In case you were wondering what I bought myself for Christmas, it was a much-needed new phone in the form of the Motorola Droid. Verizon managed to grant me my bitchin’ $50 credit towards a new phone on actual Chrismas, which meant I had to wait a full day to get this bad boy. In short, it’s like an iPhone, but not as “cool.” To save you from having to comment, I didn’t get an iPhone because I’ve had Verizon since 2001 and I figure, why switch now. So whatever.

I’m sure you’ve seen the “droid does” commercials, unless of course, you don’t have TV, in which case, I’ll sum it up for you. The claim is this thing can do a bunch of shit the iPhone can’t. Since the third member of my relationship is actually an iPhone, I feel pretty qualified to answer to this claim. Now keep in mind, I refuse to read directions (and the Droid didn’t really come with any anyway,) so this is just from me playing with it.

Pros

- Slide out keyboard and on screen keyboard. NBD.

- There is a Happy Cow app, which is like Urban Spoon for vegetarians. I am not downloading it simply to punish Jared (and cause it costs $1)

-Way, way better service than my broken Blackberry Pearl. And seemingly better battery life than the iPhone.

- Most importantly, (and in no way better than the iPhone, which also can,) I can livestream from my phone, as I have done from family dinner, when my cats got a new toy, and yesterday riding at Meadows:

You can follow all my pointless and uninteresting exploits here, and yes, I insist on starting every broadcast with “you’re live, on the internet!”

Cons

- The camera sucks. Slow, bad at focusing etc. It took my way too many tries to get a cute cat shot for my wallpaper.

-No scrabble app! And the “words” one plays annoying music and costs money to get the real version. Not into it.

- Every time I try to make a call, my cheek manages to repeatedly hang up on people. Now as you will be able to tell from the following photo,  I have abnormally large cheeks, but seriously, this shit is ridiculous.

In other news, 50 state blogging will be back after the Holidays as I must track down photos from Wisconsin, Minnesota and other random places.

I take snowboarding somewhat seriously. (My mom thinks I am good.)

Circa 2002

I hit the I-70 stretch on a road trip from Bellingham to Vermont for summer vacation. I recruited Orion to make it an epic skate mission, and then Malcolm signed on because he needed a ride to Boston. This was during my artsy black and white phase, so you’ll have to excuse these photos as they were scanned from a contact sheet as no one owns a film scanner anymore apparently.

Kansas

We skated a couple parks in Kansas on the way across I-70. I honestly don’t remember the names, but I do remember bonding with a boy from Kansas years later over the fact that I had been to one of them.

Missouri

On this trip we only did a quick tourist stop in St. Louis, but I actually spent the night in Kansas City years later. On that trip we ended up at Bucca di Beppo in downtown KC, which really could have been any city. But it wasn’t, it was in Missouri! Oh, I also was floored by the Columbia skatepark and can add Columbia to my list of college towns USA, which we skated on our 2002 odyssey.

Kentucky

I rerouted our drive several hundred miles to hit the Louisville skatepark, only to have it rain shortly after we got there. But I made it back years later when I was living in Chicago. We decided to drive there at 5 PM one night, got there at midnight, skated until 5 am, slept for a few hours and then skated again until we were almost dead. If I ever wanted to be a skate bum. Louisville would be on the top of my list.

Circa: 2004

I made it to AZ with skateboarding in mind. It was February, I had little to do with my life, and a friend living in Flagstaff. As it turns out, it’s freezing in Flag in February, but we did make it to Phoenix to skate some of the perfect concrete parks. I later hit Flagstaff in the summer, another notch on my list of random college towns that could be anywhere list.

Please note: At this point in the story I was still shooting this weird stuff called film so photos are somewhat limited.

Jeff, my host and fellow nerd.

The have this Canyon there, it’s somewhat grand.

Roadside attractions

circa 2005

State #37: North Carolina

My time here was spent on the Outer Banks, a hurricane-ravaged strip of beach with tons of random mini ramps and bowls. We stayed in a 4-story rental house and skated Wanchese, as well as some other sand covered mini ramps as part of an SG trip.

State # 38: South Carolina

I love South Carolina. I’m not talking about South of the Border, but real SC. I was somewhat over my hellacious trip for SG when we rolled into John’s Island, a small town outside of Charleston. This is the home of the legendary hanger bowl, which we skated as well as the clamshell bowl in the middle of the woods and an indoor birch mini. We stayed in Folly Beach in a really nice Holiday Inn right on the ocean, and I am pretty sure this is where I developed my affinity for staying in nice hotels. My time in SC also saved the trip.

circa 2005

Yes, you are right, these two states are no where near each other. But I hit them both on the same road trip, so deal with it.

State #39: West Virginia

(NO PHOTO TAKEN)

West Virginia is one state I sort of feel like I didn’t experience. I have only been there once, and only to the little skinny top part. I think we stopped for gas, just so I felt ok about checking it off the list, but no amazing moonshine stories or anything to share here.

State # 40: New Mexico

My cousin lives in NM, so when Sarah Morrison was moving back to California for the 2nd time, we made it a point to drive through and stay there. She lived in Taos, in a small adobe shack with plants growing through the walls. We learned about the difference between “red” and “green” chilies, but more importantly partied with a frightening sub-sect of people Sarah dubbed “whippies,” a.k.a. White Trash Hippies.

Circa 2006

For a while I claimed I’d been to Texas when I’d really only been to the airport. But then I started having to go there for work and I’ve since been to Austin, San Antonio and Dallas. I don’t hate it as much as I think I should, as it is the home of Dubyah. In fact, I sort of like Texas, spare the weird frontage roads and the chiggers.

Circa 2006

Doing fifty posts (one for each of the states) seems a bit excessive, and as I said, most of them were hit on long distance road trips. That said, I’m going to keep going back in time in the order I hit the states by combining each road trip into one post. A few might get mixed up (like GA, which I visited before this particular trip) but close enough. read more »

Circa 2006

For a while I flew Alaska Airlines and ended up with a bunch of miles I needed to use before they expired. For 40k miles I bought two tickets to AK and figured, why the fuck not. But when my original companion flaked on me, I was ready to write the miles off as a loss, until randomly, I thought of another friend who would have money and free time. The trip was spent on the Kanai peninsula, visiting Seward and Homer, going on whale watches and deep sea fishing, hiking up glaciers, eating salmon and otherwise figuring out how to fill 20 hours of daylight.

Circa 2008

Louisiana was my second-to-last state visited, always just out of reach of my cross-country routes. But like Florida, and Texas, since ending up there once, I’ve been back plenty of times. I’ve taken multiple wakeskate trips to ride the buttery bayous and enjoy some serious southern hospitality. I also went on “vacation” to New Orleans last year, where I hung out on Bourbon St, photographed cemeteries, and found myself sobered by the amount of destruction still left from Hurricane Katrina three years later. Read the full blog about my New Orleans trip here