Writing the Ship: Cars, Vans, Winter

Delaware

Sometimes late at night pieces of memories come back to me that seem like they're from forever ago, even if it's only been a couple of years. Right now, I can almost feel myself in the frigid parking lot of an Ohio McDonalds, stealing WiFi with a dying netbook, trying to figure out if there was a route out of the state that didn't have snow. After hours of traveling through winding back roads and passing the sprawl of mini marts and no u-turn signs, we emerged from our over packed mini van. The wet smell of winter and the first set of footprints spoiling the pristine blanket of snow that covered the concrete almost overwhelmed me. We were lost.

Brooklyn, Philadelphia
Sometimes memories seem so far away, it's almost as if they were a dream and you begin to make up your own idea of what happened. In a distant winter, I vaguely recall sitting in the back of a beat up Subaru, my body squeezed between amps, guitars and cables as my best friends sat in the front, singing a song I was never really fond of. They were fearless, unafraid, and I nervously peered through the windshield. The only parts of our surroundings that were truly visible in the all consuming darkness fell in front of our dim headlights -- swampy slush and mud in what seemed like an endless one way dirt road. For all we knew it could have actually been endless if we could have driven along it forever without stopping for a tank of gas. I counted the porch lights on houses, hoping to pass someone who knew where we were.

I didn't blog much this summer, and now it's November. Winter has me consistently feeling nostalgic, and there's this constant sense of deja vu anytime I smell the air before it starts to rain and feel the cold breeze against my skin. Here are some pictures from my travels -- the ones that don't involve food or messing around. Those will come later.