• For the most part living out of hotels is pretty great. No cleaning up, fresh sheets, and awesome accommodations. All of that is great until you realize you experience it all alone. Having a partner would have made every good thing about hotels infinitely better and every drawback reduced to nothingness. Without such a companion the beds get lonely and the meals even more so.
• As I briefly mentioned, eating alone is a real bummer. I ate most of my meals at the bars of the eating establishments, so that perhaps the mere presence of people will make it slightly more bearable. I had some interesting conversations with people occasionally but mostly I sat alone and my only conversation was with the bar tender. Lets focus for a moment on those interesting conversations I alluded too, in my first hotel in Erie I ate at the bar one night and sat between a Marine and a salesman. The three of us chatted for a good while. We talked of many things but what stood out to me, was that during the conversation the topic of our ages came up. Unbeknown to them  I was the youngest at 25, the Marine was 28 and the salesman 35. Before I told them my age it was agreed I looked equally as old as the salesman. So to them I looked 35. I have gotten 30 before but not 35. I pressed them as to why they thought I looked so old; they explained I was dressed much better than your average 25 year old ( I was wearing a sport coat and a button up shirt), also I appeared to have been through some stuff in my life. I have had a less than perfect life but I hope that is not the first impression I give off. It is really here nor there but like I said, it was interesting. Secondly, I had conversations were I lied about my work, to a) see if I could get away with it, and b) perfect my skills at lying and thinking on my feet. It is always interesting to pick a career that I know little about and then attempt to sound credible. I believe I did a very decent job.
• Pennsylvania is quite beautiful. Driving around has been a lot of fun. For the most part the weather was perfect. There was some rain and it was a little cool some days but I couldn’t have asked for better weather. My first stop was Erie. Lake Erie still had ice on it, and the area was quite nice. Hermitage was nice as well but a little small for me. Pittsburgh was great I had no idea it was so hilly. I have decided that if you learn to drive in Pittsburgh you will either be a great driver, or you will be dead, there is no in between. Indiana and State college are both college towns and as such seemed cool, but I spent very little time there. I would love to come back when spring is in full swing and tour the state, until then I say that Pennsylvania is a beautiful state and I highly recommend it

That is a brief summary of my experiences traveling in PA. But the story does not end there, my trip was filled wither personal disappointments. It seemed every it was some new personal disappointment.  I will not sit here and whine and moan about them, what I will say is that I have been forced to look on the bright side and move on. I am no where near where I wanted to be at this point in my life but I am working hard to get there. I will not let set backs keep me from moving forward. I have a great internship and a wonderful family, perhaps I will find someone to share it with but I won’t worry about it. I have been blessed with more wonderful women in my life than any man should be. I will leave it at this,  I am certainly ready to come home and get back to my semblance of a normal life.

Let’s move on shall we? There is a woman sitting directly behind the pair that just left, she is a middle-aged overweight lady. From the moment she sat down she stood out. Everything about her is big. That’s the only way I can describe it. Her hair, her earrings, her dress, all big. Not only did she stand out physically but she also has a big voice. She has answered her cell phone several times and even if she didn’t have an obnoxious ring tone, her conversations would still be distracting. That is because she speaks in a loud high pitched voice that grates on the ears. Everyone around her is speaking in hushed voices so her voice penetrates the quiet much the way the first rays of light disrupt the morning darkness.  As she is jabbering away the only thing that would be more annoying would be if she were talking on one of those abhorrent bluetooth headsets. Thankfully, she is not. As she talks she blankly flips through a magazine with a large photo of Robert Pattinson staring out from the cover. An annoying middle aged woman reading a magazine about Twilight, let me count the things wrong with this scene.

There are of course other folks in the coffee shop. There is the creepy old guy that looks more at the other folks than the magazine laid out in front of him. He then conveniently finds a reason to leave moments after the father and daughter leave. Draw your own conclusions. There is the gaggle of school girls with their hushed giggles and innocent smiles. The guy buried in his laptop oblivious to those around him. Then of course there are the baristas behind the counter, yelling out orders and happily gossiping to each other. They move from work to conversation as effortlessly as a bird soars over the earth. Then enters what I submit is the most interesting character there. He is an old man wizened with age and hardship. He hobbles over to a vacant table his cane doing precious little good helping him navigate the forest of furniture. As he sits down my mind can’t help but wonder who is this man? What kind of a life has he lead and what sights have those eyes seen? Does he have a family at home worried as he clings onto his fading independence? It is easy to imagine an extensive backstory for this man I will never know.

The coffee shop does provide a wealth of interesting characters and I have been here barely twenty minutes. We so often don’t really look at the people inhabiting the world around us. They briefly intersect our lives and then as quickly as they appear they are gone. Each person leaving as unchanged by our presence as we are by theirs. We might as well be miles apart. Alone in a crowd is certainly the loneliest one can ever be. Surrounded by people but unnoticed. Our presence unimportant to anyone save ourselves.