u/fuckthefalconsdotcom

Checked weather.gov earlier and it's going to be raining starting today, through the weekend until next week. Grabbed my phone and ordered a 1.75 l of jim beam and johnny walker, and some truly's.

I'm going to force myself out into the bullshit tomorrow and try to get some last minute sales and then just turtle up with my booze and streaming tv.

I really need to use this little brief downtime and get some writing done. I've been working on my train journey book little by little but I seriously did not take enough notes and since I was in legal weed cities for half the trip so it's all blurry.

Anyway, saw the forecast and got a total wine instacart order. Up pulls up my boy in his white tesla and immediately was like "Michael! I was on the phone with my girl when I saw your order and was like 'i love that dude, he's always right there at the curb'".

He gives me my scotch/whiskey/seltzers/wine and says "don't forget 5 stars!", always make sure to tip him 15%. Chairs to all who keep this addiction going with the last amount of driving in traffic.

I need to go vote tomorrow, obviously. Is there a quick "vote no for this and yes for this" guide for someone who is pretty far left? Thanks.

edit: thanks again, combined my Saturday morning run with voting, feels good.

My tolerance has gotten so out of control and it's been taking more and more whiskey/scotch to get a good night's sleep. I know everyone says you don't get real sleep after drinking but having a few glasses of whiskey before bed always helps.

The problem is the diminishing returns, drinking more and more of it has just made it so expensive to keep buying giant bottles and even worse, having them delivered.

I finished the last of my whiskey and got a 24 pack of cheap beer and said enough is enough. Going to try for 30 days, just no liquor. All the beer and wine I want but even all the seltzers have vodka/tequila so that's probably not a great idea, especially with how much they cost.

Part of me did say to myself, I should hit up total wine and buy a bunch of different brands of seltzers and see which one I think I prefer the most. I do like those cutwaters, those things are so strong, the first sip is always like !!!

I started thinking, maybe I should just start buying really high ABV beer like voodoo rangers and have a few at night.

Also thought of just doing wine but the amount of sugar in wine just makes my insane insomnia even worse. Yesterday I ran 3 miles, showered, ate dinner, benadryl, melatonin and magnesium and didn't sleep a blink and it's 9:39am. Dunno how I can possibly get any work done, might just try to fight staying awake until 7pm and drink the last of the beers and crash...shit, there is a part of me that just wants to take a shit ton of unisom at 1pm and just wake up at 5am and play catch up for all the shit I'm not going to get done today.

The eagle has to land eventually. Sitting in the lobby of a Days Inn in the most sketchy part of Milwaukee. Just trash, everywhere on the ground. It's also in a "bar desert" that doesn't have very many bars within walking distance. The funny thing is this shitty hotel has a bar in the lobby, only a few chairs. It's been my last stop every night before I go up to the room and pass out and last night there were people hanging out at the lobby bar that weren't even staying here. Like how fucking depressing is that, like "let's go hang out at the lobby bar at the Days Inn!!".

I'm sitting in the lobby the next morning drinking my morning beers out of a yeti before I get on the bus and get on the train to Chicago. One night in the hostel at Chicago and back on the City Of New Orleans to take me back to my responsibilities.

There is so much work waiting for me back in New Orleans and I also absolutely need to start tapering down when I get home. I'm pretty deep into this month long train bender but I think maybe a 24 pack of PBR to slowly get back to FA area.

Thinking a 6/5/4/3/2/1, nice slow taper. Tempted to try to dry out completely for a few weeks but that's not realistic. I was doing really well not day drinking, glass of wine at 5pm, scotch after dinner and bed by 11pm.

This has been fun tho. Saturday and Sunday I'm going to sweat it out and write up the rest of my Terrible Times On Trains book.

I'm going to absolutely do this trip again next year when the Rail Pass goes on sale. It's been wild meeting hundreds of strangers in different cities and getting their perspectives.

I still have 3 hours left before the next train leaves. Going to walk over to the sketchy corner store near the sketchy Days Inn and buy one more tall boy. Flask is full to make the quick train hop to Chicago. Already found a cheap bar near the hostel to hit as soon as I get in.

I also have a plastic bladder of whiskey in my rolling bag that I'm trying to save for the City of New Orleans train ride. I typically like to drink wine on the train since it doesn't have a significant smell like whiskey/vodka/beer. I've been doing a good job getting instacart's total wine orders sent to the hostels to cut down on my bar costs but the nearest total wine to the hostel is 80 miles which is...a bit much.

It'll be fine, chairs fuckers.

That was fucking hilarious. Laughing my ass off in a hotel lobby listening to this Phil Spector episode. Very well done.

I can't tell if it's sarcastic and I don't care. There is a liquor store across the street from the hotel I'm staying at that I've been hitting as part of my morning routine. since I've been here. Today they greeted me with a slightly sarcastic welcome. Maybe i'm taking it personally since this sub has stories of it but I smiled and said "this probably won't be the last time you see me today".

Also my fucking hipster hotel has a hammock room and a community fucking iron to press your clothes on. I dunno, this beats the 4 dorm bunkbed hostel in Seattle but I have the same aversion to hipster shit like we do with AI. I want a goddamn ice maker, even if it's fucking full of bacteria, I have my own little cooler so I don't even need a ice bucket.

I'm having fun here tho, Minneapolis is a neat place. Everyone seems pretty happy here compared to Seattle.

I always think about you scumbags when i see Ranger beer and always have to get one. Sitting in the hotel lobby drinking one out of my yeti cup. I have the flask in my left pocket(where it goes) but not sure if I should do anything blatant since my room is paid until Monday.

Two more stops. Or maybe not, Milwaukee next and might have enough money for a few days in Chicago which is one of my favorite cities, chill there. I'll still have extra segments left and might even stop in Jackson MS but that place is a shit hole which is worse than Memphis, rather just go home to my own shit hole city in New Orleans.

I'm really glad I'm doing this trip at this age. I consider my kit as far as stuff goes is top level but I need a massage after so many nights sleeping on the train.

tldr: you are all good people and deserve love

I got on the train....yesterday. The train bender must continue. I'm not feeling bad, like overall. I've been eating but my sleep has been rough.

Last night I got assigned a seat in the front of the train which has a fucked up door. So this door would open and just stay open, that's fine, it's kinda cold and there is high pitched train squeaking sounds. I have my box of wine, my earphones and ear plugs and sleep mask so like this isn't bad.

It would then close and immediately open slamming back open. This was pretty much all night. I looked around to find a empty seat to get away and couldn't. I remember it being around 1am just chugging wine in my yeti before I fell asleep and woke up at around 5am.

At that point I'm like fuck this and dragged all my luggage to the empty seats and go back to sleep.

I bought a bottle of scotch and a giant bottle of jim beam from instacart delivered to my hostel in Seattle. I'm not going through withdrawals on the fucking train.

The wine is long gone and I've been pouring the scotch into a flask at the stops. The woman across from me said "nice!" and i asked her if she wanted some. She said no and started talking about her husband, like I saw the wedding band, I'm not flirting with you but if you want to cheat on him after drinking some scotch with me, he'll never know.

I didn't say that.

She's still awake on her phone, I could say that. No, stop.

Pretty much zero sleep last night, watching the Montana skyline disappear into black. I'm going to finish the rest of the peanuts and scotch and try to sleep before I get there in the morning and have to navigate foreign mass transportation while exhausted and either drunk or needing a drink.

Booked the room for 5 days, gotta experience a weekend there and look at my finances. I have been doing okay, drinking cheap, staying at hostels, etc but I need a hotel room alone with a shower.

I haven't been writing enough this entire time, it's weird, decided to sync my main web site with my facebook's blog page to make it easier to shit post. When I get to the hotel tomorrow I'm going to throw my bags down on the ground and take the content I've been writing and pictures I've been taking and dump it into the site.

The moral of all of this is just post it in real time, don't bank content, keep it coming so it's fresh.

I got to sing karaoke in Seattle and it felt so good, need to find a place while at the next stop. Another example of documenting in real time, trying to remember what I sang.

This whole party is coming to an end in early May and it's just meal prep meals, situps, tubi and internet loneliness. We still have roughly a week to keep this going tho.

I've taken an incredible amount of photos that need to be uploaded...been thinking of giving myself a printed out photo gallery type thing to just leave on my coffee table and I can pick it up when I'm angry or depressed and flip through it and remember this adventure. The landscapes of the united states is so wild, still seeing snow on the ground, the mountains, etc.

Amtrak puts the railpass on sale in early spring and for $250 I can't recommend it enough it enough. I'm feeling it, like shoulders, back, legs, everything hurts from fucking walking the miles in San Francisco and Seattle and just carrying all my bullshit on the train, the constant drinking but this might be the final few years I can do this physically.

Thanks for listening, Ken is counting on me and hope you are too.

I've spent a week in each city over the last month. It's obviously HCOL in both spots but locals I've spoken to says Seattle is significantly cheaper. I suppose San Francisco has better weather, food seems somewhat comparable cuisine wise, obviously Seattle trends a lot more towards seafood. Economies seem to be roughly the same, noticed Seattle's brand of homelessness is fairly aggressive compared to other cities I've lived in/spent time in. If you had a sweet remote gig and could live in either, where would you go? I think Seattle beats San Francisco nature wise but the vibe in San Francisco seemed way better than Seattle.

I can't decide if that's brilliance or gross. I started to think it was brilliant because it was a overnight trip and the conductor wouldn't let me sit in a empty row "because those seats will be taken eventually" so crammed next to a giant dude in an aisle seat.