Memories of America

I haven't been keeping up this blog, and not sure if I will continue to in the future... but as I was recently banned from ever returning to the United States of America (despite never committing a crime), I'm inspired to post some of my favourite photos from my travels there over the years....

The Mall in Central Park, New York City 2005

Chillin with Abe in Las Vegas, 2005

Hollywood, 2005

Times Square, New York City 2008

2008... I got to see RENT before it closed...

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with Mateo and Lucy... 2008

Hanging with Mica in Brooklyn, 2008

On stage with Steel Panther, on my 30th birthday.  Las Vegas

What do you do when you turn 30 on the 30th? GO TO VEGAS BABY!

One of the best days of my life, hands down.  Vegas with my besties, 2010

Central Park with Mateo, 2010

Condoms everywhere! Museum of Sex, New York 2010

Of course I took a photo here.  New York 2010

The High Line.  New York 2010

Impromptu dance party on Freemont St.  Las Vegas 2011

Babes and guns.  Las Vegas 2011

Hi... I'm in... Delaware.  2012

Discovering Four Loko.  Hartford, 2012

Touching an actual dinosaur print.  For realsies.  Dinosaur State Park, 2012

Sunset in Key West, Florida.  2012

We went all the way to Florida to swill in parks and poop behind trees... Key West, 2013

Miami Beach, 2013

New York with many friends, 2013

Memphis TN, 2013

Austin, TX 2013

So glad I got to go here.  Nashville, TN 2013

Sober? Who needs sober? New Orleans, 2013

One of the last photos ever taken of me in my favourite city... New York 2013

Holy roadtrip

WOW.  I bought a car originally so I could drive around Canada and the States, and well...that's being done.   But I don't have a car anymore.

Left Ottawa Tuesday morning with Karine and DD, so we could get ourselves to Austin, Texas in time for http://chaosintejas.com/ on Thursday.  The drive down was gonna be soooooo awesome, here was the plan:

Tuesday: hit the road at 5am, so we could get to Nashville, TN by 9pm or so.  Go out to some crazy cowboy bars,  and stay at a fancy Nashville hotel that I'd booked ages ago.

Wednesday: hit the road around lunch, and get to Memphis mid-day so we could go to Sun Records, Beale Street, etc.  Stay somewhere random Wednesday night after partying on Beale St, then head to Austin the next morning.  Get to Texas around dinner Thursday.

SO.  That was the plan.  Here's what really happened:

Tuesday: hit the road just after 5, closer to about 5:30.  Crossed the border with no issue, so we were happily sailing down the I-81S when we put our hotel name in Nashville into the GPS.  It gave us an arrival time of about 7:30pm, so we were sooooo excited as this meant we'd have an entire evening to go out.

This was right about the time I heard DD's voice in the backseat say 'DEER!'.  Then a large deer appeared right in front of my car, and I slightly swerved to the right and RIGHT into the second deer.  THUMP.  It hit the hood and flew across both lanes of the highway and landed on the left shoulder, and I slowed my car and pulled onto the right.  My first thought was OMG THE DEER, not even thinking of my car, until I heard Karine say, 'Danielle..YOUR CAR'.  I realized that smoke was billowing out of front, and the hood was crumpled.  Got out, grill cracked in half, something leaking out, sunken it.  I have never been so happy to have CAA.  We got lucky to be honest, me were all fine, and the deer didn't hit the windshield.  I was also really happy to be able to say I was not speeding, was not texting, was not doing anything other than driving as I should have been, watching the road, when it happened.  It wasn't my fault at all, if I'd been texting and not looking at the road when it happened I would have felt like the biggest asshole, and biggest idiot.

Thank FUCK I'd upgraded to CAA plus, I originally just had the one with 5km in towing, but now I have the one with 100km so we were safe.  UNFORTUNATELY, the lady at AAA was an idiot, and had the tow truck driver tow us back to Ogdensburg, rather than Waterford.  Ogdensburg was 45 minutes back...and they have no car rental agency.  So by the time we were given the go-ahead by my insurance company, I then had to pay $50 to take a cab to Potsdam to rent a car.  This garbage took us about 3 hours out of our way, if they'd towed us to Waterford we would have saved that three hours and also been closer. UGH.  Really annoying.  All in all the whole ordeal delayed us about ten hours, so rather than get to Nashville in time to go out and do something, we got there at 6am and crashed until the front desk called to kick us out at 1pm.

Now...remember we left Ottawa at 5am.  And Nashville is an hour behind, so it was almost 7am when we got there.  We'd been up and driving almost 26 hours.  We are driving machines!

We wandered around downtown Nashville for an hour or two, just enough time to be sad we didn't have more time there, then headed to Memphis.  Which we got to...at7pm...right when everything closes.  YEAH.  So we ate some chicken and waffles (delicious!!!!!) and hit the road again.  Drove as much as we could, and around 2am we pulled into a cheap motel in Prescott, Arkansas.

YEAH.  Now I know why I don't stay in cheap motels.  Karine and DD passed out right away, I laid there reading emails for a while (including one from my auto guy, telling me the repairs would be $4900, and they were still waiting for the insurance guy to go inspect.  But since the estimate was so much more than my car even cost, he was expecting it to be declared a total loss.  YEAH).  When I finally tried to sleep, I couldn't stop scratching my arm and foot...and finally realized how long I'd been scratching for and looked at my foot.  BITES.  Definitely not bedbugs, Karine and I had inspected the bed first and nothing, and the bites don't resemble bedbug bites.  I'm thinking some reaction to the sheets, because I then got up and slept in the car and as soon as I got out of the bed the bites stopped itching.

So.  That was our trip here.  No time for the fun things planned, BUT, now that we have a bit more time to get back, we've decided to just do those things then.  When we leave Austin on Monday we're going to drive to New Orleans for a night, then Tuesday we'll drive back to Nashville.  This means we'll be back in Ottawa MEGA late on Wednesday night, and I'll have to get back to Ogsdensburg Thursday or Friday to get some stuff out of my car.  I have a rear hub assembly in the back that Tim was going to put on before we left, thank fuck he didn't have time to do it because now I can return it and get $150 back.

Shitty because this trip was supposed to be really cheap, but I'm looking at my insurance deductible, we had to pay insurance on the rental so the extra drivers would be covered, etc etc.  But it's just money...this trip is still pretty amazing.  I can't even begin to describe how incredible this fest is and it's only the second night right now.  We were up til 5am, ending the night watching bands play on a bridge filled with hundreds of punks.  Amazing.

I'm watching 'UP' and just twenty minutes in, it is definitely going to be a favourite of mine for the rest of my life.  And, it just re-affirms that travel is something that should never, ever, be put off.  They should have gone to Peru together.  But the adorable way he's going on his own... ah I love this movie!

Fort Lauderdale (yes, again)

Yes, I was just here a few weeks ago.  And somehow, I'm lucky enough to be here again.  Ahhhh the hardships of dating an American businessman...always getting to tag along on business trips.

Not that today consisted of much 'business'.  Inside now after spending hours basking in the beautiful, hot sun.  And the water... oh my.  I have to say, this is one of the best, if not actually THE best, beach I've ever been to.  The water is WARM.  Apparently it's always like that.  And as soon as you walk in, it gets deep.  Walk in a few feet, and you can barely touch the ground.  Just enough waves to make it entertaining, but not enough to make you nervous (and I get nervous.  Especially after being left to drown by my snorkelling team in Exmouth, Western Australia last year. I don't think I'll ever get over that).

I hate resorts, but am admittedly falling for this 'resort hotel' deal.  The luxuries of most resorts without being stuck on it all the time; and without the shitty all-inclusive deals where they pad you full of weak drinks and meager buffets.  Here, you are on the beach; there are tons of restaurants and bars in the hotel; but you are also IN the city, not on some remote area where you have to pay a tour bus a hundred bux to get you anywhere.  So, you can lay on the beach if you choose, or you can head out.  I like it.  More than I thought I would, which is actually a nice surprise.  Turns out I'm not *just* a backpacking addict; I could kind of get used to these lazy sunny days.

It has been almost two years since I went to Central America and realized what my true love in life was: travelling (Well, one of my loves.  I also love cats. And cupcakes.  And something else that starts with 'c', but I'll keep this PG for now).

When I got back from Central America, I was so in love with travelling I saved my ass off and took myself to Australia for six weeks. And since then, I haven't left North America.  Wtf?

My man takes me to the States pretty much all the time now, and not to sound ungrateful, but it's not 'travelling'.  He takes me to fancy hotels, and we eat out at restaurants all the time, all possible amenities provided for.  No adventure, no uncertainty. Lots of fun, yes, but.  I miss the uncertainty.

Not to say I've been lacking adventure completely - when A and I did our east coast trip, we decided as we went along where/what we were doing; we turned my car into a bed for three; and we saw things that rival what I saw in Belize, and Australia, for most gorgeous scenery ever.

But I want to get out of my own again.  I want to do my southeast Asia trip.  Me and my backpack.  I want to go somewhere foreign.  Where I'm challenged, every day, to socialize, adapt, and survive.  Life here in North America is pretty damned easy,  no matter where you turn.

This past year I kept trying to recover from my robbery, and couldn't.  And other things happened which changed my life, in very hard ways, and made it difficult to leave.  When you keep losing friends, it's hard to pick up and run off on the ones that are still here.

But I'm still here.  And part of who I am is having to run off from time to time.  It's the biggest reason I do the job I do: I have the freedom to do what I want, when I want.  I have a good income.  So why the hell haven't I left?  Hmmmmmm.

Florida Keys

What a beautiful day.  Drove from Fort Lauderdale right down to Key West.  Traded in the original rental for a convertible, my very first time riding in one - and first time driving one!  God it felt amazing to zip over the bridges between keys, top down, wearing nothing but a bikini.

Stopped at Bahia Honda State Park, and found a beautiful, small, white sandy beach.  Little piece of heaven.  Got onto Key West right before the sun set, so sat on a pier and reveled in that before heading back here.  The drive back to Fort Lauderdale was definitely not as exciting at night as it was during the day, instead it was just LONG.  Flight leaves in 5.5 hours, so now to try and stay awake so I can get to the airport on time.

Although, I have to say, I wouldn't be too upset if I had to stay down here for a while longer... :)

Best drives in the world

Well, A and I did the Cabot Trail, one of the best drives in the world, and today I get to cross another one off that list - I'm about to drive from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to the end of the Florida Keys.  Gonna be another day wishing I had more time here, but at least I'll get to do a bit of it!