Home stretch [ME]

Brewer, ME

Maine's been an immoderate overkill of sensory delights [i.e., some of the prettiest riding of this whole trip, and way too much of the best food]. I've kind of been treating it as a a celebration of all that's come before. Go big or go home...and I can't go home.

I've stumbled along a greasy trail of pornographically indulgent gastronomical recklessness [such as duckfat-fried donut holes, distilled carrot spirits...I'll stop there].

This included a visit to La Orilla in Ogunquit [my first destination in Maine, and a town whose name took me longer to figure out how to pronounce than I spent in it], an adorable upscale tapas place that my friend from NorCal and her brother just opened. I got trigger-happy with ordering small plates, wine and oysters while getting 100 pages into a new book that made me laugh out loud with obnoxious frequency [Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, which was given to me in Baltimore]. A very sweet, very intoxicated woman came up and asked me a lot of personal questions, almost cried on me, and declared that my next wine was on her, throwing a $10 onto my table with a flourish before being summoned away by her friend. 

I also swam in the ocean [for the record, Maine's Atlantic in June is SO much warmer than California's Pacific] and rolled around in sun-warmed sand, spent a night [getting completely lost] in a thirteen-bedroom mansion before riding onto Portland, where I went to a drive-in for the first time ever for a double feature of one movie I'd already seen, and another movie that I didn't care about at all, which is exactly what I want in a movie that I'm watching as a raucous social activity. 

Whatever your opinion of Jurassic World...if you see it in an open-top Jeep underneath the stars armed with beer, blankets, [natural-but-magically-effective] bug spray, and a lot of people who are brashly committed to not taking the movie seriously, it's probably impossible not to enjoy the experience. 

Eventually, my body punished me for the digestively ambitious eating. I foresee an impending auto-apologetic juice fast once I get to Reno. Necessarily there was a period of convalescence afterwards [digestive bitters and naps, mostly], during which I made the delightful discovery that steeping lemon ginger tea in homemade miso soup yields delectable gut-cosseting results.

From there, I stayed in a house in Chebeague Island that belonged to someone four social degrees of separation from me [I'd been given a business card shortly before the trip, which turned into my host in Melrose and, then, into the house on Chebeague]; at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound base camp [on my very first day of riding, a girl who works with Outward Bound walked up to me in the Keys and told me to take down her number in case I needed a host in Maine], then in a random patch of lupines [right after watching the Monty Python sketch about the lupine-robber] that I'd been directed to by a bartender in Belfast, where I rolled into town as some local festival was going on [there was a brigade of ukuleles, a concert, and a woman in a photojournalism workshop stopped me to take photos of me and my bike]. There's been a distinctly bookended feeling to my entire trip...a lot of things have kind of come full-circle.

Oh. And, and, and. I rode 80 miles with 3,600 feet of climbing. That's a personal "most" for me [I've done a couple higher-mileage days, but not hilly ones]. Boom!

Also had company for most of my time in Maine since I've run into another guy who's also on a bike tour. First time of the trip I've actually really ridden anywhere with anybody [in terms of actually traveling; I'm not counting day-trip jaunts around town or to the river, or recurrently seeing people in different cities who are also traveling].

From there, carried on to Bar Harbor [Baa Haabaa!] and collapsed in this weird sort of disbelieving euphoria when I got there. Wound up at Coffee Hound, which I am bothering to mention now because I don't think I've ever met friendlier baristas in my life. I ordered clam chowder and a lobster roll, and immediately dropped the lobster roll [they were wonderful and replaced it even though I was about to just pick it up and eat it off the floor]. After I'd already been basically unintelligible, and deliriously fickle enough to ask to change my order to something else [which happened to be cheaper] once I'd already been rung up.

And then spent the last couple days hanging out in a cabin in the woods in Ellsworth, right on a lake, with a couple of rad dudes. Canoed out across the lake to check out an osprey nest. Played lots and lots and lots of guitar, for the first time in months. Played chess, and actually finished a game [it was a great game, too—lasted a couple hours, at least] for the first time in...maybe years? [I'm not good at following through to the end of a game.] Perfect little place to hide out before returning to...Everything Else, I suppose.

Finished A Walk in the Woods today, my very last day of riding. Started The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho, which was a gift from a friend I made back in North Carolina but didn't quite feel ready to read until today.

Today, rode the last sixteen little miles to Brewer, where I am now. Went into a bike shop to figure out how to ship my bike, which was not only way cheaper than flying it, but was pretty much the easiest, most painless thing ever. I didn't have to do anything. I don't know why I hadn't just gotten my bike shipped out to Key West in the beginning, but so it goes. 

Treated myself to a cheap motel. I'm fasting for today, which is something I've never done [or felt compelled to do] before. But, for many reasons that I won't go into, it feels like a really good decision today. It's almost 9pm and I'm managing just fine. Kind of crazy...usually I can't even function if I don't have breakfast within an hour of waking up [sometimes half an hour].

And, also, free continental breakfast tomorrow. Boom.

I don't know, man. I didn't model in Maine, nor did I hang out with models or photographers [though I get to see the incomparable Keira Grant tomorrow, which is already a fucking treat in itself because Keira's the shit...with the added bonus that she's game to take me to the airport, even though she's already driving quite a ways to come see me]. And this is, primarily—well, at least right now—a modeling-ish blog [or maybe that's just an excuse, I'm really not sure what this blog is anymore].

In any case, I don't feel inclined to divulge too many of the really confronting and beautiful inner whatevering that I've had going on. Some shit's sacred, yo. At least, it is when it's still being digested. I think I'll be digesting this trip for months to come, if not longer. It kind of hasn't even hit me yet that I don't currently have my bike with me, and that I'm about to be in Reno in two days, and so on. I don't know. Suffice it to say that in the last 12 hours or so, I've been a well of synthesis [not merely antithesis, which is usually where I get stuck]. A lot's happened. Internal, external. And so on.

Oh, wait, I do have one awesome modeling-related thing to mention. In Belfast, I mentioned to a bartender that I'd just biked from Key West [no mention of being a model] and he said, "...This might be weird, but do you know Theresa Manchester? She was here last winter talking about how she had a friend who was about to bike from Key West to Maine."

BAM, synchronicity-machine go!

Speaking of Theresa [who I last saw in Miami, on this trip], she and I will both be in Reno this summer working on Mazu Goddess of the Empty Sea for this year's Burning Man [d'oh...every year I tell myself I'm going to do something else for the summer, but I got sucked into a project again...couldn't resist the crew who'll be working on this, though, which consists of several of my favorite people on the planet].

More on that later, I'm sure.

The program for the next two days: breakfast, Keira [more specifically: Bangor, shenanigans, food, booze, Augusta, airport], two layovers during which I'll probably be fighting down anticipatory giddy-anxiety, arrival in Reno [and into the clutches of a lot of people I love].

New Jersey & New York

Photo: daniel Anton NYC, Brooklyn, NY

Brooklyn, NY

Rode from Philly to North Brunswick [under crusty seafood green overpasses, past Princeton, on, on, on—getting so much faster than I used to be], where I hung out at the Photocoop, a studio that hosts shootouts and instructional workshops, and scampered around an incredible swimming hole with photographer Niel Galen and model Nadine Theresa.

Much fun was had. A contender for my best outdoor shooting experience, even. I jumped off a rock into a very narrow 22-foot-deep chute of geothermally water at the base of a mossy horsetail fall. Photographic evidence exists. I will post it if/when I receive it.

My time in NYC was a blurry sleepless whirlwind from which I am still recovering.

I rode into Brooklyn to crash with an old climbing buddy from Colorado whom I hadn't seen in four years; went to the Museum of Sex and found myself drowning in a cave of giant bouncehouse titties and getting lost in a dark mirror maze [oh, and super full-circle moment: the ludicrous bicycle-fuck-machine-contraption I'd seen in a film at Bike Smut, which I'd attended in Jacksonville during this trip, was on display there]; wandered Highline [one of my favorite little chunks of NYC] under a surreal gray sky; was [serendipitously, almost immediately, and without consequence] reunited with the ID and credit cards I'd left behind in New Jersey [I'd left them at Niel's, and he had a job in the city that day so I was able to track him down in Manhattan—once again...with this much help and luck, I'm never going to learn my lesson] over BBQ; went to a comped yoga class that thoroughly wrung out my tight legs and hips; rode my bike around the city in the rain at night; have actualized various degrees of reunions with phenomenal company [a lot of people I'd met during this trip just happened to be in NYC at the same time]; and even managed to catch up on Game of Thrones. 

...And that was all just the first day, against a backdrop of chilly drizzle and lightning. 

Other than that, I spent a lot of time in a hot tub full of nude models [specifically Rebecca Lawrence, Jessamyne, and Erica Jay, who are all an utter fucking riot of loveliness and absurdity] surrounded by a flock of plastic flamingos; guinea-pigged some vagina steam tea witchcraft while watching Broad City [seemed fitting]; got a little trigger-happy with craft cocktails invented by eye-bleedingly beautiful bartenders who were varying degrees of dapper [luckily, a couple of those cocktails wound up being free when I closed my tab, heh...apparently I can sometimes still beguile gorgeous mixologists after breaking glass in a bar].

I also enjoyed a multitude of little moments: randomly being given a balloon animal and then finding a small boy to give it to on the metro; sticking a larger bill in an elderly street performer's case and seeing his reaction; flipping off a particularly lewd catcaller and smugly enjoying his indignation.

...And I still somehow managed to squeeze in a bunch of work with great people [honorable mention goes to Daniel Anton NYC, Jamie Hankin, and Harlem Photo], be in a yoga video, get a free bike tune-up [thank you Tony <3], and see Sleep No More again [exactly two years after I first saw it, according to Timehop].

Every single time I come to New York City, which I often tell myself is not a city I love or even like, I think, "Dammit, why did I wait this long to come back? I ought to come back more often. I ought to make it a twice-a-year thing, or something..." 

But then aeons pass before my next return, and I'm left thinking, "Dammit, why did I wait this long to come back?..."

Once all my shoots were accounted for, I spent my last night in town being a responsible adult and staying out with friends till 4 am, knowing I had to ride 70 miles the next day. The cops beat us to an alleged "some kind of naked warehouse party" I'd been told about [and none of us were 100% sure what "some kind of naked warehouse party" was supposed to mean and so, of course, we had to go find out], but at least in the frenetic aftermath, throngs of drunk people kept trickling up to us on the street asking, "Can I join you guys?" and inevitably getting separated minutes later, and we had a good little wander, miasmically forming short-lived posses with new groups of strangers around Williamsburg.

I may not have felt incredible the next day, but I knew there was a tent-friendly plot of lawn behind a vacation home on Long Island with my name on it. So there I went.

Photo: Niel Galen, North Brunswick, NJ. With model Nadine Theresa Stevens.

Pennsylvania

Polaroid: Funktionhaus, Baltimore, MD

Philadelphia, PA

Started off my time in Pennsylvania hanging out with Ivy Lee and Greg Gardner.

In addition to being a glamour nude model [Penthouse, etc.] and talented fine art photographer, Ivy's exceptionally organized and runs awesome glamour and art photography meetups for which she recruits traveling models such as yours truly.

We ate, drank, watched Interstellar, laughed at her cat's shenanigans, and I went on a late-night Cinnabon eating spree [gross]. The next day was an exhausting one; I clambered all over the ruins of a house from the late 1700's, including getting up a ladder into a small crawlspace towards the top of the chimney. Lots of fun, but I was definitely sore the next day.

In Philadelphia proper, I spent a couple days riding all over the city with a couple of awesome ragamuffins whom I stayed with in south Philly. We found a hidden hippie haven renegade campsite overlooking a park, pulled over for craft beer pit stops by the water, swam in the Wissahickon, asphyxiated in the dense crowd of people hanging out by the river's Harbor Park [stuffed with vendors, hammocks, a roller rink], meandered amidst the Mütter Museum's morbid medical oddities, sat on the ground in focus-mode as a gourmet ice cream tasting flight melted all over my leg [flavors included Everything Bagel and Buttered Popcorn]. No photos exist from this period of running amok, as my phone was dead and I was too busy tooling around with anti-car-anarcho-syndicalist-cycle-punks to bother with taking photos, anyhow.

Then I was transferred over to my next hosts, in west Philly. Different-and-equally-awesome vibe, more of a polyamorous academic crew. The last couple days have been mellow and have largely revolved around conversation and food. Ate a squillion grilled veggies upon my arrival, then sat atop a roof shooting the shit with my new hosts and their neighbors as the sun set and unexpected fireworks popped up over the treetops. Went with a friend of a friend to Charlie Was a Sinner, a craft cocktail bar where the bartender obliged me by inventing new cocktails according to my preferences of the moment, and topped off with basil gelato. 

Figure model and artist Katie Marie came by and we hung out on the little "porch" ledge underneath the 4th story window of the Spruce Goose [the group house where I'm currently staying] as the soggy air crescendoed to what felt like a rolling boil [thankfully the heat burst into a small thunderstorm in the evening which has made the heat slightly more tolerable].

It's kind of blowing my mind that this trip is 3/4 of the way done...now that the end is kind of in sight, I'm trying my best to remain present and not think in countdown terms, but exciting summer prospects in Reno are calling my name [i.e., as much as I told myself I wouldn't be part of a Burning Man project this year, or even go to the Burn at all...I'm going to be on crew for the Mazu project that's come from Taiwan via the Dream Community...it's an amazing project being run by an amazing crew, which includes many of the people I love and miss most in this world...along my travels I've met many people whom I adore, but very few whom I miss and whose absence I really feel].

Photo: Robert Moran, Brookhaven, PA

DMV

Photo: Grissom Photography, Fredericksburg, VA

Baltimore, MD

"I suppose if there's anything you've learned on this trip, it's to have no expectations, or that if you do have expectations, don't attach to them."

Ain't it the fucking truth.

Whew. It's been a socially and photographically dense week-or-so.

Reston, VA: Hung out with photographer Kollin Bliss and art model Blueriverdream. Indulged in some decadent TV-watching vegetation and chocolate-eating, had some good long talks accompanied by aimless wandering, seafood, and beer. 

College Park, MD: Spent a couple nights at the Whytestone Creative Outcrop, an intentional burner community. Such a delightfully eclectic revolving-open-door stream of people...artists, activists, performers...and also government contractors and corporate 9-to-5-ers with secret deviant lives. Good conversations ensued.

I slept in a curtained nook in the magically-light-proof basement that successfully nullified my [sometimes pesky] biological clock, where a bunch of us watched Ex Machina projected on the wall [supplemented with delicious beer and pizza intermission], atop a magic-carpet double-decker-couch-mattress. I spent my last day there testing out a transcendentally exciting hypothesis about protein bars, crawling around in the grass during a thunderstorm, and being part of the cackling peanut gallery for what could be described as a spontaneous and unintentional 90's Calvin Klien ad [i.e., phwoar]. To make a long story short.

Baltimore, MD: Went to a charity art auction with photographers Funktionhaus [below] and PK Brazil and I won a T-shirt, just as I was passing out from compounded exhaustion! 

Several days of back-to-back photo shoots.

During a beach shoot, I befriended a pretty young woman who'd been sunbathing nearby, and she told me I'd shattered her preconception of what “models” were like [i.e., ditzy and catty]. Score! 

Moments later, I got slashed up on a rusty fishhook on the beach. Can't win 'em all. Hoping my tetanus booster is up to date...

Spent a day riding around Baltimore [which seems so far to be mostly dilapidated row houses] with a badass cyclist and kindred spirit [he's on a short tour around DC/Philly/NYC...on a fixed gear bike, with nothing but the messenger bag on his back]. Then we were treated to Ethiopian food by Jim, the friend I made in Beaufort, NC who is almost at the end of his year-long post-retirement journey traveling in a catamaran, and who surprised me yesterday with two books he'd gotten me as gifts: Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and Gary Paulsen's Winterdance.

Polaroid: Nick Nemphos, Baltimore, MD

Virginia

Photo: Mer Soleil, Amelia Island, FL

Fredericksburg, VA

Stayed with a Warmshowers host in Norfolk, an awesome woman who works as a civil engineer and had her last cross-country bicycle tour from San Diego to Virginia cut short when she was hit by a car in Arizona.

Norfolk is gnarly to ride through. Not in a good way. There were no good bicycle routes, so I wound up riding past landfills and porn shops, getting lost, and eventually winding up on the correct ferry despite having been mis-directed by several locals.

Made it to my next Warmshowers hosts in Williamsburg, which lent itself to much more pleasant scenery as I rode trails through the Jamestown Settlement. My hosts had a beautiful, giant house right on the river—the entire backside of their home was glass, lending itself to incredible panoramic views of the sunset, and my room had its own private deck over the water.

Set out for Richmond the next day, where I stayed and rested for a couple days at the Bainbridge Collective, an awesome house full of like-minded freelancers/artists/weirdos.

I'd ridden my most grueling five days in a row: about 320 miles in total, with some gnarly headwinds and hills. In the middle of those five days I felt my body shut down entirely; my ass was sprouting painful saddle sores [over bruises, no less] and my brain was barely functioning, especially after a few terrifying jaunts over shoulder-less highways and bridges with fast traffic [as much as I've tried to avoid dangerous roads, I've found myself having to take them on occasion]. Oftentimes I've had to re-stock on food in gas stations, with no other nearby alternatives. 

My body hates me a little bit, but it'll thank me once I learn to crush wine barrels with my legs.

In any case, that last fifty-mile day over rolling hills felt like a breeze...I've become so much stronger. At the beginning of this trip, fifty miles was the ceiling for how much I'd ride in a day on flat ground, and it would take me all day. 

Anyway, I fell in love with Richmond at first sight [my hosts in Williamsburg had given me a great bike route for getting to it—riding through unpopulated countryside and small local farms, and then dropping around and down a hill, suddenly, to see the skyscrapers of RVA barely popping up ahead over a dense foreground of green].

I rode into the city, on a trail along the river, through grimy chunks of industrialization, past run-down warehouses and winding alleyways, under overpasses thick with seafoam-green-stained metal brackets and woven together so densely it felt like a fantastical subtropolis.

If ever a city has beckoned me to pursue some urban-spelunking...this one's got to be a goldmine. It brought the video game Fallout to mind; a juxtaposition between anachronism and post-apocalyptic gloom. I absolutely loved it.

The Bainbridge house instantly felt like home. In a span of a couple days, I wound up at a free vegan cooking class, getting a beer flight at a local brewery, enthralling the resident alley cat with my feet at night, wandering Carytown and eating gourmet cupcakes, naked lizard-rock basking and swimming in the warm river, watching Red Dwarf projected onto the huge blank white wall of the tall-ceilinged house, watching cage dancers at a local goth/fetish club, decompressing in my skivvies with a new book [The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho, a gift from a friend I'd made in Charlotte] on the incredible back porch, eating amazing cheese steaks from the place next door. 

The residents of the house all seem to be pretty busy and active people; I had the house to myself for good chunks of time despite there being six-or-so residents, and didn't even manage to meet all of them in the couple days that I was in town. The ones I did meet were supremely easy to fall into and out of socializing with, and I hung out with then in a revolving-door fashion...I'd be sitting on the back porch and one of them would come home, grab some chocolate milk or a beer or a cigarette, and sit on the back porch and talk to me for a while until it was time for either them or me to head off to whatever other plans we had next. When someone was free, they'd take me on a short adventure [i.e., most of the preceding paragraph], and drop me back off at the house when it was time for them to go to work or whatever else they had going on. Awesome people; before I even left town I already wanted to come back and visit again.

Also hung out a couple times with fellow traveling model Rachel Dashae, who is a total sweetheart and fucking adorable.

From Richmond, rode on to Fredericksburg. Sixty miles on a hot day with a couple thousand feet of climbing, which I managed to do [on very little sleep] in the same amount of time that it had taken me to ride 35 miles on flat ground at the beginning of this trip, a couple months ago. 

Everything's changed on this trip. My aptitude at coping with fear, fatigue, frustration, pain, discomfort, monotony. I feel infinitely more humble, and infinitely more confident. I'm not at a point where I feel I can even come close to doing any of my inner processes justice via blog entry [nor do I feel inclined to publicly share them, at least not any time soon, if ever], but this trip has changed my life in a pretty huge, unprecedented way.

And I'm still only just over halfway done. No idea what else is in store.

Fredericksburg is rounding out to a pretty balanced couple of days:

Stayed with another Warmshowers host in an enormous house full of snakes [one of which may be getting named after me—quite an honor], with a six-story-tall yard made up of backyard terraces and a complicated system of wooden decks, shrouded in thirty species of tree...there's a bocce ball court waaaay down at the bottom of the terraces but you can't really see it from the house. 

Got a couple shoots lined up—knocked one out today with Transient Photography, who was absolutely lovely to work with and talk to, and am shooting tomorrow with Touched by Gray Photos, who's been very well vouched for. 

Tomorrow I'm visiting my great-aunt; she's eighty-five and has broken her foot and could probably use some help around the house. It's been years since I saw her.

And! Triumph! I finally succeeded at sleeping in, after weeks of failed attempts, which was probably facilitated by visiting a buffet after riding over from Richmond and, for the first time in my life, being able to make the most out of the all-you-can-eat factor...i.e., I had five full plates of food.

Good stuff. And I've got plenty of shoots and shenanigans lined up for once I get to the DMV!

Photo: Noisenest, Durham, NC

North Carolina [Durham through Outer Banks]

Art: Noisenest, Durham, NC

Norfolk, VA

Many people, shoots, soul-searching-solo-stints, and harrowing holy-shit-I'm-going-to-die-today experiences later...and I'm behind on the whole blogging-updates-thing, still. [Also, still have a few cards I haven't mailed out. However, if you DID receive one, please let me know...trying to keep a head count to make sure mail's getting where it's supposed to].

This is going to be another compensatory here-I-don't-have-time-to-write-about-all-that's-happened-but-have-some-photos-instead posts, for the most part.

Everyone I meet keeps joking that I should just write a retrospective book. Wild on a bicycle. Ha. [Incidentally, I just finished reading Wild this morning.] 

Which sounds ridiculous to me, because the most essential, formative, hilarious, beautiful, exciting, monumental parts of this trip are the ones that I don't feel remotely inclined to publicize—certainly not for a long, long time. I think that's just how life is, at least if you're living a good one. Sadly, y’all have not been made privy to the very best parts of all this.

But I'll give you a little something, context-wise, before passing out from exhaustion now that I've made it to Virginia. Which, over the last couple days, I kind of thought would never happen.

Headed from Charlotte to Durham, where I worked with Noisenest, Aureole, Bman, J Clarke. All awesome folks. I spent a lot of time running around with a flashlight in a creepy warehouse basement full of broken dolls and stuffed animals.

Photo: Aureole, Durham, NC

Photo: BmanPhotos, Clemmons, NC

From there, went to Beaufort, NC, and stayed with Kevin [remember lady-Kevin-in-Florida?] at her new adorable little beachy-1800's-house-with-dolphins-for-neighbors there. We originally met at the Everglades Hostel in southern Florida for a night...then randomly bumped into each other on the street in St. Augustine a couple weeks later while I was engaged in an outwardly-zipped-up-but-under-the-surface-pretty-emotional parting with someone I’d grown really fond of fairly quickly [he then left me with her, and as he drove off Kevin mused, “Honey, you must leave a trail of broken hearts in your wake,” on which I offer you no commentary]. Serendipity, boom boom.

Kevin and I went out in the morning on my rest day in town, though the pouring rain sent her back home. I spent a day wandering around aimlessly in the rain on foot, singing and enjoying how ghostly the town appeared, off-season and on an off-weather day. I wound up on a dock, doing yoga, and then after assuring myself that Kevin's house [i.e., a warm shower and a bed] were within quick-sprinting distance of the dock, I impulsively jumped into the cold water, fully-clothed. 

But instead of running to Kevin's house once I climbed back out, I laid out on the dock and enjoyed a brief period of the numb chill, knowing it wasn't too cold. A bit of rain, a bit of a breeze, some muted sunshine peeking through to offer reprieve. 

On what's been such a socially dense trip, I'd almost forgotten how high I get off slow chunks of solitude [granted, those come on a bike, too—but since I've started pushing myself to do longer days, I'm often just distracted by how much my ass hurts].

Went out on my own at night for some food, and [after I elbowed off some rather aggressively chauvinistic drunk military bros] wound up befriending Jim, the only other non-local at the one open diner [we picked one another out instantly as fellow aliens in what was otherwise a rather homogenized social scene]. Jim's been steering his boat along the Great Loop since his retirement a year ago, and we hung out and swapped travel stories for hours aboard his thirty-foot catamaran. 

From there I rode the ferry to Ocracoke on the Outer Banks, and for the next couple nights I mostly kept to myself, wanting to continue the trend of solitude I'd recently felt inclined towards. People often tried to stop me as I pedaled past, beseeching me with offers of hospitality or meals or drinks or rides, usually with open-hearted generosity [though with obnoxious and condescending persistence in one or two cases] but I'd smile and decline and continue. It felt important to put myself in a bubble for a couple days, for some reason [maybe because all the southern hospitality was keeping me perpetually drunk and I really needed to detox], and the Outer Banks felt like the perfect place to do it. Besides the single-serving friends I made for a few minutes at a time while on the ferries between islands, or when stopping to eat, I kept to myself.

I ninja-camped along the way in hidden spots. I read on the beach. I found a seven-foot dead mama shark, her baby still in amniotic fluid. Beautiful and incredible and sad.

In other news, I've been pushing myself harder than ever. Riding longer miles [at one point I my map lied to me and directed me to a road that doesn't actually exist...which turned into a 45-mile mistake when I had to backtrack], through the worst headwinds of the trip, for consecutive days. Rode over a bridge during sunset rush hour that wound up having no shoulder and rather aggressive traffic, and thought I was going to die. Heh. Whoops. Won't get any rest till Richmond. Oy.

And I'm going to have to take a couple days to recalibrate my appearance before commencing with Virginia or DMV shoots. These last days have inevitably left me with saddle sores [owww] and dark tan lines, despite sunscreen and so on. Which I'm sure most clients would not be very excited about. So that'll delay things by a bit.

But on the bright side, I've got some awesome Warm Showers hosts lined up for Virginia that I'm really excited to stay with [good change-up from the ninja camping, as exciting as that is]. Whoo!

Art: Noisenest, Durham, NC

Charlotte!

Charlotte, NC

Goodbye to my hosts from Conway, SC, with a celebratory flight:

Been falling in love with North Carolina. Knew I would, but damn. Charlotte, in particular, has one of my favorite places from this trip [I'd like to spend more time in Asheville, too, but, alas, I only had a couple days there...one good shoot, and one pretty hardcore miscommunication that I am trying not to be too disgruntled about].

Aaaand spent a good amount of time hanging out with [and modeling alongside] fellow model Brennan, who is an utter fucking riot and magical human. Definitely want to see more of her. 8]

Haven't had much leftover time or energy to write proper blog posts, but take that as a testament that I'm having a good fucking time.

PS: Anyone who sees this who contributed before my trip began [meaning before March]...I've sent most of you cards [still got a few left to send out, been staggering], but please let me know whether or not you've gotten mail from me! Slightly paranoid that not all of it has made it where it needs to go; don't want to blow off anyone!

Jax to Amelia Island

Levitating. Photo: Mer soleil, Big talbot island, fl

Got way behind due to a combination of having-no-Internet-or-power and being-swept-up-by-the-Everything. So I've chunked up my missing time into a few time-release posts, to keep each post relatively digestible.

Blitzkrieg recap. So, North Florida was mainly characterized by modeling work.

1. Unexpectedly got hired for a gig writing copy for a start-up website preparing for launch, specifically because of my pertinent modeling and traveling experience. Wrote out project details on the back of a greasy paper place mat in a pizzeria, where I kept getting the stink eye from old couples because I was still tarted up to the nines in a skimpy black not-really-quite-a-dress dress from my morning's shoot. 

2. Shot with Norseman Photographic, who is exceptionally generous and delightfully irreverent, and gave me a parting gift of "two glass bottles of water from my home country of Norway...granted, I got them down the street". He also indulged me by pulling over and letting me clamber around the silly giant vehicle pictured below on our way to the actual shoot location.

3. Attended BikeSmut at ZenCog bike shop in Jax. A bike-related pornographic film screening. Not only was it exactly what it probably sounds like, but far more. Hilarious. Awesome. Rode with a bunch of hooligans to Shantytown afterwards, a crusty dive bar where I felt right at home.

Photo: Nothing Butt Naked, Jacksonville Beach, FL

4. Spent two days shooting with Kyle, Nothing Butt Naked [delightfully cheeseball glamour, if you couldn’t tell from the name], and had an absolute blast. Popping water balloons, lying in caskets, drowning in Jaeger shot[glasse]s, playing with a snow machine and eight-foot-long spider-finger-things [knew that rock climber grip strength would come in handy someday], admiring the wild owl living in the backyard who was just slightly too far to get a photo of, going to the most excitable restaurant in the world [I did mean to use "excitable", yes]. 

5. Spent a couple days with Mer Soleil on Amelia Island. Received a tailwind-optimizing [if I ever get a tailwind] fairy gift in the mail from my buddy Rachel in California [pictured at the bottom of this post]. Wore hotel slippers all over town. Ate at Gilbert's, a new restaurant on Amelia Island opened by some celebrity chef that's sort of a cutesy spin on soul food. Drank IPAs and danced around to the guttural thrum of a superlative sound system.

6. Received a momentous compliment when Jay, a photographer from Naples, contacted me asking if I had any short-notice availability...and wound up driving from Naples to Fernandina Beach and back in one day, just to shoot with me for two hours. That's about twelve hours or so of driving. As an additional honor, I was the first model he's ever hired [so far he's made part-time income shooting senior portraits, family portraits, a couple weddings, etc]. Pretty damn flattering, especially given the abundance of models in the Miami area. 

7. Last Florida shoot was with Krystal Rose, a badass photographer-and-sometimes-model who felt like a real kindred spirit. We wandered around Amelia Island afterwards and then hung out in a saltwater hot tub. Rough life.

8. Saw the mysterious billboard [no fine print to indicate a sponsor/organization/business] pictured above immediately upon crossing the border to Georgia. Laughed uncontrollably for about ten minutes. 

Photos: Mer Soleil, Big Talbot Island, FL

Anthropological Upshot of Being a Ham

Photo: David Arran, Miami, FL

Plantation, FL

My mornings at Henry and David's house in Miami were relaxing and lazily fluctuated between easy conversation and solitarily sitting in the sun, drinking too much coffee, watching the dogs stare dolefully at me, watching the cat almost choke on a live lizard, and working on a bit of tan line reduction for the sake of my upcoming shoots.

On Day 9, Rumi came to pick me up for my first modeling job of the trip [not to mention my first ever shoot in Florida] at a Weston condo for a laid-back half day of portraits, figure work, glamour shots, and painting references [I even got to read his new Alan Watts book for a few minutes of more candid/unrehearsed portraiture—nothing like getting to read a good book on the job]. We'd previously worked together twice in the DMV area and I hadn't seen him for a couple years. We discussed our mutual inability to understand golf, Madagascar, prohibiting oneself from aspiring to one's dreams out of fear or guilt, and in between changing locations and lighting set-ups I flipped through a couple books containing photos he'd taken in Cuba.

Photo: David Arran, Miami, FL

One of my favorite aspects of this job isn't the modeling itself—it's the spectrum of people I get to meet and briefly connect with in a one-on-one setting. A photographer can be anyone from a straight-up professional photographer [and, even then, they might make a living as a fashion photographer, a stock photographer, a wedding photographer, a glamour nude photographer, or shooting senior portraits...] to an art student [and then, that might be a young precocious art student, or it might be someone who's recently immigrated or left a more conventional career with dreams of being an artist], and retired hobbyists from all manner of professions and backgrounds. 

The interaction is ephemeral, and sort of "outside" of society [particularly during a nude shoot, which is an rather unconventional way to first meet someone], so oftentimes conversation quickly transcends stifled small talk. On drives to shoot locations, or while changing lights, or while taking breaks to re-up on coffee or Calories or change outfits, talk gets real, quickly, between people who might never cross paths otherwise. 

Modeling ensures me a life richly furnished with other people's stories: hilarious, tragic, intimate, extraordinary, and taboo. Survival stories, existential woes, forgotten dreams, marriage gripes. I've left shoots with new books on everything from quantum physics to the history of skepticism. I've left them with beadwork from Panama and cigars from the Dominican Republic and homemade wine and contacts for seasonal jobs in Antarctica. And my shoots often involve being privy to the unique perks of different people's lives and jobs: I've gotten to drive heavy machinery, smash a car, and wield oxyacetylene torches; I've gotten to hang out in eye-bogglingly fancy high-security establishments, pretending to be similarly pristine and decadent...but keenly aware of how long ago I last washed my hair in reality; I've gotten to crawl through secret tunnels and storage vaults in giant museums and take a bird's-eye peek down at dinosaur skeletons from above; I've been immersed in an intentional living community in the mountains, where I was dressed up as Disney princesses. All because of modeling.

It's an aspect to being a freelance traveling model that's rarely discussed but, for me, randomness and anthropological interest are key highlights of this job. Learning about different lives.

On my last day in Miami, Henry took me J. Wakefield Brewing, which just opened up in Wynwood. Fanfuckingtastic beer! Went home for my shoot with David [and we let Henry photograph me, too; he scuba dives and does awesome underwater photography but this was his first time photographing a nude model], who then took me out to dinner, gave me a parting gift of a few small bottles of scotch, and passed me off to his awesome partner Sarah who is now hosting me in Plantation. Today Sarah's been at work and I've had a mellow solitary day in of reading [Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino], catching up on emails, and hanging out in her pool.

I've been so well cared for by good people on this entire trip, and these last few days in particular have been so easygoing...I'm quite spoiled. Where'd all the brutal, validating struggle and turmoil I'm supposed to be undergoing disappear to? 8P

Anyway, these few days of modeling and relaxing have been a good little holiday from sweating and pedaling and sleeping-behind-random-buildings, but the riding will be resuming pretty soon and my next cluster of gigs aren't till Jacksonville!