Goodbye San diego

I am treating myself today by leaving a crappy situation and giving Myself permission not to feel responsible for the emotional wellbeing and safety of people who don't honestly give a damn about me.

Happy valentines day everyone.

Mojave Desert

And months pass, without word from your intrepid narrator... did he die, somewhere out there in the perfectly laquered big box nightmare that is the LA suburbs? Was he perhaps murdered by mutants who live in the sewers of california?

Actually, the truth is much more mundane. I found out pretty quick that internet cafes are very rare, and insanely expensive when they do exist. When given a choice between eating and updating you guys, sorry, you take a backseat to my stomach. I switched to my handy dandy yellow notebook, recording all my adventures in it, intending to write it all out for you as soon as I got back to Canada. Those who know me will not be surprised to know that once i did get home, I sort of....didnt.

So its been months since I got back, and since then a lot has happened, but my recent adventures must for now stay in my notebook, because I have an adventure to commit to the interwebs. If i dont, the notebook will inevitably be lost or destroyed, and all the people I met will sink into the mists, remembered by nobody.

I did eventually get out of LA, possibly never to return. As tempting as my favorite blogger makes the city sound (The Funky Freegan), the rest of the coast was so much more enthralling, and I didnt feel in quite as imminent danger of being knifed anywhere else I went as I did in downtown Los Angeles. Maybe I will come and get the inside scoop on the neighbourhoods from the locals instead of some godawful tourist map, and give it a second chance.

My mother and I rented a car and set out towards Vagas, plotting a course along the LA-to-Vegas highway along with every other tourist and gambler in this part of the world. Soon enough, the LA radio stations faded out, replaced with the pre-recorded pep of the station that strings all the way along that highway, not letting you forget you are headed towards the glitz and sparkle of Las Vegas. After a while, we lost that station, and found ourselves on a cracked desert highway that looked very unlike the expensive 6 lane leading to the home of Gil Grissom and Catherine Willows. The lushness of LA had faded quickly as we headed along, and now we were driving down the centre of a flat, cracked and chilly desert. What alien planet was this?

As we passed through tiny settlements and passed homesteads, we could not grasp the idea of owning property in this place. Who could raise children in this featureless landscape? We asked ourselves this as we passed one of the isolated homes where a fence arbitrarily seperated MY nothing, from the miles of more nothing. The only thing that seemed different about the baked earth inside the fence were the tires, and occasional children's toys scattered around the 'yard'. To an Ontarian, used to trees and buildings constantly hemming in our vision, providing protection and safety, this was a frightening place.

But the further we drove, the more life we saw. I dont know if it was our perceptions changing, or if it was the landscape itself, but the desert went from bleak nothingness to packed with desert life within a few hours. The land outside the window was covered in the unique plantlife of the Mojave desert, Joshua Trees, low bushes, growing creepers and the tightly balled spikes of cactus. Out here were Tortoise, Roadrunner, Snakes and Lizards, even deer and mountain sheep. I only spotted a few of the lizards, and they werent too happy to have me running after them to snap their picture, believe me.

Passing through one of the barren hamlets, we stopped short at the sight of a truck mounted missile... [ To be continued ]

So a lot has happened since i last had internet access long enough to post. I dont have much time, so this post wont be as polished as the others. It seems like computer access isnt the given i had thought it was. Next time, I'm going to invest in a tiny laptop or blackberry or whatever piece of tech will allow me to post whenever i catch a wireless signal. Unlike computer access, wireless signals are a dime a dozen and copiously spread among coffee shops, restaurants and hostels america wide.

Anyhow, you'll get a proper update when I get to Dallas and crash with my friend Kori, whose internet i fully intend to hog while he is at work. Its looking like I will be hitching the rest of the way down to LA, then taking the Amtrak to Texas. I had originally planned to bum around america the whole winter, and then i didnt actually change my plans when it turned out i only had a month. Thus, plans are changing quite quickly, and I'm not hitching as much as i'd hoped, but, I'm still doing some. After a few days in dallas, I'm off to louisianna.

Bored with the downtown, i headed down to Long Beach. On the metro trains, young men walk back and forth with big boxes of candy, calling out the prices "dollar! dollar!". Once i got there, i had the whole board walk to myself. The restaurants and shops were empty, but stubbornly still open, unlike Niagara Falls which was just miles of closed shops, under a layer of snow.

The water along the boardwalk was filled with garbage, making me wince when i saw the determined sea birds picking

through the rocky beach. I visited the aquarium, where i learned that during WW2, America's largest breakwater was built to protect the military ships in from U Boats, and it wasnt removed after the war ended. That has drastically effected the currents and the water quality inside the breakwater. Apparently theres a lot of disagreement between the residents who want to be able to swim in water that isnt filthy, and those who dont want their beachfront property hit by waves the first time a storm hits. I spent most of my time in the Aquarium doing my part to give the rays and the sharks PTSD by molesting them as they swam round and round their tanks. I think i had more fun than most of the little kids there!

My adventures in Stepford, also known as the city of Santa Clarita, continue. I was able to escape to LA proper yesterday, and explored the downtown. I realized pretty quickly what most other tourists dont need to be told. There's very little to see downtown. The only places I would reccomend in the downtown is El Pueblo and the Grand Central Market. El Pueblo is a historical californian-spanish-themed tourist trap, but who cares? It was a lot of fun. There's probably one in every southern city, but its all new to me.

Hidden down an alley there was a restored Californio residence. The historical details were interesting, but what struck me the most was the garden in the centre of the home. Cacti grew the size of trees, and the orange and lime trees were in full fruit.

I bought this amazing melon sugar candy. I thought it would be fruit juice flavoured sugar, but they had actually candied a whole slice of veiny melon. It had the texture of a pomello, and they left the seeds in the candy. They had pumpkin and lime versions too. I think i know what i'm going to do with the end-of-season pumpkins next fall!

The Grand Central Market satisfied my love of fresh produce and streetmeat served by shouting cooks from big steaming pots, serving odd and unusual food at bargain basement prices. I planned to have dinner there, but it closed before i got back. Instead, i got a bean and cheese burrito at a little canopied shack. The weather allows for outdoor eating, even outdoor buffets under plastic canopies, so i get the feeling that I'll be eating at such places a lot in the next month.

Speaking of pumpkins, in my rambling i found a farm by the highway. The winter compost heap was filled with all the unsold melons.

Valencia California

So my journey begins. I arrived yesterday in Los Angeles California, and very quickly discovered that my hotel isnt in LA at all. Valencia is a small, manufactured town some ways up the coast, part of the Santa Clarita area. My van driver told me that the whole place sprung up in the last five years from nothing. It feels like disneyland, but with more car lots. Everything in slickly built with music piped in through false mushrooms in the ground, and intricate fountains everywhere.

So my base of operations is Stepford town, with LA itself an hour away. I'm checking out the possibilities of getting out of town to do some hiking in the nearby hills, and i might head into the city one day on my own to see one or two things down that way.

I've been on the road for about two weeks now, I think, and I'm finding i dont miss the web so much. When it comes to sheer intake of useless information, reading and chatting with people has fed my needs, but my fingers itch to share all the little thoughts that dont really matter. I ache to text. "omg, i just saw calleigh frm CSIMiami here in Valencia! XD" The world might be slightly better off for not hearing all of these thoughts.

I also kind of miss not having any school work hanging over my head. I havent had truly free time in years. When you are in university, any time you have off is time you have chosen to neglect your studies. I dont really know what to do with myself. (Say I, as i hitch hike across the USA).

So I will be spending the next four (possibly?) days entertaining myself during the day and then going on outings with mother's co-workers in the evenings, as she is at a Health Canada conference, and then she and I go to Las Vegas for a few more days before I take off for the horizon on my own.

I'm chugging along happily through the school year, and the end is just visible from the crows nest. Too bad I'm taking school all through the summer too, so the 'end' doesn't do me much good.

One of my goals this winter was to become a lot more fit. Actually, 'goal' has too much of a newyears resolution flavour. It wasn't so much a goal, as an inevitability. I am going to do the length of the rideau trail sometime this summer, and I have the energy to do it, so to train for it, i've been walking basically everywhere. In my hometown, everything is at least an hour's walk from everywhere else, so the result is 3-9 hours a day brisk walking. To that end, I'm earning my extra cash by dog walking and putting up flyers, anything that gets me running.

This last week, I have been drawing and creating up a storm while taking advantage of my family's absence watch horror films at full volume.

The first one is a doodle done during Social Psych class, the most boring and massively easy of all my classes. I imagine him with a word bubble saying. "WTF GUYZ?!"

I printed out a reference photo of Jeffrey Dean Morgan for another picture of mine, and my wandering hands started sketching over it in the 20 second breaks between note taking. This isn't my original drawing. I wish! I cropped out my Law notes, to spare you the TL;DR.