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OK. First off, we apologize that publishing our portraits on Sunday has been so inconsistent. It’s really a simple task but recently it’s just that we really haven’t been taking many pictures while in Kansas. It’s part a syndrome of being home and part laziness–we’ve strapped our cameras to our hips and will be making an effort to capture more of what seems like our now ordinary life.
Beginning on the first Sunday of the New Year we’re adding a twist to our portraits. We’ll keep the current ‘Portrait’ page, but it will essentially become an archive of our pre-2010 portraits. We’ll then have two additional pages for portraits, one for me and one for Kristine. With each portrait we’ll tell a story, write a poem, quote a song, or somehow say a few words. It may resemble something like a journal entry. This will be our chance to share a story from the week in a different way. It will hopefully make the portraits a little more interesting and also a little more telling. Like the portraits from the week of 12/20 when Kristine and I were in Lawrence. It may or may not be apparent but I’m cutting my friend’s hair. The same friend that let me cut his hair while he was in Seattle one summer. I lucked out and managed the transformation he was after from Metallica fan to J.Crew model. Here’s the proof.
BEFORE
AFTER
I digress. We look forward to all our new adventures in the New Year and our portraits will now be an improved way for us to share them.
P.S. Daniel (the guy in the pictures), I hope I had permission to use these pictures. And thanks for trusting me as much as you have!
We’ve thought a lot about what to do with the blog. We thought maybe it was only a blog about this road trip and so we just needed to retire it, but that thought alone made us both sad and unsettled. So we started thinking about maybe re-defining the blog. Start posting about everything and anything: food, love, culture, dreams, adventures, projects, musing, etc. We realized we’d be slamming the breaks on the momentum that this blog had built up over the trip. We didn’t want to turn a great hamburger joint into an amalgamation of American, Chinese, and Caribbean Cuisine all under one roof. So we’re leaving the title, which ‘thank you’ again Darren is a great one, and we’re going to stick to the same theme; except instead of writing about the massive granite walls of Yosemite, we’ll be exploring the vast openness, prairies, fields, lakes, and sunflowers of Kansas and Missouri. We’ll continue to play outside, to search for peaks and valleys, we’ll trade climbing for swimming, biking, and hiking. We’re inspired by Heather who is doing what she calls the ’12 for 12′, starting in the new year she’ll be entering one race each month of next year. I might adopt the baby sister of 12 for 12 and maybe pick the 2 for 12. If I do, I’ll write about that too.
This post marks a definite transition in the blog from road trip to life. It’s maybe a good time to reflect a bit, and thank our friends and family for the support that we’ve received throughout our road trip. Kristine and I didn’t have any idea that the blog would result in such a strong connection between our experiences and our friends and family. A connection that was stronger in the last three months than in the last three years for both Kristine and I. It’s something we have cherished and want to maintain. On our visits to town, to maybe post again, we’d get a chance to see the amount of traffic to our blog. That was the familiar nudge that escalated our commitment to the blog as well as our responsibility to it and its viewers. So, THANK YOU so much to all of our family and friends for the interest and ongoing support throughout our resignation at our very good jobs, the breezy and risky endeavor of the road trip, and CHEERS to the next chapter. We’ve loved sharing it all and will faithfully continue to do just that.
We’ll be continuing all the aspects of the blog that we’ve already developed: we’ll continue to post our portraits each week, we’ll keep the map of the road trip but make another map of Kansas and label it as we explore surrounding areas, the ‘General Delivery’ has changed to ‘Direct Address’. We still encourage paper, pencil, and stamp and want to continue to receive letters, postcards, pictures, etc. We’ll continue to make our own postcards and send them out throughout the year.
We don’t want to be too ambitious, although we often are, but we’re considering a seperate blog for documenting our projects and anything flavored with creativity. When and if this happens you’ll be the first to know. As always, hit us with any comments, suggestions, raving reviews, or anything in between.
Kristine and I had a special visit from two old friends of mine. They both coincidentally arrived in Las Vegas within an hour of each other late Saturday afternoon.
The fine looking gent on the right is Keith Beisner. He was first to arrive in his little sedan that was packed to the gills with furniture he’s moving from Salt Lake City to his recently purchased house in Tucson. He’s a semi-pro climber who’s stuck in the body of a struggling grad student. Luckily he’s on what looks like the final stretch and will hopefully be spending more time on his true passion: climbing & spending all his time outdoors.
My man Ben Reader is on the left. I call him either Benny or Benny-boy, it’s been that way since we met back in our college days. He showed up second after a few bad directions I gave him and sent him touring the greater Las Vegas area. Kristine, Keith, and I had gone into the nearby Borders to wait for him and sit and chat in a warm place. Kristine saw what could have been a homeless man walk up behind me and grab the back of my shoulders in the way only brothers do. I recognized the strong grip and stood to give my friend a warm hug. It has been months since I’d seen him last and he’s been fishing in Alaska, they almost lost the boat when they cracked the hull and barely made it back to shore, after the season was over he joined a crew and sailed down to San Francisco. He bought the Kawasaki he showed up on and he’s been touring the lower Western states until he sustained a fall while playing frisbee golf and has been soaking in hot springs to rejuvenate his hurt shoulder. He’s like wolverine and I’m sure will heal up in no time.
* Note: We would all look homeless if we rode a motorcycle across the country and didn’t groom in the conventional way.
That night we shared good wine, pumpkin beer, bratwursts, baked potatoes, and epic stories, all around a cozy fire. I learned of the cocoon that both my friends had recently emerged from. Keith had found his sense of community in Salt Lake City while exploring the great outdoor opportunities that Utah has to offer. He has recovered from a torn ankle something-or-rather. It’s been months of rehab and our friend was better than ever. His wife, Kim, found her dream job with the USGS and is waiting patiently for Keith to join her. Kristine and I will be heading down to Tucson for Thanksgiving and look forward to every minute we’ll spend with them!
I found Ben very happy. Happier than the last 
few times I’d seen him. He was finding his sense of self and living his life exactly like he wanted. He’s the free-est spirit I know and a true vagabond in the best way. He shared the sweetest strawberries with us that he had gotten from an underground source, he graciously shared his delicious bread he bought at a well-known bakery in Bishop, CA, he even had sage honey to top the bread with. He had two different types of chocolates that we relished as they made their way around the fire. It was like watching Marie Poppins as he pulled more and more exotic goods from his small stash on the back of his bike. Not sure where it was all coming from. He even wanted us to eat a pomegranate that wanted to be eaten, but which we just didn’t have the appetite for anymore. Crazy!
Here’s the family portrait. The picture on the left is the one taken for my Mom, and the one on the right includes the dubs-effect I strive to give every picture I’m in.
Benny got on the road early the next morning. Keith stayed to climb with us for the next two days. More to come on those adventures!
Kristine and I will take a standard portrait of each other every day of the trip, starting today, with the hopes that we capture as much change by the end of the trip as the water fountains in the Plaza of Kansas City. We’ll only post one picture a week in the page ‘Portraits’. We won’t be posting every days picture thinking that you can’t watch a flower grow if you stare at it, but we will make a virtual flip-book of each of us at the end of the trip that is made up of all the pictures. There’ll be incremental satisfaction each week as one new portrait pops up every Sunday, all leading up to the grand finale and the explosion of all our portraits.
We’re kicking this off with pictures taken this morning after cooking our first meal out of the eurovan at Golden Gardens Park. It was a beautiful morning, windy, and the lake was filled with sailboats, kick surfers, and wind surfer.
Our meal was simple: toast, cream cheese, scrambled egg, salt, peper, and a bit of paprika, which Kristine noted was especially good with the egg. Stove top espresso was icing on the cake, which we enjoying laying in the grass, soaking the rays.
Two notes about the pictures:
1. My picture is a bit blurry. This was due to a technical issue that should be resolved for future portraits.
2. I shaved yesterday. It was explicitly for the beginning of the beginning and I won’t shave again until 2010, unless of course Kristine stops kissing me goodnight.
jonathan
kristine
