Train Trip 2008, Day 2: Sunday, 13 April 2008

Seven years ago, my then-roommate E. and I, being fairly broke after 4 years of college followed by a year of Americorps service, occasionally entertained ourselves by watching free videos she’d check out from the library. I have a vivid memory of the two of us sitting on the floor in her bedroom (the other roommates didn’t want the TV in the living room), watching on her 13-inch TV a documentary program about the cross-Canada rail journey, both of us dreaming of trips we couldn't begin to afford.

When I started planning this train trip in earnest early this year, I wanted to take that cross-Canada journey myself at last--partly out of nostalgia for that post-college year, and partly because it just sounded so epic. I went back and forth about actually doing it, with my limited number of available vacation days: the Canadian train from Vancouver to Toronto only departs three days each week, so getting off the train for sightseeing would require at least a two-night commitment to the place. Still, the North America Rail Pass requires passengers to take at least one trip in Canada and the U.S., so I chose to head eastward on a nonstop trip through Canada. In some ways it felt like my train journey would truly start when that train departed Vancouver at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, beginning my travels into areas of the continent I’d never seen.

I woke up on my own Sunday morning in Vancouver just before 7:00 a.m., thanking my lucky stars for the earplugs that allowed me to sleep soundly despite the pedestrian and vehicle noise outside. (After one night I was already pretty sure those were going to be one of the smartest investments of the trip. Foreshadowing!) I dawdled around and took a leisurely shower before carrying out my plan to breakfast at Granville Island Public Market. It had rained during the night, but the clouds were rolling away as I meandered down the hill.

Browsing through the marketplace was so much fun. I bought this beautiful blueberry scone and a bowl of fresh fruit, and took them outside onto the docklike patio to eat in the sun while savoring the views of the mountains and the water. Every time I visit Vancouver I’m struck anew by how close the mountains seem to the city, how they loom up imposingly just behind the skyscrapers. This scone put those dry bricks from Starbucks to shame. It was crispy on the outside, light and moist on the inside, loaded with plump blueberries that burst sweetly with every nibble. While I sat there lingering over my delicious breakfast, I had the funniest sort of reverse-deja-vu moment. I thought, I am going to look back on this morning--on these very minutes--for the rest of my life. It's going to be one of those experiences I carry joyfully in my heart forever: this perfect scone, these juicy strawberries, the magnificent sensation of freedom and power as I begin a trip I’ve been dreaming of for nearly my entire adult life.

It was good.

Breakfast gone, moment over, I headed back into the market to stock up for the three-day cross-Canada trip ahead of me. Two big apples, a demi-loaf of multi-grain bread still warm from the oven, a small package of creamy Havarti cheese, dried peaches, and small crunchy dried apple bits. I thought it would be nice to have such wholesome treats to munch on for the next few days; I didn’t plan (and couldn't afford) to eat every meal in the dining car, and the “snack car,” at least on the Amtrak trains I was familiar with, were mostly overpriced convenience-store kinds of foods. Believe me, I love me some convenience-store foods, but I didn't want to have nothing else for three days. What can I say: stocking up on bread, cheese, and fruit? Yes, I’m a peasant at heart.



Reluctantly I tore myself away from the market and walked back up to the apartment so I could keep the cheese refrigerated as long as possible before my evening departure. While I walked, I dithered about what to do with the rest of the day. I considered taking a bus out to the Capilano suspension bridge, which I’ve never done; however, I didn’t quite trust my skills and the Vancouver bus system to get me there and back successfully, on a Sunday, in the allotted time. Instead I took the 98 express bus back downtown, figuring I could walk around in Stanley Park at least. Increasingly nervous about the looming fact that I was about to spend three days and nights mostly sitting down during the train trip across the continent, I wanted to try to exhaust myself beforehand as much as possible.

I walked across downtown all the way to Stanley Park before it occurred to me that I could rent a bike and ride the whole loop around the park. Luckily, my handy tourist map led me straight to the Spokes bike rental shop, and for $10 I was soon riding back to the park on a big old hybrid/city bike. It was way heavier and more upright than my bike at home, but its large, springy seat was certainly comfy! I made no effort to hurry, enjoying the views, the stiff ocean breeze, and the warm sun. I also enjoyed the intelligent design of the pathways, with the section for bikes & rollerblades almost always divided by an actual curb or elevation change from the lane for folks on foot. It seemed to flow more smoothly and with less aggravating cross-lane drifting than a place like Greenlake.



Even at my leisurely pace, with a couple of stops for pictures, I was still around the loop in an hour. That was the most enjoyable $10 I spent in Vancouver, for sure. I walked all the way back up to Burrard Street and took the express bus back to my friends' apartment one last time. I showered again, gratefully, well aware that I wouldn’t get another chance until Toronto on Wednesday night at the earliest. I cleaned up, packed up, and trundled myself back out on a different express bus line (bless them!) to connect with the SkyTrain to the train station. As usual, I’d been far more cautious about my timing than necessary, and was an hour and a half early. I wrote some postcards to friends and nieces, used my cheap phone card to check in with Rob, and had a snack.

Still anxious about how unpleasant three nights in coach might be, I asked a ticket agent (a young man whose close-cropped curly hair and toothy smile reminded me of my brother) about the cost to upgrade to a sleeping compartment. With no available discounts (he did try to find me one: “Are you under 25? Are you a student? No? Well, um...are you over 60?”), it would cost $431 to upgrade--significantly lower than the price I’d originally been quoted by phone three months ago, but still too high for my budget. He said it would cost $275 to upgrade for just the final night, which was mightily tempting--all meals are included for the sleeping car passenger. I decided not to do it, though, as he assured me I could always opt to do it later on, if I was having an unbearable time in coach.

By about 4:30 other coach passengers were beginning to line up, so I joined them. I was only about the third person in line; the man in front of me was on his way to Montreal for a job interview, and clued me in that VIA Rail didn’t hand out seat assignments the way Amtrak had-- “It’s just a free-for-all to the train once they start boarding,” he said. This made me twitchy to contemplate, but when they loosed us at 5:00, it ended up being much tamer than his description. They pointed us to different cars, depending on our final destinations, and there were so few of us going all the way to Toronto that the car attendant sorted us out to each have a two-seat row to spread out in. Peter, the man from the line, was sitting behind me; two elderly gentleman had both sides of the row in front of me. They were clearly rail fans who had traveled this route many times; I quickly learned to brazenly eavesdrop on their conversations for tidbits of information about the towns we were passing through.

We began inching our way out of Vancouver at 5:30 p.m., right on time. The train crossed over the Frasier River several times as we headed east, clacking through some lovely little hamlets in flat valleys ringed by mountains. For half an hour or so we took turns passing and being passed by a freight train running on a parallel track, which the two railfans in front of me enjoyed immensely. “Now it’s our turn!” they would crow when our train pulled ahead. "We're winning!"

As the sun set and the light dimmed, I peered out into the gloaming as long as I could at the lovely landscape--small towns tucked at the base of rugged, snowy mountains. Mr. Thel would like this, I kept thinking.

Bedtime wasn’t much of a problem. Our car attendant, Jeanine, came through the car in the evening and distributed not only small airline-style pillows, but also generously-sized blankets, earplugs, and eyeshades. I’d come prepared with all those things, but I still accepted the free supplemental pillow and blanket. The main lights in the car were turned off around 9:00. After visiting the restroom at the end of the car to change into pajamas and brush my teeth, I put my two seats back all the way, pulled up the footrests to make a sort of platform, pulled on my eyeshade and put in the earplugs, and curled up with my blankets in my little nest. Next stop: Jasper, Alberta, tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Mountain Time.

Train Trip 2008, Day 1: Saturday, 12 April 2008

The day of my departure was Seattle’s sunniest day of the year so far. Mr. Thel drove me to Seattle’s King Street Station (a moody, wintry photo of which had graced the cover of the Amtrak timetable I’d been poring through for the last six months). He sat with me until the train began to board around 7:30 a.m. I found myself getting anxious: not panicky, just suddenly emotional about being apart from my husband for three weeks. We haven’t been apart for that long since we first got together six years ago, after all.

Despite my anxiety, I felt as excited as a little girl on the first day of school as I lined up and shuffled out to the boarding platform. As I exited the station, I looked back to exchange one last cheery wave and blow kisses with Mr. Thel, and set out toward Amtrak’s Cascades train. I had deliberately packed everything into a set of two bags, a suitcase and a backpack which could be combined into one hefty article, so that I would never have to check any baggage and could hop on and off the train without delay. The Cascades is a one-level commuter-type train; I slid my suitcase into a luggage rack at the end of the car and found my assigned window seat on the east side of the train.

We smoothly glided away from the station at 7:40 a.m., exactly on time. As we slid through Seattle and up along the water, I kept wanting to narrate to anyone listening about what we were passing. I was well aware that these would be my last moments of familiarity for three weeks: the Magnolia Bridge, Kiwanis Ravine, the Ballard Locks. Pulling out of the city along the water on that gorgeous morning made me preemptively homesick. Joggers swarmed in Myrtle Edwards Park and Golden Gardens, the Olympic Mountains gleaming brightly across Puget Sound. The hazy gradation of blues westward made me wish I’d postponed the trip a day to enjoy it: the dark, bright water below the hazy blue of the trees on the islands; then the faraway blue of the Olympics and the pale blue of the morning sky. The lovely views of the morning made me speculate a bit smugly to myself that this particular route would be hard to top for beauty.

The train crossed the Canadian border at 10:20, just over two and a half hours from Seattle. The Canadian town of White Rock, barely north of the border, has an adorable waterfront street next to the train tracks, with shops and restaurants and parks, full of people already out picnicking in the sunshine. I spotted a bald eagle just south of town; I’d already seen a blue heron near Everett earlier that morning.

It was about another hour and a half before we arrived in Vancouver, B.C. I got through customs after being asked extensive questions about my itinerary by the female Canadian customs agent. She even wanted to see my reservation for my single night in Toronto later in the week. It was a very short walk from the station across the street to the SkyTrain, which took me into downtown Vancouver for an exchange to a bus to the South Granville neighborhood. A friend’s family keeps an apartment there; they were out of town for the weekend, but they had set me up with a key to stay for Saturday night.

I was truly impressed by the 98 express bus from downtown to their neighborhood. I don’t know if it’s what they’re calling “Bus Rapid Transit” in Seattle, but it was a route with fairly limited stops, and a bus came along at least every 15 minutes throughout the day. It made getting around much less stressful and troublesome. In Vancouver you can also use a credit card to purchase a bus ticket at certain stations, which was very convenient as well.

After finding the apartment and unloading my bags with a sense of accomplishment at having successfully navigated the first of several new-to-me public transportation systems, I went right back downtown to enjoy the afternoon. My friend had given me a pass to the Vancouver Art Gallery, so I went there and spent some time in their exhibit on trees in art. There was one piece, a film loop, displayed alone in a dark room--trees rotating around the viewer with a mix of natural and industrial noise as the soundtrack. I watched it all the way through once or twice. A woman who had just entered turned around and came right back out behind me as I moved on. Unprompted, as we exited she said, “Trees scare me!”

A headache made me head back to the apartment for a nap, after first having some disappointing Chinese food from the restaurant on the corner. There was an extremely inebriated man at the restaurant hassling the waiter. First he was appalled that he was too early to order something for delivery, and tried to convince the waiter that the time was an hour later than it was. Then he got belligerent: “Do you know how to cook?” he demanded. When the waiter affirmed that he could cook, the man persisted, “But do you really know how, or do you just think you do?”

Refreshed and pain-free after a nap at the apartment, I embarked on a walk down to Granville Island and up above the wall along False Creek out to Vanier park. The brisk salt air and the bright setting sun made it a lovely long stroll. Plenty of people were out enjoying the evening along the water on foot and by bicycle, but as I looped back uphill toward the apartment, I was more or less on my own through some quiet neighborhoods. Realizing that sunset was imminent, and not really wanting to end up wandering alone in the dark in unfamiliar areas, I increased my pace, arriving “home” just as the dusk began to deepen, around 8 p.m. I stopped at the corner store just long enough to buy some chocolate milk, went back to the apartment, watched part of a movie on TV, and went to bed.

Happy "June," y'all!

Contrary to the impression given by this blog for the last two months, I did successfully complete my long-anticipated train trip and survived, without so much as a keychain pepper spray for defense. Three weeks, ten thousand miles, 8 nights in coach, and seven cities later, I still think it was one of the best ideas I've ever had. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

In the meantime, I'm going to do some belated posting of how it all went, expanding on the notes I took throughout the journey. With gas prices climbing daily, I can't help thinking that train travel will begin to seem a more and more appealing alternative to road tripping--and I believe people who do try the train are almost certainly in for a pleasant surprise.

Itinerary

Train: 510 Cascades
Departure: Seattle (Amtrak), Washington
Saturday April 12, 2008 7:40AM
Arrival: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Saturday April 12, 2008 11:35AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

[I don't have an email confirmation for this leg, since it's on VIA Canada Rail, but the next bit goes like this:
Depart: Vancouver, BC
Sunday April 13, 2008 5:30 PM
Arrive: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday April 16, 2008 (7 PM, I think)]

Train: 7097 Maple Leaf
Departure: Toronto, Ontario
Thursday April 17, 2008 8:30AM
Arrival: Canadian Border New York
Thursday April 17, 2008 11:08AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat


Train: 64 Maple Leaf
Departure: Canadian Border New York
Thursday April 17, 2008 11:12AM
Arrival: New York (Penn Station), New York
Thursday April 17, 2008 9:35PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 160 Regional Service
Departure: New York (Penn Station), New York
Sunday April 20, 2008 9:00AM
Arrival: Boston (South Station), Massachusetts
Sunday April 20, 2008 1:07PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Bus: 8257 Thruway Bus
Departure: Boston (South Station), Massachusetts
Sunday April 20, 2008 2:15PM
Arrival: Portland, Maine
Sunday April 20, 2008 4:10PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Thruway Seat

Bus: 8256 Thruway Bus
Departure: Portland, Maine
Tuesday April 22, 2008 5:30PM
Arrival: Boston (South Station), Massachusetts
Tuesday April 22, 2008 7:25PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Thruway Seat

Train: 67 Regional Service
Departure: Boston (South Station), Massachusetts
Tuesday April 22, 2008 9:45PM
Arrival: New York (Penn Station), New York
Wednesday April 23, 2008 2:01AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 51 Cardinal
Departure: New York (Penn Station), New York
Wednesday April 23, 2008 6:45AM
Arrival: Chicago (Union Station), Illinois
Thursday April 24, 2008 10:35AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 59 Cty Of New Orleans
Departure: Chicago (Union Station), Illinois
Thursday April 24, 2008 8:00PM
Arrival: Memphis, Tennessee
Friday April 25, 2008 6:27AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 58 Cty Of New Orleans
Departure: Memphis, Tennessee
Monday April 28, 2008 10:40PM
Arrival: Chicago (Union Station), Illinois
Tuesday April 29, 2008 9:00AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 3 Southwest Chief
Departure: Chicago (Union Station), Illinois
Tuesday April 29, 2008 3:15PM
Arrival: Lamy, New Mexico
Wednesday April 30, 2008 2:20PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 3 Southwest Chief
Departure: Lamy, New Mexico
Thursday May 1, 2008 2:24PM
Arrival: Los Angeles, California
Friday May 2, 2008 8:15AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 14 Coast Starlight
Departure: Los Angeles, California
Friday May 2, 2008 10:15AM
Arrival: Seattle (Amtrak), Washington
Saturday May 3, 2008 8:45PM
Accommodation: Superliner Roomette

Yes, that's a roomette on that last leg, there. It was under $200 to upgrade to a room for that final day and a half--and all meals are included. I know my tendency to start moping at the end of a vacation, so I thought it worthwhile to give myself a little something to be excited about for the final leg of this amazing journey.

I'm only able to take three weeks for this trip instead of the full four weeks, unfortunately. But I still get to see some amazing sights, stay with some of my favorite people, meet some new people, and (I hope) exhaust my facial muscles from grinning with joy at all the random fun I will have.

Ten days to departure!

"Practice Resurrection."

excerpt from
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry:

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Happy Easter, friends.

Thanks to Slacktivist for pointing to this beautiful poem, and several others, which brought tears to my eyes. Do click at the top of the post to read the whole poem!

Ominous portent, or minor frustration?

This afternoon I noticed that my tax refund had been deposited into my checking account.

I immediately called Amtrak to start the process of purchasing the rail pass for my long-anticipated month-long trip this spring. The cheerful customer service representative told me I needed to set my itinerary at the time of purchasing the pass. This was not a problem, since I had already spent hours and hours poring over the Amtrak timetables and setting various itineraries; however, my spreadsheet was at home and I was at work. Could I call back later?

"Sure," she said. "We're here 24 hours a day for your convenience."

"That is convenient!" I agreed.

I came home, pulled out my itinerary spreadsheet, tinkered with my dream trip one last time, and called Amtrak back.

The customer service representative told me that the department I needed is only open 8:30-4:30, Monday through Friday.

Sigh.

It's that kind of confusion and misinformation that could really derail (metaphorically, I hope) a train trip like this. On the other hand, if that's the biggest screw-up I encounter, I'll be thanking my lucky stars. Here's hoping.

Two weeks ago

Mr. Thel is taking Chloe to have the staples removed from her surgery incision today. Two weeks down and six to go until we can start walking her outside on a leash again. I'm not looking forward to another six weeks like the last one; Chloe thinks she's better, and wants to be allowed to run around again. She's tired of being forced to lie down and stay all the time, or of being confined to small parts of the house. I'm tired of keeping her contained.

At least her hair is growing back in again, so she doesn't look quite so much like the victim of a deranged groomer's out-of-control clippers.

You know, I sympathize with parents' fears for their children's safety, both on- and off-line. But my reaction to this article is...not sympathy.

Ernest and his business partner Jason Thurston put their tech-savvy heads together and created Badscreennames.com, a database parents can use to zero in on suspect screen names children should stay away from.

The site posts reviews on screen names. It's akin to a movie review. Most are posted by other online users who had a bad experience and want to warn others. With each screen name review comes a sample of their online chats.

"It can get really dirty or nasty, if you want it call it that," Ernest said.

Take Fanfest 2004, for example. The name may sound innocuous enough, but a search of the new database reveals a conversation in which Fanfest, a 30 year old, describes what he wants to do sexually with a 7-year-old girl.

Where to begin? I mean, I'm hardly the queen of all geekdom (in fact, I don't think I'd even qualify to be a duchess of geekdom), but I feel like Inigo Montoya--"You keep talking about the internet. I do not think it works the way you think it does."

First of all, let's fix that last sentence:

...in which Fanfest, who claims to be a 30 year old, describes what he wants to do....

See how that works? You don't know anything about "Fanfest 2004" except what he (or she!) tells you. Isn't rule number one of the internet, "Don't believe a word anything says about themselves unless you can independently verify it?" Teaching that principle to your children would do a heck of a lot more to protect them than building a database of "bad screen names." What, you want your kid to think that anyone whose name isn't in your database must therefore be trustworthy? Way to go with the teaching of the critical thinking skills, there.

Second of all, what parallel internet do these "tech-savvy" people play on? They themselves reluctantly admit, "there's nothing stopping the bad-guys [sic] from changing their screen name." Unfortunately, they make no mention of the corollary: dozens or hundreds of different people across the internet can share the same "screen name" in different venues. Nothing prevents someone else from writing a blog under the name of "Thel," having a livejournal account in the name of "Thel," or signing in as "Thel" in chatrooms for people with very specific kinks. Go do a blog search for variants on the name "Arwen" and see how many thousands of different individuals you can find conducting their online activities in the name of Elrond's daughter, for God's sake.

(Third of all, I feel compelled to note that "talking about wanting to do something" is not actually illegal. Plenty of people get their kink on by roleplaying activities that you [and, often, they!] find repellent and rightfully unlawful in real life. Deal.)

I was going to compare this "badscreennames.com" database to the no-fly list--databases that can seriously screw with your plans even if you've done nothing wrong. But this is even worse, in some ways. Who's going to stop the trolls, the disgruntled employees, the unbalanced ex-spouses, and the pranksters from posting people's "screen names" along with a filthy little manufactured snippet of their purported deviancy? What recourse would such a wrongly slandered party have?
Are any measures in place to ensure that folks who share a screen name with one of these "bad guys" don't find all of their own online activities slandered?

I'm pretty sure the answers are "nobody, none, and no," not that anyone gives a damn. Poorly executed vigilantism may be a useless exercise, but (oh, baby) it feels so good.

Caucus Chaos

Hey, slap a sticker on my jacket, I caucused yesterday!

This was my second caucus; since we moved across town last year, this was my first time caucusing in our current precinct. There were 21 of us in our precinct: 20 for Obama, 1 for Clinton. The lone Clinton supporter was delightfully good-humored about the fact that the percentages, when applied to our allocated number of precinct delegates (7), gave all the delegates to Obama and none to Clinton.

I enjoyed the hands-on feel to the caucus; I liked chatting with neighbors about politics for a few minutes, hearing voices raised passionately in other precinct caucuses smashed into the same elementary-school library. I was impressed by how many people crammed into the building. And when the caucus organizer asked people to raise their hands if this were their first time caucusing, probably about three-quarters of the people present raised their hands, to whoops and applause from the rest of us. It felt very personal, and intimate, and very much like the core root of democracy.

Still, just as in 2004, I was a little taken aback by how chaotic and disorganized the process was. When I showed up at the elementary school where 7 or 8 local precincts were meeting to caucus, I was told we were all gathering in the cafeteria to begin. In the cafeteria, folks were sitting in their precinct groups, but the signs were taped to tables and thus invisible from a distance. It was all but impossible to squeeze through the crowd of hundreds of people in order to find the right precinct. And I was one of the lucky ones who had already registered to vote and had known my precinct number! If you didn't already know it, you had to go scrutinize a single map taped to one wall, and there were reports that the map was incorrect, anyway. I'm still unsure whether I was supposed to have shown my voter registration card to anyone; nobody asked to see it.

And I must admit that as much fun as a caucus can be, I still don't quite think it gives everyone a voice. I think of that lone Clinton supporter in our precinct, whose choice is not represented on a statewide basis. His fraction of a delegate doesn't get to combine with the other fractions of delegates; they all just get rounded down and shunted out. So I guess a statewide vote would be a bit more fair, after all, even if it doesn't cultivate a sense of community the way a caucus can.

Anyway, I caucused and volunteered to be a delegate to the county caucus in April. That will be a new experience! Then I walked back down the hill to sit and cuddle with my Chloe. She had her knee surgery on Thursday, and it went as well as can be expected. Her entire leg is shaved, hip to ankle, with a long line of staples holding her surgery incision closed. It looks bad, but I know she should be getting back to normal just in time for sunny weather and outside play!

And that's how I learned it stands for "Anterior Cruciate Ligament"

This little dog of mine was loping cheerfully around with me outside last Saturday when she halted with a yelp, holding her right hind leg up from the ground. Turns out she tore her ACL, which is apparently a very common injury for larger dogs. Alas, it is not quite so common as to make it what anyone could reasonably consider "affordable" to repair. As it happens, the surgery will end up costing just about the same amount as my anticipated tax refund this year--the tax refund I was planning to use for my train trip.

She had the surgery today, though, and will come home tomorrow to begin her three months of recovery. One month of severe motion restriction, followed by two months of slow rehabilitation. And I plan to go ahead and take the damn train trip, anyway. Credit cards are pay-off-able (or so I have heard, at least), but travel memories last forever. I'm hoping to stretch my credit as far as it will go by using Couchsurfing for at least a few of my lodging options along the way. I leave in two months, if we can make it that long without having anyone else tear any ligaments, cut any arteries, or break any bones.