america, coast to coast

so my apartment is still somewhat in boxes.  why?  because i tend to be gone every possible second that i'm not in school.  Christmas break: left the day after i finished my final final, came back a day or two before the semester began.  spring break: same deal.

with the three to four weeks we had off between the spring semester and the summer term (depending on when you were done with your projects), i figured i'd have a good ten days at home to organize, de-clutter, and still hold my own stanley kubrick film festival.  but before i'd even left for my 8-day sabbatical in utah, i'd already filled up the rest of the break with another journey.
jaime mentioned that she was going out to new jersey to see her sister before she deployed to kuwait and was then driving jess's car to their dad out in california.  when i found out that the dates fit right in between my utah trip and school starting back up, i kind of invited myself along.  a drive across america was something i couldn't pass up (only because tickets were blessedly dang cheap; i'm not rich or even being irresponsible, here.)

this is the kind of gnarly hallway
you get to walk through in the
detroit airport.  the colors change.

i left on a monday, giving me a day and a bit to hang out with the sisters in new jersey before we had to go.  i've done a fair amount of flying over the past few years and have had relatively good luck with the airlines, so it was only a matter of time until i got delayed.
i spent 45 minutes waiting in the terminal in detroit for the thunderstorm outside to calm down, then, once we were boarded on the plane and the door closed so that no one could get off, we waited for three hours for a storm to move past philadelphia.  the crew gave us all the peanuts, pretzels, and cookies we could want and the captain had a great sense of humor and showed us he was our side.  then we waited on the tarmac for another 50 minutes.  kind of ironic for a 45 minute flight.

i wouldn't've packed the
back seat so tightly had i
known i'd be riding there.

i wondered if i would be in the way out there, but we filled up the day pretty well.  i did what i could to help in moving jess's things out and got to see what a military base looked like.  as best as i can remember, i'd never seen one, just heard about them.  i guess i imagined them to look like.... a g.i.joe base?  instead, they're more like a little town.  we helped jess get the gear she needed (although the military isn't the best about keeping a variety of sizes in stock....) and jaime and i stocked up on water, granola bars, and fruit cups for our 3,000 mile journey.  jess bought some socks.

to make sure our trip really was coast to coast, we drove to the atlantic ocean.  the general impression i've had of new jersey is from all of the jokes about newark being dirty and smelly, leaving me thinking that the whole state is a mob-owned nyc reject.
nope.
we saw plenty of beautiful farmland, passed through some really awesomely quaint towns (new egypt, nj, everyone), and yet somehow still ended up having dinner at an applebee's, due to my smart aleck comment.

my feet were in the atlantic ocean.
the next morning, we were headed for the pacific.