<p>Yesterday, sucked a lot. I mean a lot A LOT. More on that later. The one funny moment, though, was when we were at the <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=american+apparel&amp;near=98105&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;cd=1&amp;view=map&amp;om=1&amp;ll=47.678103,-122.290535&amp;spn=0.108875,0.233459&amp;z=12&amp;iwloc=A">American Apparel store in the U. District</a> (in Seattle).</p>

<p>The hipster turd that was working the store then was explaining to us the shrinking that happens in some shirts. They shrink upwards, but not inwards. Ok. "Why is that?" I ask. "Oh, because they're laid out vertically." He should've stopped here, but no... "Because they're vertically integrated." </p>

<p>Emily and I both had to bite our lip to not laugh at the bullshit that this schmuck was spitting at us. Vertically Integrated... good one.</p>

<p>Just to clear things up. <a href="http://store.americanapparel.net">American Apparel</a> <em>is</em> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration">vertically integrated</a> and their shirts do shrink (a little) upwards not inwards, but those aren't the same thing.</p>

<p><img src="http://www.americanapparel.net/storefront/images/header/header1.gif" alt="Vertically Integrated"></p>

<p>I'm going to hitchhiking down the west coast from Seattle, WA to San Diego, CA for ComicCon this year again. And what I mean by 'this year' is Tuesday. I've always wanted to be able to post real-time-ish updates from the road on trips like these. Normally, I take notes along the way (usually at night after the day has gone by and I've forgotten things), then try to blog them as I can. I never follow through though. I did this with my <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/10/5/1/the-northwest-passage/">Seattle</a> <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/10/13/1/trial-reunion-show-trip-day-1-wednesday/">trip</a> for the <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/10/13/2/trial-reunion-show-trip-day-2-rursday/">Trial</a> <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/11/2/1/trial-reunion-show-trip-day-3-friday/">reunion</a> <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2005/11/18/2/trial-reunion-show-journal/">show</a> and my <a href="http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2007/5/18/1/railsconf-2007-in-portland-part-one/">RailsConf</a> posts.</p>

<p>So... this time ima try something different (and by the way, I had a dream about this in my sleep one morning waking up with the idea to do it this way). I will post little <a href="http://twitter.com/" title="Twitter">Twitter</a> tweets with my progress reports of rides and towns and stories and characters and the what-nots and the who-whos.</p>

<p>If you care to follow along there are three ways to do so:</p>

<ol>
  <li>To the right of the body content on my blog here under the heading "My Twitter Tweets" will be the most recent 10 in reverse order</li>
  <li><a href="http://twitter.com/veganstraightedge" title="Twitter / veganstraightedge">My Twitter Page</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/641013.atom" title="Twitter / shaners">My Twitter Feed</a></li>
</ol>

<p>There you have it.</p>