They're just things.

There is so much to write about, and before I was getting overwhelmed that I could never, ever possibly catch up. But then I realized that I've been in this predicament before. Last time I got behind was the first time this summer that I went to Pittsburgh, and I solved that problem easily enough by writing about Pittsburgh via pictures, and showing pictures via writing about Pittsburgh. Eventually, then, I will show you pictures from the first three weeks of this trip, and tell you about the trip via pictures. Problem solved! Ta da!

But what I find far more interesting than simply showing you pictures is telling you about all the things we have broken, lost or otherwise destroyed.

LOST


1 pair of earrings. When we stayed a night in Northampton Beach State Park, a great little campground in the Adirondacks, we were tempted to stay a second night. It was just that nice. Our campsite was right on the shore of the Great Scandaga Lake, the park was quiet, the landscape was beautiful, and the people were nice. That night I went to take a shower, and I was wearing a pair of tree earrings I got a few years ago at Santa Fe Hemp. I hung the earrings by poking them through the shower curtain. "I'll probably forget these," I thought to myself. And then I did. I went back the next morning and found the little holes in the shower curtain, but no earrings hanging from them.

1 sock. I pride myself on getting through three years of living in college dorms without ever losing a single sock. Seriously. But then, in the months of October-January 2007-2008, I somehow lost 6 socks from 6 different pairs. As a result, I am truly haunted by the prospect of losing socks. When we stayed with Patrick's uncle in Burlington Flats, New York, we did some laundry, and I lost a sock. RIP yellow and white sock.

1 laptop charger. My laptop is very old - in laptop years, at least. It's a Compaq Presario V2000 that I got in spring 2006, when I spilled coffee in my old(er) laptop during midterms week and had to make an emergency purchase of a new computer. It's still trucking, though, even though the battery only holds about 5 minutes of charge. So when I left my laptop charger at a Wendy's in Rome, New York, discovered I did so in Rochester, New York, and I had some work due to my editor in Santa Fe only a few days later, it was no good. I called my dad, who keeps extras of everything on earth, and he had an extra laptop charger for my computer. He sent it to my brother's house Pittsburgh, where we would be in the next few days, and we went to Best Buy and picked up a replacement charger (for $86!). Once we got the charger from my dad in Pittsburgh, we returned the charger to the Best Buy there. Crisis averted.

BROKEN


1 car radio. On the 4th of July, we were driving to the Jell-O Museum in LeRoy, New York. A super incredibly horrible and obnoxious commercial came on the radio. I freaked out and turned the volume down to nil. And the radio clicked completely off. I thought, whatever, I must have just turned it off. But when I went to turn it back on, it didn't come back on. Not even the clock. Patrick checked the fuses, and they were fine. Everything else on my dashboard works. RIP Radio. (We had my mom send me by battery-powered iPod player from NJ, but of course she couldn't find the power cord. My iPod, which is also from 2006, only holds about 2 hours' worth of charge, so we have to charge it periodically.)

1 external hard drive. My laptop, being 800 years old, doesn't have much storage left, so I have been totally dependent on an external hard drive for a few years now. I have all my images since I started college (August 2003) on my external drive. So you can imagine my confusion when, while we were still in New Jersey, I plugged it in one day to have it just... Not show up on my desktop. We tried plugging it in to my parents' desktop, and it worked - so we thought it was my USB ports. But then we plugged Patrick's phone into my USB port and it showed up fine. I knew I wouldn't be able to empty my camera's memory card unless I somehow got external storage space,  so when we went to the Best Buy in Pittsburgh to return my laptop power cord, we stopped by Target to get a Western Digital 320-gig Passport. This is literally smaller than Patrick's wallet, needs no AC power source (like my old hard drive did) and olds nearly 2 times what my old drive did (it held 186 gigs). Plus, it's pink. Needless to say, I'm happy. It had mixed reviews online, but we have been using it for a few weeks now and I couldn't be happier. We didn't want to spend $15 on a case so we keep it in a sock. Meanwhile, I sent my old drive home with my brother for my dad to tinker with.

BROKEN AND RESURRECTED


1 camera. Patrick has an old Nikon digital camera that he's been toting around the country with him, and since my Canon takes better pictures, we have been using my camera for stills and his for videos. When we went to Niagara Falls, we went on the Cave of the Winds tour, which is pretty much the coolest thing ever - you can basically stand under the falling water on the "Hurricane Deck." Naturally, Patrick did, and he wanted me to get some photos and video of him doing so. They call it the Hurricane Deck for a reason - I've never been in a hurricane, but Patrick has, having lived most of his life in Florida, and he said the name is pretty accurate. The camera got completely soaked. Naturally, later that night, it wouldn't turn on. But we left it in the sun for a while that day, apparently dried it off enough, and it turned on again eventually. Soon we'll get that video off the camera and see how awesome (and totally unintelligible) it is.

STILL WORKS (THANK GOD)


Car air conditioner. As I mentioned in my last post, it has been hot as hell pretty much the whole time we've been on the road (it was a little chilly in Burlington Flats, but that's about all the respite we've gotten). If the car air conditioner conks out, I swear to god I am going home. Or just driving north until I hit the arctic circle.

Computer. Sure, I have sucked at blogging, but Facebook has been my link to everyone else in the world to let them know what I'm up to and how we're doing. Not only that, but we have made extensive use of Roadside America, state land bureau websites (to find free or cheap camping) and the like - and once we get to areas where we don't have many friends, we will be using CouchSurfing more (Pat and I both have accounts).

OTHER STATS


Received: 1 speeding ticket (Charlotte in Batavia, New York - we hate Batavia)
Locked in car: 1 car key (Patrick in Batavia, New York - did I mention we hate Batavia?)
Copy made: 1 car key (Henrietta, New York)

There will undoubtedly be more things to add to this type of an entry, but hopefully nothing else vital breaks or goes missing. But if they do, oh well. They're just things, right?