damonjustisntfunny.com

When you get down to it the ACTUAL GOD’S HONEST TRUTH is useless. No one cares about the truth. What interest do people have in what was actually said? People care as much for the truth as I do about telling a story in chronological order. The truth about any moment is never as exciting as the moment itself and, therefore, by relating the moment truthfully the author is doing it a disservice. I am, in fact, being more honest in relating things fictionally for an accurate account is boring and our trip was anything but. Good narration requires exaggeration, just like an exciting paragraph requires a large number of colons and semi-colons and dashes; without them: the story — I would argue — is dull.

Seattle, Washington, is a well-enough-meaning place. It is not obnoxious; it does not pretend to be a city but most would concede that it is one. It sits on the Puget Sound and is surrounded by hills and mountains and beautiful homes and a landscape that is unanimously accepted as gorgeous and desirable. All this made me slightly uneasy and extremely bitter and we eyed the locals suspiciously and made them uncomfortable with long stares.

The Seattle/Tacoma airport claims to be in SeaTac, Washington. This is foolish and makes no sense because SeaTac sounds like an abbreviation for Seattle/Tacoma and yet pretends to be a town. It even has a zip code: 98148. #6 has claimed that it isn’t a town at all but just a place where planes land, however, I was there and I saw the sign and I found the zip code. It’s available on USPS.com for goodness sake and all around the airport there are large signs saying:

Welcome to SeaTac.

I was saying:

What would really be welcome, see, is an original name and not some copout abbreviation-turned-proper-wannabe-town.

The challenge Ben and I faced in New Hampshire on June 20th was getting everything into boxes and bags that fit under all the required weight and size limits imposed on us by the airline. Our goal was to accomplish this while being forced to shell out the least amount of money possible for extra bags and oversize item fees. We were each willing to pay eighty dollars for the bikes to be shipped in large bike boxes that had been properly packed by us — but that was all we were willing to spend in terms of extra fees. Everything else had to be carefully chosen and packed for it was to remain with us for the next five weeks.

This was accomplished by sitting on the floor of my bedroom with our a yarn scale and weighing each individual item. If we weren’t sure which piece of clothing to bring (”should I go with the yellow or the mauve?”) we weighed them both and let the scale decide. Tweezers were chosen based on weight. We only brought one razor handle with two detachable blades because an additional full razor set was burdensome. I ended up being granted thirty pounds and Ben was given the rest, which was good because otherwise I never would have seen him. Just a puff of smoke and a faint whiff of his effervescent pungency that follows him like so much fermenting ice cream. We figured that the total weight (without food or water) was about seventy to seventy-five pounds: tent, sleeping bags, mats, clothes, cooking apparatus, everything.

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