The New City Passport

I wrote a blog post the other day about how much I hate packing and with less than 24 hours left before I depart, I'm still procrastinating. This time, procrastinating involves a much larger project. Several of my friends have just relocated to brand new cities (well, the cities have been around a while, but my friends just got there) and I want to help them get out and experience new things.

Because I'm still procrastinating and maybe because someone who reads this has just moved too, I thought I'd put my hard work here as well. Happy hunting.

THE NEW CITY PASSPORT

Congratulations on making it to your new home! As you unpack your bags, you’re probably wondering what you should do next and, now, I have got the answer for you! Below is a list of activities for you to complete within your first year in your new and exciting city and hopefully at the end of the year, you will have a wonderful scrapbook of all the amazing things you never thought you would try.

Guidelines for the New City Passport:

·         Items do not have to be completed in order nor do all items necessarily need to be completed.

·         Photographic evidence is required for each activity. You should also save any other mementos you come across (playbills, tickets, receipts, etc.)

·         Add your own item to the list! In fact, that’s one of the things on the list, but feel free to add as many as you like. This is about remembering an incredible year, so anything that was incredible or special to you should be included.

·         Share the love! You’ve got roommates, feel free to send this list to anyone you think would benefit from having some fun.

To Do:

1.       Visit at least one popular tourist attraction

2.       Buy yourself a really ugly piece of memorabilia from your new home (i.e. tacky magnet or bottle opener but it has to be ugly and say the name of where you got it! Bonus points if it is wearable)

3.       Go postcard hunting!

o    Mail yourself a postcard today (make sure to date it!) describing how you feel about your new city and what you hope happens this year. Mail it to yourself (yes, this step is very important, it has to go through the US Postal service) and then put it somewhere safe, but don’t read it again. Write yourself another post card at the end of your first year and mail it to yourself and then compare the two!

o    Mail me a postcard! I just want to know how you’re doing, plus I love getting mail! Make sure to date it so that I know when you sent it!

4.       See a play (or 10)

5.       See a foreign film. Bonus points if there are subtitles

6.       Go to a concert (rock and roll, classical, that random indie-hippie chick with a guitar at the local coffeeshop, whatever)

7.       Visit a local museum/art gallery

8.       Volunteer for at least one hour at a charity of your choice (hooking up with ugly people doesn’t count as charity)

9.       Eat at an authentic Chinese restaurant (and no take-out either!)

10.    Try a foreign cuisine that you’ve never had before

11.    Eat at an exclusively vegetarian/vegan restaurant

12.    Find a really, really good pizza place and try a topping you’ve never had before

13.    Find a good place for breakfast that ISN’T Dunkin

14.    Get your coffee/work on your screenplay at a coffee shop that ISN’T Starbucks

15.    Go to an ice cream parlor (parlor? Restaurant? Whatever, it’s ice cream!) and order the most expensive thing on the menu (within reason, but hey, live a little!!)

16.    Find a thrift store

17.    Go to three independent bookstores (that you’ve never been to before). Bonus points if you can find a bookmark (or business card)

18.    Make dinner – get all of the ingredients from a local farmer’s market or independent stores

19.    Take a different route than your usual one to work (or the gym or somewhere else – anywhere you go on a semi-regular basis)

20.    Go to a yoga class

21.    Go to a Zumba class

22.    Visit your local library and take out a book

23.    Say hello to a neighbor that you don’t normally talk to

24.    Plan a day trip for somewhere outside of the city

25.    Make a new friend

26.    Add at least one thing to this list: 

So, considering that living out of a suitcase is sort of a huge part of my job, I hate packing and am doing anything I can to avoid it at the moment (I leave on Friday). Current means of distraction include listening to The Grapes of Wrath on audiobook, rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, rewatching all of season 2 of Teen Wolf, hitting refresh on my Facebook feed every four minutes and writing this blog post.

I promised population counts and I am a woman of my word, so in honor of not wanting to decide which sweaters I should take and which ones I should abandon for the fall and courtesy of the Google, I proudly present my fall itinerary!
Lander, WY - 7,732
Lyman, WY - 2,096
Bridger, MT- 728
Helena, MT - 29,596 
Wolf Point, MT - 2,787
Harrison, MT - 162
St. Ignatius, MT - 852
Amsterdam, MT - 727
Trout Creek, MT - 261

I bolded the towns with the greatest and fewest number of people, but hey, by Montana standards, 162 is a lot. I consider having only one town with a population under 200 and two towns with a population under 500 to be a serious win.

See you soon, Big Sky Country (I'll probably be naked because it's easier than packing!). Peace and love!

Better Late Than Never

I have been lazy with my blog since returning home! But it is a travel blog and I'm technically not traveling at the moment.

First off: Tattoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pretty neat, right?

So how did I get home after spending the most awesome birthday weekend ever with the bestest sister ever? Well, that is a planes, trains and automobiles ordeal (minus the trains -- there weren't any trains involved). Whitney dropped me off at the airport a few hours earlier than I needed to be there so that she could play some lacrosse. This left me time to wander, although I never did walk all the way down to Terminal E, which is where Whitney likes to go to get Pinkberry when she flies out of Charlotte -- she even has a special song to declare her love of their frozen yogurt and her quest to find it -- never destined to be a Billboard Top 40. Moving on. I was flying from Charlotte to Baltimore and then Baltimore to Boston on Southwest. I'd never flown Southwest before but they legit give you a number! They don't have real seat assignments! You just check in, get a number, and fight it out once you've gotten on the plane.

Regardless of whether I loved or hated their seating arrangement, I did hate hearing that my flight was going to be delayed due to bad weather. PSA to everyone who has ever flown or ever will fly: shouting about how upset you are that you flighter has been delayed will not clear up a thunderstorm hundreds of miles away. It just won't and you're shouting in my ear. An hour later, we got the call that we were good to go and it was time to line up. My ticket was 38B which isn't the greatest number to have -- it means that #A1-60 and B1-37 have boarded in front of me -- and is closer to the end. I was in line and they'd boarded all of A and B1-30 when they got a call that the flight had been delayed again! Half of the plane had gotten on and was stuck. Thank B38 that I wasn't one of those people! So I sat back down and watched more drama unfold. I was told that this delay would mean that I was going to miss my connecting flight, which really freaked me out and was standing in line trying to get rebooked when I was told that my connecting flight had also been delayed and that I should get on the plane. They kept going back and forth on this and I spent at least an hour totally convinced that I would never see Boston again, but I eventually did get on the plane (managed to snag an aisle seat!) and flew to Baltimore.

BALTIMORE

Flying to Baltimore, however, did not mean that my flight to Boston would still be waiting for me and that meant a mad dash through the terminal after my flight had landed. Luckily for me, my flight to Boston was boarding as I spring up to the line! I was officially Boston bound. Once I was sitting on the plane -- having found a comfy window seat -- I managed to collect another geotag in Baltimore (one must always make time for Snapchat in these serious moments).

And then I was home! Thank goodness!

Since returning home, I've mainly vedged out. I got a 30 days of unlimited yoga for $30 deal and have caught up on lots of TV.

I was reminded that I needed to blog when I realized that I had never shared my fall itinerary! I'll be back in Montana for the most part, zig-zagging all over the place (obviously). Now ladies and gentlemen (or Mom and Dad), I proudly present my intinerary!
9/14-9/19 - Lander, WY
9/21-9/26 - Lyman, WY
10/5-10/10 - Bridger, MT
10/19-10/24 - Helena, MT
10/26-10/31 - Wolf Point, MT
11/9-11/14 - Harrison, MT
11/16-11/21 - St. Ignatius, MT
11/30-12/5 - Amsterdam, MT
12/7-12/12 - Trout Creek, MT

Zig and zag

I'll work on collecting population counts as I prepare for the coming autumnal months!

Castro Street

This is Thomson Jaffe, coming to you from North Carolina, with a report on my last day in San Francisco.

As Queen of the Gays, no trip to San Francisco would have been complete without a trip to Castro Street. I can't report on everything that happened there, but I can tell you about some of it. We actually started the night in the Mission District, which had snapstickers, obviously. 

We went to the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen for dinner because... an entire restaurant dedicated to grilled cheese? Yes, please. I actually found out about this restaurant on my own back when Mandy was talking about moving to San Francisco. I told her that she had to go and a few weeks ago, she passed it (their second location, not the one we actually went to) and apparently made some very poor driving choices to get there just so she could say that she went there for me. I got the Mac N Cheese Grilled Cheese because well, duh. Have you met me? That should surprise no one. I did shock Mandy by ordering a strawberry lemonade. I don't think she'd ever seen me order something besides water at a restaurant before.

After we'd filled our bellies with molten, golden lava, we walked through the Mission District to Bi-Rite Creamery. This place came to us not only courtesy of The List, but also my cousin Sarah, who gave me her own list. According to The List and Sarah, the flavor to get is the salted caramel, so we did. Yes, I got something besides a vanilla milkshake or chocolate/vanilla twist!!! Ok, so one of my scoops was chocolate, but it's the scoop on the bottom, so if you look at the picture to the left of your screen, you're seeing nothing but their most popular flavor and something I never would have dared to try, much less purchase, a year ago.

We enjoyed our ice cream outside in Dolores Park (another suggestion of Sarah's) and then we walked to Castro Street. Being the more historically inclined out of the two of us, I wanted to go to 575 Castro Street before we hit any clubs/bars. Mandy had no idea why I'd want to go there, so I had to give her (and now you) the quick history of Harvey Milk, the mayor of Castro Street. 

575 Castro Street was the location of Castro Camera, which was the camera shop that Milk ran and lived above. It's also the location that he ran his campaigns from -- ya know, the campaigns he won that made him the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California. Since then, he's been called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States." Today, 575 Castro Street is the home of a Human Rights Campaign store, which is pretty perfect if you ask me. Mandy and I probably would have bought some swag there is we weren't going out.

I'll describe our night after that as being the most memorable night that we don't remember and that is all you're going to hear about that.

I left yesterday morning to surprise Whitney for her birthday! I got lucky and was switched from my flight(s) that would have meant I didn't get to NC until 11:50 to a direct flight, scheduled to arrive at 9:06pm! I mystically got even luckier and on this "sold out flight," there was one empty seat that happened to be next to me! Our flight was delayed slightly but I still managed to make it to Pfeiffer in time to surprise the birthday girl before she turned 22. She was in shock! It was awesome.

We celebrated her birthday this morning by getting some brunch at Waffle House in between her classes and this afternoon, we're headed out to get our very first, matching tattoos! Happy birthday, Whitney!!! 

P.S. In the past 11 days, I have been in all four US time zones, gone from the east coast to the west coast and back again.

You Know It's a Good Day When...

...it begins and ends with Teen Wolf and that is exactly what happened today.

As I said, the day started with Teen Wolf. I got up before Mandy and caught up on last night's episode while she slept in. She didn't actually sleep in very late because we left for our hike at 9:30am. In a twist of events that I'm sure surprises no one, we got lost. What can I say? Old habits are hard to break! We never found the trail Mandy had set out to find but we did have a nice time and got some pretty views of the bay (or Bay? or is it bae? That last one was a joke, but I'm really not sure about the capitalization rules of San Franciscan bodies of water). 

After hiking up, down and all around, we got back in Mandy's car and headed to Amy's Drive Thru. Amy's Drive Thru isn't any restaurant, it's a fast food restaurant, but not just fast food -- America's first vegetarian fast food restaurant. At least, I think it's the first, but either way, it's a rarity that Mandy waited to try until I arrived here. We were really excited to go here -- Mandy's friend had given it his stamp of approval (he had said there were limited options but we thought they had plenty of stuff -- this is what happens when the meat eaters are forced to look at our side of the menu). It was really cute and very tasty. I hope it catches on because while I doubt they'll be popping up in rural Montana any time soon, it would be nice to have the option of something fast on the road. 

After that, we fit in some Teen Wolf. After months of rolling her eyes at my Teen Wolf obsession, Mandy decided that it was time to give the show a chance! Victory is mine!!! Not only did I get her to watch it, but she's hooked! Hehehehehehehehe

Despite hiking for two hours, we hit the gym in the afternoon and then went got takeout for dinner (we couldn't waste time sitting in an actual restaurant when there are five seasons of Teen Wolf for Mandy to catch up on!). We didn't just go to any place to pickup our dinner, we went to Homeroom. Homeroom is "a restaurant dedicated to the best food on earth: macaroni and cheese." This restaurant might just be the greatest place on Earth.

It shall be mine!

Mandy went here right after she moved this summer and told me that they actually had a mac and cheese cookbook -- a cookbook that we'd seen on a shopping trip somewhere on our journey together that she said was the perfect book for me. I'd always debated buying it but am happy to say that this morning, I realized I had an Amazon giftcard and went for it. The book should be arriving at home at the same time I do! We got the jalapeno popper mac which was spicy and yummy and wonderful.

As we were filling our bellies with the cheesy deliciousness of cheese covered noodles, we filled our brains with Teen Wolf and eventually hit the hay, excited to have one more full day together.

Blog ALL the Things!

With limited internet these first few days (Mandy didn't have the password to the wifi at her aunt/uncle's house in Walnut Creek), I wrote things as they happened and am just now posting them, so if you're confused by tenses and verbage, I'm sorry, but I'm also lazy and write quickly and edit poorly when I'm focused on having fun and you should have very low expectations of this blog by now anyways.

DAY ONE IN SAN FRANCISCO was really a day in Walnut Creek, CA. Mandy's aunt and uncle live there and Mandy spent most of the months leading up to our tour there and we were dog sitting. Mandy modeled the brand new Aladdin t-shirt that I brought her and the dynamic duo was back in action.

Walnut Creek has some pretty geotags... I'm still really confused about how geotags work because sometimes they're there and sometimes they aren't, even if you're standing in exactly the same place as you were before but now you can design and upload your own, so I might have to do that someday. Along with their pretty geotags, they had one that took some decoding. Please not "DubC" in the upper left-hand corner of my photo collage; Mandy admitted to me that she didn't know what it stood for when I asked and it took me a while to figure it out but I did. Walnut started with W or "dub" and Creek starts with C. Yay logic!

We went to a vegan restaurant for lunch. It's so nice to be in veggie friendly territory with another vegetarian. Mandy wants me to mention again that she didn't force me to become a vegetarian, but I'm glad I did because I'm having lots of fun trying all of these new things. I also saw the pet store that inspired Mandy's switch to vegetarianism, which is what inspired my switch. I'm not sure I've ever told the story, so here it is:

When asked why she became a vegetarian, Mandy's response is always "It started with a snake..." As I said before, Mandy lived with her aunt and uncle for the months leading up to our tour but I didn't mention her two young cousins or that one of them has a pet snake. Mandy had to take her cousin to Petco to buy mice to feed the snake and as she was standing there, she thought about how inhumane it was that these little mice were just being picked up to be fed to the snake and how they didn't have a chance and then she had an epiphany that she was doing the same by eating meat so she said goodbye to steak and chicken. I have now seen those mice -- actually, I probably didn't see the same mice, those mice are definitely dead by now, but I did stand in an important spot in Amanda Belscamper history.

After lunch, we went back to her aunt and uncle's and made some banana bread (a new favorite that Mandy got me into in the spring) and watched TV. We were marathoning UnReal, which I had already seen but I thought Mandy would like (I was right). As we were hanging out with two hours to go before we left for an evening in the city proper, Mandy said "I think I have time for another half of an episode" and I said "I think you have time for a whole episode, how long does it take you..." And then I remembered who I was talking to.

We had a good night out. We collected more geotags and just looked cute in general. We met up with a couple of Mandy's friends and had a lot of fun.

DAY TWO was also a day in Walnut Creek. I woke up early -- Mandy did not... I caught up on some TV and then rewatched some Teen Wolf until she was up. When Mandy did eventually get up, I tried to explain five seasons of Teen Wolf to her in just ten minutes, which wasn't a real success.

After that, we went to "The Reservoir." I'm not really sure what that means, but apparently that's all you have to say and people know exactly what you're talking about. Typically people go earlier in the day to avoid the heat but Sleeping Beauty changed our plans.

Reservoir

After that, we went back  in town in Walnut Creek to an ice cream place from the list called Cream. I was disappointed quite frankly. Their specialty is custom ice cream sandwiches and everything looked great but they warmed up the cookies before they made the sandwiches! I know that sounds like a weird complaint but it meant that half of the ice cream had melted by the time I had paid. They also wrapped it up in a wax paper envelope so it was hard to get a grip on it. I don't feel like I even got to taste it because I was trying to shove it all into my mouth before it dripped all over my face, hands and front. We got some lunch at California Pizza Kitchen after that and then we went back to the house for more UnReal binging. We went to yoga in the evening and it was really great except that the studio was carpeted, which was new to me and I had a hard time balancing because the floor felt so squishy. We finished UnReal after yoga and after making ourselves a pretty awesome dinner of hodgepodge items we'd bought at Trader Joe's, we went to sleep.

DAY THREE started with a bang. Or should I say a shake? Actually, I should say a quake, because we experienced an earthquake in the wee hours of the morn. Ok, we for Mandy, pretty typical for myself. The quake even made the national news because when we turned on Good Morning America (which we consider news), they were talking about it.

We went to the Exploratorium in the early afternoon. It's a museum that seems to be about everything and anything. We had a really good time there, running around, acting like big kids and sometimes having to fight off little kids to do what we wanted!

After that, we hunted for some grub at Fisherman's Wharf and after lunch, stumbled upon Musee Mecanique, which is a penny arcade/museum. It was full of vintage, working penny arcade games but the first thing Mandy and I found was a photo booth. And I mean, how could we not?! We decided we would walk around to see everything and save the photo booth for last and while we were walking, I had the revelation that maybe this is the arcade where Anne Hathaway took Julie Andrews to play with the arm wrestling machine in San Francisco. Mandy seriously doubted this, but hey, when we came back around to the photo booth, we noticed a familiar face -- the face of the weird guy on the arm wrestling machine. We both took posed photos with it and while I was taking mine, some small child photobombed me and then told me "You know it's a game, right?" Sorry I didn't waste a quarter to reenact my childhood, small person.

After that, we returned to Mandy's apartment in Berkeley and then to the Saturn Cafe for dinner. The Saturn Cafe is on The list but Mandy had gone there without even knowing that, so when I told her I wanted to go, she was all for it!

The photo of Mandy in the lower left hand corner is a joke because when we told our waitress that we were both going to have water, she only brought us one glass and was surprised when we wanted a second one.

I got the fajita bowl with vegetarian chicken. Technically, I think all chickens are vegetarians, but this chicken was fake chicken for vegetarians. It was good fake meat! I thought it was all good.

After that, we returned to Mandy's apartment again. We'd wanted to find a Redbox earlier in the day but seriously could not, so we ended up watching a documentary on high schoolers at a performing arts school.

Now that I've managed to catch you up on three whole days in one post, it is time to take on Day #4.

To San Francisco!

Check in is over and I am in San Francisco!! How did I get here? I flew, of course. Just flapped my arms and into the air I went -- just kidding, I took a plane to Salt Lake City, Utah and then on to San Francisco.

I had to get dropped off at the Missoula airport like three hours early, which is a lot for any airport but especially the one in Missoula where there is like... nothing. I mostly fought with the internet for those three hours.

Although Salt Lake City had some quality geotags, I only had a short layover there.

My flight to San Fran was easy. The plane was very comfy too, which was a nice perk. I mostly slept through the flight:

Actual photo of my arrival.

As I continue to collect geotags,  I would like to point out that airports tend to have their very own and I have quite the collection. The Missoula airport doesn't have one -- it has more taxidermy than aircrafts -- but these are me in my various states of travel via air and space. Fun fact: I didn't actually go to the airport in Atlanta (bottom middle), I just stayed at an airport hotel!

Mandy met me at the airport and it was AWESOME! She even got me blueberry muffins because she thought I might be hungry!!! We drove back to her apartment (which may or may not belong to a murder victim -- no judgment, it just looks like someone might have died here!) and talked until like 3 in the morning. Now I'm up and she's not (what a surprise, that's such a new thing for us) and getting ready for the day. 

Good morning from Berkeley, CA!