Road Trip Part 2

So I made it to Fargo without incident, including speeding tickets. My car a 99 2-door Honda Civic named Otis went pretty well for being an 11 year old car. Although, I'm pretty sure my old '90 Oldsmobile Cutlass (Cecilia) would have given me fits on more than one occasion.

So Otis and I trapsed through the remaining portion of Illinois, through Wisconsin and then up to St. Paul, Minnesota. Illinois didn't leave much of an impression on me. In fact, it looked a lot like Ohio, which isn't saying much. Granted I was only in the top corner and most of the time I was avoiding Chicago like the plague. Didn't leave the state much chance to impress me. Wisconsin was pretty, rolling hills dotted with farms. I imagine Vermont might have looked similar at one point when there were no trees because they were cleared for farmland. Only difference would have been Vermont has hills and mountains verses Wisconsin has petite hills. Minnesota was a lot like Wisconsin, maybe less hilly. I came into St. Paul/ Minneapolis and the roads between those cities aren't fun especially around 4pm. I would highly reccomend not doing this, in fact unless you have some reason to be there, don't go if you're just driving therough.

The reason why I didn't go around, was that I had a friend living in the area who I hasn't seen since college. Thanks once again for letting me crash at your house. It's nice to be in a home rather than a hotel room. Hotel rooms are sterile and lack life, a home is welcoming and comfortable.

The next day I drove on to North Dakota, my final destination. I thought about stopping at the worlds largest ball of twine, it was only an hour out of my way, but I decided an hour was a long way to go to take a silly picture of myself giving the thumbs up in front of a gazebo that houses the worlds largest ball of twine, arguably the most boring attraction ever created. If anyone is wondering where exactly it is, as it would be fun to get their picture taken in front of it, it is located in Darwin Minnesota, halfway between St. Paul and Fargo, but not on the main road. I ended up at my destination around 10:30am, I left St. Paul at around 5:30am. The road between Fargo and my destination of slightly north of there was water on either side. A huge lake due to flooding. That's what it was like, driving through a lake.

And so my road trip is over, 4 days, 1,700 miles, 2 hotel rooms, 1 friends house, 3 foot long subway sandwiches and 7 muffins.

Moving

Right now I'm in the process of moving from my hometown of Belmont, to my next residency near Fargo, ND. So I'm driving my car out.

I've so far left Vermont, drove through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and I'm now in Illinois. Yesterday I never left New York and was mostly on I-90W the whole way. I stopped and looked at Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. When I say looked I mean I got out of my car, walked around for 20 or so minutes, snapped a couple of pictures, ate a sandwich, went to the bathroom and got back in my car. It was cool to see them, but I was a little dismayed at the amount of tourist traps they had. But what did I expect, it was NIAGARA FALLS not the Falls of Lana. The rest of the way was nice, farms all over the place. But nice rolling hills, well kept old barns (I have a soft spot in my heart for old red barns and get very sad when I see one that collapsed).

I ended up staying a Quality Inn in Hamburg, NY. Which had a bar/ restaurant downstairs. Looked like it was hosting the young male red neck societies weekly meeting, I decided to skip take out and ate a yogurt in my room. The place was nice, clean and just fine for the night. I had their breakfast, which was OK.

Here is a rant: Coffee. Continental breakfast coffee. The only word that I would use to describe this is fowl. Does good continental breakfast coffee exist, anywhere? I'm not asking for Starbucks here, just maybe something that doesn't taste like you're drinking a liquid that might be used to thin paint, clean out drains, or make babies throw up. I didn't think that anyone would actually want to say 'Hey look I make this fowl coffee' much less anyone who would want to serve it to their guests.

Hamburg was located just south of Buffalo. My goal was to get to Dunkirk, NY the night before, but just didn't quite make it due to a few snags which took a few minutes to get worked out. New York has these really cool service stations that are on the turnpike so that you don't have to get off to get gas, get food, go to the bathroom and walk around. I was also impressed that unlike Maine where the gas prices are much higher on the turnpike, New Yorks are lower. So you don't wonder if it would have been worth it to get off the turn pike only to pay the toll again to get back on.

I was only in New York for a little while and then on to Pennsylvania which did not have service stations so I had to get off the interstate to get fuel. One thing I did notice in Pennsylvania is that on almost every single exit there is a Subway close by. Which if I have to chose fast food, I go with Subway. So I got off and got a foot long sub, one half for lunch, and one half for dinner. I decided that Pennsylvania, the piece that I drove through was pretty, some rolling mounds (I wouldn't call them hills). Then after Pennsylvania it was Ohio.

Ohio was crap. The only thing good about the whole state were the service stations, and New Yorks were nicer. Trust me, I've been to a few. Ohio was mostly brown in color. It was also WINDY. My car got blown all of the place. I got out of my car to get gas at one point and I really had to lean into the wind. About the time I realized it started to get pretty was after I crossed the boarder into Indiana. Sorry for anyone who lives in a pretty part of Ohio, I'm sure they are there, but the northern I-90 pieces I saw... not so much.

Indiana green and had rolling mounds like New York, and was not as windy as Ohio. Although keep in mind there was a tornado warning for the piece of Ohio I was in so I'm guessing it's not windy like that all the time. There's nothing really to report about Indiana, other than that there were a lot of farms along the road.

The little piece of Illinois that I've seen so far has been my successful attempt at getting around Chicago at 4-5pm without getting stuck in traffic. If anyone is wondering take 80W toward Des Moines Iowa.

Tomorrow my plan is to visit a friend of mine in Minnesota near Minneapolis, only about 7.5 hours of driving (more when you add in stops). Friday I'm going to be coming into North Dakota with only about 5 hours of driving!! Short day! I'll keep you all posted.

I live Everywhere

I've had a few changes take place in the last few days. Around a month ago I started looking around for work in the fall. I contacted a few Outdoor Environmental Science Schools which are kind of like camp for school groups during the school year. Elementary aged children usually in 5th or 6th grade can go, spend a few days focusing environmental science, team building, and outdoor skills. I emailed a few asking what their hiring process would be for the fall. I received responses from a couple programs.

One emailed me back within hours and told me to submit my application as they had a rolling application process. Made sense, if they had someone who wanted to apply for the fall semester early it fills up a spot for them so they have one less position to fill. So I sent in my resume, cover letter, and reference contact information. I got a response from the school about 24 hours after receiving my information, they wanted to set up a phone interview.

A few days later I interviewed for a position, at the end of the interview the interviewer asked me what I was doing this summer, I explained that I was working in Wyoming starting the 12th of June. He then asked me if I was still working for Okemo. I figured this was a backwards way of asking why I was unemployed for the months of April and May, so I explained that I wasn't working at Okemo anymore due to the end of the season. I also explained that in Vermont there is literally nothing to do. Once winter ends everything stops and shuts down until summer starts. There is NO work to be found. He then offered me a job right then, from May 3rd until June. We worked out logistics and the next day I had bought my plane tickets out.

So here's my plan:

Drive out to Fargo and drop my car off/ spend sometime with my dad

May, fly out to Southern California for the month

Fly back to Fargo, spend about 48 hours in North Dakota

Fly out to Salt Lake City

The End of Winter, Beginning of Mud Season

The mountain is closing for the season, sad day. Granted it's still open for another week, but skiing the last week basically means that you got to say that you skied the last week. Kind of like opening week means that you're too impatient to wait for better conditions closing week means that you can't accept that conditions are bad and aren't getting any better. I skied on friday and it was good for the first couple of hours. It was also sad because Southface and Solitude (different areas of the mountain) were closed, meaning 1/2 the mountain was open and everyone was skiing on it. Conditions got too slushy for my taste. I was told that in order to truly enjoy this mashed potato like snow you needed wider skis, ones that almost look like snowboards. I had fun but skiing through slush is a lot harder than normal conditions. There were also starting to get bare patches in the trials as well. Towards the bottom the snow kind of resembled margarita mix. And so with a heavy heart, I packed up my ski gear and got out my mud boots.

Now some places in the world have spring. That nice time of year when the birds come back, the air smells fresh, and trees bud. Everything is nice and new. In Vermont we have that too, but instead of taking a stroll in the woods we walk through mud (keeping in mind real spring comes later, in June). Imagine all those nice things about spring covered in a layer of mud, and you're basically got mud season. Did you know mud has a smell? Smells about how you would imagine. Mud season is the worst, mostly because it comes right after ski season, and then there's not a whole lot of fun things to do anymore outside. Hiking should be kept to a minimum because hiking on muddy trails erodes them, boating is cold because the water hasn't heated up yet. None of the bars are open anymore because even the locals don't want to go out at night they're so depressed about the season. So if you were thinking of taking a trip up to Vermont anytime soon, don't. No offense against tourists, but this is the only season that we don't have a crap ton of tourists around. At least let us wallow in our mud alone.

Job Search... Encore!

I finally have a job for the summer. June- August. That has been a welcome relief as now the job posting I'm seeing are less for Instructor/ Guides as are for camp counselors. Jobs that don't require any sort of prior certificate or education. If I didn't already have something lined up I would be getting a little nervous seeing the majority of places having a hiring age of 16, with positions for 15 years olds in the counselor in training (CIT) programs.

I then started to feel weird, now that I didn't have my job searching hobby what would I do? I finished knitting a blanket, read a few environmentally themed non fiction books which were cited in my classes. I went skiing. I then was thinking about it the other day, when should I start looking for work in fall? I figured that I should apply for fall jobs in June. I them remembered that I'm moving potentially late April/ May from VT to North Dakota with my parents and then in June I'm going to start work, and won't be done until maybe August (no internet, no phone service). I then thought that if I did apply for jobs in August they might all be gone and it would look real bad. Guess I was going to apply real early, like now. Such is the life of a seasonal employment hopper, once one job starts you have to apply for the next.

I had a few places in mind that I was waiting to apply at. They're all outdoor environmental science schools. Schools can come to these places for a few days (3-5) and spend a week in environmental outdoor learning. Mostly public schools come, it's like a vacation, teachers bring their classes and also participate. The educators at these centers lead all classes and workshops. I'm applying to be one of these educators. All places that I'm looking at applying to have free housing on site as well as meals when the center is 'in session'. Surprisingly there are a bunch of these schools centered around Southern California. There's only one such company that I have found in New England.

One I had wanted to apply to has a rolling application basis but they're based in the Bahamas and basically I wouldn't be making any money because I would spend the money that I did make on plane tickets. While the program did look good, and the location would have been amazing... I ruled that one out when I did the math. I don't need to make a lot of money but I least need to pay my student loans. The company based out of New England didn't have a very good breakdown on their website about what they pay, how you can advance through their system, and what the housing is like (is it a tent in the woods with a wood stove in the corner or is it a private dorm or is it a shared house?) basically there wasn't a whole lot of information. The only concrete information that I gathered from the whole experience of perusing their site was that in big bold red letters at the bottom of the employment page WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS AT THIS TIME. I shrugged, well that answered my question.

The other two that I was looking at are based in Southern California. The one that I was originally looking at back when I was still in Benin had a great employment page. Honestly, the company in New England needs to look at this page because if someone who's serious about applying sees this it spells out everything right away and shows that the company might actually be a bit motivated about their hiring process. There is so much information on here I really don't have any questions to ask, it's all answered in the website. I'm sure there are aspects of the school that they don't post on their webpage, i.e. videos of screaming children, employees pulling their hair out, and fights between the classroom teachers and educators. All things that I'm sure do happen. But they did a good job portraying the company without it coming off all sugar coated. The second place that I found also did a very good job. Probably what happened is that they're competitors and need to keep up with the latest hiring techniques (such as a good employee page).

I looked on their webpages and I saw that they both are hiring for the winter/spring semester. I figured that there was no harm in asking if I could apply early to one of these places. So I explained my situation, that I was going to be gone when I wanted to apply but I had already made up my mind to do so. I suggested that I could submit and application and they could keep it on file until they were ready to review it. I sent out both emails at around the same time. Both companies email me back right away two hours later encouraging me to apply and that they would be review my application right away! So I have begun to submit applications for September. Hopefully I will have lined something up before I leave in June. The hiring process begins again!