Oh Hey!

Hello friends, I apologize for the severe lack of updates to this darn thing recently. Let me catch you up to speed. On July 14th, Ashlinn and I hit a wall, metaphorically speaking of course. In Napoleon, Ohio, we decided, for many reasons, that we were going to pursue a more direct route to Portland. After a quick visit to the largest Campbell's soup factory in America, we rerouted ourselves back to Toledo. We hopped on a midnight Amtrak train to Washington D.C. I know, that doesn't seem like the fastest way to Portland, but if we weren't going to continue on bicycles, we were going to take care of a few things first. Ashlinn's sister, Sensei Brenna, picked us up and we spent the next week playing with dogs, scouring Forever 21, and watching The Colbert Report. We packed up Ashlinn's beloved Subaru, and hit the road for Chicago. Here we celebrated Brenna's birthday at a Carol's Pub, a beautiful country bar conveniently close to St. Boniface Cemetery (I wanted to die by the time I left.) Our accommodations in the Windy City were great though. We stayed with Ashlinn's mother's college roommate, who just happens to own a great house in the city and a little bar named Murphy's Bleachers. The best part of the house was the huge balcony/porch. IT HAD A HAMMOCK!
So from Chicago we headed to Rochester, Minnesota. We visited Ashlinn's grandparents and went out to eat at a restaurant that appears to make all it's money on celebrities visiting the Mayo Clinic. Brenna left for the airport to fly to NYC, and Ashlinn and I hit the road again.

We stopped at the Badlands in SD. While setting up the tent, the dry weather and my chronic nosepicking fueled a nosebleed of epic proportions. You know how they tell you not to keep food in your tent...or even food wrappers....or even clothes that you wore while cooking food? Well, I don't think they want you to bleed all over the tent either. Making me even more nervous was the fact that they were doing a special presentation on bats at the campground. You do know what bats turn into, right?

Further westward, we visited famous tourist traps such as Wall Drug, The Corn Palace, and a Prairie Dog City. We also stayed at a lousy campground that placed us right next to an animal shelter. Barking dogs and a sprinkler system isn't my idea of a lullaby. Luckily, they had free pool in the lobby, high speed wireless, electric hookups at every site, and baller status bathrooms.

Ashlinn and I spent a week at a campground outside of Portland, visiting the City of Roses during the day. We met up with my old friend Garrett, who has been living out here for almost 2 years. He's doing good, and now we are crashing at his house in the SE area.

We are searching for work, and turning up a few good leads. Lucky for me, Ashlinn is a resume wizard, and has been helping me format mine. I'm at a constant mental battle on wanting to either work freelance as a grip or electric or try to get something more consistent, like a rental house job. I guess I'll see what happens.

OK, now for the really tough news. I'm officially done with this blog. It's over. I've decided I need to see other blog services...Yes, there's someone else. She gets me more. And she listens. And she's prettier too. Sorry Blogger, but Wordpress makes better templates. And I'm sick of the hyphen in my blogger address. I am now the happy owner of adambelanger.wordpress.com. Update your bookmarks and links. I have been posting a few short stories and photos from the trip and previous work. To my friends from Rockport College 07-08, as soon as I find my dvd with all the shoot pics, I'm going to post my faves, along with links to your films if they are online. If you've got it online, send me an email, or post a comment to the other blog. And if you don't have it online, you should check out Vimeo. It's like Youtube, but the quality seems to be a lot better, it supports HD and the user interface of the player is really clean. A+ in my book. 

So that pretty much catches you all up to speed on what I've been up to for the last month. Sorry it had to come at you all so quick! This will probably be the last post I make on here, so please check out adambelanger.wordpress.com for more content!