Max’s stuff in black, Mark’s in brown.

It’s now the 23rd of August and I’m in Boston, so I’ll try and do a seance on myself and write like all this stuff is just happening.

Since I’m a lazy bastard, I didn’t edit this until the 3rd of September and I only covered stuff until the 29th or so of August. Also, I’ll just interspace my thoughts in between paragraphs.

More Chicago

art museum in Chicago

Chicago library

The Chicago Art Museum is pretty amazing. We got to see a lot of the paintings, especially Impressionistic ones, that we had only seen on slides or in books. I was a little disappointed with the current Pharoahs of the Sun exhibit. I was in the mood to see crazy bejeweled gold scarabs and treasure like in the Mummy, but it was mainly stone sculptures over three thousand years old. Call me ageist, but it was somewhat boring. All the heiroglyphics were cool though. Question for the day: How to scholars know how to pronounce ancient Egyptian names like Nefertiti and stuff like that? I thought all the verbal language was lost.

No clue. As usual I spent a lot of time looking at the contemporary stuff. I really like fields of black with subtle variations in texture. Not for everyone I know, but I find them very soothing.

Huge thanks to our cousin Leo and his wife Stacy for letting us crash at their place for a week!

Mark tries his hand at artistic photography.

So that night (August 10th), we boarded Amtrak in the nick of time. Unfortunately our bikes did not make the train in time and arrived in Pittsburgh a couple days late. I know technically we could have planned a little better and arrived at the Chicago station a bit sooner to disassemble and box up our bikes, but whatever. We made it, and that’s all that really counts in the end. While running to make the train I got serious leg cramps carrying my trailer and could barely walk or move for hours. That was by far the most painful experience for me on this whole trip. I guess I can handle biking 3500 miles, but make me do some heavy lifting and my whole body falls apart.

As a consequence, I had to carry Max’s trailer around for a while… But I thought it was more amusing than a hassle. As for our bikes, I would later discover (from my Amtrak trip from Providence to Portland) that it doesn’t matter how on-time you are; sometimes Amtrak just decides to delay your baggage. But by then I’m thinking, ‘I’m back in Portland; I don’t need my bike until I start work 5 or 6 days from now, so who cares if it’s a couple days late?’

I slept on the train the whole way even with the air conditioner blowing right in my face the whole way.

I didn’t sleep the whole way to Pittsburgh. I didn’t sleep at all on the way to Pittsburgh because, unfortunately, a really annoying person was sitting in front of me who would not keep his mouth from yapping away. He kept talking to himself or the person next to him, wowing at the sites or complaining that he wouldn’t even be able to sleep if he tried due to his sleep apnea. No sleep to be had by the people near him. I suppose talking is better than snoring, but he could have shut up completely and just read or something… At the end of the trip, the person next to him politely told him that he would probably not have such a severe case of sleep apnea if he lost 100 pounds or so. I had to stifle a laugh.