In the beginning...

The route:



The stops:

Flagstaff, AZ.
Albuquerque, NM.
Oklahoma City, OK.
Little Rock, AR.
Memphis, TN.
Nashville, TN.
Asheville, NC.
Charlotte, NC.
Raleigh, NC.
Kitty Hawk, NC.
Richmond, VA.
Washington D.C.
Philadelphia, PA.
New York City, NY.
Boston, MA.
Rochester, NY.
Cleveland, OH.
Terre Haute, IN.
Rockville, IN.
Chicago, IL.
Rapid City, SD.
Yellowstone National Park
Bend, OR.
San Francisco, CA.

Helping the economy...

With the economic crisis, and the high unemployment rates, I did what any good-hearted American would do to help his or her country, I quit my job and hit the road. I followed George W. Bush's advice and went out and spent money.

The most unexpected result of this trip was the amount of used books I purchased. This really could be my trip to used book stores around America.

Here is what I bought:

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
En Attendant Godot - Samuel Beckett (yes, I bought a FRENCH version of Waiting For Godot).
Mao Tse-tung on Revolution and War
The American Foreign Policy - edited by Ernest R. May
Ideas, Faiths & Feelings (Essays on American Intellectual & Religious History 1952-1982) - Henry F. May
You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense - Charles Bukowski
The Last Night Of The Earth Poems - Charles Bukowski
Immortality - Milan Kundera
Why I Am Not A Christian - Bertrand Russell
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
Existentialist Philosophy (An INtroduction) - L. Nathan Oaklander
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Native Son - Richard Wright
Last Exit To Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr.
Mexico City Blues (242 Choruses) - Jack Kerouac
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
Veronika Decides To Die - Paulo Coelho
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Beyond Good And Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
The Chosen - Chaim Potok
The Practical Encyclopedia of Feng Shui
Don't Sweat The Small Stuff.. And It's All Small Stuff - Richard Carlson
The Caretaker * Dumb Waiter - Harold Pinter
Iliad - Homer
A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
Writing Screenplays That Sell - Michael Hauge
My Name Is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok

I also bought a CD:

Manners - Passion Pit

My Hosts!

This is Zingara, she is a friend of mine who moved from L.A. to N.Y. It was wonderful seeing her again, I truly miss her.


This is Whitney, she saved me from sleeping in my car when I arrived in Asheville. I was her first couchsurfer.


This is Val. She lives in Chicago and is awesome. We went all around that city and saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs together. A very cool person.


This is Sharlie. She lives in Chicago also, but wasn't going to be there, but she invited me to her parents lake house in Indiana and I accepted instantly! A wonderful person with a unique outlook on life.


This is Phil. He was my host in Arizona and the first person who's couch I stayed on. Great guy. It made me feel very comfortable about how the rest of the trip would go after such a positive experience.



This is Nicole. I stayed with her in Cleveland, Ohio and we had an amazing time together. She is a great person who I am very glad to have met and spent a considerable amount of time with.


This is Kate, she was my host in New Mexico. She is an artist and has had some great trips and I had a nice time getting to know her and wish it had lasted longer.


This is Josh. This guy loves to have a good time. I stayed with him in Philadelphia and would honesty have rather spent all my time with him and his friends laughing and having a good time than touring the city.


Joan was to be my host in Boston but had a bad couchsurfer before i arrived and wasn't able to host me in Boston because her roommate was uncomfortable. However, she was a life-saver and I stayed with her and her boyfriend an hour outside of Boston. They are two awesome people. Wish I been there on a weekend so I could have had a great host to show me the city.



This is Irina, she's from Russia and is in Tennessee right now. I didn't stay with her but I met her there and she is wonderful. I had one of the best afternoons with her. Sadly I was completely hung-over during our outing. Awesome woman.


This is Erica, she was my host in Washington D.C. I only got to see her for a few hours even though I stayed at her place for three nights. She lives with four other people. Everyone was amazing. One of the highlights of my trip, for sure.


Dan and Dan hosted my in Little Rock, Arkansas. We stayed up til about 3am just talking about music, and sharing music. It was an amazing experience. Two of the coolest guys you could spend time with.


Cristina was my Richmond, Virginia host. She has an amazing home and she has cool taste in... everything! I regretted only being there one night after meeting such a kick ass woman.



Brittney was my Nashville, Tennessee host. I stayed with her two nights and had a wonderful time. She was so great to be around and had a really good group of friends. She's planning on doing something similar to what I did and I wish her the best. Crossing my fingers I am living somewhere else when she travels so I can host her.


This is the Ant Hill Co-Op. They are based in Rochester, New York. A cool group of people and if you are interested on Co-Op living, you can see their website.
http://ant-hill.org/


Angela is a very sweet girl I stayed with in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you can dance the tango, you will have a friend for life, or at least a wonderful dance partner.


Amanda was my Oklahoma City host. A great girl I got to spend a couple hours chatting with. She told me about a great trip she took to India and it makes me want to visit. She also recommended a number of great things to do before I left the city. Great host.


This is my cousin Whitney. I stayed with her in San Francisco and it was the best part of my trip. I love hanging out with her and I absolutely LOVE San Francisco! Hopefully I will be living around the corner from her very shortly! (Crossing fingers)

Driving to Arizona

One of the things I wanted to do while on the road was stop off at road side attractions that caught my attention. However, I soon realized I would see far to many in the 9,000 miles I drove. So... I pretty much canceled that idea, but on my way to Arizona... when I was more idealistic, I stopped off at this abandoned hotel to snap some photos.

More books...

I found another bag of books I bought that escaped my sight.

Here are the titles:

On The Genealogy of Morality - Friedrich Nietzsche
No Exit (and three other plays) - Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialism (Basic Writings)
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals - Kant
The Four Loves - C. S. Lewis
On Bullshit - Harry G. Frankfurt

Photos of me

These may be the only photos with me in them from my trip.


White House (Washington D.C.)


Washington Monument (Washington D.C.)


The Bean (Chicago, IL.)


New York Subway


Old Faithful (Yellowstone National Park)


Mount Rushmore (South Dakota)


Lincoln Monument (Washington D.C.)


Lincoln Memorial (Washington D.C.)


Capitol Building (Washington D.C.)


Hirshorn Gallery (Washington D.C.)

Arizona & Grand Canyon Photos

My trip began out of Long Beach, CA. and my first stop for the day was Flagstaff, AZ. The drive is essentially a 7 hour drive, almost 500 miles. I was only going to be staying in Flagstaff for a night, in fact my first 2 night stay was to be Nashville, TN. which I would arrive at on day 5 (Cinco De Mayo).

For my trip I rented a Mazda 5:


I got the car for 31 days, unlimited miles and it ONLY cost $580 after taxes! I put 9,000 miles on this thing, drove it in intense heat, rain, hail, high winds, and snow temperatures. It was big enough that I could sleep in it and I did a number of times.

My drive to Flagstaff was a nice drive through desert landscapes. It was very pretty. Eventually I got into some low mountains along the way. I saw a number of things I would have loved to have taken photos of but if I had tried to do that it could have added 2 hours to my drive.

While heading out to Flagstaff I started day-dreaming. I was a little nervous as I had never couch-surfed before and I didn't know what I would be walking in to. Also, I started to realize the magnitude of what I was taking on in this trip and was a little nervous about it. I decided to stop thinking in such grand scales and instead just focus on a drive to one town at a time and that made things much easier. So... while I was day dreaming I neglected to look at the gas gauge and then all the sudden I realized the gas light was on and I was on a desert road with nothing around for miles. I began to get VERY concerned. Was this how my trip would start? Day 1, stranded in a desert with nothing and nobody around?

Here is a video of me getting nervous about my situation. I am sorta clowning around but I was really quite nervous about this. Also, the mileage on the car may say things like 364 miles or 388 miles... add on 20 miles to whatever you see because I didn't reset the mileage til I had been out driving for awhile.



Here is another video of me being an idiot on my first day out on the road:



So these are two photos I took inside my hosts home. Living in Long Beach, CA. I am not used to seeing a stove like this, nor seeing things like snow shovels hanging on the wall in case it snows. I forget it snows in residential areas in other parts of the country... but that's the result of growing up in southern California I guess (and being an idiot).





I had a great time with my host in Arizona. He cooked me dinner, which was awesome and very delicious. We then were going to go see the latest X-Men movie, but it was sold out (it had just opened... and I still haven't seen it). We met up with some of his friends and hung-out at one of their houses, played some card games and just hung-out. It was a good time. Everyone was really cool and very nice.

I got my own bedroom at this house. A roommate had just moved out so I had a bed and everything! Also, the room had those glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls, so it was quite a surprise when I turned out the lights. I had forgot such things existed, I used to have some myself when I was in high school.

The next day I woke up and headed out to see the Grand Canyon. Here are some pictures below, but I will post about that experience later.