temporary relocation project

New Haven, Connecticut is where I now find myself. When most people ask where I'm from, I usually say New Haven. I honestly have never lived within the city limits, but Ansonia (where I'm really from) is 10 miles northwest of the Elm City. Besides, how many people are going to know where Ansonia is? Hell, people who have lived within spitting distance of Ansonia still don't know where it is! I have always liked New Haven, and though it might be cool to say the place sucks, I still like New Haven. For a city of only 125,000 it has culture, no doubt helped by its most prominent landmark Yale University (where I am now typing this--don't tell anyone!) The joke in these parts goes: New Haven would be just like Bridgeport if not for Yale. (Bridgeport, 20 miles west, is Connecticut's largest city (yet mostly unknown by those outside of the state) and a textbook case of post-Industrial burnout.) New Haven was the place that my dad brought me to when we wanted to go to &quo

I just finished a four-day stint staying at my mom's place in Ansonia, CT. I will say that I love my mom, but I'm glad it's over. My mom still lives in the tiny apartment that I grew up in, and now it's cramped since my aunt and her boyfriend currently occupy the bedroom that was once mine. Guess where I had to sleep? As the years go by, I realize how much I have grown apart from my family--both my mom's side and my dad's side. It doesn't help that I don't tell them everything that goes on in my life. That's mainly because I don't really know how to relate the life I live to them. Any time that I try to it's met with confusion and amazement. ("You rode your bike between Minneapolis and Milwaukee? Why? ") After all I live in Portland, the vegan-hippie mecca where everyone rides bikes and hates Wal-Mart. (Well, maybe not everyone, but at least amongst my people .) While I'm from blue-collar roots (and did work in a factory for awh

I've traveled thousands of miles over the span of a month to reach "home", or to be more accurate, where I'm from. Ansonia, Connecticut 06401. A small decaying factory town located in the Lower Naugatuck Valley, in southwestern New Haven County, population 18,554. "The city, settled in 1840 and named in honor of the merchant and philanthropist, Anson Green Phelps ( 1781 - 1853 ), was originally a part of the township of Derby; it was chartered as a borough in 1864 and as a city in 1893 , when the township of Ansonia, which had been incorporated in 1889, and the city were consolidated." (from Wikipedia) It's about 3,000 miles from what is currently my home, Portland, Oregon, and feels like a world apart. I've been in town since Sunday, staying at mom's, and will be around through the weekend. It's been the longest stay that I've had in the state since 2000, and on one hand it feels good to be back in native territory, on the other hand,

Early Sunday morning, September 25th. At 1:30am I depart SPX to catch the Metro Red Line to Union Station, where I catch the 3am departure to New York's Penn Station. Mull about the empty train station until boarding, then find a seat and try to get a little sleep. 6:30am and I awake pulling out of Newark. The sun was rising, coming up from behind the now visible Manhattan skyline. Within 15 minutes I'm in the bowels of Manhattan, train disgorging me into Pennsylvania Station. I'm tired and in no mood to deal with much of anything. On cue, New York acts the stereotypical asshole part, the one made famous in movies like the Out-Of-Towners . I'm confronted by a crazy guy with spit in the corners of his mouth who really wants to use the stall I'm going to use, and I end up somehow paying three dollars for coffee and a donut at Dunkin' Donuts (a good dollar over what it should be.) Thanks, Big Apple. I was a bit grumpier than usual because I had to make a change o

Friday, September 23 and Saturday, September 24 were spent pretty much in the confines of the Holiday Inn Select of Bethesda, Maryland for SPX, short for Small Press Expo, one of the largest alternative comix events in the country. I first visited SPX in Sept 1997 with my friend Mike, and we drove down from New Haven with a bunch of our own comix (I had the first issue of TEN FOOT RULE, just two months old, plus TFR 1 1/2, the ultra-rare convention special--scour eBay for it!) and a fistful of money. That first event was inspiring, making me more excited about this stuff and causing me to "get serious about comics". SPX, along with the cross-country trip to visit APE (Alternative Press Expo) in San Jose, California in February of 1998, were the events that jump-started my life from the doldrums of the mid-90s. They've drove my life in the direction it's been headed over the last eight years. I doubt I would be where I'm at now, living on the West Coast, taking cra

So, here I am, back "home" in New Haven, Connecticut, typing this from the bowels of Yale University. It's Tuesday, but in typical "gotta catch up" fashion, we'll go all the way back to last Thursday, September 22: I got up too-fucking-early in Champaign, Illinois in order to get to the train station, pack up my bike, and board the City of New Orleans Amtrak service to Chicago. Despite being not-really-awake, I packed up the bike without trouble, boarded said train a little after 6am, and got into the Windy City around 9am. Not much to write about the eight hours to kill in Chi-town. I drank some coffee, went to the library, made some copies, wrote some postcards, and got some supplies for the day long train trip into Washington, D.C. Waiting for the 5:35pm (CDT) Capitol Limited to depart from Union Station, I noticed that some of the folks waiting in line had homemade signs. Inspecting them, I remembered the flyers I saw around town: a big anti-Bush/anti-

Right now it's Thursday morn, and I'm hunkered down at the ridiculously large Chicago Public Library typing this. The last couple days I spent in Champaign-Urbana, a small metro area two hours south of the Windy City that is home to the University of Illinois. You may wonder why I chose to go there. There's a few reasons. First, my friends Ellen and Paul live there, so I wanted to hang with them for a bit. Second, I showed "From Portland With Bike Love" (directed by Steev and Phil) at an artsy cinema while I was in town, which went over quite well. And thirdly, after two weeks of biking and a whirlwind four days in Chicago, I knew I needed some down time before I hit the east coast. Champaign is a perfect place to do that. It's fairly small (the combined population of it and Urbana is a little over 100,000), but because it has a large school it's got some things to do. Basically I spent Tuesday and Wednesday hanging out with Ellen and Paul, adding entries

Friday, September 9th, Day Six of the Bike Tour: I wanted to get up as early ,as possible to see how far I could get in a day, but sometimes it's hard to get moving. It takes a while to boil water to make coffee and oatmeal, a little more of a while to eat it, and it still can take almost a half hour to take down the tent and pack everything back up. Sometime after 8, I got a visitor, the same dude who talked with me the previous night. He told me the best route to take from Reedsburg (the end of the "400" trail) would be due south until I hit the Military Ridge Trail and then use it to get to Madison. That route would be pretty flat; if I headed east from Reedsburg I would have to deal with the Baraboo Hills. I thanked him for the info and took off. The final 20 miles along the "400" were uneventful, but they went a lot easier than the previous day's arduous travel. The scenery wasn't particularly exciting, but it wasn't bad either. A few hours late

One positive thing I realized after a few days of pedalling through the countryside is that I was visiting small towns that I would never pass through otherwise. Most of the route that I was traveling was away from the Interstates, and the only sizeable city between Minneapolis and Madison was La Crosse, WI. Every 5 to 10 miles I would pass through a small town, and pretty much every one of them looked like they were frozen in time. It was nice to see that the mythical "small town America" still did exist, even though it wasn't exactly thriving. Here was the ideal that so many Americans supposedly strive for, the places usually shown in television spots anytime a presidential election comes up. And it was still untouched. These were villages off the beaten path. None of them had a Starbucks, very few had a McDonalds. The most evidence you would see from Corporate America (besides the beer advertisements at the pubs) would be the ubiquitous convenience store, and if the to

Thursday, September 8. Day 5 of the Bike Tour: I awoke damn early (6am) to take down camp before a park ranger or any other figure of authority who might bust me for not paying for a campsite would show up. Rather than hit the road right then and there, I opted to detour back into Sparta (about 2 miles back) to go to the same coffee shop and have breakfast. The morn was pretty cool (50s!) and a bit foggy, which I figured would make things easier. I finally got on the Elroy-Sparta trail at about 8:30 am. The Elroy-Sparta is the "Granddaddy of the Nation's Bike Trails" being the first rails-to-trails project in the nation. The line was originally owned by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway but that railroad abandoned it in 1964. In a rare bout of forethought (unlike most governments) the state purchased the line and converted it for recreational use. What we have now is a 32 mile crushed limestone paved trail that passes through several small towns, rolling farmlands, a

Day Four of the bike tour (Wednesday September 7) found me waking up at Perrot State Park outside of Trempleau, Wisconsin, in the Mississippi River Valley. I was psyched to get the day started, since for the next 100 miles I was going to be not on the highway but on a bike path. Wisconsin is the national leader in converting abandoned rail lines into multi-use paths. While part of me wishes the tracks still existed (because I'm a train buff and we need more trains, not less), I'm glad they found a use for them other than selling them off for subdivisions. And rail-trails are generally nice to bike on, since the grade is pretty level. Pretty much every railroad in the US built their railroad to a 3% grade standard--meaning that the track never rose or dropped more than 3 feet in elevation for every 100 linear feet traveled. Anything steeper than that would have been very hard on long, heavy train consists. Biking on level grade means not having the constant ups-and-downs in a ro

So, I'm all fancy-like, typing this on a laptop in a wi-fi cafe in downtown Champaign, Illinois. But don't worry, the laptop is borrowed. And why does it matter when I'm one block away from the honorary REO Speedwagon Way? (They're from here, y'know.) Now I shall begin the arduous task of "catching up" and transport my head back two weeks ago. Two weeks ago was Tuesday, September 6th, and I was leaving Frontenac State Park, 12 miles south of Red Wing on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River. It was 9:30am, Day Three of the bike tour, and despite the sucky previous two days I was in good spirits. I was cruising at a decent clip south on US 61, passing through Lake City (Birthplace of Water Skiing) and going up and down the li'l hills on the riverside. About 5 miles outside of Wabasha I stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the Rive and Lake Pepin (the only truly natural lake on the Miss, caused by the Chippewa River Delta slowing the water flow) and

Aargh! It's been too long since I've updated this thing! I was in Chicago for 4 days, and was only at a computer once. Guess that says something about the Windy City. Now I'm in Champaign, Illinois, where I'll be for a couple days. Then a train eastward to Washington DC for Friday, where I'll spend time at SPX, the East Coast's premeir alt-comix event. Next to New York on Sunday, then back home to New Haven for a bit. I promise to write something substantial soon...

It was yet another warm day here in Madison. It got up to near 90 degrees again, but there was a breeze that helped things. Right now at 10pm Central Time it's 80 outside. No dramatic overnight cooling like I've gotten used to back west. The weather stays the same tomorrow, but Wednesday it drops to the low 70s, which is when I'll get back on the bike and head towards Milwaukee. So today was another lazy day in town, which is really welcome after being on a bike for a week. One great thing about being in an area with a college or university is the free perks. When I lived in New Haven I used the Yale library's computer for my internet. Same went for Tucson and the University of Arizona. Right now I'm typing this at the University of Wisconsin's Student Union. I just saw a free movie put on by a social justice student group. It was "Bread and Roses" starring Adrien Brody, documenting unionizing efforts amongst Latino cleaners (Janitors for Justice) in L

I made it to Madison! Seven days of biking from Minneapolis and I'm here. I still have to figure out distances (since I didn't have a cyclometer) but it looks like it was near 300 miles culmulative. I hit the city limits of Madison at about 3:30pm yesterday, not long after my library stop. It was nice to be in a urban area again. I casually rolled my way to downtown. State Street was hoppin', since school was back in session and there was a game eariler in the day. It was a shock to be around so many people, and so many kinds of people again. I met Kiran, a friend from PDX who is from here, at a coffeeshop. He brought me to his folk's house and we ate dinner. I was too beat by that time for much else, so I went over to his aunt Mary Lou's place to clean up and crash for the night. And crash I did! I think I slept from 9 until 9. The trip wears you down. And makes you hungry as well. My metabolism is still going, which means I am constantly hungry. Today has been a l

This is another unexpected quickie update from the public library in Waunakee, WI (none other in the world!) Unexpected because I wanted to push on today without stopping until I got to Madison. But the 95 degree heat (that's 35 in Celsius for our English-system impared) and hazy sunshine is getting to me. So it's breaktime. And what better way to cool down than be in an air-conditioned library? Last night I made it to Devil's Lake State Park, about 40 miles northwest of Madison and 3 miles south of Baraboo, the largest town I had seen since La Crosse on Wednesday. I arrived in Baraboo around 5pm, and debated whether or not I should push on further (since I had some "oomph") or play it safe and camp in Devil's Lake. I knew that I wouldn't be able to clandestinely camp there (like I had done on several spots), but what the hey. When I got to Devil's Lake it made me wish that I had got there earlier to enjoy the park. The lake is situated between two hig

Brought to you from the public library in Reedsburg, WI... Since I'm at Day Six of the biketour and I'm still writing about stuff that happened three days ago, I should give a quick update on how things are right now... The last couple of days of biking have been decent, through some nice countryside, but it's been going slower than I hoped due to three factors 1)weather-somewhat rainy 2)condition of bike path-dirt and 3)weight of bike. I was hoping to be rolling into Madison tonight, but it's noon and still 60 miles to town, so it looks like tomorrow will be the day. I guess that's how things roll on biketours. I'm a bit worn out and lonely and am excited to be hitting up a city (yes, a city) after almost a week of nothing but small towns. I still liked the small towns, I just want to be able to pause and relax for two or three days. And to complicate matters further, I just got some not-so-good news from Portland, the type that I'm going to need to address

From the public library in Elroy, Wisconsin... As I left off, I was facing the quandary of whether to keep going or stop in Frontenac. One thing that made the decision easier for me was when I remembered that the next campsite down 61 (20 miles south in Wabasha) was also about 5 miles inland. As I reached the gate for Frontenac State Park, I saw...the office was closed! Hurrah! Yeah, I should have "self checked in", but after the days I was having and the money I was losing, saving $11 for camping was a relief. As long as I vamoosed by 9am (when they reopened) I would be fine. Of course I had to get to the sites first. And that's when I was confronted with the longest, steepest hill I think they have in this area. Too beat to bike, I walked my loaded bike uphill. It seemed like forever. At least when I got to the top I was greeted with a great view of the Mississippi Valley. And with the sun starting to set, I got intensely lonely and sad. I'm a weird mix of loner-int

From the free library in Sparta, Wisconsin... They always say the first couple of days of a bike tour are the hardest. I hope that it's true, because the first three days of this excursion have been fairly miserable. Oh yeah, there has been some good in there and some spectacular scenery, but overall the first three days were not fun. Day One (Sun 9/4) was the departure day from Minneapolis. As with everything on this trip, it got off to a late start. I didn't get packed and out of John's house until almost 11:30am. I met John and his daughter Isabelle at the Seward, a veggie-hippie type o' food joint (think Paradox) at noon-ish for brunch. Figured I should get a good meal to start off things. Then we went over to the Freewheel, a bike shop, for last minute supplies and info. The problem I was having was figuring how to get out of Mpls. Getting around in the city, no problem. Biking in the countryside, no problem. How to traverse that fatty belt around the city commonly

Ugh. Still no time to post what has happened in Vancouver, the trip to Minneapolis, or my stay so far in Minneapolis. Too little time. I'm using the last 20mins the Mpls Public Library is open to post this and to do trip research. Right now I'll just say that things have been going "awesome". Today's a somewhat rainy day in Minneapolis. It started with a thundershower, but rather than be the typical "over and done" late summer midwestern type of thing, it's decided to linger. The streets are deserted, partially due to it being Labor Day Weekend and partially due to weather. But I'm a Portlandite, I'm used to rain, so it isn't stopping me! The rain means it's a good time to type this type of stuff. I've been searching the internet for bike shops along my route so that I can avoid as many surprises as possible. The shops are still going to be miles apart, but at least I'll know where to go when a problem arises. Tomorrow I leave

I apologize for not updating this as much as I want or should, but that's what happens when you're on the road. You're internet time is scattered and limited, and the public library (where I'm at) only allows one hour. And besides, I'm busy out there doing stuff, I don't want to sit at a computer all day, right? Believe me, it's nice to have a break from the computer-box. I haven't posted in almost a week, and have many tales to tell about my Vancouver stay and my travel to the midwest. But I will get to that soon. It's sort of weird to be posting about all the fun I have, sitting from a computer in Minneapolis, while 1000 miles downstream on the Mississippi we are witnessing the worst natural disaster in America since the San Francisco earthquake. It makes you think how temporary our great cities are... To tide y'all over until I post about the past week's adventures, I'll fill you in on the details for the first half of September (it