IowaIowaIowa

I won’t lie. The reason I haven’t updated my blog that much in the last few days is because nothing much has really happened.

Downtime was sorely needed. Anyone with a decent short-term memory will be aware that I’ve been slowly ground down over the last week or so by numerous long-haul bus trips, late nights, etc. My stay in Iowa was extremely laid back and gave me plenty of time to sleep, get my head and affairs in order, and prepare for the last fortnight of the trip.

From Minneapolis I traveled to the small and often scenic town of Cedar Falls, in Iowa the state, where I met iowa the person (fun fact: the bus journey of four and a half hours from Minneapolis to Iowa would have taken me 23 hours from the station 20 minutes away in St. Paul). He explained to me as we trundled through the rambling college campus that the town consisted almost entirely of students and old people. The houses there were lovely; whitewashed and pristine, shaded by the leaves of veteran trees, but the demographic dichotomy does rather leave the town without an economic direction. The students go home in summer, so one can’t afford to cater just to them. As a result, the ‘downtown’ area is a single road that we came to the end of almost as soon as we started strolling down it. There are a couple of bars dotted around the campus that seem to cater to the majority of the twenty-something partygoers.

Iowa and I spent most of the time shooting the breeze, playing Smash 64 (he’ll never look at Kirby the same way again. OWNED, sir.), Mario Kart, Perfect Dark, and generally not giving a damn one way or the other about anything more taxing than rolling out of bed. The last night I was there we went to a bar where I experienced the profoundly odd sensation of being graduated. Strange.

Anyway, Cedar Falls is not exactly a tourist trap. There’s not really much in the way to photograph there, no sights to see, no must-visit attractions. But at this point in the trip, winding up for the final stretch, it’s exactly what I needed. So my thanks to iowa (person) for giving me space to just chill for a while. It was needed.

My first night in Chicago has already proved this point to me twice-over, but I’ll talk about that tomorrow. Suffice to say there is no way I should be sober right now.