what a long strange trip, only six more months to go!

ah, ithaca. i have been here in ithaca for a couple of days now. it is nice. i took a couple of days to get here from bradford. i left there and went north into new york. and it was nice to get out of pennsylvania. i like it there and it is beautiful, but i was ready to be in ny. but, once i got there i just drove east along the border, highway 417. i stopped in wellsville and made a path towards a city called horseheads.

honestly, i only made that my destination because of the name of the city. it was at the northend of a little metropolitan area on the map, it looked like a good place to set up camp. but, quickly, i found out otherwise. first there wasnt any clear downtown area that i could go to walk around at, and that is what i wanted. so i drove around looking for it and ended up in corning, ny. there exists a museum of glass. i walked over to it and around the museum but i didnt want to pay to get in so i just got back into the truck and decided to give horseheads another try. this time i would go at it from the expressway and hopefully find the area i was looking for.

and i found a little downtown area, but before i saw that i saw the sign. the equivalent of "no dogs allowed." the sign said that there was no parking on any city street between 2am and 6am. which means that i would have to find a parking lot to sleep in or risk being towed/messed with by cops. i wasnt into that idea and it was still pretty early. so i decided to drive to the southend of that metro area. to the city of elmira. and that was a jackpot.

elmira is a sleepy little town with a nice little downtown walking area and a college. apparently it is also the place where mark twain is buried. i think it is also where he is from, but i dont know. there were some signs for his gravesite and i followed them but just got lost. how exciting can a gravesite be anyway?

i got over the idea of gravesites being really interesting when i was fifteen. i went to europe as part of a class trip, and i was a long hair hippie at the time. not so much in my demeanor but my dress and my look. i was a bit more rebellious than i think of hippies. i was part of a group of 15 people i think, me and 14 girls. i was certainly awkward and this was an awakening period for me becoming my own person. i think the alcohol helped. anyway, i wont go into that too much right now. but, one of my goals at the time was to see the grave of jim morrison.

i wasnt really allowed to go anywhere on my own and the pere lachaise cemetary wasnt a place that was on the guided tours list, so i asked my teacher if i could go and she said yes, but she would chaperone me. no one else wanted to go so it was awkward. but she was one of the better teachers that i have ever had. she was my spanish teacher and we were in france. go figure. anyway, we went to the gravesite and it was as i had seen in pictures it was awe inspiring for me at the time. i took an entire role of film of the gravesite.

when i got back stateside i stacked all of my film on the kitchen table, and the dog got at them and chewed up only one roll. that was the roll of the gravesite and i was furious. i dont know why that anecdote means that i am over visiting gravesites, writing it out it seems that i just have a mental blockage towards them. a great pain that i dont want to face again.

at any rate, grave yards dont have much draw for me. i have thought that i should explore them more on this trip, but i havent followed that up. when i was leaving elmira i drove around looking for the gravesite, but still unsuccessful, i just moved on.

the river at elmira

elmira had a nice little downtown area that i walked around. they had an awesome river with a bridge and just a trickle, but kids playing in it, the image was just very perfect. it was in the dying sun blah blah blah. i sat on a concrete ledge overlooking the river and just read there for awhile, it was nice. then i walked through downtown reading periodically. i made a halfassed attempt to get to the roof of a building and then went and found a place to sleep. i slept outside the taxi place just near a train track. it was nice to have the rolling trains to fall asleep and wake up too. i like that sound. not necessarily the engine, but the rumbling as the cars go by. whatever.

in the morning i went to the little farmers market that they had set up and walked around that, but there wasnt much action i think it was on wednesday or thursday. who has a farmers market in the morning on those days? after that i jumped on state highway 13 and headed north to ithaca. i am still always nervous to see people on this trip. i wasnt really nervous at all to visit my family and this meeting was as close to that as possible. i wavered only a smidgeon to call my friend jesse bastard. and we got in touch and met up at a bar to celebrate our lives.

it was really nice. we went throughout ithaca to about four different bars, drinking beers and shots and some mixed drinks. we called it a night after spending a couple hours at a bar talking with the bartender and a patron. i am not even sure what it was all about but jesse kept up a conversation with the patron and the bartender kept up conversation with me. it was just a really good night. we went back to his house, probably around midnight and watched some twilight zone (my first time) and had some more beers. then we blew up an air mattress and i got to sleep!

the air mattress isnt a very good one, it deflates after two hours or so, but i am asleep by then and it is just a bit awkward. but i sleep okay on it. jesse attends cornell law school and has spent most of the time sending out resumes, trying to find a job in this desperate market. it seems like a pretty boring/mind numbing/frustrating task. but he is diligent. for the future. when he takes breaks we have spent our time together going around the town, visiting restaurants, walking around the parks, and today we visited the farmers market.

i have been filling my time walking around town, doing laundry, and reading. they have a nice library here and a commons area that is like a pedestrian block. it is nice. yesterday i met some of jesses neighbors. they have a little punk house which is nice, he and i were upstairs in his apartment and i started hearing music from outside. it was loud and it was good. it was the sweet sounds of a band that i like very much, blackbird raum. i assumed that it was the band outside playing because there were clearly a person playing the accordion. however, it was just the neighbors who love the band.

i went outside and watched them play a song. there was a spot where the accordion plays quiet and a lady sings "and it wont be the witches that are burning this time" very loudly, and then everyone joins in. i joined in when everyone was supposed to. to let them know that i didnt just like the music, but that i knew it. i asked them if they were the band and they informed me that they were just fans. it was nice to meet people. thats something i havent been doing enough of. they were going to a peach festival, and the way she said it seemed like an offer, but i am not that bold.

this was in bradford, pa. but i put it here.

so i just spent my time walking around downtown. ithaca also has an awesome food co-op. it has a main store (which i found first) and a satelite store downtown (which bastard showed me later). i spent some time outside the main store, enjoying some of their food and reading. i like this town. and right now is a real good time to be here, early fall. the morning are cold and the afternoons are warm. i think that it would be really impossible to enjoy it here when there is two feet of snow on the ground. snow is not something that i agree with.

i am still waiting for my tags to come to me here in the mail, hopefully they come tomorrow and i will then leave on tuesday or wednesday. i know i talk about it often, but for whatever reason time is really catching up with me. for the months before now i thought that i would have all the time in the world, that i would be in florida by november. now i am hoping to be in richmond by november. and that doesnt even seem likely. it is crazy to think about. my plan to go from here back to buffalo and then northeast through canada and south from there. my plan has always been to visit maine, and that will happen. i had always thought that i would be in maine right about now, but i spent too much time in pgh and in indiana. not that i regret those times, but just havent been managing my time as well as i should.

or maybe i am and i just being over critical. overall, i am looking forward to toronto.