no need for frommer's.

one of my best friends is studying abroad in florence this semester. how we managed to miss each other by about 2 weeks in europe i still don't understand, but regardless, i've been living in her sporadic emails and pictures and losing myself in all of her experiences.

she emailed me about 2 weeks ago and all she said was,
I'm going to Barcelona from Feb. 24-27
We're staying at Barcelona Sound Hostel.
Tell me everything that you know.

i waited about a week to respond, not wanting to open my moleskin journal from last semester, shuffle through all of my scribbled addresses and jotted down memories. finally i resigned myself to write her the most honest account of the way i saw and felt the most amazing city i've ever lived in.

i sat outside on my porch in one of those random 70-degree-days-in-february we often see in virginia and wrote her a very personal 6-page travel guide, complete with directions, menu suggestions, bartender names, and anything else i could think of.

i cried through most of it, but when i was done i couldn't help but feel satisfied that i spent 4 months in barcelona and truly felt every part of the city.

if you find yourself traveling to spain anytime soon, or with some extra cash and a thirst for adventure, download my itinerary and enjoy.

pure impulse.

i've been craving a roadtrip.

my hunger for adventure has only grown since returning from spain... and considering there's no longer an availability of low-budget plane tickets flying me to weekends in parisflorenceibiza, my jeep has become the only sensible portal to continuing my exploration of the world.

i sit next to a freshman friend in one of my classes. i exposed my roadtrip fever to him the other day... i told him to choose a city.
"sure, texas is perfect!" i replied, imagining photographing dusty landscapes, 10-gallon hats, and seasoned saloons.
i told him we should just do it. we could charge our credit cards only with polaroid film, coffee, and road snacks. we'd each compile 25 hours worth of our favorite music and keep the windows down. we'll block the wind with our offensively large cheap sunglasses. we'd wipe the midwest dirt off the lenses and laugh.
when our parents asked, we'd say, "no, we don't really know each other, but it's fine; it's an adventure"

i explained to him- the only real adventures come from pure impulse.


he thinks i'm crazy... anyone interested in being by co-pilot?

¡viva americana!

... some photos to inspire an american feeling.

love at the laundromat.

yesterday i went to the laundromat. i love the laundromat. there's something oddly calming about watching your clothes spin around in big, old dryers, seeing that one pesky pair of bright yellow undies spinning around in the whites... it's almost hypnotizing. i always bring work that i never do. yesterday, instead, i documented my time there, in hopes that someone else could also appreciate the charm that is valley laundromat.

enjoy.

directions on a napkin.

there's something so simple and gratifying about being with old friends. and being from a small town. we stick together, we appreciate things, we're honest with each other... and it's refreshing. i woke up this morning on a futon beside my best friend of too many years. we recounted the night, laughed, and walked outside to an endlessly blue 65-degree virginia mountain day. the ride home, even though i still managed to get us lost, was uplifting. there was something so comforting to look out and see nothing but the sky and mountains ahead of me, and in my rearview, my best friend singing loudly in her civic.

i put all the windows down in my jeep. i sang along to my ipod's davematthewsdispatchclaptonsublime mix and felt good that my hair was satisfyingly wind tangled. i felt infinite.

transcontinental tshirt.

i'm taking a class called global economics and world economy. in the class for the past two weeks, we're supposed to have been reading a book that my professor refers to as simply "Travels of a T-shirt." which, made me excited. excited enough to pick up the book yesterday and then to be letdown by the rest of the title ("in the Global Economy") and then question why i thought it could even be mildly entertaining judging the rest of the books i've bought for the class (Global Capitalism, The Ascent of Money, Free Trade Under Fire, The Market System...).

regardless, it made me think. unfortunately, not so much about the global economy but of a traveling tshirt i myself had the chance to wear. i bought it, ironically, with some money i got for selling a book back, at the beginning of the summer. it somehow became everything my summer was... on the days i had off, i would put on my lime green bathing suit, my cutoffs, and the tshirt and make it a point to only go places i could ride my bike to. happily i would ride downtown to take pictures, ride to the market, ride to the river with friends, ride to lunch dates... it was perfect. the tshirt was lightweight, loose-fitting, and kept up with all of my adventures. one day in particular i rode to 711 to pick up a slurpee before going to belle isle with a friend. i got 20 ounces of everyflavorbutcoke as always, and when i came outside i realized that it would be quite hard to ride all the way there with one hand. i drank down the slurpee enough to tilt it into my cupholder and headed down to the river. once the road flattened out, i felt safe enough to reach down and grab the slurpee and continue enjoying it. i was slurpping away when BAM! a surprise patch of richmond cobblestone popped up. and consequently my slurpee top popped off. and my bright reddish slurpee popped up all over my tshirt. i laughed. hard. and then got out my tide pen and took care of my tshirt and went on to have a lazy day relaxing on the rocks by the river with some good conversation.

my tshirt, i think, enjoyed my travels. i wore it in the airport when i flew off to start the best semester of my life... and then continued to wear it for the first 4 days in spain until heathrow airport decided to send me the rest of my luggage.

my tshirt came with me to morocco. one evening we were out on the beach at sunset and decided to go for a swim. i tucked my tshirt and cutoffs safely beneath my rainbows and dove in in my limegreen bathing suit. after a while, we got out and ran up to our stuff... to find the only thing that had somehow blown away was my tshirt. i ran in the direction of the wind and searched up and down the beach. after a while i finally resigned myself to realizing that my travels with the tshirt were done, and our travels from then on would assume different paths. i think about it every now and then, where it may be, who could be wearing it and what they are doing in it, my transcontinental tshirt.

and i smile.



banana!