After the trip, I settled in a bit at my parents’ house. I was exhausted and didn’t really know what I was doing – other than moving to Seattle.

August
Most of August was spent not doing a whole lot of anything. Mostly, I was recovering from the trip. I lived with my parents and that was nice, I spent a lot of time in the basement (where my computer was set up). This is obvious by lack of posting about anything that was actually happening. Nothing was happening.

In mid-August, I started to work on the 2008 Christmas CD. I also, after twelve years of searching, found an old country music compilation that I heard when I lived in West Virginia.

August was also when the cats started to mooch off of my parents. I think there were five or six for awhile. That’s fairly impressive. I also got the leg lamp from Nikki.

Towards the end of the month was the Vedic holiday Janmastami. I spent it in Gita Nagari. Smartz accompanied me.

Aside from that, not much happened. It was a great contrast from the past few months, and a much-needed reprieve.

September!
Fall was coming to central Pennsylvania. But I wouldn’t really know it – I was still in the basement honing my geeky computer skills and watching several seasons of Law & Order: SVU.

The skills culminated with me figuring out how to install the Vedabase program on Linux. Since coming home from the trip, the scooter was still my main transportation (if I ventured outside, that is). But it ceased to be a thing of recreation. It was a means of transportation. I still had my Yaris, but hated it, so mostly ignored it. However, in early September, my dad and I took a lovely scooter ride up to Halfway Dam, where we used to camp when I was a kid.

In the second week of the month, Smartz and I went to New Vrndavana for the holiday called Radhastami. Then, a few days later, we wound up in Philly for the Ratha-yatra and to sell my Yaris! Yay!

On the scooter front, I had decided to leave the Vespa at my parents’ house and take the white Stella to Seattle. But before doing that, I needed to put in a new engine. To do that, I had to drop the old one first. The new engine would be here shortly.

For central Pennsylvanians, the end of September means Bloomsburg Fair. I hadn’t been there for a couple of years and wanted to take it in before leaving for the west coast.

I finished out the month by taking a week-long Civil War scooter trip. I hit many sites, saw Olivia in Lexington and had an amazing, though very rainy time. I covered over 1,200 miles and it was great to be back on the road. Of all the things on the east coast that I miss, I miss the history the most.

October!!!
It started off with the installation of the new scooter engine. It took a few days and there were still kinks, but it was basically finished.

So I decided to start packing up my stuff for the move which would happen in about a week. Time was winding down, and thankfully, I got to see a few friends before taking off.

On the 16th, Smartz and I packed everything we owned into a van and the next day into a shipping container.

The day after that, we were gone.

But only to Hagerstown to pick up Jeff and hit the Cedar Creek Civil War reenactment. It was a great time.

I wasn’t at all content with letting my Civil War Scooter Trip be the last time I looked at an east coast historic site. Oh my no. This reenactment was held on the original battlefield (that I also visited on my scooter trip) and after that, we hit Antietam, my favorite battlefield.

Smartz and I decided that the trip west, which we were driving, was going to be a trip of weird things. But that wouldn’t start until after a day’s stop off at Rati and Dwija’s.

The next few days, we traveled across the mid-west, stopping at some strange places and old sections of highways. It took us nine days and the whole thing can be found here.

It’s odd to think that I crossed the country three and a half times in 2008. Neat though. The Moving Trip was a bunch of fun. In the stark midwest and prairie, vegan food was a bit scarce, but that’s to be expected. In Nebraska, we picked up the Oregon Trail and it became a symbolic story arc. Here we were moving west following the same basic route as so many before us.

We arrived in Seattle on the 26th. We stayed with Ryan and Jaime for a few days, which was great. But luck shined upon us and we found an apartment just north of Green Lake.

The last day of October was spent unloading and unpacking. It was hell. I love moving and setting up a new house or apartment, but I hate the whole process of moving. Sarah and I did it pretty much by ourselves. Jasmine, our new neighbor, helped us out just when we were dying. She was a life saver. Ryan was supposed to help us, but got into a fairly bizarre car accident where some guy in a truck somehow managed to hit three cars and not hurt anyone.

November!!!!
By the 3rd, we were pretty well set up in the new apartment.

November was when we were supposed to get jobs. We didn’t though. We spent most of the month just getting used to the new city. We found some perks, of course.

Then I discovered Seattle’s great record stores. What a glorious day! I’ve been back to them too many times to recall. I think I’ve doubled my record collection (by the end of 2008, I have well over 500 titles – not the largest collection, but not bad).

In mid November, we decided it was time to become official residents and wait in line at the DMV to prove it. You really have to jump through hoops to get residency here. The DMV is never fun, but we had an entertaining host while we waited in line prior to its opening.

We went to the movies and saw Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D. Yet another perk of living in a city is that you can see stuff that you wouldn’t ever be able to see in rural Pennsylvania.

Much of this time was spent exploring Seattle. This place has some great parks and we hit a few. We even hit the Space Needle!

The weather was great in Seattle. Normally, it would have been raining, but for some reason, it just wasn’t. Great!

The week before Thanksgiving, I received MST3K’s Tom Servo’s parts. All of the parts needed to build my own bot! It was quite the task, but I was up to it. Much drilling, sanding, painting and assembling and he was finished in time to host a Thanksgiving dinner with Ryan and Jaime and family to close out the glorious month of November.

December!?!?!
December was spent much like November – exploring the city as best we could. We got to see Let the Right One In, a great Swedish vampire movie. More exploring and more records too.

On the 9th, I got the Chirstmas CDs in the mail. And a few days later, I switched operating systems from Ubuntu to Linux Mint. The day after that, I broke Smartz’s Cock Bowl and my laptop’s power jack. Sad, sad day.

As the Christmas season came upon us, I figured out a fun way to wrap the gifts I’d be sending home to my family back east. I had a real fun time with this.

I also decided to delve back into a study of the Vedic classic Bhagavad-gita. The weather had turned for the worse, dumping a ton of snow on a city ill-prepared for it. Due to a cold snap, the snow stuck around for a week, basically stranding us in our apartment.

Christmas was spent with Ryan and Jaime and friends and their families and it really was wonderful. I got many Christmas cards and even though I was away from where I grew up, I felt very at home.

Seattle is wonderful.

And 2008 was a hell of a year. Here’s to 2009!

Related posts:

1. 2008 – Best Year Ever? Hell Yes! (part one – January thru April)
2. 2008 – Best Year Ever? Hell Yes! (part two – Scoot 66)
3. Maybe a few weeks trip in August (Watch me brainstorm)
4. Radhastami at New Vrndavana 2008
5. It’s been a year since we started for Seattle