for those of you that followed my USA tour, check out my other tumblr: nickmanske.tumblr.com. it’s a site for my illustrations, and i update regularly. so please follow me, and thanks again!

been there. done that. and now, this journey comes to an end. for those of you that came out and supported, i thank you. thanks for coming out. thanks for reading. thanks for donating to my brother’s cause. and mostly, thanks for keeping up and commenting. on those lonely nights in the middle of some nowhere small town, while laying on my twin-bed air mattress with the spider-man sheets, knowing that people were reading and following really kept me motivated. i hope you’ve enjoyed my limited, biased slice of american pie. i’m now back in new york, and happy to begin the next chapter of my nyc adventure. i’ll still post summer’s postcards on this blog as i finish them/as she receives them. other than that, best wishes to everyone, and thanks for following! see you around.

nick*

17,500 miles driven.

48 states visited (i couldn’t afford airfare to alaska and hawaii).

48+ generous gracious hosts/new friends, with a life-time of free lodging in nyc should they ever visit.

5 cities in which i could potentially live (denver, seattle, chicago, new york, austin).

4 months (september 6th - january 10th).

4 total weeks of hanging out with my wonderful family in texas, and especially my perfect niece, willa, and nephews holden and theo.

3 natural wonders that i’m so grateful for getting to see (big sur, grand canyon, yellowstone national park)

2 crippling hangovers that prevented me from driving.

2 stops by the police.

2 guys that i’m glad to have shared the experience with. way to go, nate and marquise. we fucking did it!

1 field sobriety test (i aced it).

1 girlfriend/city/apartment/group of friends that i’m happy to be home to.

0 traffic violations. that’s right, ZERO.

0 regrets. an absolutely amazing trip. i’m so glad to have gotten this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. thanks everybody!

50-states of summer: new jersey.

just had a typical nyc weekend, lots of hanging out with best friends and brunching at taco chulo. and it took four hours last night to show my photos of the trip to a few people. we were just flying through them too, and it still took an hour per month. wow. so this is the view from my apartment on my first day of business back in the greatest city in the world. unpacking four-months of clothes and a laptop bag full of tickets and pamphlets from four-months of cultural events. busy busy, writing emails to art directors, looking for work (if anyone needs some illustration work, get in touch with me). what a trip. but it’s so nice to be sitting in a freshly cleaned apartment, after showering in my own bathroom, drinking my own coffee, eating my own breakfast, doing whatever the hell i wanna do.

this is my last official run of the tour. it was a run in 25* weather, through my mom’s neighborhood in georgetown, texas. since september 6th (when we started the tour), i’ve run 39 times, in 29 different states, for a total of 124 miles. that comes out to an average of ten runs per month, and 3.18 miles per run. i ran along the mississippi in minneapolis, the athletic hike-and-bike trails of denver, the frozen suburbs of providence, the german shephard guarded ghetto of little rock, the mountainous granola gravel of portland, the miserably steep unable-to-catch-your-breath misty hills of san francisco, the gross cookie-cutter sprawls of the las vegas suburbs, the great lake michigan of chicago, the snowy whispery quiet of duke university in north carolina on christmas day, and bitchin’ miami beach. it’s been a hell of a run.

17,000 miles, on the way to texas from new orleans. and if anyone’s still paying attention, that’s how many miles it takes to get from driftwood, across the entire continental u.s., and back again.

this run took place in texas, in a small suburb outside of houston called katy. i ran around the neighborhood park called ‘george bush park’ (ha. only in texas), and afterwards, fed bread to the ducks with my three-year old nephew. it was surprisingly cold, and even snowed later in the day as we were leaving for austin. yeah, you read that correctly. it snowed in HOUSTON. strange times.

another run in mobile, alabama. still pretty cold. still pretty boring. gotta get outta here.