I went out to the barn tonight expecting to begin where we left off the other day; with about 1/10th of the flooring done. I walk in and see this:

Go dad.

It’s not 100% done. There’s maybe 8 more pieces that need to be put in, but hell, it might as well be.

He’s got to route a bit of plumbing, then we’ll put some basic trim along the walls, also put some trim over the wooden beams where the walls meet the ceiling, and also a piece of wood right where the two halves of the ceiling meet. And a door for the temporary entrance needs to be installed.

I think there’s a few quick minor things like getting power to the outlets in the kitchen and bathroom, and running the cable line through a wall somewhere. But other than that, I need to start looking at furniture and lighting. Very exciting stuff.

Erin’s coming home in two weeks and is expecting a party. I’m going to go ahead and very tentatively place the barn party within the weekend of October 24-26, probably the 25th. Which would work out well because I have no concerts to record that weekend.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

The paint is done. And I rather dig it.

I know what you’re thinking to yourself: “Oh, that’s that ‘Spring Morn’ color from Behr paint! I love that color!” Damn right you are and damn right you do. It’s soothing, calming and perfect for both relaxing mornings sipping coffee as well as hot jam sessions in the evenings.

With that done, I bought the “underlayment”, which I mentioned on Twitter sounds like a made-up word. One of my fellow Twitterers commented back that it sounds like something George W. would say, which I thought was spot-on. But so this underlayment goes on the floor before the flooring…

…but my dad wanted to do the underlayment and the flooring simultaneously…

And the pictures from my iPhone don’t really do the colors justice at all, but the wood is really a nice, soft brown color; not as orange-y as it looks in the pictures.

I can totally see it coming together now too. The floor is going to look gorgeous, finally tying together the walls and the cabinets and everything else we did. This is kind of the finishing touch; the bow on the present. Blah blah, etc., etc.

Spread the word ’round the social scene: the barn party is on the horizon. Beer, wine, music and a donkey show…maybe. Perhaps at the end of October. More to come on that.

Looking at a map, I found I’ve been to 36 states so far. 33 of them have been on road trips, with Florida, New York and New Jersey being states that I’ve been in for other reasons (friends, etc.).

The 14 that I’m missing are:
Hawaii
Alaska
Kentucky
Tennessee
Kansas
Arkansas
Maine
Vermont
New Hampshire
Connecticut
Rhode Island
Massachusetts
Nebraska
Michigan

I suppose a trip up into New England is in store. This could be done on an extended weekend I guess; it wouldn’t require a full vacation.

Now Alaska is the one that really interests me. According to Google Maps, a roundtrip to Anchorage from Harrisburg could be done in 14 days with a minimum of 10 hours of driving per day. This is intriguing. Something to consider.

So the iPhone turned out to be incredibly useful and convenient for the traveler looking to document his/her journey.

First off, the GPS in combination with Google Maps was useful in a number of ways.

For one, it obviously helped me route my trip and give me time estimates as to how long it would take me to reach my destinations. Secondly, with the built in searching business, etc., the GPS/maps combo was invaluable in helping me find hotels, gas stations and attractions. Simply type in your query, some pins drop on the map, tap a pin, tap its address to get directions and/or tap its phone number to call the place. Quick, simply, absolutely intuitive.

 

While the iPhone’s built-in camera isn’t great, it was good enough to simply document things and occasionally it snapped a decent photo of a landscape. What surprised me and which I only found out later when I got home, was that not only was the iPhone geo-tagging my photos (attaching GPS coordinates to locate where the photo was taken), every time I emailed a photo to Flickr to be posted to my mobile photos stream, that geo-location information was sent as well, so on my Flickr Map you can see exactly where those photos were taken, which I just think is cool as all get-out.

I was able to type blog entries using the Wordpress for iPhone application (iTunes link here).

Typing on the iPhone isn’t of course 100% easy, so longer blog entries required more time and some frustration, but it was worth it to be able to blog wherever and whenever I felt like it.

And the InstaMapper GPS Tracker (iTunes link) was unnecessary but fun.

I think I mentioned before the only downside to this app was that for it to track me, it had to be open and running in the foreground of the phone. But since the iPod function can run in the background, this didn’t matter much; I was able to open up the tracker, play a song on the iPod…

and then put the screen to sleep and everything ran beautifully.

A combination of iPhone apps Twitterriffic (iTunes link)…

and Twittelator (iTunes link)…were used to do Twitter posts and photo uploads to TwitPic.com.

And of course I could read the news online, check email and call people as well. Honestly, the iPhone makes me want to road-trip more, just because of how easy it is to document a trip with all the features that either built into the phone or can be installed on it via applications. Well worth the money in my opinion.

***Update***

Just found out that InstaMapper was able to save AND EXPORT the data it tracked, then overlay that onto Google Earth. Friggin’ amazing. Here’s a screen shot from Google Earth of my trip (click for hi-res):

Last night sitting in my hotel room watching the debate felt somehow familiar. An then I remembered that four years ago this time of year I was on my other road trip, also sitting in a hotel room in another part of the country watching the presidential debates.

Don’t know why, but the past two nights I’ve been having a hell of a time falling asleep. You’d think after 12-13 hours of driving I’d have no problem.

1:38am. Wide awake in Wisconsin.

If Montana is a great drunken Saturday night, N. Dakota into Minnesota is the Sunday hangover.

That’s a bit extreme; both states are beautiful, but their beauty is a more mild one, much like PA. And they had the misfortune to have to follow the tough act put on by Montana.

Today was…uneventul. Scenery was much like home; I was mostly just driving today as opposed to exploring and marvelling.

I stopped in Fargo, ND hoping to get some tacky souvenirs but after an hour of driving from the north side of the city to the south side, I couldn’t find anything and was rather in a fowl mood after dealing with traffic, so I left.

It comes on very slowly at the beginning of a trip like this, but I start to notice that the distance and the unfamiliarity of everything cause the everyday worries of home life to get pushed far into the back of my mind. This trip has been successful in at least one aspect: clearing my mind. I haven’t thought about work, home or other daily worries. I just wake up and look forward to getting out the door and into my truck and just…digging this country. Whole new thoughts and ideas grow in my brain, seeing all these people, these communities that exist everywhere and seeing that they’re really not different from ours. It really makes obvious the common denominator that would solve a lot of the world’s problems: we’re all human. We’re not Pennsylvanians or Minnesotans or Americans. At the very core we’re all so much the same.

Eh. Sounds so trite and idealistic. Shouldn’t have bothered to write it, but whatever. It’s true.

It occurred to me at some point during the trip that something like a 2 week trip around the country should be mandatory for all students. It’d never happen, but I’d be so curious to see what effect it would have on this country to have every teenager see the country they live in.

Tis all for now. No pictures today except a few miscellaneous shots that don’t really fit under any category. Enjoy.

Too tired to write much. Briefly:

- Met a woman from PA
- Met a woman whose mother died this week.
- Stopped and stood in an expanse of land of incredible magnitude and utter solitude.
- In that expanse of land had a curious steer get through a fence and come walking and mooing towards me.
- Felt smaller than I ever have in my life.

Amazing day.