remarks from the road 1

Welcome back to my awesome travel newsletter! Where I write so much every day that I don't want to write anymore when I get home.

But that's fine. We don't need to worry about all that silly stuff! Let's just talk about the fact that esteemed subscriber Noah Curran is driving me and his car halfway across the country from Ann Arbor, MI to Seattle, WA for his summer internship!

Throughout this trip we'll go through eight to nine states that are new to us. But first, we started somewhere familiar.

the midwest

I flew into Detroit on Saturday. I had been here once, long ago, for my friend's wedding in Dearborn. I didn't remember the heat being so dry here — in June it had felt like a sticky swamp with every warm breeze another layer of condensation.

After a night chatting with esteemed subscribers Madeline Smalls and Noah Curran's friends (along with a wonderful focaccia sandwich made by Madeline) we set out fairly early on Sunday morning (today) towards De Moines, Iowa.

My task? Figuring out how to sync data off of this device that Noah was using for research. For the more technically minded, the only way I was able to get access to the internal files was via SSH, so I set out to use rsync to download the data onto an SSD provided to me. After much finagling with rsync I was able to figure out the right commands.

While I did this, the device:

• Overheated, due to the sun and me wringing its memories out of it
• Constantly restarted and stopped recording for no apparent reason at all
• Frequently just gave up on trying to sync photos over

And apparently this retails for one a thousand dollars. So, go figure!

Also please take this gallery of obnoxious billboards. One dispensary is enough. This many ... please no.

the prairie

Today was our first day in the prairie — and we aptly chose to spend it in Iowa, the home of the world's biggest truck stop.

Pulling into the truck stop, it honestly didn't feel any bigger than the pictures of the Texas Bucc-ees that I'd seen. Maybe it was because we were in the car area? The rest stop itself had a bunch of restaurants and I bought this funny little magnet to remember I was in this weird corner.

The trucking museum (which you'll read about tomorrow morning) was a lot more interesting. They had originals of some of the oldest electric vehicles in America (including the first e-truck, suck it Cybertruck) as well as some particularly snazzy cars like the snowmobile one!

In general, one has to admit that the beauty of Iowa's rolling hills far surpasses that of northern Indiana. Where Iowa has undulating waves of earth covered in crops as far as the eye can see, Indiana just has flat land stretching until its southern half and Michigan — a terrible thing to witness for anyone flying into Indianapolis airport.

And of course, no day in America is complete without going to Cracker Barrel. This one employed some strangely young employees? That's one hell of a summer job.

Another note — what the hell is going on with the Iowa state capital? Is that ... a church? A mosque? Some type of basilica? Why the fuck is it so big???