Alright. So my blog is a fail.

I know... I haven't posted anything since Oklahoma. I feel like I was in Oklahoma around a year ago, because so much has happened. The thing is, every time I think about posting something, I realize I have way too much to say, and way too little time, so I don't post anything.

I definitely can't tell stories about everything that has happened, but I'll tell a couple, and try to catch you guys up on where I am.

So after Oklahoma was my trip to New Mexico. I froze to death camping behind a gas station in Texas, then saw some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever laid eyes on in Northern New Mexico.

Eagle's Point, Northern NM. One of the most beautiful spots I have ever stood.

I met up with my good friend Lana in Albuquerque, and we hung out with different friends, went to a show, went to good restaurants, and generally ran around the town. We drove a couple hours south the next day to cliff jump in the beautiful waters of the man made lake there.

Walking down to our cliff jumping spot.

The next monday I left for Reno, NV. A long. long. way. away.

Quick stop at the grand canyon.

The first day leaving I got caught in a freak storm (you can see it brewing above) at the top of the grand canyon... which was the coldest I have ever been in my life. I was driving in the freezing cold, soaking wet, pouring rain, for around two hours. In total blackness. I felt kind of like that guy who fell down a cliff in Antarctica and crawled all the way back to his camp. I kept talking to myself "Come on, Justin. You can do it. Come on. Just stick with it. Just a couple more miles." Finally I got to a lodge, and I must have looked like a serial killer to the front desk woman. I staggered in, barely able to walk, violently shaking and convulsing. I tried to talk, but my lips wouldn't move, so I had to rub my face for a bit before I could beg her for a room.

*sigh*

No big.

Anyway, next was Mexico, which was beautiful.

Somewhere on the border of California, Arizona, and Mexico.

I stayed at an orphanage in Mexicali and got to hang with Mexican chillun. Then Los Angeles, salsa dancing with my friend Emily. After that I got to drive the first stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, which was 10x as beautiful as I had hoped for.


The storm clouds in this picture were moving so fast that they ruined the lighting of my panoramic.

Unfortunately I didn't get to take many pictures, because I had 480 miles to cover in one day, and had to speed fast. I spent one night at a hostel in San Francisco, then headed to Reno to meet up with my friend Olivia's friends.

The people in Reno were phenomenal. We chilled and chilled and chilled some more, until the chill was overwhelming. I got to go with a group of Olivia's friends to a wedding where they were fire spinning after the ceremony. Yeah, I know what you are thinking: You want fire spinners at your wedding too. Well now I can hook you up.

I really wanted to stay in Reno for a while, because I loved it so much. However... Something else came up.

See at the beginning of my trip, I had read my friend Jon Jenkins' blog and seen that him and a group of people were touring around mexico and central america in a renovated school bus surfing. Of course I was immensely jealous, but I was otherwise occupied, and flying to meet them in central america didn't work into my plans.

THEN. While I was in Reno, I read that Jon and the crew were in San Diego! I quickly texted Jon and worked it out to meet up with them the coming Friday for a week.

I drove down to San Diego on the PCH, bought a thick 4/3 wetsuit, and met up with them at what they had called "some hippie commune in the woods."

(Can you find me in this shot? I swear I'm in it. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answer.) Obviously I am still perfecting my panoramic-taking skills. It looks like the mountain is cut off, but it is actually just the position of the clouds that has moved.

Little did I know... they were not joking. I drove through mountain roads north of San Diego for half an hour before arriving at the "Morningstar ranch" where people come, grow long beards, change their names, rant against the corruption of popular culture and do crazy circle dances. Yeah. They tried to convert us and get us to join. No luck.

The next day we began surfing, which was the most tiring experience I have had in three months. It was more difficult than normal because of the full-body, movement-restricting wetsuit I had to wear; but it was easier because waves here move slow and last foreverrr. Anyway, I have to go, but I'll update more later.

**Answer to the photo above: Look at the rock outcrop on the left part of the photo. On the left quarter of it, you can see me sprawled out trying to climb it before my 30 second timer was up. Though I actually jumped off of a small cliff and injured my hands to try to get to it... I still failed.

Oklahoma: Where Justin, Jordan and Kenzie live... And not much else.

Okay so everyone I met in Oklahoma jokes about there being nothing in Oklahoma. But that's not true. There are many people, big churches, stuff, buildings, things, grasses, dirts, people, things, etc.

I feel like almost everything I did at ORU was top secret/can't be talked about, but I will post some pictures about the things I can talk about.



Driving over the Ozarks in NE Oklahoma



Me and Justin decided to go camping at 1:30 am one night. We drove around on a dirt road in the woods for a bit trying to find a good spot, but we found a gay hobo colony (no joke), so we booked it out of there really fast. We found a nice spot in the woods around an area where they had cleared the land to make a church.




Justin cooked hotdogs, and we put some nice chicken and rice soup over it. Delish.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are wondering about the stuff I can't talk about... it involves skyscrapers, someone getting tazed, and me getting beat up and thrown down stairs by a bunch of people while wearing only a mexican wrestler mask.

Sorry, it's confidential.

Welcome to Arkansas! Next gas stop: Oklahoma.

I literally drove 90 miles through Arkansas without seeing a gas station.





Okay, well that's the worst picture ever. But I realized I never really took any others... Here's one from their couchsurfing profile.

Jack and Jacob (Not pictured is Jonathan and Megan.)

Jack, Jonathan, and Jacob are all 19, and live in a giant house together.



They let me stay there, and we spent the whole night till 3 am eating, playing balderdash, and watching very strange movies. It was great.

Before dinner, we took a bike ride around the city.






I climbed to the top of their drawbridge.





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Some random goodie pictures from driving through Arkansas


Fat guy staring at locked vending machines. (He was there for around 10 minutes.)


Contact John Jack Jenkins.


Apparently Arkansas has these magical Chipotle chicken tenders that you put in your gas tank and it cleans your intake valves. Wowza.

Tennessee: We do hillbilly in ways your inbred fifth cousin named Billy-cletus can only dream of.

I feel I never truly knew what a hillbilly was until I traveled through the back woods of Tennessee.


View Larger Map





Breakfast



Tail of the Dragon: Count the confederate flags

Psalm 34

Well today went far better than expected/nothing at all like I expected.

After waking up in D.C. to a groggy friend telling me he was way too tired to go to breakfast, I got an early start to my day. My route included a lot of scenic roads along the coast, and I was really excited.

View Larger Map

Then... the most anticlimactic bad thing happened. I pulled over in the middle of Fredericksburg Virginia to go inside a gas station to get some moolah (money) and my key decided it was a perfect time to peace out (run away). After looking for it for around 2 minutes I threw my arms up at the futility of it all, fell on the ground, and called my mom. She told me I should probably look for a bit longer, so I looked for 30 minutes, and then threw up my arms and fell to the ground in exhaustion again. Then I decided to tell the indian gas station attendant.

Me: Hey I lost my key in here! I looked everywhere but still can't find it!

Attendant: *feigning interest* Oh. *turns away to be distracted by something else*

No help. Long story short... After hours of calling locksmiths and realizing my cheapest option to get a replacement was around $200, I resigned to the fact that I was probably going to be in Fredericksburg, Virginia significantly longer than I had intended to be (which was like 5 minutes).

Because I hate spending money, I decided to find a place to couch surf. Couch surfing is a huge worldwide network of individuals/families that let people stay at their houses for free. It's a kind of honor system thing; if you use it, you should probs let someone stay at your house in the future.

After parking my bike, and making a hike to a starbucks across the street, I submitted some requests, and half an hour later I got a call from a man named Steve.

Steve is an englishman who used to hold a very high position in British Government. He was extensively involved with the negotiations between Britain and China over the handover of Hong Kong, and he has a biography signed by Margaret Thatcher. Now he lives in Fredericksburg and is the editor of an online newspaper, the founder of a christian ministry, and an avid cook and gardener. He is hilarious, especially with his English accent.

When I told Steve of my predicament, he came over, somehow fit my motorcycle in his minivan, and drove me to get a new key.

Steve: "Before we go home we absolutely have to stop by George Washington's childhood home where he cut down the cherry tree."

Steve: *Looking at the Mcdonalds across the street* I don't think they had that when the Washingtons lived here, but I could be wrong.

After that, he took me to his home to meet his sons, fixed an amazing dinner of shepherds pie with apple pie for desert, and showed me to my room, where I had a queen sized bed. Balllin.

Us eating apple pie

Steve's ice cream collection.

When I went to thank Steve for everything, I told him how 4 hours ago I thought I was going to have to spend hundreds of dollars to get a new key and a motel, and that I never would have thought I would have a new key, full stomach, shower, and queen sized bed to sleep in. His response was; "Well, it's like Psalm 3:4; I cried out to my God, and he answered me."

Word.

--------------

Steve: *while getting into bed* "See this is a strange habit I have, I like to take a long nap every night."

Steve: Hello bed! *imitates bed's voice* Hello Steve!

I have to go to sleep, but I shall conclude with this picture of one of Steve's cats riding my bike.

Word.

There is a time for everything...

Hey everybody,

I can't remember how many times I have wanted to get this blog started up again. Every time I do, the process goes like this:

1: Justin thinks "Hey! I loved my blog! I should start writing in it again!"

2: Justin gets on his blog

3: Justin reads some old posts

4: Justin cries bitterly

5: Justin gets off the computer, tears his clothes, covers his head, and rubs ashes all over his skin in a sign of his great sorrow.

See the thing is... I find it hard to believe I could ever be as funny as I was when I lived in Sudan. I don't know why I had so much creativity there - all I know is that it hasn't really followed me back to the U.S.

Alas.

But, there has to be a 37th time for ev

erything, so today I am trying to start it again.

-------------------

I guess one of the real reasons I am more confident about starting it up again this time is that I have stuff to write about now. I just got a motorcycle, and I am going to be taking some roadtrips around the U.S., and it is great to have somewhere to write down all the funny (but probably not as funny as before) thoughts that I have about everything and everyone I see along the way.

So let's begin.

My goal is to take my bike out west. When I was younger I saw a video about someone driving down the pacific coast highway, the highway that goes al

l along the coast of California, and thought "I need to do that on a motorcycle."

<-- The Pacific Coast Highway

But, I thought for my first test trip I should do something a bit easier, and I wanted to see all my Pace U friends anyway, so I decided to go up to NYC.

From Raleigh NC, that is a 9 hour and 8 minute drive.

I have heard that typically you want to limit the amount of motorcycle road time per day to 6 hours, as anything past that just wears you out, so I decided to split the trip into two legs; one to DC, and one to NYC.

-----

1st LEG: North Carolina to Washington D.C.

On this leg I learned a couple of things.

1: Don't leave late

2: There are many bugs in virginia.

3: There are even more bugs at night in virginia.

4: A bug hitting your ch

est at 80 mph feels like a BB gun shot.

5: A bug hitting your face at 80 mph feels like a BB gun shot to your face.

2: Always wear a face shield. Especially at night. Especially in Virginia.

3: Driving at night is not fun.

4: After going 80 mph for 5 hours, your body gets very strange.

5: Never open your mouth while driving through Virginia at night without a face shield

6: Leave on time.

Somewhat random... But all very true.

Now I know what you are thinking: "Well well well, another Uganda-bus-barf-into-mouth incident! Looks like someone rode without a face shield and had bugs hit his face. Foolish. Serves him right!"

No, I didn't do that. But I did find my helmet looking like this after an hour of riding:

Now it was really dark when I took this, so it's hard to see the ridiculousness of how many dead bugs were on it, but trust me: It was significantly ridiculous.

I did, a couple of times get hit by big bugs in the chest, and that was very unpleasant.

All that to say: the first leg of the trip was not very exciting. I meant to leave at 3, but instead I left at 6:30, so most of my trip was at night time, going through the endless expanses of forest freeway in Virginia. I got to DC at around midnight, and stayed the night with my friend Cash.

My lovely couch

-------------------

2nd Leg: Washington D.C. to NYC

Leaving from D.C. (Trying to be awkward)

Thankfully, this leg of the trip made up for the boredom of the last one.

I was looking up really good roads to drive on, and I found Highway 213, which goes along some island-ish type off the coast of Maryland. If you look on this map, the three dots are where I changed my route to go over 213 for around 3 hours. It ended up being the best decision of my trip.

View Larger Map

Sometimes I have experiences that are just too intense to communicate to others, and parts of this drive definitely fell in that category. The whole 213 detour was a drive through giant farmlands and weird places that I didn't have time to take pictures of. The first bridge over was two lanes wide, and towered around 75 feet in the air over the bit of ocean that separates the island thing from the mainland. It was unreal.

A field on 213

Dumpster on the border of Delaware and Maryland

Gas Station in Delaware

Then I had a pretty crazy discovery: I found an abandoned amusement park in the middle of nowhere. And by nowhere I mean Delaware. Of course I had to stop an explore it for an hour or so.

The whole place was really eery. The wind was blowing really hard the whole time and the whole place was filled with the creaks and moans of the abandoned structures.

Finally I got to Jersey, and then to NYC.

I shall post more about NY and the trip back in a couple of days. For now, I need to shower. Badly.