New York

A five hour drive brings me back to Long Island, NY.

Crossing the bridge to Long Island
I am greeted by Charlie and Jon. We get many many drinks on. My sister decides to join us and then we are downtown getting more drink on. It seems drinking is what people like to do with me when I am around.
In the morning I introduced Strider to the local woods and pond. We walk around for about an hour.
I forgot how pretty this place gets in the summer time. The weather as of now is beautiful. Time to get to work!

Gainesville to Maryland

So I wake up at 6:30 in the morning and decided to do this drive.

14 hours and about 800 miles later I am hurting real bad and I finally make it to Cate's house in Berlin. Cate, her boyfriend and I went out to the bar for a few drinks. Then back to her house to hang out with the many pets and drink some sangria before calling it an early night. I was terribly exhausted.
The 12 dollar chesapeake bay bridge/tunnel.
Cate's huge house just outside of Ocean City.
The phantom hits 50,000 miles.
Weird enough, I see this guy with a gainesville gators sticker and Florida licence plate right as I am crossing into Maryland.
More Strider hanging out with cats.

Gainesville Florida

So after what I colorfully called the "Black hole" part of the trip was over in Tallahassee. I left John and Kate's place and drove the two and a half hours to my brother's new house in Gainesville.

This is Scott and Territa in their new kitchen. Soon this kitchen will be painted the color of "parsley Sprig".
The first night I am in town we go to a dinner party and eat some very yummy vegan food. Tempeh lettuce and tomato sandwiches with an avocado spread, watermelon salad with onions and cilantro, and a mixed greens salad were all sorts of delicious. Good people + good wine = good times. We all ended up hanging out and listening to music while drinking whiskey at the end of the night.
The spiders here... All sorts of huge.
The next day Scott, Terita and I went thrifting. We also picked up a bunch of paint supplies from Home Depot. Then at night we went out to a bar owned by one of the dudes from Against Me. They have an appetizer called Tebow Toothpicks. This town loves their football.

Tallahassee

So after hours of traveling and another "check engine" light incident. I get to Florida and for the first time in a while I am on East coast time. I hang out with John's girlfriend Kate for a few hours and talk politics. Nice women, conservative in nature. John gets home from work and we hang out for the next few days.

Downtown Tallahassee
The trees are crazy looking here and often contain these giant spiders.
We celebrated John's birthday with beer and pool. It has been very relaxing here.
It also pours pretty much every day. My brother ran into some apartment problems out here in Florida. He tells me that they are condemning the place... So they can't live there. As of now the plan is that I am heading out of town tomorrow and up the coast to North Carolina. More on this later

and now this happened

I woke up and then headed to the French Quarter to walk around.

Strider and I meandered around for about a few hours in the morning.
Statue
Then the rain came and I was caught up under cover for 30 minutes with some nice people.
Insert party + drinks
Then I went to this hole-in-the-wall bar called "Parasol" eating a Louisiana sandwich called a Po' boy. Then it was back on the road to the East coast.