Tueday, October 30: I leave Rob and Sarah's apartment in the morning and get across the Brooklyn bridge, then try to take a ferry to this one state park in Jersey, but no one's going there anymore since nine-eleven (it's part of the Ellis Island tour). So I find a ride to Hoboken and then in tring to get off of the Jew Jersey peninsula I'm completely stymied and eventually start begging for rides across any of the pedestrian-and-bicycle-unfriendly bridges which line the peninsula. Quickly I find a retired butcher who's on his way to Neptune, NJ and I'm on my way. He takes me as far south as Neptune and in fact drops me off a state park near there where I set up camp and feel happy as a clam to be out of New York which had posed such difficulties in leaving. Talked to Kelsey for a while that night. Naughty.

Wednesday, October 31: Get up and head south but not that far. Get as far as Tom's River and stop in a Bike shop to see if they have any bike maps of New Jersey. Nope, they sure don't. But they say I'm going to have some trouble on the route I'm on passing over as route 9 merges with the parkway over this bridge north of Atlantic City, and I'll have to detour over ten miles inland to get to a bridge I can cross. It looks like total it will ad about twenty-five miles to my ridingn that day. So I thank them and go to the bus station to see if I can get a ride over the bridge. Since nine-eleven they have locked the storage compartments under the busses and no bikes are allowed in the busses and there are no bike racks. I'm totally SOL with busses. Fine. At least I can get some lunch. So I get some mexcican lunch and I start to feel a little sick aftewards. This is just not my day. I figure I'll just rent a hotel room for the night and try to sleep off whatever it is that's ailing me and get an early start tomorrow. So I ride to the nearest cheapest hotel and get a room and find out there are drug dealers who hang out by the lobby, but at this point I really could care less. I let myself into my room and crash. I'm immediately woken up by the heating unit in the room which is louder than a jumbo jet taking off. Later I'll be watching tv (without remote) and need to get up each time the heater turns on, to adjust the volume and then the same when the heater shuts off. This sucks. So I sleep for a while in the afternoon and when I wake up, the ceiling is leaking. So I call the front desk and they send some dude over with a small trash bin to catch the water. Great. They call back and tell me that the person above me let the shower overrun. Well, gee, Sherlock, that was a tough nut to crack. I'm just not having a good day. I eventually get back to sleep and the day of hell is over.

Thurday, November 1: I get up and start early at around 7:30. Stop for breakfast, which I don't even finish, and by 9AM I'm on the road 100%. I don't give a shit about potential obstacles, I figure I'll cross that brisge when I get to it (HA!). So yeah, I stop this guy at a coffee shop just north of the bridge and ask for a ride over the bridge. He's more than happy to oblige and I throw my bike in the back of his pick up and off we go. He's totally incredulous that I would ride my bike from Chicago across the country and his eyes got as big as coconut cream pies when I told him I was on my way to Florida. "You're crazy! I could never so that!" I thanked him much for the ten minute ride, and got back to heading south. I stopped for lunch in this tourist trap town shortly thereafter, just north of Atlantic City, called Smithville or something like that. Aparantly it was like the oldest city in the state or had some historical significance, but all I saw was candle shops and other chotchky shops in faux colonial architecture. Whatever. The veggie burger was alright, but they didn't have shakes. So I press onward and southward and by 4:30 I'm in Cape May and I've gone over a hundred mile in a day. It feels great, and I'll get to spend a few days with my girlfriend Kelsey's family in Rehoboth Beach, Deleware. I get on the ferry named "Twin Peaks" and spend an hour listening to David Bowie and reading Walden. I get to Lewe, DE and am picked up by Kelsey's dad, Jack and get back to their house where I'm warmly greeted by Debbie and eventually meet the mythical brother of Kelsey, whom I had never before seen, Kris. I crash out earlier than later and feel amazing and so thankful for the turnaround in spirits since the day before.

Friday, November 2: Hang around the house and play with Wegman, their Weimeraner doggie. He's the best. Eventually I think I go out with Kris to see if the waves are decent and we're going to try and go surfing. Things don't pan out, so we get lunch at this pizza place where we have Hot Pockets or their Americanized Italian equivalent, which is a variation on the calzone. Then I buy my first CD in months and get the new Aphex Twin which I think is wonderful but not nearly as thematically coherent as previous albums. This isn't necessarily a criticism, as much as something that, if it transcends the surface level and becomes more unified on repeated listens could prove to be a very stong album indeed. Anyways, Kris and I then go play pool and a bit of Tekken 4 at the arcade. Then we see The One(hour film) and then Monsters, Inc. Get dinner at Dogfish Head brew pub and I have a wonderful pumpking ale. A band called The Darcy Miner Band starts up during dinner and she who is the band, Darcy, has a great voice and the rock is good, but not good enough to stay much past dinner. Go back home and realize that I can set up their laptop as a DVD player for their television if I have an s-video cable. Debbie seems excited, but skeptical.

Saturday, November 3: I drive Kris to work on the off chance that I'll use his car to go see a movie or drive around town, which doesn't actually happen. Debbie comes back in the afternoon from shopping with the s-video cable and I set up their DVD player. This pleases Debbie muchly. Later in the day there is some minor Shrek watching, but sooner than later a friend of the family, Jim, shows up with beer and begins cooking up a nice dinner. Kris gets back and he, Jim and I talk deep into the night.

Sunday, November 4: French toast by Jim. Ride to Baltimore to get me across the Bay Bridge by Jim. Long talks of many things by Jim. Jim's a good guy. Get to Baltimore and ride bike from Butcher Hill to Bryn Mar School in Towson. Meet with Kris Schaffner, a good friend from Kalamazoo College days. We go to dinner and I try not to get in the way of her doing some massive grading for Tuesday.

Monday November 5: Baltimorestuff - try to go to visionary museum but it's closed. Get lunch at a thai place near downtown. The food's only okay, but there's a couple there (foriegn woman and domestic man) that I'm totally intrigued by who are doing language lessons but it's totally flirting, or maybe the woman is trying to seduce the man. They're at a semi-romantic restaurant and she's asking the difference between sensual and sensuous. AHEM. After my brief voyeurism I'm off to find some art supplies and find a really nifty comic book to send to Kelsey, along with some Indian wool paper complete with hairball. I also find a copy of "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" which I buy for Kris for her generosity. It's my favorite book and she mentioned that she started to read it a while ago, but had to return her borrowed copy well before she finished.