11/10/2012

Road Trip USA part 6 - Baltimore, Banana Beer, and Breaking Science…



Grad School ate my life; it chewed until it sucked all the juicy delicious part out, and spat out the rest for me to keep. That is where I’ve been the past few months, and I must MUST finish these road trip blogs, so that I can start sharing more great adventures on this side of the ATLANTIC! 

Hrm... Should I have given this advice to the newbies too?
Also, on a side note, just to update you quickly, I have been writing micro-fiction and was even given the opportunity to read my micro-fiction at a fundraiser event for the great Penumbra Magazine! (That blog to come). And here we go, instead of participating in the NANO novel November writing experience, I will attempt to catch up on these, I hate that I’ve kept you all waiting for so long!!

So, where were we…. Ah yes, once upon a long long Long time ago... after the great George Watsky Concert and the Artbreak hotel, I began my drive to Baltimore to see Jenni and Greg! I was so excited to see their new apartment and life in Baltimore and to be their first ever guests in their new big city! 

Jenni and Greg at their wedding!
The last time I saw Jenni and Greg was at their wedding in May, and I was excited that due to an unfortunate event of a maniac deer running into my car -as if it were avenging it’s father who too had a vengeance out for little Betcy and died 1.5 years ago- attacked her front passenger side and caused me to have to return to KC early from my road trip to pick up my car from the shop, but in turn granting me a whole extra 36 hours with the awesome Jenni and Greg duo! This unfortunate event, actually worked out in my favor the entire road trip, causing me to change my schedule a bit and giving me extra time in all the places I went. 

The deer that attacked me was much much bigger... but somehow this little one is scarier!
The actual unfortunate thing about going to Baltimore was driving on the long boring turnpike through Delaware and New Jersey. The drive itself is not long, approximately 3.5 hours, and actually I made it in good time, it was just the turnpike itself was a hideous gray color stretching out forever and blocking the view of anything possibly beautiful. Where, on one hand this was great because it did not involve any more deer, and on the other hand was awful, because all I wanted to do was teleport past all the concrete and non-self serve gas stations and get to this infamous place called Baltimore. 

Concrete Trees
Finally I reached the street I was supposed to and Greg met me down at the sidewalk, jumped in my car and we began the search for parking. You would think that this would not be an adventure, but it turned into one as we parked, then had to go to the bureau to get a weekend “visitors pass” which little did we know was not necessary now that they had moved two blocks from their old apartment, and caused me to play roulette with my car the next three days… Although strange, I got to ride on the free hybrid buses that they have as public transportation and I felt a little bit at home.  

One of the great views from their apartment in Baltimore!
Jenni came home and we all went and had SUSHI! It was A-ma-zing! If you can’t tell, I am a little bit of a lover of sushi, so this was a huge treat for me! We walked around Baltimore a little bit more and settled on just relaxing at the apartment, drinking banana bread beer (which was delicious!), and they introduced me to “Parks and Recreation”, a T.V. show that I came to love, and after Jenni went to bed, because she had to do science-y experiments the next morning at work (because she’s a crazy smart scientist!), Greg and I watched endless amounts of “Malcolm in the Middle” and he made the best snicker doodle cookies I’ve ever had, which became our breakfast the next day. 

Gigantic, Delicious SNICKERDOODLE!!!

Banana Bread Beer, it tasted like beer, with an aftertaste of banana bread; I mean who wouldn't want that!?!
To my surprise I slept in extremely late and woke up with adventure cat walking across me. I then- of course- blogged about my adventures and we went to meet Jenni at her work - a giant amazing science lab that would have made anyone love science growing up! They had beakers galore and plastic containers a plenty! I wanted to touch everything! Which may explain why our science labs in school were never so nice with so many gadgets… *pauses to ponder* yeah, that’s exactly why… After a while, Greg and I decided we shouldn’t touch anything, because we would probably break science, leaving all of the scientists with nothing to do and young children crying. 

Please wake up, you are on my couch...
The only ironic thing about our joke was that Jenni’s experiment that day was the only one in her set that failed the entire week… So maybe I did break it? … Oops.

Oops...
Our adventure continued to a nice bar where we found a table with a zombie drawing on it, and as the table was far big enough for six people, and Jenni and I had both studied in Europe, when a man asked if he could sit at the other end of the table, we thought little of it. Until, of course, we realized that we had made a terrible mistake at sharing our table in America… The man was clearly out of his mind, re-named all of us, which actually was to our benefit, stroked Jenni’s hand, asked me if I was spiritual due to my tattoo and wooden ring, and commenced to telling us his “extremely convincing” conspiracy theory. To our great fortune, the man “needed to leave and quick” and disappeared into the night. His whereabouts are unknown, and we are okay with that.

ZOMBIE MAN
After that we enjoyed the evening walking in the beautiful night air of Balitmore, and I thought to myself, I think this is one of my favorite cities so far. And I truly mean that, it was nice walking everywhere again, and taking the bus, and just being with good company! 

Baltimore!!! The statue of Lafayette if I am not mistaken.
Sadly, the adventure in Baltimore ended early the next morning as it was a two day drive back to KC and I had to pick my car up Monday morning. 

Washington Monument
They also live near this beautiful church: the Vernon Place United Methodist Church
I had a wonderful time in Baltimore and I just want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH Jenni and Greg for letting me stay at your place, taking time to spend some time with me and show me around the town, and of course for just being all around AWESOME! Miss you guys!

Until our next adventure,
Raelynne

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