by Ian Rygiel | Nov 21, 2014 | Ian's Blog
As I less-than-coyly hinted at in my last post, my work life has been incredibly busy the last few weeks. Regardless, I wanted to make sure I squeezed in a post tonight. One: because I feel guilty when I shirk an obligation (I’m a proper American laborer in that way; blame it on the Puritans). Two: I feel reinvigorated whenever I get to relive the trip in my own way. Short on time or no, I’ll share a quick story from Missouri, which the crew and I still get a kick out of. We were doing a bit of camping and realized there wasn’t a whole lot of dead wood to be found around the campsite. Not having the means to cut anything substantially dead down, and being fairly close to civilization, Lauren and I headed out in search of a small town we passed a couple miles back. Rolling into a small strip mall that had seen better days, we split up. Lauren went in search for the truly important items we needed (water and beer), and I went looking for some fire wood. What I found was described to me as a cord. Now, if you’re at all familiar with cords of wood, they generally measures 4ft x 4ft x 8ft. I didn’t know that at the time and was just happy to have found some fuel to cook dinner with, so I bought two and headed back to the car. In my absence, it seems our van had become quite the topic of conversation, which Lauren managed to eavesdrop on. It went something along the lines of:...
by Ian Rygiel | Oct 31, 2014 | Ian's Blog
It’s Halloween Eve, which is to say the eve of All Hallows’ Eve, and everyone and their brother with a creative outlet is doing a Halloween-themed entry. I’d like to tell you I’m better than all that. I would love to say I’m going against the grain, blazing my own trail, and taking the path least taken. But I have a confession to make. A deep dark secret. I love Halloween. Halloween is without a doubt my favorite holiday of the year. Since I was just a wee shaver, I felt drawn to monsters, horror films, and the macabre. October was the one month of the year everyone else seemed to immerse themselves in this world with me. Horror films, dark humor, and the celebration of all things that go bump in the night took over for one whole month. It was glorious. And it still is. I never lost my enthusiasm for the spooky things and places of the world, and I want to spend some time in this blog talking about the scarier moments from our trip. They’re likely not the moments you would think. A few films have informed public opinion about rural America: Deliverance, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hills Have Eyes all come to mind. The plots share some similarities; namely, a group of city folks are terrorized by disturbed individuals who live beyond the edges of civilization. As a city boy myself, you would think that I’d carry some residual fears with me across the country. In all honesty however, I never felt unsafe in rural America. The people we met were...
