down the rabbit hole

getting the speeding ticket was lame.

not only that, but night was falling at a supersonic rate and the gravity on rain appeared to have increased. i had definitely seen better days on this road trip, but i wasn't planning on giving up on this one until i could track down the hostel. unfortunately, the hostel was tucked away in a small ski town in central vermont and i was getting lost left and right. although i had none of the normal pain associated with a hangover, i felt completely stupid the entire day. synapses weren't connecting and my iq seemed to have left the building for a quick walk around town. it would be back later in the evening, it promised.

fortunately, i finally made it. i made it in the dark and with almost zero visibility - probably a threat to myself and those around me, but i was there and i was exhausted. i checked in at the trojan horse lodge in ludlow, vermont and was pleased to find out that since it was the off-season, i was the only resident for the evening. the manager showed me around and then left me alone in the century-old converted carriage house as he went back to his dinner in the attached home. i locked the door behind him and found myself in backpacker's luxury, all by myself in a ski cabin in vermont. despite the fact that it wasn't ski season, it didn't seem bad for eighteen bucks a night.

the trojan horse lodge was pretty cozy for a hostel. there was a tv with cable and a selection of videos that seemed to be an archive of bad films from the mid 1980's. a taxidermied deer head stared glassily off into the distance and the outside was stone cold quiet. i was beyond happy to have the cabin to myself, but found it also a little eerie in a janet leigh psycho sort of way. as much as i had been travelling by myself on this trip, i hadn't really experienced staying in an entire building by myself. although i was grateful to have the opportunity to sleep in complete solitude, i was also a little wigged out. even through the unsettling dead silence of everything, or maybe because of it, i got a great night's sleep. that previous day was a bitch.

the next morning i started up the space car and headed towards the stowe-bound lodge in northern vermont. the main reason why i wanted to go to stowe in particular was because they were near the von trapp family inn. it turns out that when maria and the rest of her acquired brood escaped the nazis in austria, they decided to set up shop in the hills of vermont, right there in stowe. who woulda thought?

i decided that before i found myself holing up in another hostel or seeing if the hills were alive with the sound of music, i had to check out the most popular aspect of vermontness. i had to go to the ben & jerry's factory. the funny bit is that i think i imagined the ben & jerry's factory as full of oompa-loompas and rivers of chocolate. instead, as i looked at the employees in their hair nets, working on the stainless steel machines of the floor below me, it seemed weird and uncomfortable. do these guys like being watched 8 hours a day by strangers? i know that when tours come by my desk where i work, i find it kind of annoying. for security reasons, tours going past my desk only happens once in a blue moon, so i'm pretty lucky. these poor guys, on the other hand, have to deal with it every goddamn day.

after the ice cream, i got distracted by the maple. vermont seems to be proud of their maple. maple sugar. maple syrup. maple ice cream. maple flavored maple maple. if it's maple, then there's a place in vermont that will make it. you'd think vermont didn't make anything else for chrissake. i stopped off at a maple sugar house to check out their cute home-made maple sugar making displays. i imagined schoolbuses of kids coming to look at these giant dioramas of maple and i thought it was awesome. what a great field trip this would have been. what a great field trip this was right now.

when i finally found myself at the stowe-bound lodge, i was impressed by how unbearably charming it turned out to be. it was definitely the nicest hostel i've spent the night in so far, with its single bedrooms and the chorus of vermont frogs singing in the background. the one bit that makes it feel especially country home quaint is that the rooms are in the family's home. their living room is your living room. their kitchen, complete with all their mail and bills and random bits, is your kitchen. the upstairs, where the rooms were, didn't seem like it could have possibly been built to code; the hallways were so narrow you needed to hold your breath to squeeze through. maybe my manifest destiny sense of california space gave me a different perspective of how big living environments should be like, but it seemed like a small fit to me - and i'm barely big enough to look like i've hit puberty. although the size of the room was dollhouse small, i appreciated the fact that i had an entire room to myself, regardless of the amount or lack of space. ms. woolf was right, a room of one's own wasn't a bad thing at all.

as the sun set that evening, i stood out in the back yard, looked up at the sky and gazed upon the incredible shade of twilight blue that hovered above me. it was hoolovoo colored. the frogs conversed amongst themselves about matters of seeming utmost importance while the air grew heavy and the flowers closed up for the evening. i retreated back to the house, walked down the impossibly narrow hallway and stepped into my room, with its slightly claustrophobic slanted ceiling. the proportions and angles of my tiny surroundings made me feel a little bit in wonderland.

had i eaten the potion that said 'drink me' or the cake that said 'eat me'?

i couldn't tell. <05.26.04>

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