August 16, morning

I had a lovely post all typed out, but something glitched when I added pictures and now the whole thing seems to have been deleted. So for better or worse, here's version 2.

To begin! (Ah, you can tell I'm regurgitating what I simply remember writing, perhaps with less natural ease and force of conviction, which I'm attempting to mitigate by adding these fresh new parentheticals—) I only know Jack Kerouac from a running joke in one episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun season 6—but just upfront, I am not trying to be Jack Kerouac. This blog exists solely for documentarian purposes and I make no pretension towards it being anything fundamentally unique or of having broad interest. Having traveled little, relatively speaking, the ordinary functions of trains and planes still possess some mystique for me, presumably. Hopefully.

I am sitting at an airport bar, although not one that appears to be open, next to Gate B9 at the Philadelphia Airport. Which is kinda interesting, because I must've known airport bars were a thing but I didn't realize they looked like this. Or that there would be so many—at least, this is the second one I've seen in Terminal B. I knew about hotel bars from Anomalisa.

I'm traveling light, almost comically so, it feels to me, with a single tiny fabric suitcase marked "T. Wesley" in acrylic paint (I have my own suitcase but I took this one from my parents' place since it's tinier — I went home, did some laundry, and found this case in the basement to stuff my newly clean clothes in), and a checkered black bag gifted to me by my former housemate and member of the 2020-21 Shalom Project cohort Lin, which I have filled with miscellany, including my recently burned DVD+R with 98 minutes' worth of my "home movies" from the past 21 months.

It was that DVD, or the idea of it, that launched this trip. I figured I would mail it to my grandparents (my grandparents being about the only people with the right combination of interest and remove such that I could show it to them) in DVD format with maybe a link to watch it Unlisted on YouTube if that would be easier for them. But I ignored the last possibility and, to build anticipation, asked if they had a DVD player to watch my home movies. G-pa offered to pay travel expenses if I brought them out personally—was that a joke, it almost seemed like?—but two days later, I had my plane ticket. Out of Philadelphia, which is interesting since we'd always flown to and from BWI — I last made this trip in 2010, although not by myself. Actually, this is my first time flying by myself.

The Baltimore and Philadelphia airports turned out to be equidistant by car from my new place, but Philly turned out to have the possible advantage of being accessible by train from Lancaster. —Though getting me to the Lancaster train station turned out to be an endeavor involving the whole colloquial village. My thanks to my father, who drove me back to my place by Hershey after I dropped my car off in York so work can be done on it while I'm away. To Luke, my new housemate and old friend, who drove me from Hershey back to Lancaster. To Emily, one of my other former housemates in the Shalom Project, who kindly welcomed me into her home for the night (even though they have no power this weekend!) and gave me a thorough rundown of what to expect and what to do traveling from Lancaster to the airport, without which advice I might not be already sitting here three hours early. To Joe, Emily's housemate, who likewise extended such gracious hospitality with no questions asked, even when, as I've noted, they had no power. To Alysha, yet another Shalomee, who let Emily charge her portable battery pack at her place that Emily then let me use to make sure my phone stayed charged overnight (because if I can't get to these QR codes, things are gonna get…complicated). And to my final Shalom Project housemate, Olivia, who knew full well that I could walk to the train station, and still chose to pick me up from Emily's and drive me to the Amtrak station at 6:45 in the freaking morning.

Olivia shrugged this off, saying she's sure the favor will be returned—but last night in the Poplar place kitchen, lit only by a LED lantern, Joe said with a touch of…irony? in his voice that such action could only be explained by love, given how devoid of self-interest it is to wake up before 6:30 in the morning to drive someone to the train station. I do feel loved. Someone remind me to write these folks thank-you notes.

Of course, ten minutes before Luke and I were going to leave Hershey for Lancaster tomorrow, my grandmother messaged me to say I should bring a coat, given that it is apparently 60° in San Jose. I barely managed to stuff one or two blazers into my well-packed suitcase filled exclusively with short sleeve T-shirts for top wear. As for the coat — my $20 Community Aid find from this past winter, a grey overcoat that swishes around my ankles when I walk so I can feel like Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock — I've simply been wearing it. As Luke dropped me off on Duke Street, I thought that I must be a sight to see, with my long swishy coat, lugging around my suitcase and carryon bag. Twenty seconds later I saw a girl walking around with her own suitcase. But the coat garnered some concern: "Ain't you hot in that, baby?" a middle-aged woman asked me (I tried to explain I just needed a place to put the coat so I chose to wear it), and a bit later a guy who might've been playing basketball saw me and called out, "It's too hot to be wearing that, man!" To which I simply replied, "It really is!"

Coffee and a sausage biscuit from the Wendy's in the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia