Chipotle with Seth. Hung out in Maggie Daley park. Paradise for kids. Think we’ll bring our board with us to Portland and SF. Stopped by Chinatown. Back of the Yards. View out of the 47 bus window: shipping crates stacked sky high. Got a shirt and a pair of jeans. Had flan from a local supermarket. They don’t get many non-locals here. Yari. Walked past Elijah Muhammad’s house on the way home. Yacub’s third son. Fixed our shoes with superglue. Made ourselves dinner. Slept. Packed everything to go. Born slippy. Took a lyft back to South. Julianna let us in. Did laundry. We subsist on the generosity of strangers. Saw Josie. Test slept on chairs. An eye mask may be essential. Cameron came in clutch. Pack early tomorrow. Trader Joe’s food run. Start budgeting—we’ve been making major expenses these past two weeks. Charged our camera. Shave and look clean.

Under the Bean with Seth and appreciated how the curved surface echoes as it slopes upwards—so that images of you layer in concentric rings like angels do in chapel dome frescos.

Packed up our stuff. Everything seems to fit. Decent bit of camera gear. Took the green into the city. Marvin with the green tote likes to surf around (as we do). Picked up supplies at Trader Joes, then an eye mask from Target. Tobias from Carbondale, an Amish teen, has traveled upwards of 50-60,000 miles on the amtrak. Boarded the empire builder. It’s pretty spacious. The quickly vanishing past. Thought we lost our earphones and panicked. No wifi on our train. Many amish. Women, kapp and dresses, men, bowl-cut and suspenders. Met Bobby and Robbie (and Josh and Sarah), a family headed to hike in Glacier National Park. Spent the afternoon just looking out of the window. Asked for some hot water from the cafe car. Along the Mississippi. Short stop at Winona, MN. Felt good to get fresh air. Listened to some Lumineers. Short stop in Minneapolis. Rendezvous with Kimba and Rakesh from Madison, WI.

Things we’ve realized about traveling: Limb coverage is essential. Worth getting the bigger blanket. Pack light. Snack run. Immersion water heater?

Amtrak specific learnings. Get out and stretch. Need water. Change outfits to maintain day-night division. Get clean wipes to wipe ourselves down.

Turn west from Milwaukee, we pass through farmland. Cornfields wide and pure. A red barn once in a while. And then just more corn. Columbus WI… An hour out and there is no more memory of the city. Then swampland. Lotus pads by the trackside. Patches of purple flowers. Really you want to look out the window all the time. Saw the Mississippi for the first time and it felt significant. The water, so wide and so slow. It’s just there—Amish teens at the back of the observer car take turns with their digicams. Think one of them snuck a picture of us.

Night, we pass through much of Minnesota and wake up to the plains. Could see for miles up to the horizon. Tinges of dawn before sunrise. A fine mist covers the ground. Cows, sheep, horses and all manners of livestock. Short stop in Minot, ND. Freight trains. Some scattered oil rigs. Slowly we exit flatland to badlands, layers of coloured sediment. Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Montana. The expanse. Had more bread. Called Kelli downstairs. Talked trainspotting. Sarah, Josh, Robbie, and Bobbie shared cinnamon knots and cookies with us. 21 miles of visibility. Maybe we can see Canada from here. 100 miles from Glacier National Parks. Got ourselves a hot chocolate. Thunderstorms in the distance. The sky opened up. Rockies in full view. Glacier National Park. Much more green, though the sun start to set. Met Burt, Theresa and Kelley from North Carolina. Talked food and beverages. Kelley works for Checkers and Rally, Theresa for Pepsi, and Burt with ATM security. Josh and Bobbie left at White Fish, ran back to say bye but they had left! We’ll see them in Chicago sometime.

Take note of vegetation. Forests to reeds to grass to shrubs.

“You could lose your dog for a week in North Dakota and still see it”

Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. So named because of a story with a momma bear and her cub. An imprint in the rock formation like the digits of the claw. Encounters of the Third Kind.

Thought about how we’re visiting Will Park after a while. And people from high school that we saw this summer—Noah and Seth. Of all the many life-paths here we are out in the American West.

The bellybutton of Illinois. Between Peoria and Bloomingdale. Mackinaw (?) Think that’s where Josh and Bobbie are from. They spoke about a farm fire. Waiting for the firemen to come. The barn. Controlled burning?

Song: Higgins Hall by Joshua Allen (who we met on the train!)

Morning, sun in the cabin. Pasco, WA. The trees look different here. We’re much closer to civilization. Straddling the border between Washington and Oregon. Basalt cliffs like sets of teeth sticking out of the ground. Little nap. Wishram, WA. Passed through the cascades. Mount Hood in the distance. Met a Pierre from the tri-cities, going to Portland for the funeral of an old family friend. Talked anarchy, film cameras, and urban loneliness. Texted Nick at Vancouver, and before we knew it we were in Portland. Said bye to Rakesh. Nick picked us up and drove us to Beaverton. Portland’s Suburbs. Uwajimaya, Asian grocers. Had ramen. Picked up a little rice snack. Dropped our stuff off at Nick’s. Met Nick’s mom. Shuffled off to the pickleball courts. Met Nick’s dad. Played a game. 4.0 ranking is not something to mess around with—got absolutely squashed. Out in the town with Nick. Portland Tram, OSHU, walked along the waterfront. Said to a lady: you know who the regulars are (by the way they’re unfazed at the rocking of the tram) Blueberry like bushes? Many dog-walkers, we’re in a slow part of town. Later in the afternoon—Nick’s dad took us for a proper tour. Rose garden, “lemon fizz”. Pittock mansion, view of Portland. The mountains have no end. Stopped by the Oregon Badminton Academy. Watched Nick play. The intensity of that room. Went back to Nick’s and showered. That felt good. Had dinner and a very good sleep. Uploaded our pictures.

I. Met Pierre in the observer car who let us sit down with him for a better view of Mt. Hood. He wore a mask, and had with him a Minolta GM-2 and a gallon hydro flask from Dr. Hydro. We talked about his camera, and asked where he was going—to which he said a funeral. An old family friend had passed away who fought in Germany in the 60s. Pierre’s hoping to photograph the funeral with a Leica 3 that he had left him.

II. Pierre’s an anarchist advocate—asked him how he got into it. He talked about difficulties with claiming disabilities and uncompassionate bureaucracy. Recced us: Seeing like a State by James C Scott, Anarchism and the Black Revolution, and Anarchy Works by Peter Gilberly. Hyper Localized governance seems to be what it's about. Asked him what he saw as viable alternatives to money, and he mentioned time banking, practiced in Japan, Burlington, Vermont, and Plumas, California. Using time coins as a labour based currency for fulfilling people’s social needs. Pierre had volunteered at one point to renovate an office for Street Rats, a Portland newspaper for the homeless.

III. Told Pierre about our trip across the country and our project. Her recced us: The Americans by Robert Frank and Uncommon Places by Steven Shore. Both collections of Americana. While the Americans is in black and white and rough around the edges, Uncommon Places has polished pictures of funny shops and parking lots around the country.

Episode at the Oregon’s Badminton Academy: Enter the ramp at the back of the warehouse into the Oregon Badminton Academy. Green rubber mats, shuttlecocks passing vigorously between racquets. There’s a new player on the block. Steven, U19, going to Virginia Tech as a freshman next fall. A parent behind me says he looks like he’s twenty five. Tall, strong, muscles. The badminton circle is a small one—mostly Asians, Chinese and Indian. Here, Austin, white guy in a purple shirt, orange shorts, Deep, a smaller Indian guy, and Green Jersey and Knee Brace gather around to talk. Did you hear about the Dutch Machine? He’s 6’5’’, came in here a week ago and beat everybody. “One of the toughest matches I’ve had.” Deep says. Nick thinks he’s played him—but it must have been someone else, because the Dutch Machine is thirty. A boy walks off the court with a broken racquet—that seems to happen every two seconds here. But the real talk tonight is Nick playing Steven—to which a small crowd has gathered to watch. Austin (aforementioned purple shirt) offers commentary: you see what Nicky does is he preempts it, just lets his racquet hover for a few moments before hitting it. He listens and sees what Steve does. But Nick says he thinks nothing at all when he plays. The first match comes to a 21-5, by the end of the second match, Steven’s on the ground. Consult DFW’s How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart.

Woke up at 8:00. Became a member of HI hostels. Booked a couple nights in Tenderloin. Nick still asleep. Nick’s dad fed us breakfast, toast and carved tofu. Went out to run in Fanno Creek. Nick’s dad was on a bike, he really pushed us—went sub-7 for two miles? Solid 6-miler in fresh air: good practice for tomorrow with Bango. Showered and got our things together. Nick’s dad took us to see the Nike campus. Told him about the sub-3 documentary we saw about Kipchoge. Started remembering all these stories about ourselves—our first year in the states, how we were bigger than all the kids in JV soccer, the Lost Sanity email we sent, and how we would climb in our room in Browning through the window much of lower year. Stopped by a Banh Mi place for lunch, packed one for the road. Visited Powell Books with Nick. Place is a maze! Stereotypically Pacific Northwest. Cards with cats with puffy eyes from K. Karlson at paper puffin. Cool slug mug @owlandbearstudios. Bought a fridge magnet. Cut it really close with the train. Nick dropped us off there at 2:00. Convos right at the gate. There’s Sybil, who just published her first book at 70, Poetry and Art, on Amazon, and Michael, an electric historian going down to visit a hydroelectric plant, complete with dig tools and all. Our neighbor, Margot from Brest, Brittany is an illustrator for a publishing house. @margot_fdl. Train views: thought we passed a field of wombats—too small to be sheep. Short stop in Eugene, OR. Coming up at the Coast Range. Think the scenery along this route is much the same. Going up a tall stretch. Hung out at the observation car for a bit with Sybil. Two guys from San Diego who’d just come back from Kanchuga(?), Alaska. Art from Detroit has walked the length of the continent, 35 states, 113 places, lives now in a trailer on 7 acres of land in New Mexico that he rents for 25 dollars a month. Bobbie from Princeton teaches Modern Authoritarianism, went to Swarthmore, visiting friends just like us.

Just three days ago we were in Chicago. See Red Woods, Muir Woods. Monkey wrench gang.

"A real leader can somehow get us to do certain things that deep down we think are good and want to be able to do but usually can’t get ourselves to do on our own” from Up, Simba. DFW McCain coverage from rolling stone.

Sleep last night was a little rough. Woke up in Sacramento. Above the bay. Will Park’s up. Wrapped around the water. Said bye to Margot. Will Park picked us up in his Gray Nissan Altima. Breakfast in Pacific Heights, Sweet Maple. Talked magazines. Hung out in Golden Gate park. It’s building a tribe—Sliced Bread is a short term realization of amigo. Regained confidence about our project. Ran into buildspace people. Hung out on Ocean Beach. Indonesian smoking cartridge. Touched the pacific—ran into the pacific. Tasted the salt and said thalassa, thalassa. Little wet. Will Park showed us his favourite taqueria in the city. Showered. Sent back our DNC confidentiality agreement. Got all of our classes for fall. Went out to meet with Bango and his brother Gabe. 7 miles. Up Kearney, then Columbus, then all the way along the water past cressy field to the Golden Gate Bridge. View of the city. Pink fog coming over the pacific: that’s the edge of the world. Sun is down, freezing cold. Old driver drove us back. We’re in love with this city. Said we will one day live here. Made noodles for dinner in the hostel. Met Adam from Sydney and Giovanni from Rome.

Did not expect to get sunburnt in San Francisco.

Will Park showed us some of his 11mm photography in Indonesia. So wide it draws you in. As they say, if the picture isn't good it's because you’re not close enough.

Here are tribes—runners, skaters, the ummah.

Breakfast. Strawberry butter toast. Adam from Australia got us to go on a walking tour. Golden Gate park with Chanel. A couple from Jersey. And a girl from Alberta. It’s a storied city. If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. Dahlias. Mr. Chow from Sha Tin, 22 years in the park, started talking about “hostages(?)”, was in special forces, it was a “no tomorrow” job. Back to the hostel for a quick break before we walked cross-town to Haight Ashbury. Picked up a 70s/80s electric hotpot from a goodwill (so we think by the packaging and something called Gerber Oatmeal?). Thought about getting a kid scooter. Sheltered in the Haight Public Library. Buena Vista Park. 2 dogs. 6 miles around the city. Went by Castro and Twin Peaks before taking a tram down Market Street. Length of the city. Friends from New York. San Francisco is a kind of utopia—or at least an attempt at it. Past and present, Trolley cars—awfully reminiscent of our native Hong Kong. Dinner with Bango brothers and Bai in Chinatown. Had noodles. Forgot how much we missed XC. Waymos with the revolving sensors. Ice cream from an insomnia cookies. We said our interests are very epicurean, prompted to explain, we said it’s like we love gardening but there's no actual garden. Gabe said he’s epicurious. Took the muni one stop to our hostel. They have Cantonese in the subway here!

Back home, DNC cops living in Woodlawn?

Allen Ginsberg was a photographer.

Get orange sunglasses.

History of Golden Gate Park. Land used to be sand dunes. They piled on manure from which the trees grew. McLaren, what a man. Planted trees to obscure statues, tore up the World Fair. Nature goat.

Felt something when we stood on that hill where thousands of young people had come in the summer of 67. In the backdrop of the Vietnam War, 2 million of your buddies being drafted to die in some jungle. And the president had just gotten shot four years ago. So you take the train out west to where the sun sets over the ocean—something no one had ever seen before.

And blue tickets. Gay men dishonorably discharged and dropped off with the closest port, many ending up in San Francisco. Ticket to their name, they could do nothing but build a home here. One of them was Harvey Milk.

Gabe: “Sometimes you really try to be friends with the first people you meet in college because they’re close to you, seem cool and popular. Then you quickly realize that they’re not your people and go out to find belonging among another group of friends (a group you may not have been initially drawn to).”

Walking around Corona Heights, up this random park. The flowers. And it all just sloughs off. Saint Francis of Assisi, nothing of prestige, really. And round the hill, Sutro Towers like the trident of Poseidon. We have come from flatland—home of a people that know nothing of the sea, and now we are here.

Will Park picked us up in the morning. Salito’s in Marin County. Soft shell crab. JD Vance and friends. Drove through the mountains, winding. Brought up De Profundis, haven’t thought about that in years. Parked 2 miles from Muir Woods. Hiked. Talked Plato—noesis. Story of our fathers: Thomas Wang. Felix chap from Australia, gave us free tickets into Muir woods. Junior Park Rangered. Muir beach. Dragged seaweeds around, Will said “I’m walking my dog”. Absolutely spent, sunburnt too. Slept in the car. Here We Go by Mac Miller. Called Arhon from Ohana Hawaiian BBQ in Marin. Will Park drove us back. Windows down, arm out the window, San Francisco, view of the bridge. Scary climbs, 8 turns down Lombard Street. Called dad. Want to make SB really good now. Merch design. Distribution networks. We’re just full-on experiencing these couple of days, putting down little notes here and there to reconstruct.

Joel from Saarsburg, Germany, is visiting his cousins in Concord, CA. One of his cousins is half Brazilian (on his mom’s side), and the other is a really good French speaker. Says California is the first stop on his world tour. Spent his 25th birthday on top of Mount Diablo, showed us pictures of the sunrise. Said it was his best birthday ever. We asked him how to say awesome in German—it’s toll.

Shaun from Denver is a teacher, just came from the California Zephyr, 5 hours delayed. Said he sat next to a woman on the train coming back from the trial of his nephew’s killer in Reno. She went to look the killer in the eyes for his sister, because she couldn’t.

“The problem of the tortured artist is, as we said to Will and Rishi, that they suage our conscience. So that we change nothing about how we live or how we treat each other. They are that perfect representation of the idealist—so pure a rejection of the world around them that we take them as ikons. So we say to each other we like Van Gogh (the genius in him no one understood) or read David Foster Wallace and just go about our lives.

Will Park told us that, at least in high school, we seemed most wanting to become a martyr out of anyone he knew. We thought this was true, but ironic that we really believed in nothing back then. He said, alluding to Moby Dick for the second time that day, that what people don’t get is that everyone needs a white whale. Most people never have something like that. Remi Boncoeur”

Something about smoking in Indonesia being a unit of time? The Fault in Our Stars. You take the power away from it. No fault in carrying cigarettes.

#thehousebehindthechurch.

A month out from school. Slow day, packed up our stuff. A little breather. Follow Will Park on Spotify. Sat in Union Park. Grabbed a chair for an old Asian couple with their dog QQ, a black pug who sniffed our fingers and rolled around belly up. “He likes to show off”. Sunshower as we typed this out. Went back to the hostel to make noodles. Met Eden from Australia, who also takes pictures. Took the F streetcar to meet Annalisa at the Musee Mecanique. Foggy and now a light mist, like out of one of those very fine sprinklers at a summer garden. Sat down, talked, and had a vanilla steamer at some cafe. Told Annalisa about Siddartha summer. Will Park picked us up from Walgreens. Beach digging, fire building. Clark called Clara, and watched us dig the pit. Sebastian, Alexis, Chloe, Ben, Kavya, Will Park, Clara, and Annalisa. Sunset over the ocean “just as it's supposed to be.” which is weird because no one’s ever seen that. Three California teens in the car.

About the bone broth, and yoga, and the cafe, and David who went to Japan to study bone broth for three years. And this interconnected web. If this isn’t nice, what is.

Anya Taylor Joy. End scene of Emma, I think about that all the time.

“David gave me recs for wine because he heard I was going to Sonoma county, I had no heart to tell him that I was 18 and did not drink”

Overheard in the park: “It’s just a second, Holden” “When you’re thirty five and you have these pictures, you will be so happy”

Set out from the hostel at 6. Caught a bus to Emeryville. Our train was much delayed. We’re a damn sad fella, cried on the train out of Frisco. Ian, ecologist, riparian, wetlands. Many got off at Reno. Read On the Road. Helped out an old marine headed to the VA office in Salt Lake. Read Consider the Lobster. In the early morning we’re projected to cross the Utah desert. Night, no stars, streetlights.

It had been two years since I last saw Will Park.

All you can do on a train is think. Like what am I even doing here? Do we listen to other people’s music to approximate headspace? Consider the Lobster: the real problem is we don’t think—DFW is so naive in thinking we think that it hurts. We’re just inhuman sometimes like that. Kill the whale!

Song: Piazza, New York Catcher by Belle and Sebastian

Woke up to Salt Lake. Salt crusted. Saw some deer in the rugged landscape. Kim and Wayne from the south coast of England. Near Poole. Say they like to take a pair of nude gnomes on vacation with them. Nice people. Colorado Mesas. Green River, UT. Cows so close. First mooners. Fresh air stop at Ramirez, CO. Right at sunset. Golden clouds. California Zephyr views are kind of unbeatable. Into the world famous lava tunnel, 2 miles long of dark. Approaching Denver, lights in the distance. Texted Maya. Tall hotels and glass windows. Spent 10 minutes in Denver. Walked out onto a street outside the station.

Conductor at Glenwood Springs. This is the bermuda triangle of the Amtrak, we lose someone here every week to the smoke stop.

Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois. Sat down with Freek, from the northern parts of the Netherlands. He’s working on a farm/homestead near Burlington, VT, and taking the train back after a cross-country trip visiting Frisco and joining a group of Germans on a road trip down to the Grand Canyon. Talked cycling, ecology, greenspace, forestry. He makes a living planting trees as an independent contractor. Says he grew up listening to Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, the trio. “Can’t beat that”. At Naperville. Seers, we’re back in Chicago. Showed Frits around a little. Took the 4 back to Hyde Park. Moran gave us two dress shirts. Grabbed oat milk and apricots from Walgreens. Hotel Cobb. Texted Nhan. Posted Writing and Time Travel.

Freek told us he’s a big fan of Steinbeck, recced us Geert Mak’s How God Disappeared from Gorwert.

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