Coming to America! (pt.1)

A Companion Trip to the US of A

Generic “look I’m on an airplane” photo

Gosh, it’s been a coon’s age since I’ve written a travel blog, which is a genuine shame. However, since I just spent a week in the United States, it seemed like a good time to start back up again, especially considering I had an astoundingly good time while there.

Why was I off to the middle of nowhere, USA? Well, because one of my BFFs, Lady Enslain aka Chrissy Hujanen, was going to visit her family with her 4-year-old son Miki, and said she doesn’t like traveling alone; her husband just switched jobs, so he didn’t have any vacation time accrued to spend with her. Since I tend to fly pretty cheap thanks to spousal benefits, I scrouged a few bucks together to join her, because why not? I was feeling really depressed at the beginning of this year and nothing’s as nice for depression as shaking up routines. So, on January 14th, 2025, I hopped on a flight to New York’s JFK airport with my friends! 

The flight was nice. I had the row in front of Chrissy and Miki, thanks to the amazing woman at the airport, so we were all grouped up together. There was another lady who had a 2-year-old who was being pretty chaotic, so luckily he and Miki were able to play together a bit, though I’m pretty sure Chrissy didn’t sleep at all on the flight. I watched Inside Out 2 (and cried) and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (and cried) before falling asleep. It’s a 9-hour flight, so I was glad to get some rest during half of it. 

I was also surprised that Finnair still gives meals on flights. Charging for meals is one of the biggest cost-saving methods airlines have started implementing in recent years, so that was honestly quite nice… and it was edible! What a pleasant surprise. When we arrived, it took us only about an hour to get through the customs line (extremely weird that we didn’t need to fill out customs forms, wtf? I’ve never not had to do that in Canada, so this was crazy bizarre, since I figured America would be 10x more diligent on that front), though we did need to handle Miki puking in the line—we were really grateful that the people behind us were kind about it and gave us some napkins and a vomit bag, and I was able to keep our spot while Chrissy went to clean up Miki. Ahh, if only that was the only story of its sort from this trip… 

Our bags were already waiting for us by the time we got out at least though (unsurprising, since it took us an hour), even though, as you can see, it took me half a moment of panic to find mine (I’m sure someone did that as a little prank—nice one!). We then picked up our rental car and set out for Pennsylvania, which is about a 3-hour drive from New York. It was a pleasant and uneventful drive, with no more barf—huzzah!

Before reaching our destination, we had to stop at Wawa, which is, I suppose a gas station chain? But, as per the North American norm, it’s also more or less a convenience store that even makes warm food, so Chrissy picked up some of her favorite things that she’s missed over the years, while I got a Slim Jim, because I am obsessed with Macho Man Randy Savage and have recently been watching his ‘90s Slim Jim commercials. It tasted like a dog treat, haha! “SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM!” (This is truly the funniest shit I’ve ever seen). 

We arrived at Chrissy’s mom and stepdad’s place in time for a pleasant chat and introduction before heading off to bed. In the morning, we went over to the YMCA to get week-long trials, because Chrissy refuses to not work out when on vacation. That’s good for me, because I need to work out more, so I was glad to do some gentle yoga on my own while she was in an aerobics class. We were hoping to meet with her friend in Oxford, but she was pretty busy and despite multiple efforts throughout the week, we were not able to make it happen (the last reason being because she had contracted norovirus, which has been going around… this will come into play later, naturally). 

Me & Le

One of the loveliest parts of the first half of the trip was when my friend Leona showed up. We’ve been acquainted for all of 5 minutes, really, having met in October on an Instagram post by Persephone Valentine, but connected instantly, largely due to her beautiful, kind, and supportive personality. Even more incredible? She’s from way over in Connecticut, but managed to find her way all the way to PA just to meet me IRL. How amazing is she? 

Herr’s truck with the gang

Chrissy had been looking for local things for us to do in small-town PA (options were more or less nonexistent, heh), leading us to the Herr’s Snacks Factory to do their guided tour to see how chips and pretzels and cheese puffs are made. I was sorry that they didn’t allow photography or videos inside because it was a really cool tour. I love seeing how things are made, so it was awesome to get a chance to see different sorts of production, where and how it began, and how they’ve made efforts to keep up with the times and avoid waste. If I recall correctly, our tour guide (I think her name was Terry?) explained that the average factory like this has 3-4% waste and theirs is only 1%. I don’t really know what those numbers mean but it was impressive to say the least—I love a company (especially in America) that cares about waste reduction and all that stuff.

While we did need to keep Miki from eating potato chips off the floor (4-year-olds, haha…), they gave us fresh-off-the-production-line chips at the end and some little snack baggies of plain chips and pretzels to take home. We learned how tortillas are made, which is different from regular and crinkle chips, which is different from pretzels, which was different from cheese puffs. We saw how they get their color and seasoning, how they’re packed, how they’re stored, and how they’re shipped out. Quality control goes through them every hour and we even got to see a packing assembly line catastrophe, as something got jammed and we saw how it was dealt with. Overall, it was a fantastic tour and we really enjoyed it! 

January weather in PA… if only it was this mild the whole time

In the evening, we first visited the liquor store, where we could find the things we don’t usually get in Finland. Granted, I don’t really drink much, so my 6-pack of Mike’s Hard peach lemonade lasted me the whole week. It was extremely funny to find that they were selling lonkero [Finnish long drinks] there—can’t say I was expecting that in the middle of nowhere! We then got pizzas and hung out with Chrissy’s family. I was surprised to find that the pizzas were, by default, quite thin crust; I had assumed they’d be more or less the same as our thicker crust pan-style pizzas in Canada, but I didn’t see a single pizza like that the entire time we were there (and we had our fair share of pizza).

Wild!

Chrissy’s half-brothers has an impressive DDR setup in the basement, so he showed off his impressive skills at the game, as well as another cool rhythm-based arcade machine that he’d obtained over the years. When we were winding down for the night, Leona headed back to her hotel and we headed off to sleep. 

Artist’s depiction of Miki falling asleep in the same chair

Thanks to jetlag, we were up pretty early, but since I was hiding away in my room, Chrissy headed off to the Y without me. That was fine, I was happy to chill because she went earlier than I had energy to do much of anything. Leona joined us again after noon sometime. 

We did two main things on our second day (apart from playing cars with Miki), the first of which was going shopping at Walmart. Of course, as Ruth Whitefeather Feldman said, Walmart is evil, but it’s bulk evil, and you can get some interesting things there that you certainly can’t find in Finland. I only picked up some North American candies that I’ve missed, but Chrissy wanted some supplements and other things that she could only find in NA, and Leona and I wandered around, feeling a bit like we were 15 again. Yeah, I used to be one of those teenagers who thought Walmart was more fun than a mall, so I’d run around doing weird things. I think I still have a photo of me from when I was around 16 or so with another friend, with “touch me” stickers all over us that we stole off the bras. The weirdest thing we found? Dunkin’ Donuts brand body wash and deodorant. Even more bizarre? It was fucking expensive (like $12+ for a standard deodorant stick, holy hell). 

In the evening, Chrissy’s half-brother had to go to bed at around 6 p.m. so we decided to go to a bar so we didn’t have to spend the evening whispering. This is where my 15+ years in Finland really culturally slapped me in the face. We were not in this little Irish-ish pub for more than half a moment before people started chatting with us. I was sitting on the inner edge of the bar, so a lady who was maybe in her late 50s or early 60s began chatting with me. I was astounded at first… I literally had forgotten that people do that in other countries that weren’t Canada. She was really nice, didn’t express any sort of bigotry or things like that, and I enjoyed chatting with her. She was there with her son and son-in-law, if I understood correctly. Her son-in-law was what we affectionately call a “character”—his name was Sean (however spelled) and also came to chat with us about extremely random things, like the benefits of psychedelic mushrooms, his alcoholism, and the fact that he really needed to get home to help his wife out with something. I did like him, since he had a lot of personality (and also because he thought I was 25, haha). I also traded transcendental grief stories with the extremely lovely bartender about our mutual losses. It was such a stark contrast to what I’m accustomed to in Finland and I’ve felt overwhelmed by this in the past, but this time around? It was refreshing AF. 

Since Leona was heading home the next day, I opted to join her at her hotel for the night to shake things up and let Chrissy go early to the gym again. Part of this is because I super love her, but I was also excited about the idea of having a bath. Because of saunas, there are next door to zero bathtubs in Finland, and I thought that since water has a narcotic effect on me sometimes, that if I woke up at 4 a.m. I might run a bath and go back to sleep. Sure enough, I did wake up at 6 a.m. and had a bath (which was accidentally way too hot) that put me down until half past 10 a.m., which was maybe the best sleep I had while there. We had a leisurely noon check-out and I reluctantly said goodbye, but was excited that we were heading out to Atlantic City! 

Blurry, oops. I missed her immediately!

Stay tuned for part 2: road trip to Atlantic City, incoming hopefully tomorrow!

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Atlantic City Bay-bee! (pt.2)

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How to Be a Respectful Fan When Meeting Your Heroes