Pt. 2 : IN, IL, WI, MN, SD [pt 1]

IN, IL:
i had two huge days of driving on this trip, and this was the first. it was also the first day that karen and i had our first major understanding. (karen, for those of you who've never ridden with me and jerry, is the name given to the voice of my gps, while jerry is the name of my car. she is karen because she is a wild cougar who senses fear, and he is jerry because he completes me, and if you think naming your cars is retarded, don't apologize to me, apologize to your poor, underapreciated automobile.)

karen wanted me to stay on 80 through indiana, probably to avoid driving through chicago proper (or in order to see a cross burning-- ok, last klan joke, at least for this week), leading me back just in time to enter the $.80 thunderdome relay race that is 90 outside of chicago. nobody warned me about this. in fact, i'd say warning is one thing you don't associate with this particular stretch of road. or speed limits. or logic.

basically, the rules are thus: the speed limit is 55 (altho everyone is going a good 20 miles faster), there are tolls at seemingly random intervals (most are $.80, some are $1.20, all are really easy to get exact change for when trying your best not to get rear ended by some angry commuter who hates your guts for going a mere 70), and if you don't have easypass, which i don't, because tolls are nonexistent the west side of the mississip', you can only pay for said tolls in the far right lane. and if you're not in an suv, which i'm not, but surrounded by suvs, which i pretty much always am (or trucks, or busses, or doublewides en route to a new locale...it reminded me of high school, when all my friends were over 6 feet tall), sometimes you never see a single warning of the oncoming lane-pocolypse and have to jam out to the right lane in less than a jiff.

i saw signs saying you could pay your toll later online, but c'mon. if i did have internet at the best quality la quinta suites or wherever that night, would i remember the url for toll payment? and if i didn't, would i have to avoid chicago as a traffic fugitive? not that i'm ever going to drive that stretch again-- EVER-- but still. and have you ever accidentally driven through ez pass without an actual pass? i did on my way onto the ny state thruway once-- i had to pull over, get out of my car, and WALK to a booth for a card. across several lanes of traffic. there are certain places in this this world where you can't even imagine getting out of your car-- in a car wash, at safari adventure in the emu exhibit, on the streets of north tonawanda, new york-- and for me, toll booths is one of them. it was like going through the looking glass, and the very embarasing looking glass at that.

the only good thing about the chicago stretch of 90 is that instead of calling it a travel center/rest stop/fast food pagoda, they call it an "oasis." yes, a shimmering vision of overpriced gas, autoflush toilets, and sabarro. don't let it be a dream!

WI:
after that, wisconsin was sort of a blur, although i did appreciate passing at least three billboards that just said CHEESE. no brand, no variety, no context. just CHEESE. it would be like driving on 128 in boston and seeing billboards for "CHOWDER", or being on the BQE and seeing "BAGELS", or driving on 90 in eastern washington and seeing "METH" (more on that later). i also liked passing cornfields and actually being able to smell the corn. were i in new hampshire, and i'm quite aware that i'm not, this would be the time of year for fresh corn from the local farm stand, which means having to shuck on the back porch before dinner, and getting chided for not doing a good enough job with the silk, and retorting that if you want it done right, do it yourself, and then telling each other to go fuck ourselves, and then storming out. it's a magical time of year, really. sigh.

MN:
when i crossed the missisippi into minnesota, it was also magical, not just because it's beautiful, but because that was the spot when cops officially disappeared. the construction thinned out, but staties (and all other form of local motorized authority) vanished completely. until oregon. and the speed limit went up to 70 or 75. it was pretty fucking glorious. that it smelled nice was just icing on the cake.

since i spent most of the time on this day driving/crossing 4 lanes at once to give the chicago transit authority their precious $.80, i'm a little thin on pictures here, but i did see something of note when stopping for gas somewhere in MN near the SD border. i blindly followed the exit's promise of the image of a gas pump, but when i got to the bottom of the ramp, i had two choices for procuring my gas, and they were right next to each other. and when i say right next to each other, i mean they shared a parking lot. and they were as follows:



i realize that kum&go is a chain in that part of the world, but the proximity of this particular kum&go to it's local rival, the little guy, made the spot seem like a real travel destination for gas, microwavable food, and feelings of sexual inadequacy. at least if you're a dude. for me, it was a place to get denied food at the little guy (the "kitchen was closed"-- so for the sandwich, you need to cook the processed turkey?) and buy a sturgis bike rally kerchief at the kum&go for my friend eilene in nh, since she probably already has every piece of weirs bike week merch ever created.

and it was really amazing, because the girl working at the kum&go had dyed black hair, multiple face rings/a tacklebox visage, some really bad tattoos (the ace of spades! grr!), and she couldn't have been more friendly and cheerful. it was like there was a fargo dvd where her voicebox had been. i hope the kum&go uses it's superior manpower to jizz all over the little guy. and at least it will be quick.

SD pt.1:
when i finally got to SD, i was starting to lose it, so i decided to look for a place to stay. i called home, and with the help of google maps, my father surmised the best place to stop with the most hotels would be mitchell. so, to keep myself awake in the last 15 miles before mitchell (and to keep my father awake in his few precious hours before working a 12 hour day), i told him about how the name mitchell always makes me think of mystery science theater (hi, comi-con), when they did the movie mitchell, and how it had the lamest theme song (m-m-m-m-mitchell!), and how i didn't really want to stop too much in south dakota, and how everybody stops at the corn palace at some point on their way across 90 and i wasn't sure where it was but i'd seen so many pictures of it from friends who'd gone and thought it was so wacky that at this point i kind of hated it and didn't give a shit. and fyi, the corn palace is a giant building covered in (if not made out of) corn. there's just a lot of corn. tada.

my dad was like, nobody's going to make you go to the corn palace, can i please get some sleep, so i got my late night chicken selects (day 2, if you're keeping track!) and snuck my dog into a best western. i didn't sleep much, so when i spotted this on my way out of town the next morning, you can imagine the confusion.



m-m-m-m-mitchell! once again, being around shucked corn made me want to tell someone to go fuck themselves. magic, indeed.

next: SD pt.2, WY, MT

review: comi-con 2007 (just the saturday, and just for 2.5 hours)

fig 1: the twilight of day 4 of comi-con.

dudes in costume, ladies running away. the way it should be.


when i decided i was going to be in LA for a while (notice i didn't say move to LA-- that would be absurd!), i decided that meant i was going to go to comi-con. it's that simple. comi-con, for those of you who simply enjoy entertainment without feeling the need to be able to write a wikipedia entry on demand about any of the entertainment you so flippantly observe, is a giant nerd convention held annually in san diego.

nerd, for those of you who might pride yourselves on not being one, is not meant as a derogatory term, or even one implying intelligence. nerds are just people who care very, very much about things most people think don't matter. sometimes, that thing is, say, math, in which case, yes, the nerd in question is probably pretty smart. but at comi-con, the nerddom on display is not an obsession with numbers, but a guy dressed like a storm trooper in a costume he's been working on for 2 years or a group of adults pushing each other in order to get a coveted "smallville" oversized totebag from the WB booth, handed to them by a lithe teenagerette dressed like supergirl. or, in my case, an adult woman who drives 4 hours in traffic and spends $30 to hear the creator of a tv show about vampire slayer talk about himself for an hour. and for the record, i can't add.

and while comi-con still puts on the pretense of being about comi-cs and the world of sci-fi-- the early list of announced guests trumps comic heroes like neil gaiman, warren ellis, stan lee, etc-- you don't fill a convention center with over 100,000 people when the main attraction is the guy who created transmetropolitan. at least joss whedon, the aforementioned buffy creator, does comic books; he's finishing up stints for xmen and runaways and has turned buffy into a comic since tv is more complicated and his actors tend to go through periods of extreme weight gain (sup, angel, the cherub years).


fig 2: groovy!

i tried to take a picture here of some dudes playing d&d, and then i got all bummed that people got in my way, but it wasn't until later that i noticed that one of said people was a dude dressed like ash from evil dead. see how he cradles his bag of merch to his side with his boomstick! see how he dares to show up when even bruce campbell can't be bothered to! see how he has someone to talk to on his cellphone when i have only my parents, who i couldn't call due to the time difference! (kill me now!)


but after i went to his panel, and after some time on the convention floor admiring the "my little pony" of the future and the sci-fi booth omniblob, i sat in the audience for a panel featuring the cast and creators of the movie "superbad," which, again for the casual fans of pop culture, is the latest release from the judd apatow comedy machine, and he's the guy who made "knocked up," that strangely popular/vaguely pro-life comedy the new york times told you to like so much. and while i could easily give you his entire resume and biography in a matter that would make wikipedia proud, just know that he's funny, the cast, who've been in his other films, is funny, and the writers of the film, also repeat players, should rock paper scissors to determine who i can immediately start building a life with. because they're funny. and also jews, which is just a nice bonus.

fig 3: the sci-fi omniblob.

interestingly, i didn't see any people in any sort of battlestar regalia, even though i was sure i'd see at least a few tough lasses in the backwardsy tanktop and cargo pants ensemble that would do starbuck proud. i guess i can be greatful nobody dressed up like roboslut (yes, i'm talking about #6, and feel free to kill me now, also). and there were many dudes with the topical-map-style complexion to do adama, but no dice.


still, there are no big fight scenes in superbad. no one has a secret identity, there is no cgi, and, praise the lord, there is no involvement from the dark santa, george lucas. but the movie's there, not just because the studio wants to promote the film, but because there are apatow nerds (me me me!), and comi-con is now a mecca for all nerds everywhere. and the studio, and all studios, cable networks, toy companies, cell phone carriers, fast food restaurants, scientology, etc, now realize how powerful the nerd dollar is-- those who care too much do, in fact, often spend too much. which is why judd apatow is forced to leave his home in the palisades, sit in heavy traffic, round up his cast, not brush his hair, and kiss our collective nerd ass. and how we love him for it! and how it makes him palpably uncomfortable!





fig 4: progress!

totally not kidding about the my little pony. but i like how it's taken them 20-ish years to come up with the idea for emblazoning their asses with the world ZOOM.


anyway, since i was determined to go to comi-con, and since i don't know a single other nerd in the state of california willing to spend $30 and hours of his/her life in a car in order to attend the kind of event where, as future-life mate seth rogen put it, "the line for the men's room is actually longer than the line for the ladies room," i drove south by myself, dropped off the dog with my friend aaron in del mar, and entered the dude fortress solo, racing up the escalator to registration behind a guy dressed like a character invented by the guy i was racing to see speak. less meta, more hilarious, since said character wears pretty tight pants.

post-x-country jaunt, which, as you might have noticed, was a solitary affair, i have come to the realization that doing things by yourself is a better option than not doing them at all. cause on the one hand, yes, it would appear that there is nothing sadder on this earth than going to a large gathering of nerds by yourself (even the largest, most acne-speckled fellow in attendance had found a sidekick to be the hans solo to his jaba, and if you think i'm speaking metaphorically, i'm not, i saw people dressed up like this, and besides, solo and jaba weren't buddies, duh, kill me now, again).


fig 5: light saber with 5 blades.

not solo, i know, but please note that a, only one person in this picture is being paid to dress up, b, at least the person getting paid is the one chained to a giant hunk of plastic, and c, i'm pretty sure facial hair is a young jedi no no, and besides, if you're really going for the luke look, why get the whole ensemble down the the belt but let the personal grooming slide? and don't try that "this is not a beard, you will believe i am cleanshaven, you will let me pass" bullshit.


but on the other hand, if comi-con is about anything, it's about free shit, having your ass kissed, girls dressing up like sluts to promote heroes or just for free, and, of course, letting your nerd flag fly free of judgments. so i parked the car, registered in a jiff, and found a seat at the whedon event next to a grizzled old feminist (probably me in 20 years minus the really unfortunate ankle dolphin tattoo, i hope) and a teenaged boy with so many gadgets in his cargo pocket that it fell across the seat next to him and i almost crushed his trio/psp/pen scanner/whatever with my ass. and don't get any ideas, because i'm pretty sure he didn't have a ween growing out of his guy-hip, and really just had a lot of technocrap in his cargo pocket, and was incredibly uncomfortable to see me, or anyone with boobs.

and i'd guess most beboobed attendees of comi-con were with me to see joss (one name basis now, that's how intimate the ballroom was as i watched him on a big brother mac-ad-like-screen since he was about a football field away). he told us about his future projects (a ripper movie! a screenplay with drew goddard! buffy season 9 comic! a bunch of other shit you probably don't understand or, if you do understand, already read about on whedonesque minutes after the panel was over!), made jokes, refused to do a dance, and, best of all, although totally unnecessary, declared the intentional inclusion in his writing of "straight-up, 70s style feminism." and while that's not exactly shocking to anyone familiar with his work, it's not often-- ever?-- that you hear an adult man proudly declare his solid second-wave beliefs. the grizzly lady next to me was especially stoked. the teen dude also next to me shifted his pocket of the handheld communicative techology he uses to talk to the friends he doesn't have (pot, kettle, black, i know, but all i have is a shitty cellphone that i openly admit is really just a portable alarm clock and bulky calendar [since my parents are usually asleep] [when will you do as i ask and put me out of my misery]).

and then in between panels i checked out the convention floor, which was packed, with everybody scrambling to get their hands on any free schwag thrown their way, from nickelodeon's juggling balls to the aforementioned smallville totes that looked like and were about the same size as actual highway billboards to spike tv's t-shirts to he-manliness (has joss taught us nothing?!). i bought my sister a japanese vending machine toy that you build to make a model of the bones and muscles of the hand, because in japan, that's what you want to get outside of the supermarket while waiting for your mom to pay when she won't let you just get some stupid candy. and maybe in japan they don't have homies.


fig 6: carbon rods, still kickin ass!

blurry, but, please note: 1 of those giant, uggs smallville bags, 1 of several thousand fucking jedis, 1 head of unfortunate hot topic hair, and some guy who i don't think was dressed up as anyone but a creepy guy carrying a long blunt object.


then i saw the apatow thingee, which was funny but also kind of excruciating cuz there were at least 2 girls who used the q&A period to solicit sex from one of the stars of the movie (if you're keeping track, it was michael cera, formerly of arrested development/motherboy xxx), who, unbeknownst to one of the girls, was sitting on the panel next to his girlfriend (charlene yi, formerly of youtube), but the second girl knew and didn't give a shit, and the girlfriend is a comedian whose shtick is based on being incredibly awkward, which, aside from making me squirm instead of laugh most of the time, really didn't help. and ps, isn't she maybe 12 years older than he is? cuz if so, good work/highfive, squirm-inducing comedian. i recently worked out a test for a friend of mine who also tends to fall for the younger gentleman-- we decided a cultural reference would be best, so if said manboy cannot answer yes to the question, "hey, do you remember when bill clinton played sax on arsenio?", then he's probably not ripe for the pickin. but on the other hand, fuck it, that dude's adorable. there's got to be a term for ladies like us, one step below cougar. bobcat? merkat? lemur? i'll work up a list.

[please note: i have just now remembered a conversation i had ages ago with my friend lizzie (friend is used loosely here, not because i don't think she's a very nice person, but because i hate when people say, "oh, my friend blah blah" when they only met blah blah once in a bar and then maybe added blah blah as a chum on face book, but i've hung out with lizzie a few times and even ridden in her car, so i guess i'm allowed "friend" status). and lizzie talked about charlene yi and mentioned she was 21, and we all cursed her for being so accomplished and young, and then went back to eating pancakes. i guess ms. yi put the thing out there about being 31 as a "joke," and ha ha, i guess, but natch, it's a squirmy ha ha as 31 isn't so far away in my future, so dangit, that discomfort-inducing comedian charlene yi has done it again! i would be laughing were i not so eager to dig a deep hole and crawl in it to hide from the awkwardness.]

i left soon after to collect aaron and my dog for dinner, and while i wish i'd spent a little more time at comi-con, i was also pretty ready to leave. on the one hand, it was kind of amazing, but on the other hand, it was so full of people, and so frequently those people would just stop moving right in front of you because some paid or unpaid young lady wearing next to nothing would stop to pose for pictures, and while there's probably some established term for this phenomenon, i just referred to it as a slutjam and it started to give me ptsd after my morning of stop and go on I-5. maybe next year, if i can wrangle up a co-nerd, i'll give it a whole day, or maybe two days, or if joss whedon comes back (to reprimand me for using the term slut-- i'm sorry joss, i know not what i do), or judd apatow comes back, or evan goldberg takes me on our honeymoon, or something like that.

and i guess the good part of the large crowds is knowing how many other nerds are out there, be they awkwards dudes (well, mostly awkward dudes), hans solos (who, ironically, aren't solo), or gothy whores (joss, can't help myself). also, it's nice to know there are so not-shitty things about being in southern california (being here, but not living here, of course-- i'm a nerd, not insane).





fig 7: in conclusion: fuck star wars. see ya next year! kill me then!

Pt. 1 : NH, MA, NY, PA, OH, MI

NH, MA, NY, PA, OH:
i was going to try to drive to michigan from nh in one fell swoop, but at 3 pm, when i was sitting at the lee travel center whatever on the pike with four states to go, i realized i'd have to aim for cleveland instead. cleveland is where my sister is living with her fiance, or was living, since he's moving to indiana soon for his new job and she's moving back to boston for her year-long gig before joining him in indiana and forcing us all to go to indiana on purpose. say what you will, but it's klan country. makes the 5 years my sister spent living in upstate new york seem like a paradise (but the kind with snowmobile and motorcycle accidents).

i got in late, but my sister and aaron (the fiance/soon-to-be-brother-in-law/future klansman?) were wide awake, watching that show where that funny/basic-cable-handsome guy does crappy jobs, gets hurt, and then gets to stop doing the job and be on tv while his temporary co-workers return to the daily grind of collecting moose semen or taste testing kitty litter or whatever. and i know it's called "dirty jobs," but how funny would that be?

aaron's house is huge because cleveland is kinda shit-- really, his landlord should probably be paying him-- so i got my own room with my own bathroom.
however, the bathroom looked like this.

where to begin? the jaunty angle of the toilet? the space-saving hover-tank? the fact i had to patch two pictures together to capture it in its entirety? the not-pictured sink that's not large enough to bathe a spider, let alone hold my toiletry arsenal, namely the provigil i would need to get me through the next morning's drive to saginaw since the airless nature of that guest room would wake me up every half-hour with nightmares of being buried live?

long story short, i "slept" for 6 hours next to that "bathroom" before leaving at dawn for michigan to have "fun." and that's only in quotes because i didn't really have fun until i had a nap, because i was so tired the world was in slow motion and i hadn't the strength to fight gravity's pull on my eyelids or even my head, which kept finding flat surfaces to lean against, even if those surfaces were for eating or coated in baby vomit.

and i later found out that the cops in ohio are supposed to be merciless when you speed, but i didn't really find this to be the case. i just found there to be tons and tons of summer road work, which meant lane closures, which meant being stuck in a single-file death march where you couldn't speed if you tried (and many did. right at my bumper, as i gave the proper car-length of space to the guy in front of me going 45. awesome.)

i'd also like to give a shout out to the travelganza center that was either right at the edge of NY or right at the start of PA on 90, the one where you have to walk on a bridge over the interstate to get your chicken selects. kind of beautiful, in a soul crushing way. and it was there i hatched my plan to eat only mcdonald's for dinner on those days when i was dinning alone, like a week-long supersize me except not really a week and limited to 3 piece chicken selects. if you've ever driven for several hours by yourself, then you'll understand the depths one goes to for self-amusement. besides, the "supersize me but not" challenge was far less painful than my "find the craziest person on christian radio" challenge, which i had to give up on after about 5 hours when i heard a woman call in to a jesus radio show to praise god for ridding her church of the heathen yoga classes that had been taking place there. downward dog? downward devil! that's when i realized the christian challenge thing wasn't exactly a challenge. and i hadn't even made it the central time zone.

MI:
to me, michigan is a lot like new hampshire, if only because they could give a shit about your highway safety (NH – no seat belt law, MI – 70 mph all the way, baby [save for road work, which is 90% of your drive, but still, you'll drive so close to the paving materials you'll be choking on fumes for days, so no worries, the danger is still real). also, both states love themselves some guns. few of my friends don't know about my favorite business in newport, nh, which bears the following sign: "STONE EAGLE – FINE ARTWORK, FRAMING, FIREARMS." i've never had the guts to go inside, because, well, they have firearms, and they probably don't have a sense of humor. in MI, i saw three billboards that read "GUNS GALORE!" i passed my beloved cabellas, the hunting superstore chain that many east coast people have never had the good fortune to experience.

maysan and i (maysan being the friend i was visiting, born and raised in flint, sup) had gone to this exact cabellas in the past, unless there are two cabellas in michigan with iron statues out front of large, angry bears locked in combat. and now that i think about it, i kind of hope there are. either way, cabellas has everything you need to kill stuff, from a camo onesie for your infant so you can babysit and hunt at the same time, to a snack bar that serves the fruit of the kill (boar, elk, illegal alien) to an indoor "mountain" covered with stuffed and mounted wild animals, forever preserved in their unnaturally recreated natural habitat, right down to a flowing stream to quench their ghosts' thirst. so i didn't stop this time, if only because i feared i would pass out on one of the store's camoflague futons and sleep through saginaw altogether, but the sight of those bears, forever pissed at each other, did warm my heart.

also, i recently advised a friend of mine to go when he was in detroit-- he was there for an alcoholics anonymous convention, and it turns out that such conventions aren't really that exciting (talking about hitting bottom tends to kill the party i guess). and wouldn't you know, he and his fellow drunks loved it, and i'm sure that they were the only sober people there, and the only ones not handling weapons.

i got to maysan's house pretty early though, but it wasn't actually her house, just a place she and her family were staying before moving to virginia-- her husband is teaching there this fall (i'd say his name, but name+school+location=internet creepy i think? i dunno). keep in mind that they lived in north carolina last year for a post-doc at duke in the wake of the rape scandal, so if you're at a school that has hired maysan's man for the following semester, brace yourself for crisis mode now. i hope they'll stay at VT, even if visiting them'll become a pain, because i find moving to be hell as a solo entity, and the maysan clan has two small kids, the smallest kid being less than a month old at the time of my visit (and the less-smallest being 2ish, so you know he's got the temperment for long trips and the like).

we caravaned it from the temp-condo to maysan's mother-in-law's house, that being the saginaw destination, and since the front seat of the maysanmobile was full of stuff (while maysan rode with me at the caravan's helm), i'm not sure how they're going to pull off the drive to VA. maybe the toddler'll go on the roof (and i have nothing against him, but maysan's a living, breathing all-you-can-eat buffer and the baby's a multiple-trips-to-the-sneeze bar kind of dude).

anyway, like i said, i was tired, and maysan was in a perma-state of dinner rush, and husband was keeping the toddler from poking my dog in the ribs, but i was really glad to see them. here they are to the right, minus mama/the ground round with feet. mr. dad is probably the one living person who fully understands his son's toddler-ese, not just because it's spoken by a 2 year old, but because it's also a mixture of arabic and english. i learned quickly to respond to anything the kid said with a big smile and a "very good!" which is to say, he spoke toddler-ese, and i spoke retardlish. it should go without saying that kids aren't my strongsuit.


later, maysan and i went to meijer for daipers. meijer is basically michigan walmart, but better, because there are no greeters, the name is vaguely ethnic, and they don't sell no junk. for instance, did you know you could get babies to go with those diapers? maysan saw this li'l cutie and threw him in the cart. hardy har har. after i took this picture tho i had a dream that they were giving babies away like they give away bobble-heads sometimes at baseball games, and i got significantly freaked out. again, not so adept with young ones.

i'm pretty sure the maysan clan are en route to blacksburg as i write this, so i hope it's going well and the toddler's doing ok on the roof rack. oh, and i should also mention that maysan's mother-in-law made some delicious pasta, and let my dog poop in her backyard, and was generally chill despite the fact she had a family of four in her house plus their deadbeat friend and her canine.

oh, how i love michigan. so, by the way, does aaron, the aforementioned almost-brother-in-law/ f'd-toilet-owner/ grandwizard-to-be, as he is from there, went to both college and medical school there, and cares so much about the "maize and blue" that he wants a michigan shrine in the indiana supremacist compound he and my sister are soon to share.

so, when he picks up the item to the right at meijer, and he will should my niece be a feminine child, i will do all i can to learn toddlerese and remind her, despite being dressed like the youngest member of the michigan dance team, that nobody expects or wants her to become a stripper.

by the way, just to clarify, aaron does not hate black people. yet.

next: IN, IL, WI, MN, SD pt 1.

NH to LA : Why Come I Done It

technically speaking, i live in new hampshire. i vote there, my dog gets his tags there, and my car's plates offer you the choice of living free or death. and lord knows i want to live there. i want to plop a double wide next to my parents' house, and turn the former industrial air conditioner showroom in town into a movie theater that shows cartoons on saturday afternoons, and meet some dude with a 1982 toyota landcruiser who totally takes charge when bats get into the house (and cedes charge in almost any other situation).

to do those things though, i need money, and to get money, i need a job (even the dude requires cash-- landcruisers don't go biodesiel by themselves). to get a job, i spend a lot of time in los angeles. i see myself as nh resident who works in la with the world's longest commute. because if i start seeing myself as resident of ca, i might step into oncoming traffic.

so, what follows is the ov-review (a overview/review hybrid, just like my car, but without the push button start) of my latest trip across this great nation. but before i can get to that, i should give at least a brief mention of the la to nh leg back in may. it was actually between oakland and syracuse, took 3 days, and was essentially uneventful. although i did eat a couple delious meals in elko, nevada (basque food AND slot machines in the bathrooms!) and omaha (you got a problem with choice steak? prime is for pussies!), and one meal at a mcdonalds where they were out of beef. BUT there was a guy there wearing a baseball hat that said "FUCKING A", and that was much better than a big mac.

en route to oakland from LA, there were a few notable events, and they were as follows:
-i took a gas/pee break in a town called "los banos," which i thought was awesome. that place should be the mecca of peeing. ha ha toilet fart pee pee i'm an adult.
-my cousin sara is getting her phd at santa cruz, and she showed me the campus, and it's like oz/middle earth/smurf village, but with more sandals. she also fed me and gave me a nice place to sleep, which i didn't exactly deserve, since, when she visited me in new york, i took her to popeyes in times square and stuck her on a foldout. plus, no redwoods.
-i visited ashrita at her job in san francisco, and she worked with a guy i interned for back in college, and we hugged before realizing that is not something we had ever or should ever do. especially since i'd just spent 3.5 hours hiking big basin and sweat so bad i could feel it in my socks. still, no harm done, and if he'd asked me to run dumb errands, i probably would have done it for old time's sake.
-ashrita complained to me how someone she knows in sf always goes out of his way at parties to talk about ashrita's exboyfriend and how they dated even though it was really long ago, and then maybe two hours later, when her roommate put on a cd, a cd that happened to be of music by a band featuring a guy i dated TEN YEARS AGO, what do you think ashrita did? loudly? with a sweeping motion of her arms for extra dramatic emphasis? she has since apologized, but the irony was not lost on me, and i'd kind of like to lose it, because i'm still embarrased.

anyway, here are a few pictures of note from that leg of the trip:

this is the coast at santa cruz, which is, duh, pretty. cousin sara told me that the flora you see here-- i think it was call ice plant-- was put in by reagan during his reign as governor of california. he thought the plants were, duh, purty. they were also, duh, not native, and killed all the indigenous plants and majorly fucked up the local ecosystem. i guess the one good thing to come out of this is a fresh reason to hate ronald reagan. loathing that cocksucker really never gets old.



i stopped at big basin thinking i'd just take a li'l stroll since i had time to burn between santa cruz and san francisco, plus i had a hankering to see giant trees. the ranger, who looked like the guy from the movie once/the frames/the commitments/ the spin doctors/the entire country of ireland, asked me if i wanted to see a waterfall or a view, and, like the fucking moron i am, i said view. view, as in,i hope you find this view stunning, because it took me about two hours to reach it. i got to big a nice place to see the countryside from a great height. and since the ranger station wasn't at the top of a mountain, said view would have to be reached by, ya know, going uphill. in jeans and a shitty pair of adidas. with really unclear markers and a kind of crappy map since big red ranger had a bit of a 'tude. and i have a less-than-streamlined, manatee build.

i got lost, i got bitten by at least one kind of insect, i got a bad case of swamp ass, and it was all the for vista you see on the left. the way down was actually really nice, a path along a small gulch with trees all around and natural bridges and the like, but i was too rattled to really appreciate the scene since i was convinced i was going the wrong way and when my body was eventually found my cousin would say guiltily that she wished she'd spent more time with me on the coast, thus making my death the fault of none other than ronald reagan (think about it). in the end though, it was a nice hike, albeit three times longer than i intended it to be, and helped to make up for the next 3 days of sitting on my ass in a car waiting for the next flying J travel center truck stop, hoping that it be one with a barbershop inside because that shit's just too weird.





oh, and this tree had a ball.

moving on.