While one huge goal of this trip is to be on the road, spending each night in a different town, the truth is we also have a good number of rest days. These days are crucial for us to recover physically, mentally, and simply serve as a great opportunity to explore some of the major cities we pass through. We’re on our final rest day in Pittsburgh today, which got me thinking about how our rest days have fallen into a predictable routine. For this post, I will detail my impression (emphasis on my impression, as I don’t see everyone most hours of the day) of what we each do on rest days — here goes!
Lewis and Clark
Just yesterday morning, I returned to sit on my sleeping bag after a couple of hours of early morning tutoring to space out (need to fund my caffeine addiction somehow), when, in the corner of my eye, I saw Alex very excitedly telling Victoria’s parents (Victoria’s family has been hosting us) about a list of museums and landmarks he plans to explore. I saw Leo looking at his phone, grinning, very pleased with himself for having plotted their favorite museums on a map to determine the most efficient route to visit them all. Both Alex and Leo were in baseball caps and running shoes, ready to embark on one of their many day-long side quests of the trip.
Nearly every museum and hike and landmark visit I’ve made on this trip has been entirely thanks to Leo and Alex researching the city and offering to take the group. If anyone’s Google Maps search history could be copy-pasted into a comprehensive travel brochure, it would be theirs, without a doubt.
Mega bike we found at a bike fair that Leo and Alex took us to yesterday!
The Thinker
Victoria often gets a look on her face – on the bike, in the car, in the tent — those unmoving eyes and wistful are a surefire giveaway that she’s deep in thought. She’s always pondering some pressing question: What makes a meaningful relationship? What types of impact do different government and public sector jobs create? How do you approach our biggest social problems? Unsurprisingly, given all the time in the day, she often asks to be dropped off near a library or some pretty street for her to freely wander, read, journal, and phone an old friend or two to discuss these questions. Of course, these blocks of thinking are often peppered with shopping trips, team excursions, and her easy laugh.
House of Ravenclaw
Living with Anna for these past 2 months, I’ve seen her read and write far more than I have in my two years of being an enrolled student at Stanford. Without fail, Anna will find her way to a library on a rest day. When she isn’t reading a very thick book, she is typing away on a Word document at what I can only imagine to be the next great novel (I am not joking — she is a spectacular writer and helps proofread nearly everything I write). Anna is also a great coffee shop buddy, being wonderful company while my reliance on Americanos provides us with AC and WIFI. Jordan and I have told her that she will oversee our studying next year to make sure that we can be more like her. Unfortunately, she does not sound over eager to take on this role…
Case in point. I’m typing this blog right now, and she is currently sitting across from me.
Mutual Menaces
Me and Jordan spend far too many waking hours together to be good influences on each other — we have revived our true crime interests (you can bet many hours on rest days go to Netflix documentaries), enabled our clothes thrifting and book window shopping habits, and have collectively supported the entire coffee shop economy as we crossed this country. Our rest days are a steady rotation of coffee shops, window shopping, and an occasional tourist excursion. As I’m wrapping up this blog, I’m chugging my iced Americano from Pittsburgh’s Yinz Coffee, and I’m wearing a tank top we thrifted from a vintage pop-up fair in Denver and jeans we thrifted in a sports exchange shop in Steamboat Springs.
What I encountered on my tourist excursion of the day — Andy Warhol’s paper mache elephant that Keith Haring painted over!
Signing off to refill my coffee,
Helen