Portland Day 3: Well Done Day.
10:00 AM. I awake to find Tim and Shaun missing, but there is a note waiting for me. They have gone to get brunch supplies. We are to do a series of tasks before they return, including “be awesome.” On it.
We have planned a Well Done Brunch. Invited: Bowerbirds, Megafaun, Hometapes crew.
We took this project pretty seriously. It’s the first-ever Well Done Brunch. We can’t let the people down. We have menus and everything.
Let me just give you the rundown of what we created.
Iced Coffees.
Mimosas.
Bloody Mary Bar.
Egg frittatas with bacon, white cheddar, garlic, herbs and veggies from the garden.
Blueberry corn pancakes, topped with maple butter.
Curry breakfast potatoes.
Roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary. (compliments of Megafaun Brad)
Fruit salad.
Shaun was busy preparing a brisket to cook for the next seven hours, I played waitress and took everyone’s order, while Tim shelled out frittatas at a blinding rate. I’m not entirely sure how he did it. He has breakfast superpowers.
We ate like champions, then watched the boys play in the water hose. Just a typical day in tour land.
As if this wasn’t enough to call it a day at 4 PM, we all decide to drive to Washington state for the afternoon to play in the river and jump off cliffs. And that we did.
Finally, nighttime arrives, and it’s time to celebrate Adam’s birthday at the Hometapes abode. We run back to Shaun’s house and prepare yet another epic meal: beef brisket with raspberry BBQ sauce, sweet potato salad, brown sugar baked beans, cabbage slaw, gluten-free peanut butter cookies with fresh strawberry compote, and ice cream. This is getting ridiculous.
We head to the celebration. Brad has french braids in his hair. Mark is wearing Beth’s jorts. More eating like champions. Everyone is comatose by the end of it. We decide that the best day ever has to end at some point, and head back to Shaun’s to retire from yet another glorious night in Portland.
So that ends one of the best weekend of my entire life. Can’t we all just stay here forever?
Ode to the Brisket.
Shaun took me brisket shopping.
Such a large mass of meat is worthy of its own blog post.
Portland Day 2: Bowerbirds + Megafaun + Tire Swing
Day 2 began with Tim cooking the most epic breakfast from whatever he could find in Shaun’s kitchen and/or potted herb garden. Tim is known for his epic breakfast making, but this one really took the cake. I think we’ve earned our keep at Shaun’s house.
We spent the afternoon exploring the downtown Portland area with Shaun & Margaret, eating ice cream, touring giant bookstores, and enjoying gourmet happy hour treats (fried kalamata olives for one dollar? yes please).
We eventually head over to Porque No taco shack to meet Megafaun and the Hometapes crew. We are in the land of Hometapes, and we finally meet the staff of the label, including Sarah’s husband and label co-owner, Adam. I had a shrimp-chile-pineapple taco. I’m fairly sure it was the best taco I’ve ever had. Quite sure actually.
We swung on a tire for a bit, then headed to the venue.
The show was at Mississippi Studios. This was a big show, as it’s Hometapes territory, and the turnout was huge. Both bands played one of their best sets I had ever heard them play. The crowd was incredible. I tried to hover near the front and shoot as much as I could.
After the show, we did a quick visit to a neighborhood bar, then headed back to Shaun’s to make obscene amounts of iced coffee and make ridiculously detailed brunch plans until 4 in the morning. Totally normal.
Bed. Epic day of cooking begins in five hours.
Portland Day 1: Surprise BBQ Adventure
Driving out of Utah, we were faced with the decision to drive to Seattle, Anacortes, or Portland. All routes led us through Boise, so we just went to Boise.
I would have liked to see this city, as I’ve only been there for a day before this visit, but we arrived at 3 in the morning and just wanted to get a hotel and pass out. And that we did. We spent a couple of hours in the morning doing some work at an Idaho bookstore-coffeeshop, then headed onward to our destination of choice: Portland.
We chose Portland for a number of reasons.
- The drive was several hours shorter.
- There was no chance of being late to the show, because we’d be an entire day early.
- I had noticed a Portland-based design blog had mentioned our coverage of Megafaun. I sent him a message thanking him and informed him that we happened to be on our way to his city. He asked us if we had plans upon our arrival (we did not) and invited us to a BBQ he was hosting. Of course we said yes. Who doesn’t love BBQ-ing with strangers in Oregon? It sounded like an adventure in the making to me.
Nine hours later, we’re driving along the Gorge, surrounded by water and mountains and Christmas trees and windmills that resemble giant bladed alien probes. We arrived at Shaun’s house soon after.
Facts about Shaun:
- He is a Portland-based designer who spent years working with Wieden+Kennedy.
- He is moving to Raleigh-Durham (our hometown) in 10 days to work as art director for Travelocity.
- He was recently in Raleigh staying with my friend Grayson. Hanging out with my friends.
- He is best friends with the owners of Hometapes, Megafaun’s record label, who we’ve been touring with already.
- Basically, we were destined to meet him anyway.
I don’t think I can say enough how freaking small this world is.
So we dove right in. Lots of tasty drinks and grub waiting for us. It was a proper west-coast BBQ, a foodie’s haven. We quickly got acclimated to our new environment and finished up the night crashing our new temporary Portland abode with our new best friends, Shaun and Margaret.
We would end up living here for the next three days.
More Dinosaurland
driving back up the long dirt road we got to see a few pieces of nature. like a hawk and some cows and more cows and stuff. we also could see about where our campsite was, in the next photo you can see steamboat rock(in the middle at the bottom) with the echo park cliffs all around it. was humbling to see how far we had gone and how far we had to go. from here it looks like the grand canyon. 
hey COW!
more giant dinosaurs. they were really everywhere.
liz singing young turks, a regular for her.
dinosaur! you will see more of this guy soon.
as you may have already seen, there was karaoke later that night. it had been a while since ive done the karaoke so i figured my song selection would get enough bonus points to make up for my lack of singing ability. above you can see me singing the back street boys i want it that way. later i figured i had to go for the cheesy boy/girl band double. which meant the spice girls say you’ll be there was up next. the high pitched voice i was attempting may or may not have worked in my favor. it took a lot of drinking for this all to happen and not just normal drinking cause the Utah beer doesnt work, its 2% or something terrible. so i felt like i had to drink a whole ton more to even get ‘im feeling good’ vibe going. but it was a very enjoyable night for such a small town.
Karaoke night in Utah.
Night three in Dinosaur, Utah. Back from epic camping adventure. We wanted to see what sort of tasty grub this town had to offer. We had the choice of about two restaurants. We went with logic and naturally chose the Dinosaur Cafe.
I feel it’s necessary to restate how epic the clouds are here. Upon our arrival at the cafe I witnessed glowing rain for the first and likely only time in my life. Glowing!
The cafe was a dive and it appeared to be devoid of any staff when we first arrived. For a minute I was unsure if there was some unsaid method of self-service that none of the regulars were telling us about. Maybe they just wanted to relish in our confusion just a little longer. We finally found the one waitress though. I had an insanely good BBQ sandwich. After our meal, we continued to sit awkwardly for about a half-hour until the waitress finally informed us that we pay at the bar. Now we know for next time.
And then we hit the bar. I say bar singular because there is ONE. I forget the name of it… something saloon. It was karaoke night.
You know how some bars attempt to embody a country-western theme? This bar epitomized everything you could envision a country saloon to be. And it was all real. Totally legit. Old paintings of naked girls in cowboy hats, antiques randomly strewn about the wall, lots of animal heads and horns hanging, and even saloon doors to get to the bathrooms. Country as country can be.
Song material of choice? Backstreet Boys. Spice Girls. It was incredible.
We spent the night drinking more beer that doesn’t work, teaching the bartender fun shot recipes, and watching Utah folk dance to Nelly and Kid Rock between karaoke rounds. This actually sparked my intense desire to have a Bowebirds/Megafaun/WellDoneMedia dance party as soon as possible. Basically the same thing that regularly happens in Raleigh, just in a different setting than the Jackpot. I’ll be sure let you know how that goes once it happens.
I will miss this crazy crazy state of Utah.
dinosaurland, utah.
well thats nearly the actual name of the place. and if you look around you can see quite a few different giant sized dinosaurs. like pink dinosaurs with big eyelashes. i think i saw that one on jurassic park III last night.
liz had a good plan for the night. considering we had a 3 hour drive from salt lake city back to dinosaurland and the plan called for more driving on top of that, yeah it was going to have to be night plans. but good plans they were indeed: camping in echo park. 
“yeah it takes about 2 hours to get there because the last 13 miles are on a winding dirt road that you can’t drive through if its been raining.”
yikes. no wait, fun!
and liz was right. we drive 10 miles into the park on a real road with pavement and two lanes and stop signs and other normal things you see on roads. then we see a sign for echo park and something that reminds me of a hiking trail. the sign told us this trail will end with echo park after 13 miles. a beautiful drive followed. it felt like we were driving into the crand canyon. we could see for miles and everything was beautiful. i had never seen what a rainstorm looked like 20 miles away, we did from up here.
we finally made it down into the canyon and could see echo park and steamboat rock and a huge deer 15 feet from our campsite. we were definitely in nature. you could taste it with every breath. we settled in for a long night of guitar playing, smores and star gazing. wow i miss this place.
how big do you think that cliff is?
i dunno maybe 200 feet. 30o MAYBE.
[liz runs down to the base of the cliff, see photo]
hmm… thats at least more bigger.
gourmet smores! yum.
Dinosaur Camp.
With Salt Lake checked off on our to-do list, we decide to switch directions and head back eastward for a short hiatus in Dinosaur National Monument. I mean, how often do you get the chance to hang out in Dinosaur? Who could say no to that?
Liz had lots of fun planned for us. Our first objective was camping in Echo Park, which was about an hour and a half of driving through the monument, the last half-hour covering only about a mile’s distance through ridiculous terrain. I’m glad the car survived.
We drank wine and legitimate Ukrainian absinthe, read horoscopes, applied fake tattoos, ate lots of bread and hummus and avocados, cooked gourmet s’mores and listened to Liz serenade us on her guitar til the wee hours of the morning.
We all awoke early the next morning to the sun glaring down on the canyon, forming a nice atmospheric hot-pocket enclosing our campsite. We did some morning exploring until it was too hot to continue, then hopped back in the Dinosaur-mobile and trekked back to home base on the other side of the monument.
COW!
Colorado/Utah driving.
These states are particularly fun to look at. Nine hour drives aren’t so bad when the topography changes drastically every 30 minutes.
Utah’s topography was particularly epic. We soon found ourselves in the region of Dinosaur. Dinosaur functions as both a city in Colorado and a giant national monument that extends between Colorado and Utah. It is also a glorious haven for dinosaur statues. We picked up our friend Liz and continued on to Salt Lake to catch the end of the Bowebirds‘ set at Kilby Court, the best backyard venue ever.
Other notable fact about Utah: The beer doesn’t work. You can also get in big legal trouble if you are caught with liquor that was not purchased in the state of Utah. You also have to purchase wine at the one state liquor store allotted per city.
But yeah, other than those few alcohol-related differences, Utah is fabulous.
the great salt lake
leaving denver i cut a few sunflowers from slaby’s garden. yet another 9 hour drive ahead of us because we were making a detour through dinosaur national park on our way to salt lake city. it seems like we decided to step things up a notch as we left denver. we’ve been adventuring quite a bit but the adventuring needed a kick in the butt.
driving through the mountains our poor car puttered through like a champ. we have a lot of stuff in the car and its amazing the car made it up some of these mountains. the winding roads were pretty fun though. once we got past the mountains there were long stretches of desert and nothingness. it was beautiful.
running a little late we pulled in to dinosaur national monument in jensen, ut at 6 p.m. but i was excited to see liz for the fist time in a long while. she is currently interning at the national park to paint a 48 feet wide by 8 feet tall mural at the new dinosaur museum. gonna be huge and awesome. you’ll see some of her drawings soon. i was amazed at cause she lives inside the national park, kind of out in the middle of nowhere but mountains with in walking distance. and plenty of places to camp!
we loaded up quickly trying our hardest to make the three hour drive farther west to salt lake city. it was almost 7 p.m., the show starts at 8 p.m. and megafaun would go on at 9pm. ugh. we decided to go on and see what adventure we could find even if we missed the entire show. i’m sure salt lake city would have a few things for us to see.
more driving. more mountains. more beautiful.
halfway through the drive i send a message to brad:
“we are running a little late. create a diversion!”
if they did i’m not sure if it worked to well. we got to the venue, kilby court, which was described to me as someone’s back yard. well yes, it was. i figured it would be some bar with an awesome outside area. but no, it was kilby ct, the road with a venue at the end of it. it was beautiful.
this last one is like a wheres waldo for phil of megafaun. see if you can find him.
the denver
wow. another 9 hour drive. this makes a full day of driving over just three trips: raleigh –> indianapolis (10 hours+). chicago –> omaha(8 hours+). lawrence –> denver(9 hours). yikes. but if you think about it we did less sleeping than driving during those days. i guess thats a plus…
first thing we met up with nick, a recently relocated raleigh-er, who seems to be enjoying denver and all 100, or so, skate parks within an hour of the city. so much so that he messed up his shoulder about a month ago doing some jumps. he was doing some awesome trick and busted, but don’t judge him by that one fall. he’s pretty awesome and has enough guts to take chances on the bike and in life, a good man to be around.
we plotted about riding around the city the next day, yay, which we did. denver is a pretty awesome city and by bike its really awesome. felt like a normal big city downtown but less cars. very few cars actually and lots of bikes. lots and lots of bikes. nick told me the last city bike ride brought in over 700 people. sounds like a dream come true for him. and me too. one of the great things about raleigh is that i dont have to drive anywhere mainly because all i need in raleigh is pretty close together. but denver is huge and i feel like i can get around to most places on a bike. we stopped by the art museum and the convention center to see some of the public art. there was a huge blue bear at the convention center looking in the windows and some giant bulls outside the art museum. we climbed the bulls.
matt slaby, a fellow member of luceo images (and now we have a twitter account: luceo ), was kind enough to put us up for a couple nights. the day we rolled in to town he was out at some LARPing or live action role playing. check out his blog for some of the photos. it looked pretty awesome. when we got to his house we were a tired from the drive and drank some of slaby’s homemade wine, which was very good, and hung out playing him in some chess. i beat him pretty good a few times and then challenged him to a game where i dont get to see the board ust hear the moves. i would have beaten him…
the megafaun/bowerbirds show was great. one of the highlights of the night was after the music with phil from megafaun. we were doing some fun stuff for a video i’m making. he showed me a levitating hat trick then did some slow motion dancing. more on this later though.
then more wine at slaby’s. bed.
DENVER!
After waking up from an incredible night in Lawrence, Kansas, we said our goodbyes to our gracious hosts of Ample Branches and set off on our 9-hour trek to Denver.
Our directions were simple enough: take two turns, drive 500 miles, take another turn, and you’re in Denver.
Somehow I managed to take ZERO photos from the drive… but I think that was largely due to the fact that we were driving through the desolate expanse of Kansas and eastern Colorado.
It was dark and rainy by the time we arrived, but the city still looked glorious. Our first stop was a coffee shop to do some work and meet up with our beloved friend Nick, who recently moved to Denver from our Raleigh homeland. He was happy and looked great, other than the shoulder he managed to recently dislocate from his body which sort of leaves his right arm dangling. He enjoyed showing it to us repetitively as we drank our coffee.
We then headed to our temporary Colorado shelter, the home of the honorable Matt Slaby. Slaby is a Nordic viking who owns a beautiful house in the hills of Denver. He makes good photos and good wine. He has two cats, both affectionately named “Cat.” He currently has a fish bone stuck in his tonsil. He is also part-owner of Luceo Images, Tim’s photo collective.
We spent night one exploring Slaby’s basement, drinking Slaby’s homemade wine, playing Slaby’s guitars and piano, and harassing Slaby’s cats. A good night at Slaby’s indeed.
Day 2. Tim and Nick went to ride bikes around town, while I caught up on some work I needed to complete for grad school. I ate my first enjoyable salmon dinner of all time at a little Japanese dive, then headed to the venue in which we were supposed to meet up with Bowerbirds & Megafaun.
Well. Tonight’s show presented some complications.
1) Apparently this is some sort of music festival, which apparently justifies a $25.00 ticket price.
2) None of the bands were allowed a guest list.
3) Tim managed to sneak in while helping the Bowerbirds load, and found an extra arm band allowing him unlimited access. I did not.
So I decided that this show I would do without. $25.00 for a show that we have already seen in four states is a little out of my budget, as much as I would have loved to see then again. In addition, Tim was already in, so at least one of us could be collecting material for the blog.
So I went to drink apricot beer with Slaby on a patio elsewhere, where we discussed and exchanged our views on networking and marketing and overzealous wine descriptions.
I headed back to the venue once the show was over to hang out with the folks I had missed. We considered going out and finding some adventure with everyone, but we were a bit tired and wanted to save some money. So we all headed back to Slaby’s where we ended up drinking homemade strawberry wine and playing cards until 2 AM anyway.
Day 3. We woke up late, had one last epic battle with Slaby and his oversized weaponry, and headed on our way. Next stop: Utah.
Lawrence, Ks. – You could hear adventure calling
Today’s posts are presented by Busy Bee Cafe!
The Busy Bee is one of Raleigh’s newest establishments, nestled in the center of the downtown district. Open 20 hours a day, the Busy Bee functions as a multi-level coffee shop, restaurant, and bar. You can stop by in the morning for fresh baked pastries and renowned Counter Culture Coffee, even stay a while and to use the free wifi and perch at a table in their loft to get some work done. You can enjoy the food menu all day, from tapas sharing plates to gourmet sandwiches to excellent entrees to late-night tater tots (my official post-midnight Raleigh addiction), crafted from local and organic ingredients. And then there’s the bar. Oh, that bar…
The Busy Bee boasts and outstanding selection of microbrews, with a beer, wine, and cocktail menu that changes seasonally. Their second floor bar, also known as The Hive, has its own custom menu for adult beverages, to be enjoyed on their rooftop patio (the only one in downtown Raleigh, mind you) or on the dance floor, usually to the accompaniment of a live band or awesome DJ. The Bee is constantly looking for innovative ways to create unique beverages, and you can usually find a new cocktail infusion being crafted every week. Their drinks are always stellar, and they happen to serve my favorite cocktail of all time: The Sting. It’s a Bee-invented fruit cocktail that involves fresh cilantro and jalapenos. Need I say more.
Tim and I absolutely love this place, and The Bee actually hosted our last Raleigh photography show for the month prior to our phototour. We love everyone involved at The Busy Bee and are so fortunate to always have their support.
Check out The Busy Bee at busybeeraleigh.com!
-H
After the Omaha show we get word about Megafaun playing a show in Lawrence Kansas. This wasn’t on our list of places to go but Brad and Phil promised it would be worth it. They played there a bunch of times before, the venue was awesome and there would probably be a fun after party.
We could hear adventure calling. So we followed…
Just an easy three hour drive down to Lawrence, cake compared to some of the other drives. Once in Lawrence we met up with Megafaun and showed videos, talked about good Asian food and worked out the rubik’s cube, Kansas started off right. Later Helena and I went to seek out some good food. We walked the entire strip up to Free State Brewing Company, recommended by a Kansas friend, only to find the restaurant overflowing with people. So we quickly got some noodles on the way back to the Replay Lounge.
This place was madness. A huge outdoor area with a stage and an inside bar where most of the bands would play. There were also six, yes six, pinball machines. One was on free play. I played a bunch of games and felt pretty confident so I challenged Brad to a game, one on one. He walked up with his Golden State Warriors jersey on and proceeded to own my entire score with his first ball. Failed.
In front of a comic book scene Megafaun took the stage, you could see they had their game face on. Apparently the crowd did too. Lots of people and lots of dancing. The lighting in there was pretty awesome with some green shining on a disco ball, red millennium falcon dangling from the ceiling and some other fun colors which made for good photos.
Then we all partied.
Omaha + Megafaun + Bowerbirds + Awesome
omaha is pretty awesome. got to see the bowerbirds and megafaun for the first time on this trip. i got some more to say about omaha but we just got to lawrence, kansas and megafaun is playing soon. so ill have to get back to you on some thoughts. above are my favorites from the other night.
Hp explores Omaha.
Greetings from Omaha!
This was the first time we actually had a deadline to be in a specific city. We knew that no matter where we ended up in the country prior to this, we needed to be in Omaha by the 22nd, as our friends Bowerbirds and Megafaun, two incredible bands based out of our hometown of Raleigh, were playing a show that night. No traffic jams this time… and we actually made it into town a day early!
This left me the entire following day to explore downtown before the show. The area where I spent most of my time could be compared to Raleigh’s warehouse district or downtown Durham… lots of old warehouses and otherwise giant brick buildings that had been renovated but still retained their integrity. The streets were made of brick and most of the streets had giant wooden awnings installed over the sidewalks with flowers planted on top. Way fun. The weather was a little crumby, but still good enough to snap a few shots.
I stumbled upon a random thrifty antique shop in the midst of my exploring… and was greeted twice by a young hipster lady who seemed too inebriated to realize she had started a conversation with me five minutes prior. I carried on the second conversation as if the first never happened. I’m not sure if she ever realized it. Perhaps that’s for the best.
I met back up with Tim and Alyssa, our lovely Omaha host, and we spent some time drinking coffee and browsing record shops (Saddle Creek Records, founded by Conor Oberst, is based out of Omaha… so you can get a lot of their tunes for cheap here).
Next stop: Meeting up with Bowerbirds & Megafaun. They were playing at the Slowdown, the venue owned by Saddle Creek. The venue was nice… very aethetically pleasing and quiet and completely devoid of smoke or grime. Nice change.
The show was great, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, and the show was well-received. We stayed for a bit to catch up with all of them post-showtime, but we were all so exhausted from our own individual tours that we said our goodbyes early and promised to catch up in Denver, when we all reunite.
Omaha day 2 consisted mostly of pizza, beer, and mustaches. Just you wait and see.
tim’s day 2 in chicago…
Hi! Up until now I’ve been shooting most of the photos and Helena has been doing most of the writing. But now we both will be writing and photoing. Watch for the author of each post to see who did what.
day 2 in chicago…
I woke up with a big day ahead of me. We made it to our first really big city, Chi-city, and there was so much on my list: hang with Common, go see Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Oprah. Well, I did listen to Common and sing his music all day while wondering.
Ok the actual list: Good Breakfast. A quick walk to the cornerstone cafe and a smiley waitress. “Ivana. Its sounds like I wanna. Everyone starts to say ‘I-want-a…’ and I say ‘Yes?’” The turkey avocado was yums. Helena got a salmon omelet so big I called it a football. She ate the entire thing.
Next stop Ukrainian Village to see my old friend Elif. Considering I’m Ukrainian, I’d have to say she lives in the best area of Chicago. So I bought me a one day “Fun Pass” from a check-it-to-cash corner store which upped the days cool points by 6. No maybe 10. I made my way down Western to Elif’s apartment for a quick hello before she went off to work. Made some photos with her wonderful window light before she started to break dance on top of her couch. Crazy. We then talked about her brand new [to her] giant van that she bought the day before. Then she posed with the vehicle’s title.
Wandering came next. I’m a big fan of street photography and all the random findings around a big city. I took the blue line down to the loop and started walking. Final destination at the Bean. I really do miss street photography.
After hanging out around the Bean for a while my tired legs needed a rest. I met up with Helena and we sat in Millennium Park for one of their Monday concerts. Wonderful music. Strings and beat-boxing. Meanwhile I find a photo of the rosebuds show at jackpot. Then immediately said crap and thought “would have been worth it to drive 15 hours to see them.”
rest time. power nap.
Elif finished work around 11 p.m. and we go to a bar in Ukrainian Village, The Bottleneck. Helena, Elif and I buy the Monday special, PB & J (PBR and a shot of Jim Beam. not in the same drink), look at the crazy baby doll heads on the wall and realize we missed the music completely. ha. We walk to another bar to meet up with Angus and Adam. Our progress gets halted by a very rude parking job. The SUV was blatantly in the crosswalk. So Elif keeps walking and proceeds over the SUV. “i mean it was the second of two illegally parked cars and it was entirely in the crosswalk,” she said explaining the simple cause and effect.
This new bar had more of a Ukrainian feel. The bartender spoke broken english and felt like an aunt of mine.
Taxi.
Bed…
Chi-City v.2
Angus insisted that we start off our second day in Chicago with a proper meal. So we took a quick walk to the Cornerstone Cafe, a cute little spot nestled in the middle of a gargantuan 5-way intersection. I somehow championed a smoked salmon omelette the size of a football. I was comatose by the time I got back to the abode.
Tim and I split ways for the afternoon, and I wandered around with Angus and Adam until evening, when we all met back up at the bean. Oh, that bean. It really is more marvelous than I could have ever imagined.
We said our goodbyes to Adam and Angus for the evening so we could get some shooting done. We quickly found ourselves distracted by really nice grass in the park, sandwiches, and a free concert at the pavilion at Millennium Park. Cellos, violins, MacBooks, and beatboxing. The music was absolutely wonderful and I found myself unable to really function other than laying on the grass and letting all of this soak in. People actually live in this place. This type of afternoon is normal and accessible for them. They can do this whenever they want (minus the winter months). I’m still processing it.
So yeah, I’m completely enamored with Chicago. Glad that’s settled. Now moving on in hopes of falling in love with the next city.
Indianapolis, Target, Chicago.
Our second day in Indianapolis was rather uneventful. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
We spent our afternoon in a downtown coffee shop putting together giant to-do lists, attempting to carry out snippets of said to-do lists, and putting together a stop-motion video to announce the winners of our Postcard Friday contest. It turned out pretty neat. You should watch it.
Next stop was Carmel, IN. It’s a little burb about 30 minutes north of downtown. We took a slight detour to drive by Helena’s childhood home on the way.
Our night in Carmel consisted mainly of spending time with the Hahns, eating crepes, petting dogs, researching, clipping, compiling data, writing, editing, emailing, calling, pitching, and watching X-Men 2. A low-key, generally productive night to prepare us for our trek to Chicago.
The drive to Chicago was… scenic. We were kindly warned by the state of Illinois that upcoming road work would have us in traffic that would make our remaining 80 mile drive take approximately three hours. So we took a little detour through… well we’re not really sure. But it got us to Chicago. We stopped at Target on the way, because Helena had a $25 gift card. We felt it was appropriate to spend it on things that would be necessary for tour, such as:
- Animal crackers
- Jolly Rancher gummies
- Four packs of grow capsules (in assorted shapes including aquatic animals, farm animals, and dinosaurs)
- Phase 10 deck
- Lisa Frank sticker set.
All of these will be put to use very soon.
After some more driving and about 90 wrong turns (Helena was driving), we made it to Chicago.
First stop: Sultan’s Market. Tim had been ranting about this place the entire way into the city. Apparently they have the best falafel sandwiches on the planet.
And that they did. Two spicy falafel sandwiches stuffed with cucumber + yogurt + hummus + spicy spice with curry rice to top it off. Good way to start the night.
We spent the next few hours wandering the streets of Wicker Park, and eventually found ourselves in a bar called the Crocodile, that happened to be serving $4 Blue Moon, $4 Dewars, and $4 Jim Beam, all of which comes with FREE PIZZA. We were sold. We ate more food and drank more drinks and wrote more obscenely long to-do lists. Nothing can take us completely away from all of our tour work… not even bourbon and beer and free pizza.
Around midnight, we headed to friend and gracious host Angus’ house, aka “The Whiskey Chest,” for some hangtime. We had full intentions of going out and exploring the city, but next thing I know, we look at the clock and it’s 3:15. I think it’s time to rest.
Next up: Chicago day 2.
Longest day ever: flaming semi trailers, secret Indy speakeasys, etc.
Yesterday was a long day.
We woke up in Raleigh. 7:30 AM. I (Helena) made plans to meet up with Simon Biswas, the road warrior that I wrote about in my previous tour planning post, at Morning Times for a cup of coffee. It only felt appropriate to meet up in the same spot where I first read his email about planning an epic phototour meetup.
Our coffeetime was a little rushed, as Tim and I were supposed to get on the road early, but Simon and I had a jolly time showing each other our tour routes, plans, and music suggestions. We snapped a few window shots and then I headed on my way. I can’t wait to compare tour stories + photos with him again when he stops through San Francisco.
And so began the drive. Driving to Indianapolis. A little far. Yes, we know.
Our original plans for Indianapolis:
- Arrive mid-afternoon or evening
- Eat sushi at sushi restaurant in which my friend Megan works
- Go to Vollrath Tavern to meet up with fellow Raleigh compadres and road warriors Bowerbirds and Megafaun, who had a show in Indianapolis that night.
- See where night goes from there.
After making a quick stop at a coffee shop in Durham to get more work done, we were extremely tempted to go surprise the Flywheel Design crew with a round of Locopops (fully expecting a response of… “aren’t you supposed to be in Montreal or something by now?”), but with limited time and funding in our Locopops budget, we decided it would be best to head on our way. Just know, Flywheel folk, we thought hard about it. Real hard.
Every single drive I have ever made through the NC mountains has been dominated by ridiculous rainstorms. This time was not much different. The storms were spotty, but intense. We’d go from sun to torrential downpour, and sometimes both simultaneously.
Enter West Virginia. Such an incredibly gorgeous state. Last time I was here I was touring with American Aquarium, yacking my brains out from food poisoning I received in Pittsburgh hours earlier. I’ve suddenly started producing body head and have been allergic to garlic ever since.
Anyway. The drive was going as planned.
Then, the inevitable traffic jam. In West Virginia, of course. The perfect setting for such a jam. Mountain to left, mountain to right, no exits for ten miles or so. No escaping this one.
Two miles and TWO HOURS LATER, we are quite eager to see the source of such a jam. We mentally prepare ourselves for some sort of measly fenderbender, so we can wallow in the irony just a little bit more.
Turns out it was a semi truck’s trailer that had caught on fire and perhaps exploded. Ok. That will do as a proper excuse for epic traffic jam. We finally pass it by and head on our way.
After a not-so-quick stop hunting for wireless in Raleigh County, WV (appropriately), we check our remaining travel time. Six hours to go. It’s 8:00 PM. Something tells me we’re going to be missing the show. I call the B-birds and tell them that we’ll just to see them somewhere else in the country in a few days.
Fast-forward six hours. Actually, almost seven. We finally arrive in Indianapolis. It’s 2:50 AM. Great news: Bars close at 3 AM here!
So we head to Broadripple, a bustling neighborhood in the city, to meet up with my friend Meghan, just in time for last call. We have a much-deserved beverage, and prepare to call it a night soon thereafter.
But no. There is a treat in store for us.
A certain friend of Meghan’s is opening a late-night speakeasy of sorts for us where we can drink for free, in a certain restaurant in a certain neighborhood of a certain city that we happen to be in. That’s basically as much detail as I can provide you on that one.
So we spent the rest of our night in an unlit, seemingly closed restaurant, sipping free cocktails with a hoard of new Indianapolis friends we had made ten minutes prior. They were all quite ahead of us on the drinking, as they had been drinking for hours, and we had been drinking for minutes, and it was quite funny trying to participate in conversations that consisted mostly of me autopiloting responses to inaudible slurring. Friendly well-intentioned slurring though. Nice folk they were. It was a good time had.
We’re going to spend the next day or so exploring Indianapolis. I was born here, and haven’t really explored it in about 16 years… so me and Indy have some catching up to do. More adventures to come.
Raleigh… again??
We had been anticipating a first week chock-full of thunderstorms. That’s what technology had been telling us anyway…
And somehow our random ocean excursion was pleasantly devoid of crumby weather. Even up to the point when we had to leave.
We weren’t entirely sure where we were going from here. We figured driving westward was a good start. We said our goodbyes to our gracious hosts, John & Linda Lytvinenko (who are kin to Well Done Media’s Tim Lytvinenko, if you could not have guessed), and headed on our way.
Not having a specific destination was not a huge concern to us. We had plans to be in Indianapolis by the 17th, so anywhere between there and the Atlantic Ocean would be a valid stopping point.
It wasn’t long until we found this mysterious unseen ominous weather. It was conveniently waiting for us on HWY 40. Lovely.
We couldn’t think of anything more logical or ironic than stopping back in Raleigh. What’s another day of dealing with everyone in the streets saying… “Aren’t you supposed to be gone already?” and us responding with “Yes… we’re gone. Totally not here right now. You never saw us.”
First stop: Visit Tim’s brother, Victor Lytvinenko, and his wife, Sarah, at their warehouse. Victor and Sarah are owners of the oh-so-wonderful Raleigh Denim. They’ve lately been busy with shipping obscenely large orders of hand-crafted, custom-made denim to Barneys New York. Not a bad problem to have! We felt like they wouldn’t mind taking a break to deal with yet another surprise Raleigh visit from team Tim & Helena.
A big thank you to Raleigh Denim for making Tim his new short pants. Victor (above) is putting the finishing touches on the jeans. 
rachel.
sarah.
We were thinking about heading to Asheville &/or Knoxville for the night, but our places to stay didn’t end up confirming until about 9 PM. At that point, it was a little late to start driving, so we crashed in Raleigh, one last freaking time. Promise.
Next task for team Well Done Media: Onward to Indy. Bowerbirds and Megafaun await.
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