MOABmoabMOAB

i've been completely out of touch with the real world for the past 5 days and only have 15 minutes on this computer, but we know that this blog has a loyal following of readers anxiously awaiting our next post who will be upset with us if we dont update regularly.

train ride #2: oakland to green river, utah. more tourists than last time, even more old people if thats possible. there were volunteers on board giving us historical information over the intercom along the way, but the intercom system was broken and kept cutting out and the result was pretty hilarious. we made a friend from minnesota (he had minnesota tattoed to his calf), but the friendship kinda floundered for awhile in the second or third hour when we revealed that the darjeeling alias' we had given him weren't our real names, and that the bandage carson was wearing around his head wasn't really from a bike accident but we just wanted to be like the darjeeling. nevertheless, alex from minnesota was a great friend and the funniest thing he said was "that lady across from me was as nuts as all balls." we made a graphic novel depicting the events of the second 24 hour train ride in greater detail, and if we find a scanner we will try to upload a sneak peak of that for you. also, cow counting competitions were the new thing for us to do on this train, replacing stacking things.

turns out green river is not the sprawling metropolis of opportunity we had hoped. that would have been in opposite world, because the green river "train station" is actually a concrete block platform, with an arrow pointing over to nothing. its such a weird feeling to be standing with just your backpack with nothing but closed stores around.

the theme for the rest of the trip is "i just realized..." or maybe its "adventures in hitch hiking", which i actually promisted my parents i wouldn't do. we've been doing a lot of hiking around and setting up our tent where we can and eating the same thing every day: oatmeal for breakfast, stale baguette with tuna for lunch, rice and beans for dinner. i don't like rice. we are ten miles from all the attractions of arches national park, but everyone who goes there is an old tourist afraid of ride giving and when we tried to hitch hike there park rangers wagged their fingers at us. so we went to the tire store, got 3 intertubes for five bucks and floated on them down the colorado river aka ghiardia river through the canyons for 4 hours. i almost died watching carson 30 feet ahead of me going through the rapids with his feet in the air singing sailor songs. we also did a terrific hike all the way up to the top of a canyon, and at the top i had this thought that it would be a great place to kill yourself, jumping of the canyon. we drank all our water out of "matrimony springs", called that because once you drink out of it you're married to moab and you have to come back.
while we wait for a car to pick us upwe met a guy who lives in wallingford and his girlfriend?/intercontinental affair? from atlanta who's given us a ride. we've learned that there's a lot of kindness out there, and a lot of different types of kind. we stayed at a campsite one of the nights, and the guy at the campsite next to us was playing banjo aka "pickin' and grinnin'". we met a group of germans who literally spoke in the jane schaffer essay format, a guy who is still making his way back from burning man with a tall bike. also got a ride from a guy with an art vw van painted like the playa, and the back was filled with two things: beer and gasoline.
we're staying at the lounging lizard hostel tonight. today the guy there picked up the phone and said "you're looking for alex? he used to work here. he's still here though."

the computer is running out of time, we're alive and well

love,

bianca carson jordi
aka gianca, dr. rhumpus, and lone wolf or knapsack

sorry if we speak in a code of inside jokes