California love

California is like Oprah: Big and Beautiful

We left Jamie’s house early Monday morning. It’s gotten a lot easier to wake up at 9 a.m. the further west we go. We were excited to see Greg, Cesca, and their dogs and wanted to hit the road quickly. On our way to the highway, we passed Hollywood Boulevard and stopped for some pictures with all of the stars in the sidewalk. We came across Chuck Norris, Donna Summers, Levar Burton, all of the Barrymores, Godzilla, Michael Jackson, David Carradine, and many others. There were also struggling actors posing as famous characters in order to make a couple bucks through tips. It was all pretty surreal. Most surreal was Michael Jackson’s, which was covered in candles and flowers. That was fairly understandable, but the heat had melted the candles and covered the star in a creepy red flowery wax goo.

The drive to the highway was awful and we sat in stop and go traffic for about an hour before we managed to get anywhere. In California, and possibly other places, motorcycles are allowed to drive between cars during gridlock. This would seem to be a huge incentive to ride a motorcycle, especially in conjunction with California’s ridiculous gas prices….except that in that traffic, we were shocked that the motorcyclists made it out alive. LA also has an inconvenient conception of an HOV lane. The HOV lane is separated from the other lanes and you cannot merge from one to the other except at various designated points. While it is nice to not have to deal with people merging in and out of the lane, it makes it incredibly difficult to merge back in with the rest of the traffic. Thus, if you want to get off at your exit, you have to traverse a strip of broken asphalt and merge in with traffic going 90 mph. Thanks for the convenience LA! Almost as conveniently irritating are California’s version of gas station. As if the obscene prices weren’t a sufficiently low blow, the gas stations apparently cannot afford to have a credit card machine at each pump. Thus, you have to walk up to an independently standing machine and insert your card while typing your pump number. In order to use this feature, you are charged a convenience fee. Thanks California gas stations. I enjoy paying extra fees and I appreciate your willingness to oblige me. Next time, though, you should really put a toll on the way out of the gas station, if you want to be as convenient as Oklahoma.

Practically everyone we spoke to advised us to take the scenic route up Highway One (the Pacific Coastal Highway), even though it makes the trip a little longer. We figured two extra hours was no big deal after all the driving we’d done to get out here. It was worth it - view was diverse and beautiful. We saw luscious fields of grapes, miles of coastline and beaches, rolling brown hills, and a wonderful In-N-Out Burger. Our GPS calls it “In North Out Burger,” much like it calls all abbreviated “streets” “saints.” In-N-Out burger is awesome. Order your food “Animal Style” and it comes with extra toppings, including a sauce composed of red stuff, white stuff, and onions. MMMM. We passed through Castroville, known as the Artichoke Center of the World. Stew slowed down just enough for Tori to take a picture of the giant artichoke!

We had made such good time on the drive up that Greg and Cesca weren’t even home yet and we had to meet up with them at a coffee shop. They were meeting with their real estate agent, Monica, in hopes of buying a house soon. We’re both super excited for them. Even though they’re looking for a house to buy, their current rental cottage (or apartment above a garage depending on semantics), is great. It is located right off highway 17, down a long country road through a redwood forest. Even with the exhaustion of an eight hour drive, we were thrilled to see Greg, Cesca, Maddy and Cooper. We ate dinner outside on their patio and relaxed while watching a movie, because Cesca has work every morning and has to leave the house by 7 a.m. She’s a 2^nd and 3^rd grade teacher, so it’s pretty crucial that she shows up on time!

The next day, Greg took us on a tour of Santa Cruz, the pier (sea lions!), UC SC campus, drove through down town, and visited Trader Joe’s. We made lasagna for our hosts, in appreciation for their generosity in putting us up for the week. Another easy night and we all fell asleep early, exhausted from a long day of site seeing in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is an absolutely amazing city. It has big forests and trees, mountains, long white sand beaches, sea lions, a relaxed liberal atmosphere without some of the superficiality, uniform ideology, and ironic competitive “chill-ness” which can detract from an otherwise idyllic environment. We got to put our feet in the ocean, thereby signifying that we had truly crossed the country, from sea to sea. Technically, we only went “to sea,” and not the full “sea to sea,” but there was no way we were going to go out of our way to visit Virginia beach. We were in the best parts of Virginia, however, which are definitely not the beach.

The following day we went on a tour of San Francisco with Greg. We parked at Fisherman’s Wharf and walked down the pier to see a massive group of sea lions doing silly things. Stew took an extended video of sea lions wrestling. They look like Maddy, Greg and Cesca’s pit bull/rotweiler mix. We walked through the financial district to try to see the original official “mint” built to accommodate the gold boom. It also survived the earthquake/fire of 1908. Tori really wanted to see “City Lights Bookstore,” famed for its involvement with the Beat poets and various poets published through them. Stew was surprised to discover that Bob Dylan also hung out, which he discovered when he saw a bunch of photos of Dylan, Alan Ginsberg and co hanging out in the basement. We returned to the car after another exhausting hike (we accidentally came out 32 blocks from our car when we got back down to the pier) and drove home tiredly. Cesca was done with all her work when we got home and we watched Futurama, Greg’s movie, and our friend Alex Campbell’s film project “The Plague.” All were very enjoyable. While it is often confused for Timmy the Tooth’s famed mid nineties expose on tooth decay entitled “The Plaque,” Campbell’s film provides an interesting look at the terrifying possibility of a zombie virus epidemic using the vehicle of a faux documentary. We look forward to seeing all of Alex’s future productions. Hopefully Alex and Stew’s joint production, Resurrection, will be finished by this weekend.

Today we found out that our flight had been changed to this Sunday, rather than Tuesday. We had to change it to Thursday in order to still have time to meet up with some of our friends and get to really spend some quality time with Cesca (she’s been so busy with work that we almost never get to see her). So we delayed our trip to Guatemala for a couple days, but we think it is for the best. Two days, after all, is immaterial in the grand scheme of our nearly year longjourney. The errands today were not very exciting, but Greg had is first day of work at a Christian boarding school tutoring a kid in writing. Right now we’re making dinner for Greg and Cesca using a recipe for taco salad that Jamie taught us. Stew’s prior recipe was slightly less formal: make a burrito. Poorly. Mash everything in frustration and douse in hot sauce. The new one uses Fritos and forgoes the frustrating tortilla. This should be impossible screw up. Tomorrow we’re going to try to meet up with our friend Brandon Padilla who goes to UC Santa Cruz and hopefully go to a dog beach with Cooper and Maddy. Afterwards, we will finally get to party with Cesca. Yippeee!