This doesn’t look like texas

As we drive into Austin, we are a bit disappointed. Just the same old texas, a couple dairy queens and farms, as far as the eye can see. Then things begin to change. Skyscrapers pop up, and pretty awesome ones at that. We check out 6ixth street. Everyone in Lubbock was raving about it. The first restaurant we see looks good. We order some mushroom and goat cheese ravioli for sixteen bucks. Out comes the meal with three ravioli on the plate. This is not the giant cheap portions of Texas we are used to. After strolling through the street we encounter a “ten month pregnant” bum and more then a few people yelling nonsense. When ten o’clock rolls around we head over to our new couch surfing host.

No such thing as too many bubbles!

The best part of our trip to Lubbock, Texas was the private Jaccuzi tub in our room. I knew after seeing it that we were going to spend way too much time in that tub, but luckily there isn't all that much else to do in Lubbock! I started filling the tub, and of course I wanted as many bubbles as possible. In retrospect, an entire container of bubbles might be too much for one bath- as soon as we turned on the jets the bubbles started getting pretty out of control. They quickly flowed over the top of our wine glasses and onto the floor, covering the whole bathroom and even trailing into the room. We were in the bathtub for way too long, and were half-asleep at our 7:30 breakfast the next morning.

A place for all his buses

Waking up with a short two-hour drive ahead of us we decide to explore a bit of Clovis. Last night we saw some run down looking silos, a good place to start, as Jen loves decrepit places. As we step out of the car an ominous rusty warehouse looms over us. Jen does her best to encourage me to explore it. The closer I step, the further the oddities take shape: abandoned RVs, stacks of old printers and copy machines, piles upon piles of cardboard boxes. One of the warehouses has an open door. We creep around to it and are startled by a voice. “Why you college kids always takin’ pictures round here?”, questions a large woman on a tractor. Her form appeared to merge with the very structure of the vehicle as the folds of her abdomen curled over it. In the back of the shop we spot an old man with a Santa Claus beard blowtorching some unknown object. We quickly come up with some excuse and continue into the depths of Clovis.
Gates block off entire junkyards of organized garbage. This time I send Jen to peek through a broken glass window. She sees two staircases tunneling underground. We move on. I jump onto an old semi flat bead for a photo when a straggly haired man starts flailing his arms and approaches us. He opens his cracked lips to reveal a mouth full of stretched out corn kernel teeth. Past yellow the edges brown like a well-done egg. He extends a leathery hand to me, and I wearily shake it. Jen follows. We explain to him about our art and why we are trespassing. He insists that we enter his warehouse and look at a picture he found the other day. Jen accepts with a look of panic on her face. He leads us through a graveyard of more office appliances. Inside the only light comes through slits from uneven roofing panels. The backroom opened up to a hanger filled with four ancient buses. Jen follows him into the first bus. I can only peek through a window to get a look at what is going on. A warm glow emanates from the window and illuminates a surface textured with beads, fake jewelry, giant dollar bills and other assorted trash. Worry sets in and I make my way into the crowded bus. I bump into a cane with a goat skull garnished to the top. “Like it, I made it, see the eyes I made them ouda candy,” he cackled. I give Jen a look trying to give her a hint that we should get out of there, but she is in a trance by the mystery of it. -Aronson

Clovis, Texas- A place for family

Oh wait, Aronson said we are still actually in New Mexico, but its pretty much the same thing. We decided that the next must-see stop after Albequerque would be Clovis. We pull up to a cute little agricultural town with rows and rows of hotels. We pull up at the first one- an Econo Lodge where you can talk to the attendant outside through a sheet of glass. Unfortunately, that one was all booked up. Looks like Clovis is a more popular destination than we thought. She sends us over to the Days Inn, which to our surprise is actually a really nice hotel except for one little thing- the curtains covering the window to our first floor room are completely sheer. Our creepy voyeuristic neighbors aside, it was a great night.- jen

Albequerque not even worth two pictures

Upon leaving albe, or querque, or any other weird name the locals call it we realize this is the only spot we didn’t take pictures in. Ill do my best to fill the visual gap in. The navigation system went completely a wall in this city. It constantly had us going in circles and readjusting routes. I guess I should talk a bit about our hostess from last night. She was a complaining machine in the nicest of ways. Telling us about how shitty her life was for the entire hour before she fell asleep. We woke up to an empty house though which was nice. We took our only Albuquerque picture of her dog and headed off. Old town was boring, photo store was over priced and that’s all I can stand to write about this.- aronson

Crater- Holbrook- Jen the boring couchhost

That was pretty much our trip to Albequerque. Saw a giant crater in Arizona but didn’t pay to actually see the meteor hole hahah. Then we went to the best diner in Holbrook- pretty impressive, I know. Then we met Jen, our couchhost, blah blah blah. Aronson is such a blog nazi- keep trying and trying but he keeps insisting I blog- I try to make him but he keeps putting the computer between us and forcing me to blog. This is my blog-- hope you're happy.

Even more ridiculous Chinese tourists

Trying to wake up bright and early did not quite work out. By 11 we drive back out to the grand canyon. The place looks like Disney world there are so many tourists running around. I try and find a suitable place to set up shop and start painting. My hopes of out walking the crowd begin to look futile as we turn a bend and see the mob of infectious colored people spots far off in the distance. The combination of heat and supplies begins to weigh on us and we decide to throw down our stuff on a nice little rock ledge. People begin to swarm around the me as if I were the latest attraction. I can overhear an assortment of voices, “look mom it’s an artist”, “are those oil paints”, “I used to paint”, “that’s so cool”, at the time they seemed less generic. One girl even commeted on jen’s holga camera. The best of all though were the Chinese tourists. They come right next to me and tell me to look at the camera in Chinese until I comply. -aronson

A pair of tweezers, a nail clipper, a keychain, and an electric toothbrush..

So silly Aronson and I have never been to a hotel without our family, and it didn’t occur to us that on a Saturday night at 9 all of the 3 hotels by the Grand Canyon might be booked up. So our options were to drive 50 miles out of town or pay $150 for a shitty room. So we drove out of town and were pleasantly surprised to find a sketchy hotel only about 30 miles away. So we check in there and go to our decently clean hotel room. I feel like such an adult!
We try to open our bottle of wine but realize we didn’t bring a bottle opener.. we get resourceful and use pretty much everything in sight to try to open it. The bottle is putting up a tough fight, but Aronson is determined. He didn’t want me to make him sound like a wuss in my blog. We finally use the toothbrush to push the cork into the bottle, spraying glass everywhere. Aronson cut his finger, but I’m so proud of him, he didn’t even faint at the sight of his blood! Then I sat on a shard of glass and my leg started bleeding… but it was all worth it for the $4 wine, right? The cleaning ladies at the hotel are going to be pretty confused when they see the mess of wine splatters and glass shards!

Damn, where did that hoover dam come from?

First off I have to congratulate myself on thinking of such a wonderful pun for the title. We start driving to the grand canyon and in the middle of the desert we hit insane traffic. Jen starts freaking out because the navigation system shows some crazy curves and she doesn’t quite trust my professional driving skills. I mean it is pretty tough taking a turn at a blazing 15 mph. We figure out the traffic is from the new Arizona Mexican checkpoint law. After about 20 minutes of mexican searching they let us right through and the Hoover Dam shows up. Now maybe we are kind of retarded but neither of us expected such a famous national monument to surprise us. Jen keeps trying to convince me to stop and enjoy the scenery. Finally I give in at the very top and we find a little indian family to take our picture. Before we can get back into our car the perfect stereotypic Chinese tourist couple pulls up and we take their picture and are on our way.

High school Party!

Tonight we had a joint party with a couple highschoolers. Now the set up starts nice, an island of liquor, a cooler of beer in the hallway, and a couple high school guys walking around. What more could we need for a kickin’ party? For some reason Lorenzo puts on Jackass 2 and everyone (and by everyone I mean about six of us) start cracking up hysterically. Then the Highschool mom comes in, she offers us some chicken wings and shots. She gets into how beautiful her kids are and how lucky and blessed she is. A couple more high school girls shuffle in, a little mutant like. Lorenzo’s date seemed slightly horrified at the fact that she was the oldest girl there besides the mom. Jen and I tried to make her more comfortable by talking about stabbing vaginas and choking people. From there the party somehow manages to slow down and we decide to pass out on the couch. -aronson

two's company, three's a crowd, four's a date?

In the evening we went with Lorenzo on a romantic picnic third date. He really went all out on the setup- he spent $50 just on cheese and had a pretty professional picnic setup complete with stakes he set in the ground to hold the wine and wine glasses His date met us at his place and we all drove over to a park that was projecting a movie outside. We get there and it’s total babyland! I of course, was completely thrilled. We were the only people there without a toddler or infant. Lorenzo unfolded his three course picnic while making fun of our TV dinner meal. Even the guy at the checkout counter at the supermarket told me I should try to find rich boyfriend after Aronson bought our $4 wine, haha. - Jen

Guten Lauden!

The drinks helped loosen everybody up- before you knew it we were all dancing around the living room and singing along to American Pie. The Russian girls have finally come back, and so it’s just us, the Russians, and Germans alone in the home of someone we all barely knew. The Germans were also taking a road trip around the country so they pulled out their giant U.S map and we sat around on the floor comparing routes. They are ending their trip in Miami, so we might have some German couchsurfers when we get back to Gainesville!
After a lot of convincing on my part, we all pile into my car and take off for the strip. I assured the Germans that we would make it back in time to watch the World Cup at 4:30. Las Vegas is even crazier than I imagined- it’s like a combination of Disney land and a cruise ship. We wander around the hotels, but since the Russians and I are 19 we face the usual problem of not being able to get in almost everywhere. We did find one club and all jumped and danced around together. Just walking around the casinos and replicas of famous monuments was pretty incredible.
When 4 rolls around we trek back to my car and make it back just in time for the big game. We try to figure out sleeping arrangements in the small apartment. Lorenzo has been letting the Russians sleep in his bed, since he never sleeps. When we ask the Germans if three people can fit in the bed, they say that it’s too small. When the Russians ask if they want to stay with them in Lorenzo’s bed, they quickly say yes and insist we sleep on the couches. So we get the couches and the teacup Chuawua. As a first time couchsurfer, I found it a little hard to get comfortable sleeping in a stranger’s house. I turn to ask Aronson if he’s having trouble sleeping too, but of course he’s already fast asleep. - jen

2 germans, 2 russians Lorenzo and a dog.

The drive was beautiful, tons of la traffic, blah blah blah. The real adventure starts when we reach our first couchsurfing host. Kind of a coral springsy condo place, nothing out of the ordinary, but once inside we are greeted by two germans and blaring german folk drinking songs. Lorenzo tells us he has work from midnight til 8 and goes to bed to catch a couple hours of sleep before heading off to work. As we walk around the place we notice little labels on light switches and bathroom toiletries. This is some sort of couchsurfing twilight zone. He has about six hundred movies organized by great genres like drug flicks and dramas with sad endings. The bar is fully stocked including a tip jar. We hear a couple of Russian girls are staying for three months, but left this morning and probably got abducted by some prostitution ring. To add to this wonderful atmosphere a tiny little rat sized dog jumps around at our feet. Upon further inspection we notice a tiny pink dog bed with a picture of her and Paris Hilton. Well I need a drink, time to try and find some good American beer and show those germans whats up. - aronson

Grandpa Hal

Never did i think I would be having a conversation with a 95 year old dude about the pirate bay, but here I was at the dinner table telling Grandpa Hal about all the music and movies you can download. You should have seen his face light up when I said you can even get audiobooks.
-aronson

We spent the evening with my grandparents hearing cute little stories about my three-year-old self and embarrassing me by pulling out my old poems. Then I got a crash course in parallel parking while trying to park my monster of a car into a tiny little downhill spot. It took three of us 15 minutes to finally make it in there. Tomorrow we're off to begin our roadtrip- 4 and a half hours and we'll be at our first couch in Vegas!
-jen

Cant anyone just give us pizza?

After hearing so much about hollywood, really not all it is cracked up to be. To be fair we didnt get out of the car, but what could that have changed. We saw the big hollywood sign and the stars on the floor. It just made me want new york. We drove around looking for pizza and Jen just could not understand why no one would give us pizza. I think that includes they wouldnt sell us pizza but who knows. We did go to an Out of the closet. A gay aids thrift shop. That was pretty sweet found some good shirts. Walked out of the store with a big pink out of the closet bag.
-aronson

First day in L.A

I tried to resist blogging last night since the idea of couple's blogging together is inherently pretty obnoxious... but I'm a sentimental person so I decided it could be fun. And also, no one gets breakfast ‘till I blog.
So yesterday I took Aronson to my grandparent’s house, which is in a beautiful garden area, surrounded completely by frat houses. I showed him the gardens and all of it’s quirks and super secret spots. I can’t tell if it’s really as cool as I think it is or if it just had to do with growing up there, but he seemed to like it. He met my Grandparents, who are pretty rockin’ for 90 and 94 years old. I took him to all of my favorite places- we walked down to UCLA, and the village, and saw the Getty- a beautiful museum that’s on top of a hill overlooking L.A. We frolicked in the gardens and then went home and filled up on lots of yummy Lebanese food and both passed out.

FLying into Los Angeles on no sleep

After a day of full of spray painting, Jamie and I drive down to Orlando just in time to eat some Kyoto. We barely manage to stay awake til 4, by drinking coffee and watching stupid comedies. The airport goes smooth enough. I get to sit next to a 13 year old black boy and get into deep philosophical discussions on Pokemon. I manage to take an hour or two of sleep, then im in the airport. I give the kid my card. Who knows maybe he will buy art some day. Haha I ride down the escalator to the baggage claim when I see an adorable pair of feet in silver sandals. It can only be jen. We run at each other and embrace. What a cute little moment, I know. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she is still as in love as she has ever been. We hop in the car and are on our way to grandmothers house. Carpool lanes are incredible, we zip through traffic and find our way to a little town called westwood.