sisters from Camp, too, and we warmed to his parents immediately.

St. Paul/Minneapolis: The Hard Times Cafe

Casper at Hard Times.

I have long heard of the Hard Times Café in Minneapolis. One night, when I was ready to go to sleep in the car and Casper was feeling alert, he asked a gas station attendant about chill places open 24 hours in the area that we had parked. Someone recommended Hard Times, which I hadn’t realized was in our neighborhood, and we have since begun frequenting it daily. This morning, Casper walked in and the lady behind the counter knew his order.

Here’s the thing about this place: there is not one ounce of pretentiousness. I’m used to hip/cool/popular cafés being stuffy with expectation. Not here. It is never empty, but ranges from a couple of patrons in the mornings to chock full at midnight. It used to be open 24/7, but these days they’re closed between 4am and 6am. Casper, who read some stuff online about it, says the switch occurred after the café was the subject of a drug sting. The city wanted the hours reduced so they compromised by closing for two hours each day.

The art on the walls varies in style and the patrons do as well. I’ve seen houseless folks, straight up hipsters, granola crunchers, your average college student, straight-laced-looking men in their 50s and 60s, and traveling kids just in the few days I’ve been coming here. They have a free box with clothes and shelves for games and books. The board games actually get played, too. Chess in particular seems to be popular, but I saw a couple set up a game of Life today and two girls playing checkers.

The food is wholesome and reasonably priced. “Wholesome” feels like a corny word (no pun intended); what I mean is that the food hear makes me feel like my mom’s cooking does. Ok, that’s corny, too, but she doesn’t make, like, fried chicken or apple pie. She makes incredible vegetable soups, delicious stir fries, perfect biscuits. And she grows lots of the ingredients herself and doesn’t use too much sugar and always uses real butter. Etc. It doesn’t hit your stomach like a rock. It makes your veins feel more alive. It’s good fucking food.

St. Paul/Minneapolis: The Duluth Adventure

I met Mar in high school, though he went by a different name then, and said hi to him when we crossed paths in college, but I’ve actually only hung out with him a few times. Yet, he feels like a good friend. He was headed to Duluth to help a friend of his mom’s move across the company. It was so good to see him. Casper and he immediately hit it off, too, which allowed me to relax socially.

Mar was hungry, having been traveling most of the day, so we headed to the Mall of America. It’s just a tram ride away from the airport and we already had our passes because we’d parked at a park and ride and ridden the train into the terminal. (So cool!) I had considered just taking us to our car since we had some food there but thought MOA would be easier and more fun. Boy, was I wrong.

Mar didn’t have too much luggage so Casper took my purse, I took Mar’s suitcase and he carried his backpack. Before going into the Mall, we smoked a couple cigarettes and he bestowed upon me the following:

The last few lines of Bukowski's "Alone with Everybody", the second poem of his I read and what convinced me to borrow the book.

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker which I had loaned him, according to the inside cover, in 2005
• A pin from the production of The Vagina Monologues he had been in. I can’t believe my little town in Washington had the ovaries to put it on! So cool!
• A book of Bukowski’s poetry. I have long wanted to read Bukowski but have assumed I wouldn’t like his style. Mar was near the end of the book and, upon me reading two poems and the second one blowing my mind, offered to lend me the book.

We strode quickly through MOA searching for decent food. It was late – 8ish – and not much was open. All we could find were ice cream shops. At 8:07, we gave up and hurried back to the tram. We got on, but it just sat there for quite awhile before finally taking off towards the airport.

It felt like my birthday! At Peggy’s, I acquired a book of Rumi, too, so I am in poetry bliss at the moment book-wise.

Mar’s shuttle was scheduled to leave at 8:45. We arrived, after running up and down escalators in the airport, at 8:47 and the shuttle was nowhere in sight.

I had promised Mar that, if we missed the tram, we’d drive him to Duluth. It was no big trouble for us – we didn’t have any plans for the night, we love to drive, and it gave us more time with Mar.

St. Paul/Minneapolis: Couch Surfing Awkwardness

Nomming on Casper's amazing garlic bread.

We left Peggy’s on the 8th, a day before the Twin Cities Couch Fest’s first event. Our first Twin Cities host was going to let us stay four nights. We arrived and the place was great: newly remodeled, lots of space, a private sleeping area, an air mattress. We sat in our host’s living room and chatted with her for awhile.

Casper cooked spaghetti and the most incredible garlic bread I have ever had and we shared our dinner with our host. Casper and I played chess (still no win for me) and then went to bed. The next day was the early bird kickoff for the Couch Fest. We left the house around noon, after a lot of much-needed cuddling, in search of wifi and a grocery store. We spent quite a bit of time online and, afterwards, drove to Joe’s Garage, for the kickoff.

We were some of the first guests to arrive, but within an hour the place was fairly full and we had made some friends. We spent a good deal of time talking to a fantastic lady named Roseanne. She just joined Couch Surfing and has yet to have her first guests. 2010 was a hard year for her, she told us, and she was ready to make 2011 a joyful year.

We also met a few other folks, two of which were from Philadelphia and around our age. I forget their names, but they encouraged us to come to Philly some day and we definitely plan to. After a couple of hours, we were peopled-out and needed to head to the airport to spend a few hours with my friend Mar, from Washington. He had just flown in from Seattle (via Phoenix) and had two hours before he needed to catch a shuttle to Duluth, in northern Minnesota. I promised him that we’d get him back in time for his shuttle.

But I didn’t. In short, he missed his shuttle so we drove him all the way to Duluth. Details on that adventure (because that, as most of my mistakes end up being, is exactly what it turned out to be) shall be told in another post.

It’s three hours each way to Duluth so we didn’t arrive back in the Twin Cities until 5am. We hung out at a coffee shop for a few hours before ringing our host’s doorbell. We had texted her the night before that our plans had gone awry and we wouldn’t be home until the next day. We also tried texting and calling her before doing the door ringing.

We had obviously woken her up but she didn’t seem too upset. I took a shower and then we went to bed immediately. We slept until 3pm. At that point, the awkwardness began.

Milwaukee: Our Meal at St Ben’s

A pretty house in Jason's neighborhood.

After having our long talk and scanty breakfast, I can’t rightly remember what all we did. We were limited in terms of sightseeing since we were saving our gas. I’m pretty sure we drove to a new library and did our usual thing. We also left my phone charger there, which ended up having many repercussions since the library wasn’t open again until Monday.

That evening, we parked in Jason’s neighborhood and walked the several miles to a free community meal at a church called St Ben’s. Some parts of Milwaukee appear to be as run down and vacant as Cincinnati, though more industrial than slummy. I was worried about the walk (my usual lack of energy + a lack of food) but it turned out to be quite nice.

Lots of people were gathered outside the church doors as we made our way inside. We arrived near the end of the meal and the line was short. We were graciously served delicious meatloaf as well as milk, coffee, dessert, fruit and more. It was the first time in days that we’d had a complete meal, much less one at a table with clean silverware.

Receiving free food when you’re hungry is an incredibly humbling experience. I wanted to cry and then hug every one of the servers. So many people giving so much without asking any questions. I didn’t have to explain, defend or qualify myself.

I felt weird being white, young, from a middle class background, relatively educated. I was afraid someone would question us being there, question why we weren’t taking more advantage of our privilege, question why we were “choosing” to be low income. But no one did.

Madison: Georgia’s

Saturday morning, Jason slept in so we didn’t have to leave too early. He had told us at the beginning of the stay that he had another surfer scheduled for Saturday afternoon so we’d need to leave before that. We packed up, cleaned up and drove off. Jason was still in bed looking sleepy and obviously enjoying his day in.

Again…not really sure what we did on this day. My daily diary just says, “Slept at Georgia’s.”

Georgia, our second Milwaukee Couch Surfing host, lived a few miles from Jason in a one bedroom apartment. She has a degree in packaging and has a job designing boxes, but she’s also a musician and an artist.

We arrived outside of Georgia’ apartment building around 6 or 7, but our phone was dead (and the charger was at a library that wouldn’t be open until Monday; it was Friday) so we had no way to let her know we’d arrived. We knew her apartment number, but the door to the building itself was locked. The buzzers didn’t work and no one seemed to be coming or going.

We tried to find wifi on her front step, but no luck so Casper walked to a nearby café to email her. He returned and, just then, a man came out of the building. We went in, knocked, met Georgia, settled in. Later that night, two of her friends came over to “base fade”, as Casper calls it, which apparently means drinking some before going out. I, to no one’s surprise, had not heard the term before.

One of the friends who came over was another Milwaukee couch surfing host who we had contacted us. All five of us hung out for a while, chatting, and then they went out to some clubs.

I slept on the couch; Casper on the floor. Just as Casper does better going without eating, he does better with inadequate sleep, too. Either one of those things and I’m a freakin’ mess. (That’s me justifying the couch vs. floor arrangement.)