Home Is Where the Heart Is Where the Home Is

Having reached our temporary destination at Nicole's parents' home in Gap, PA, we felt this would be a good time to gather our thoughts (and our stones) together. There will be a time to cast away stones at a later date yet to be specified. First, however, the specifics from the last 2 days of or trip.

"It was just a fucking shitshow...we couldn't see more than 3 inches in front of the car and were going 15 mph on the turnpike...we had to stop in Bedford fucking Pennsylvania and in the morning we had to dig our car out...I was livid..." - That would be Nicole describing the last two days of the trip to her friend Julia over the phone, and it sounds pretty accurate.

We definitely were going 15 mph down the highway at 8 pm, sliding back and forth in the dark and hoping not to hit a snow bank (not too bad), a guardrail (bad), one of the 18-wheelers flying by at 50 mph (worse), or the bottom of a gulch (worst). We managed to avoid all these options.

Actually, Nicole managed to maneuver the car past these obstacles. I relieved myself of driving duties after it became exceedingly apparent I am not cut out for snow driving. Especially at night. I never had any close calls, but my high level of stress almost gave Nicole a heart attack. I also squeezed the life out of the steering wheel like it was Bart's neck and I was Homer Simpson (now that I mention it, Mr. Plow would have been nice to have around at that moment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWxF1Q022L4&feature=related).

We decided to stop driving to be safe and pulled off the turnpike/toll road. Nicole gave Tollbooth Wilma a small earful about the lack of snow plows (Plow King drunk much?) on the road we paid to drive on, and we slid our way to a motel parking lot. They had a comedian at 9 in the lounge but we were a bit tired and seriously...how good of a comic would be performing in Bedford, PA in the middle of a snowstorm? So we watched Look Who's Talking Too and Groundhog Day and then got some sleep.

The next morning we had a free hot breakfast, dug our car out from beneath 20 inches of snow, and finished the last section of road to Gap, PA. Ten miles from Lancaster, the epicenter of the bustling Amish community in the United States, Gap is a lovely town that has been covered in a beautiful layer of snow since we've been here (we're expecting at least a foot more of snow tomorrow and Wednesday).

We're going to continue blogging, albeit less often, as we move to New York City and find jobs and an apartment. We actually will be in NYC on Thursday and Friday, as I have an interview on Friday afternoon and we're going to see Kate Luckinbill perform a one (wo)man rendition of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (actually it's a show called "I Forgive You Ronald Reagan" - I'm just assuming it's a 1980's take on the Shakespeare classic). I plan on providing more analysis of the different places and people we encountered, with more of a focus on how America functions differently in different places, for different reasons, and at different paces, in the weeks ahead.

We also will take more pictures going forward, and will post all of the pictures on another site that allows us to post them all, but we haven't decided yet where that will be. We'll let you know when we figure it out. Don't worry your sweet little hearts one bit.