It's time for part 2 of the story of me and Canadonian's trip through the US! I'm writing this on the Monday of the Canada Day long weekend, so that's…I don't know what it is. Cool I guess.

For part one, see this blog

Anyway, before we start, I'll just copy and paste the same advertisements as last blog:

As before: I've resized the images, and used the hide tag to hide them. Sorry for the bad quality. The captions for the images are below the image.

Here is a map of our trip, so you can glance at it as I tell about the trip and who we met!

Google Map

For future reference, I'll be referring to Canadonian as “Mattâ€?.

June 4th (day 4)

When I finished the last blog, we were just leaving Acid's house, and our odometer had hit 1337 KMs. Our plan was to make it to Scranton, PA, meet up with a couple friends from outside 64D, and spend a night or two there. Maybe try and find the Dunder Mifflin office, and visit my favourite female TV character.

If you're following along on the map, we're driving from point E to F.

The drive wasn't all that eventful, but since we have pictures, I'll narrate the story as an excuse to use the pictures.

We ran into some traffic a little before noon. As we came to a stop, Matt (who was driving) pointed out that we're almost out of gas. The car calculated how many kms we had left on the tank, and I used the GPS and billboards to try and figure out if we could make it.

…And we could, if we conserved gas. The traffic was completely stopped, but did move forward a few car lengths every so often, so we turned the car off whenever we could, and watched the Foo Fighters “Back and Forthâ€? documentary, which was pretty good.

Up until this point, the music on the trip wasn't on par with what I would have liked. When I went down back in March with one of my little brothers, he likes some of the same music I do, including metal, and he liked it loud. So we drove the whole trip blasting music, and if he didn't like what I was playing, he put in his headphones, and either listened to his own stuff, or watched a movie on a laptop.

Matt, on the other hand, doesn't like a lot of my music, and likes to keep the music turned down. I dislike driving without music as well, but Matt doesn't mind. So, as the passenger for more than half the trip, I did a lot of the mp3 player navigation, and it was difficult to find bands that he might like (he has a very small collection of music too).

But, after watching Back and Forth, I had Foo Fighters cravings for the rest of the trip, and Matt didn't seem to mind them. So that was good.

On the same topic, I found some old CDs that I burned years ago, and it was pretty cool listening to it. I think next trip, we should definitely make mix CDs.

When I find bands, I try and listen to entire CDs, and not just the singles (though if it's a big band, and they have a “Greatest Hitsâ€? album, it's a good way to kind of familiarize yourself with the band, and learn songs from different albums, so that when you listen to the album, you have recognizable points to latch onto within it), and it adds a lot to experiencing the band. But with an actual CD, where you can't just hop over to something different, it's pretty cool. If you don't like a song, you can skip ahead - but if you skip ahead, the rest of the CD will be shorter, so you'll have to change to the next CD sooner (or else listen to the CD through again). Plus, it just feels different when you skip a song on CD - if you're listening to a song on an MP3 player, it feels like so much less work to hit the next button.

And then, if you don't want to sit and listen to the CD, then you have go through all the work of swapping the CD, which most people are pretty lazy to do.

But, I want to make mix CDs for a long trip not ONLY because it will force the passenger to either listen to my music, or become un-lazy and change the song/CD, but also because the feeling of having a set list is cool, and you can pick and choose what songs you want on the CD, to give it a feeling of progression, and you're guaranteed that the songs will fit a mood, as opposed to having your MP3 player on shuffle.

Sorry for that tangent. I used to burn CDs a LOT, and I miss it.

Anyway, as I said, we were stuck in traffic for quite a while (an hour or two), with very little gas. Eventually we got to the exit with the gas stations, so we pulled off, fueled up, and took a quick look through the GPS to see if there was anywhere we could stop for a picnic (Matt had brought crackers, bread, and canned stew stuff, and hadn't eaten any of it on the trip yet). I don't know what we really expected the GPS to show us, but we didn't find anything, so we sat in the gas station parking lot, and ate. The first can of stew that I picked up from the box did NOT have a tab top - that meant that it needed a can opener to open, which we didn't have. It was a great example of Matt's ability to notice things and plan ahead. =P

As we sat and ate, we checked out the GPS to see if there was an alternate way around the backed-up highway. We determined that the street we were facing would be the best alternate route, and decided that once we finished, we would take that road.

But before we could finish eating, we watched a big tractor trailer with an oversized load chugging along that single lane road, and Matt declared that we would not be going down that road.

We finished up, and hopped back on the highway. I think this is the on-ramp (it might have been earlier in the trip though) with FIVE signs along it that said “do not stop on rampâ€?. And it's not like this was a super long ramp or anything - it was just a regular on ramp. At any given moment, you could see three of the signs at the same time, as you came around the bend. I have no idea why they had to emphasize it so much. Do people really just stop on a highway on ramp?

It's a [hilarious] mystery that I'm hoping an American can shed light on.

After getting back into the traffic, and sitting around for another half hour, it finally started moving. We didn't pass anything that indicated what the hold up was. Several cop cars had passed us on the shoulder, and we passed ambulances and firetrucks every so often, and then we passed a bent guard rail with some skid marks, but that was it. No actual evidence of an accident (the guard rail could have been bent years ago). Maybe the Ministry of Transportation (or whatever it's called in the US) used up its budget on the “do not stop on rampâ€? signs, and didn't have enough for “do not stop on highwayâ€? signs.

As we started making our way through the Commonwealth of Pentagrams, I was still having trouble getting a hold of the people that we were going to visit next. I actually didn't know where exactly in PA they were, but based on Facebook, they were near the centre of PA, so that's where I set the GPS to.

I finally got a hold of one of them, and they told me they were near Scranton, so we had to backtrack about 15 minutes to get back on the right highyway to get there. At that point, Matt was tired, and seemed pretty frustrated that I didn't know where we were going, so we swapped places so he could nap, and I'd drive.

On the turn around, we passed a forest park, and went for a little drive in it.

And then we went driving through central PA. I drove through PA back in March when I went down south before, to get back to Canada, and there was a lot of ups-and-downs and driving on the edges of cliffs, but there wasn't as much of that on this trip. There were a few times when there were edges, and it started raining HARD to the point that I couldn't see. That was kind of scary. Most of the time I was the only one on the road too, which was REALLY nice.

Fun fact, Matt recorded some of the rain on his phone, and he could see through the windshield much more clearly than human eyes could. There's one video where I (stupidly) pass a semi in the pouring rain, which just showered you in MORE water from its wheels, and the camera is still able to make out some shapes and stuff.

We pulled into Scranton around 19:00ish, I think. One of my friends couldn't meet up, and neither one of us (me or her) could get a hold of the other person, so Matt and I pulled into a gas station to fill up, use the bathroom, and grab something quick to eat.

We decided not to spend the night there to see if my friends will be available the next day, so we set off south! We'd be going down through Baltimore, so I sent hobomonkeyc (Danny) a message to see if he'd be alright with us crashing at his house that night, and he said it'd be fine. If you look at the map, this would be the trip from point F, to PAST point G. We weren't planning to stop in Baltimore (we originally planned to spent the night at point F, and then drive all the way down to Virginia Beach), so it was cool of Danny to invite us in on such short notice, after I'd told him we probably wouldn't need to spend the night there.

And so we set off to a new destination, for the second time in one day! Heh, you suckers have had to read 2,000 words so far, without anything juicy about a 64D member yet.

We drove for a couple hours without incident. I tried to watch “Lemmyâ€? on the laptop (after watching the Foo Fighters documentary, I felt like another band documentary), with headphones on.

But then! In the darkness of the interstate, something happened! There was a loud noise from the back of the car. We were afraid that someone in the trunk wasn't actually dead (we slit the throats of Acid and Chiken, and brought their bodies along as souvenirs), but it wasn't that - thank goodness.

The noise had happened on the rear passenger side, and the tire was making a weird noise, so I leaned out the window to see if I could spot anything weird. I didn't, but it sure sounded like we'd popped the tire, so Matt pulled over, and I got out to look at it.

Yep, it's flat.

Fortunately we were RIGHT at an exit, so we carefully drove the few hundred metres off the ramp and into a gas station to inspect the flat. Fortunately, the rain had stopped, but the ground was still soaked, and my hole-riddled shoes soaked it up like there was no tomorrow.

We called AAA (Matt has a CAA card), and they told us that, for insurance reasons, they will not replace the tire for us, but directed us to the nearest body shop. It was between 22:00 and 23:00 I think, so everything was closed, of course. I texted Danny to let him know that we wouldn't be able to make it to his place, and the friggin' guy asked if he could help, and even offered to pick us up. It was weird - he was practically Canadian at the point - except that he didn't apologize about the flat tire. That's how I could tell he was still American. For anyone curious, this happened in York, PA (point G on the map), and as you can see, it's quite a distance from Baltimore.

The cashier in the gas station said that it would be alright if we spent the night in the parking lot, but we didn't want to try it. We were parked right under a light, and we didn't know what kind of authority the cashier had, and so on, so we didn't want to do that. Instead, decided to put on the spare tire (which we had to do anyway), and then take a drive over to the mechanic shop to scope out where it is, and then find a place to sleep in our car. Sleeping in the car was something we had been looking forward to for the whole trip. =D

After changing the tire, we hopped back in the car, and drove down a side road for about 15 minutes to the body shop, scouting out different places we could park and sleep. After we checked out where the body shop was, we went back, and found a large church parking lot, where we could park in the back, out of sight from the road.

We decided to try folding down the back seat, and sleeping half-in-the-trunk. Unfortunately the Nissan Sentra has an annoying bump at the part where the seat folds down (right where our abdomen is when we lay down), so it wasn't that great, but we decided to go with it anyway.

We dragged all our stuff out of the back seat and trunk, and somehow stuffed it into the front seat/under the folded back seat. Matt had only brought a couple pillows and a bed sheet, but I had a sleeping bag, two bits of padding (for camping, that you put under your sleeping bag), along with my pillows. I would not get to enjoy my luxuries, because we ended up laying on them, to try and even out the bump between the trunk and the back seat.

We put the windows down a little bit so that it wouldn't fog up, did a quick look around to figure out the best emergency exit if we needed to leave in a hurry, and then got ready for bed. Matt brushed his teeth with a bottle of water, and I got out flashlights, and peeled off my soaked socks.

After texting Ronnica a bit, and then having a conversation with Pounce over text, I fell asleep. (We didn't visit either of them, but they were along for the ride, via our occasional correspondences. =P)

We woke up around 06:00, and groggily dragged ourselves out of bed. I re-applied my still-damp socks to my feet, and stepped into my still-wet shoes, and we sleepily stepped out into the cold, and tossed whatever we could into the back so that we could drive out.

As we came around the church, and drove out the parking lot exit to the road, we passed a young woman driving into the parking lot, and for some reason she didn't even look at us.

We looked at each other, said “that was closeâ€?, and laughed.

The body shop didn't open unitl 8:00, and we had slept 5 minutes down the road, so we went and sat in a McDonalds (there's more McDonalds clustered together in America, than there are Tim Hortons in Canada) to eat breakfast and wait around. I don't know if I mentioned this in the last blog, but holy crap was I sick of fast food. I have an incredibly terrible diet, and always eat out, and everyone at my work points it out, but Canada is nothing compared to America. =/

I ate what I could, and then we went to see if the body shop was open early. As we drove past, we actually noticed the street was a row of 3 body shops on one side, and 1 shop across the street.

We went around to each of them, and in the end, the first one that we went to (Pep Boys) would be able to get us up and going soonest. They were a nice and helpful bunch, so if you're ever in York and need a mechanic, drop by Pep Boys.

Maybe they'll give me free service the next time I'm in the US now.

Long story short, they gave us help and information about changing the rental car's tire, and one of the mechanics was a talky guy and talked about going fishing in Quebec, and all that stuff. I also bought a Smith and Wesson knife there, just because.

After an hour, we were back on the road, headed to Virginia Beach to visit another-friend-of-mine-that-I-had-met-on-a-site-that-isn't-64D! She was the one I had gone down to visit on my trip back in March.

Now, the trip down to Virginia Beach (moving from point G to point H on the map) wasn't very eventful. We drove across a bridge, and under a tunnel, and finally got to enjoy some 70MPH speed limits (with Matt sleeping most of the way), but there were on pictures.

So, since very little happened, I'm going to splice in what happened during my March road trip (which I mentioned in a blog back in March, but never wrote about it).

Gah, I just realized that I have to start a whole new story now, so you have context. Since the trip wasn't as hyped as this one in June, I'm going to go through it pretty quickly:

Backstory: One of my little brothers, who was 16, had a friend he met on some forum (a Maple Story modding forum or something), who lived in Virginia Beach. He'd wanted to go down and visit her for something like a year, so my parents thought of doing a vacation trip down there or something, but it's bloody expensive for a place like VA beach. Also, his name is Jesse, for those of you who continue to read this side story.

But then, in November/December, I started talking to a friend I'd met before I created 64D on facebook, after several years. Her (Alicia) and a few of her friends from high school had been members of a forum I frequented, and they directed me to a blogging site. At first, I was hesitant to join, because I REALLY wanted to try blogging, and for some reason felt like I could write a lot, but I wanted to blog on my own system. Because, you see, at the time, Matt and I had started working on a website to replace our last one, as we did almost every year. In the past, it had only showcased games that Matt and I had tried to make, as well as games that JakeX (now Requiem) had made. There was some art from a few of our real-life friends as well (we didn't know Jake in real life - he had just liked one of our earlier sites, and submitted his stuff, and we loved it, so we asked if we could put his stuff on our site). Jake jokingly asked if this next website would have a dash in the name, like most of our previous sites (eg game-basics, or gauze-media).

Initially, we just wanted this new site to be a file hoster (back in the early 2000s, finding a GOOD hoster for your game files was hard), and, if you wanted to, you could submit your game to be added to our showcase of games.

However, because of Alicia and her friends, I thought that blogging would be a pretty cool thing to add to this new website. But, because it was taking so long to develop, I eventually decided to just sign up at that blog site. And boy, did I write a lot. I copied a few of those blogs over to 64D, but for the most part, it's not on 64D.

So now, partially due to her influence, you all have a site to blog on.

Anyway, I started talking to her again, and she had joined the Navy (which is not something I would have expected. Holy crap did she NOT seem like military material when she was younger), and was stationed at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach. My ex had recently moved out of my apartment, and out of the country, so on one hand the empty apartment felt pretty shitty, and on the other, I felt really free, and felt like I could do anything. I had some vacation time left over, so I thought it'd be cool to take a trip down and meet her.

In the end, I used that vacation time being really sick in bed with pneumonia, but the idea to visit was planted.

Then, during March Break in Canada (which isn't the same time in Ontario, as it is in the US), I kind of did a short-notice plan to go down for a week, and bring my little brother with me (kind of using his wanting to visit VA Beach as an excuse for me to go).

We rented a Nissan Sentra (if you'll recall, it's the same car as what Matt and I took in June), and set off on a Friday morning, music blasting, with the printed directions form google (no GPS directions this time) in the hands of a kid who had never driven outside the city of Mississauga. He caught on to how to explain directions to me pretty quickly, though.

We drove across the border, through some toll booths, through NY, through PA, yada yada, down to Maryland. Here's some pics of that trip:

We get into Maryland after dark, and head to Baltimore to meet up with twisterghost. The plan was to stay at his place on the way down to VA Beach.

I sent him a text message as I was pulling off the highway near his dorm, and he said he went out to eat dinner, but he'd come back as soon as he could, and that we should wait in the parking lot. So, I follow his directions, and pull into a parking lot…And in that parking lot is a crap ton of cop cars, parked everywhere. I texted him and said that there were a lot of cop cars everywhere, and joked about if that's normal, and he said “yeah, pretty muchâ€?.

As we sat and waited, cops would walk to their cars, and I'd try stay low, and not make noise or light, so they wouldn't see us. I don't know why, I just didn't feel like having a cop walk over and ask why we'd been sitting there for the past 20 minutes.

Eventually TG (I'll refer to him as TG instead of Michael, for the most part, because it's shorter. =P) said he was back, and asked where we were. I explained, and he said we were in the wrong parking lot. We should have turned in at the NEXT parking lot.

The parking lot that we were in, was a police station.

So we drove to the right parking lot, and EVENTUALLY found him. We brought our pillows and sleeping bags up to his dorm, and met his brother kevboh, who happened to be visiting from DC, but wasn't staying the night.

As we set our stuff down and talked for a few minutes, TG's roommate and his girlfriend (roommate's girlfriend, that is. Not many of you know this, but TG is totally homosexual. In the entire 16ish hours that I met him, I never once saw a chick on his arm) came in. I didn't really know what the plan was, but apparently it was to go drink at hobomonkeyc's house (Danny). For you new people, TG's a very old member, and he brought his brother, Kevboh, to the site (for those wondering, Kevboh doesn't look ANYTHING like his avatar, and I was quite sad), along with his real life friend, hobomonkeyc.

So the five of us (TG, his roommate, roommate's g/f, Jesse, and I) crammed into TG's car, and drove to grab some subway, and then continue on Danny's house. Kevboh followed in his own car.

Even though TG had a phone with directions, and had visited Danny before, he somehow still managed to screw up getting there. Poor Kevboh was following TG in his own car, so we were laughing about us leading Kevboh in circles.

We eventually got there, where Danny and his girlfriend were waiting. This was probably around 20:00 or 21:00.

All of us went down to Danny's basement, and a few of us opened up some beers, talked a bit, and played some beer pong (with water in the cups. Less disgusting, plus Kevboh wasn't drinking). After a little bit of that, Kevboh had to go (he had to drive back to DC that night), and we moved upstairs for margaritas.

Along the way, TG asked Jesse if he was a member on 64D, and (yes, Acid, I know you've heard me tell this story many times on Teamspeak) Jesse says “noâ€?, with a look on his face, which TG points out as “what?! Why would a join a stupid site like that?! Don't be ridiculous!â€?

Margaritas were made (including a virgin one for the DD roommate), and we proceeded to get drunk, talk a bit, and play some drinking games. As the drunkness got drunker, things didn't stand out as much, but I know TG was a cool guy. If you have the chance to meet up with him in the San Fran Bay area, I recommend you do.

At one point during the drunkenness, I remember looking down the table at the five Americans, and saying something like “this is why we make fun of Americaâ€?, and they looked back at me with very surprised, and kind of heart broken looks, and asked “do you guys really make fun of America?â€?

I felt SOO bad, and actually tried to play it off, like “what? Nah, I'm kidding…Uhh, anyway, it's your turn now…â€?

Later on, in VA Beach, I asked someone else if they thought Canadians make fun of Americans, and it seemed like the thought had never crossed their mind.

For the record, though, the Americans in Baltimore did a lot of poking fun at Canada.

Danny actually did a really good one (good, in the sense that it showed he knew about other cultures), where he pulled out a carton of milk from his fridge, held it up to us, and was like “see this? This is what we keep milk in down here!â€?

For those who are confused, you can watch this fairly famous video. It actually doesn't show the special tool we sometimes use to open the bag too (though scissors works just as well). She's also got a video about Bloody Ceasers, which are pretty gross, and Ketchup chips, which are pretty awesome)

At the end of the night, his roommate started to drive us home, but then TG declared that he wanted some Tacos, so we drove through Taco Bell first. Everyone (but the DD, and my brother) were drunk, but TG reminded me of a stoner. We pulled up, and TG couldn't decide what he wanted, and finally decided on like 10 tacos.

Then we went back to his place, and drunkenly ate a few tacos, drank a little bit more (I feel bad, 'cause I left like half a beer undrank) and played his wii. Then we went and passed out.

The following day, we woke up, and TG lamented about how he would never order something as gross as Taco Bell unless he was drunk. Then he took us out to the Double T Diner (the name actually was “TT dinerâ€?, it wasn't just slang for “titty dinerâ€?, implying something like Hooters) for breakfast.

When we got there, I was Canadian, and helped an old lady up some steps, while TG held the door open. Then we ordered some food, and holy crap did they have a lot of food, and TG showed us terribly-bad-for-you foods we'd never had before, and then paid for us. =D

We only got a few pictures:

And that was it for Twisterghost - we were back on the road! I want to point out that on the way out of Maryland, we were on a wide open highway, that was like 5 lanes wide, just blasting along, when all of a sudden, I see stop lights up ahead. Right in the middle of the highway. Then, the light turns yellow, and I'm like “AHH! WTF DO I DO?!â€?

Because…You know…Stopping in the middle of a highway seems like a really stupid thing to do.

But as it turns out, it was a stop light, and everyone else around me stopped, so I did too, as I cringed and waited for the impact from behind.

Fortunately most Americans drive really slowly, so they were able to stop before rear ending me.

…These red lights in the middle of a highway occurred a few more times. I was so confused. Angry, and confused. Stupid stop lights.

And that's the last of the trip that you guys care about.

So that's what happened the last time that I went down from PA to Virginia Beach. This time, though, there wasn't much of that. It was just driving, with Matt sleeping.

A lot of you have gone off to college, right? Have you ever brought anyone home with you? And you have to fight the urge to point out “this is where I grew upâ€?, “I used to go to that schoolâ€?, “that's the schoolyard that the bullies always used to punch me and take my lunch money, 'cause I was a massive nerdâ€?, and so on? As we were getting through Williamsburg, it was really kicking in for me.

As we got across the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, it was really hard to fight. And as we were merging onto I-64 (yes, I'm only now just realizing that it's I-64. We should have taken a picture or something), I couldn't help it. I pointed out a few things I remembered, and we drove past the hotel I stayed at, so I pointed that out too, etc.

As we got into downtown VA Beach (it's about 5-10 KMs from the actual ocean-side beach), I turned off the GPS, and wanted to try see if I remembered the streets, and if I could get us to the actual beach.

After an hour of driving around (I ended up driving up to Norfolk, but had the sense that Norfolk was the WRONG DIRECTION), we found ourselves in a mess of dunes and houses-on-stilts.

It's well over 6,000 words in, and we didn't meet a single 64D member this whole entry. It's barely covered 24 hours of our trip. But regardless, I'm sick of writing, and I'm going to end it now, with a picture of those houses.

Next time, I'll write about our time at the Beach, and hopefully finish off the trip, and show the last of the pictures we have with 64D members.

Now that I look at it, that's not actually a shot of the stilt houses…I think the blue one on the left is on stilts, but you can't see it. But regardless, that was taken in the right area, so whatever.