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August 21
Do you realize how long it’s been since we finished our trip? Eight months. To put that in perspective, if I had conceived a child at the end our journey, when we reached New York, I would be extremely pregnant. Just one more month and I would be a father (or in this scenario, a mother, I guess).
The short version of what I’ve been up to begins in Maine, at my parents’ houses, where I wallowed in bankruptcy and unemployment. On this website I had claimed that my after-TYAP plans were to clandestinely renovate my father’s garage into a guest house for myself, and I would have done that, but I didn’t have the financial resources to buy, say, a hammer.
I knew I wanted to move to Boston, but I also knew I needed enough money to pay rent. So I needed a job. It was a stressful period in which I made the Maine-to-Boston commute almost weekly, and worried my way to an ulcer that made me burp all the time.
Finally I found a job waiting tables in the South End of Boston, moved into an apartment in Southie, and stopped burping so much.
In addition to waiting tables and bartending, I’ve also been interning at an advertising agency called Modernista!, which has been helping TYAP put together a book proposal. I’ve been at Modernista! so long that they even pay me thirty dollars a day now. I’m trying to set the record for oldest intern, in any profession, ever.
As far as other writing projects go, I recently launched a new website, TheAdamWhite.com, and I’m publishing my novel, Twenty-One, late this fall.
One thing I’m beginning to realize is that the experiences, interviews, and footage we collected on our trip are all perishable data, so we need to accelerate our publication and production calendars. The documentary guys are doing a stellar job editing the film, and the book proposal should be done in the next couple days. I’m confident that help from above – in the form of a producer, publisher, or sponsor – will arrive in the near future.
I guess you could say that TYAP is our baby, one we conceived in the fall. It’s been eight months now, and it’s almost time it popped out, or hatched, or did whatever it is that babies do.
February 1
We were so close to the finish line we could taste it, which is a phrase that doesn't make any sense because even if a finish line had all the gastronomical qualities of a juicy steak, you still couldn't taste it until it was in your mouth. I don't care how close you get to that thing, you're not going to taste it unless you're actually eating it.
But we were close. We were in New Jersey . Just outside of Philadelphia at Ben's cousin Andy's house. Andy and his wife, Jamie, and their two young boys, Sam and Max , had treated us to a nice lasagna dinner and a toddler wrestling match the night before. The plan was to leave early, to get to Harvey 's Cruise A me rica dealership on Long Island , and head toward our respective ho me s. It was a good plan. We just weren't ready to go.
Ben had slept reasonably well that night. The rest of us had not. Matt and Wigs were up until four in the morning interviewing each other in the RV, and I was in the house teaching myself how to edit a music video – “More than Words” by Extre me if you must know. Then when I ca me back to the RV to sleep, I accidentally locked us out of the house. This shouldn't have been a big deal, but Matt can't sleep without having a sip of water first. And we didn't have any water in the RV. So we started Harvey , drove to a CVS, and got Matt his water.
We were tired the next morning.
Since we had chosen to do interviews and edit music videos instead of clean, there was still plenty of work to do to get Harvey ready to go. We cleaned until eleven o'clock. Then we realized we needed to take all the stickers off Harvey 's exterior. When we left Maine , we were too poor to get a proper sign for the side of Harvey , so we had covered him with those black letters you can buy for your mail box. In three places we had written, “TheYoungA me ricansProject.com.” The T, the Y, the A, and the P were sparkly and red. The rest of the letters were black.
All the letters, whether black or sparkly red, did not want to leave Harvey . They, out of all of us, had the hardest ti me saying goodbye. When it's a frigorific December day and you have to use your fingernails to claw off letters that are ce me nted to the side of an RV, life sucks. Our fingers hurt, then they went numb. We had to decide whether to blow on them to try to get them warm, or just wait it out, get enough hypothermia to necessitate amputation, and go on Injured Reserve, which would be preferable because when you're on IR, you don't have to peel stickers.
When all the stickers were off, Jamie and Ben went to a deli to pick up sandwiches, which turned out to be over two feet long. They were the biggest sandwiches I'd ever seen. Actually Subway party sandwiches are bigger. But our sandwiches weren't party sandwiches.
We were off to a late start. Maybe Ben should have been more assertive in setting a departure ti me , but he had a right to be pissed off because Matt and Wigs had eschewed their cleanup duties the night before, and I was distracting everybody after lunch with my embarrassing Extreme video.
We finally got on the road around two, but soon after, Wigs announced that he had to stop at a FedEx store. He was riding shotgun, and I was driving, and we were going past a FedEx, so I pulled over. This set Ben off. He couldn't believe that Wigs had the nerve to send a package when we were already late. Wigs couldn't believe that Ben really thought waiting for Wigs to send a package would make us significantly tardier.
“Have you ever FedExed a package?” Wigs asked Ben. “It takes five minutes.”
“It does not take five minutes.”
“It takes five minutes.”
Wigs slam me d the door to Harvey and went inside the store. Ben followed him. Matt and I couldn't tell what they were saying, but they see me d angry, and then Ben gave Wigs a shove and ca me storming back to the RV.
The last leg of the trip was not off to a good start. Twenty minutes later, Wigs was back in the car, and we continued toward Long Island .
Around Manhattan , we hit rush hour. I took a wrong turn, and put us deep, deep into traffic. More reason to be pissed off at me .
All along I had been planning to exit the RV on Western Long Island, pick up my car, which was staying at a friend's house, and drive into Manhattan . The plan was for the rest of the guys to drop the RV off, and take the ferry to Connecticut , where they would go their separate ways. But Wigs had to get to a doctor's appoint me nt, so now he wanted to get out with me , and Ben and Matt weren't happy because they felt like they were getting stuck with the responsibility of dropping off a late RV, and nobody was happy.
Harvey had never been so cold.
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Did everything work out okay? Yeah, it did. It's too bad that our last day had to be our worst day, but after three months on the road, I think we were all ready to get off the road.
After spending the entire fall together, we knew each other so well that we'd all beco me completely predictable. We could imitate each other, we knew what kind of passive aggression each of us preferred, and we knew when to avoid so me one's bad mood. Unfortunately, on a 30' RV, you can't always avoid so me one's bad mood.
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So me final reflections?
Not right now. I'll wait until our book co me s out.
I'll just say this: it was a great ride.
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It's been over a month since the end of our trip. We've been gathering so me R and R, but we've also been thinking about the next steps for TYAP. There's more to co me from us. Sit tight.
We'll be back.
December 18
This blog’s just a little guy because I’m saving myself
for the end-of-trip season finale. Also, I used the time allotted
to write the blog to watch R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet.
I have no regrets.
So here’s what we did yesterday:
Drove from Charlottesville, Virginia to Washington, D.C. Along
the way we stopped at a shooting range where Wigs and Matt learned
how to shoot a shotgun and interviewed some local rifle enthusiasts.
Back in four. Email adam@tyap.com
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