“It’s one of Nature’s most beautiful sights — the convoy.”

October 24, 2011 4 Comments read California, Pacific, Travel, USA, West

^{…I never knew how tiny that sign actually was.}

We left for LA on Thursday evening as soon as Jason got home from work, making our way to the tiny town of Yreka, California before having to stop to rest. (I was glad we were finally through Oregon–it’s not that I have anything against the state, but as you aren’t allowed to pump your own gas, stations tend to close at night rather than manning them 24 hours a day, which made for an, uh, interesting tour of Roseburg where I first attempted to illegally pump my own gas at a closed pump and then drove around town until I finally found an open pump, at which I waited ten minutes for the operator to sashay his way over to the car.)

Once in Yreka, I initially pulled into a rest area, intending to nap for twenty minutes and then hit the road again, but as Jason tossed and turned and huffed and puffed on his seat, moaning, “This is so uncomfortable. I thought we were going to stop at a motel. I thought that was the plan.” I realized it wasn’t fair for me to change the game plan on the fly without consulting him, even if it meant arriving in LA later than I would have liked. So I drove us to a nearby motel and had five hours of overly caffeinated, jittery dreams, hitting the road at about 8 am, putting us on pace for an arrival at our hotel around 6pm.

Along the way, we stopped for Jason’s first taste of In N Out burger, saw tons of cows along the road (aka baby In N Out burgers), and, during the hottest portion of the day, the highway came to a complete stop and we got to watch the car’s temperature gauge click up…and up…and up…and up, all while panicking and cursing a little. Luckily, after clicking off the AC (which, in that car, means “blast slightly less hot air directly into your face”) and a few minutes of backed up traffic, the roads opened up again and the gauge went back down into the normal range. After checking in at the hotel, and finding our room, tucked back in the “loser corridor” away from the main hotel rooms, we went to the concierge to get directions to Hollywood Blvd. The Sheraton Universal hotel’s website indicates that it’s within walking distance, so I thought it was just a matter of having him point us in the right direction. Not so. It’s technically within walking distance, if you consider walking distance to be “Walk to the subway station and then take the subway to your destination,” otherwise, it’s a mere casual stroll over a mountain range.

Not ones to be deterred by such technicalities, we made our way to the subway system and were immediately befuddled by their ticket-selling system. They sell passes that can be used across their entire transit system, but if you buy a one-way pass, you walk through a separate stall, which doesn’t verify whether or not you have a ticket. At no point does anyone verify whether you have a ticket, and since the majority of the people use passes, it wouldn’t even make financial sense to have someone roaming the stations, asking to see ticket stubs. What, exactly, is stopping anyone, everyone, from riding for free? Aside from being pansies from Washington, too dorky and law-abiding to try and skirt the rules? We didn’t spend a long time on Hollywood Blvd that evening–just long enough to have dinner and map out the area for tourist activities the next day, but it was still nearly 10pm by the time we were in the subway station waiting for the train to take us back. We waited. And waited. And waited. A train showed up on the other side, and a garbled announcement was made on the overhead speakers, but I couldn’t hear it over the rowdy teenagers shouting and fighting nearby. We waited some more. And after that, we waited some more. On our side of the station, a man in a wheelchair cut pieces off of an onion bagel and flung them down onto the tracks, yelling “You all is stupid, waiting on the wrong side of the tracks. Crazy! Trains is all on the other side. Asshole! Shitbreath! Cuntstain! Wrong side trains!”, each exclamation punctuated by another piece of bagel chucked onto the tracks below. I leaned into Jason and whispered, “So…the man throwing bagels onto the tracks says that all the trains are coming on the other side of the station. But other people are still waiting on this side. Do we listen to the bagel-throwing man?” Jason replied “I think it means we should take a cab.” “Not after I paid for these tickets, it doesn’t! Shitbreath!” We approached some friendly-looking people, and as it turns out, they were tourists as well so they couldn’t be of much help, though they did say it seemed as though the trains were running in both directions from one side of the platform at this stop, as they’d gotten on the previous train and it announced it was traveling in the opposite direction. So we waited, and waited, and waited, and sure enough, the bagel-throwing man was correct. After finally making it back to the hotel, we showered off 30 hours of road sweat, grit, and the occasional french fry out of our various nooks and crannies, and collapsed on the bed so we could get a solid night’s sleep before the long day ahead of us.

“Thrilled to be Undead! A Zombie-licious Exhibition”

October 24, 2011 1 Comment read Attractions, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

Immediately following my post talking about how played out zombies are comes a post about a zombie art show at Shindig Martini Bar, as I am nothing if not self-contradictory. Jason and I found ourselves there on a Monday night two weeks ago to take in some awesome zombie art by Kate Vrijmoet, and drink some delicious zombie-themed drinks, at least superficially. My not-so-hidden agenda was to twist Jason’s arm into taking a road trip to Hollywood to attend Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. Little did I know that no arm-twisting was required, as he immediately agreed that we should go. I then found myself attempting to talk him out of it, saying “It’s a long drive. Like, nineteen hours long. There’s every chance on Earth that we’ll break up after spending so much time cooped up in a car together. And the car might break down and the attraction might suck and we could end up being murdered by transients, and then who would take care of the dog? Did you even think about the dog when you agreed to this?” Since I didn’t need to persuade him and I couldn’t dissuade him, it was decided that we’d be making the trip to LA that weekend. With the matter settled, we dipped into our drinks and checked out some artwork.

If you’d like to check out some zombie art and sip some zombie-inspired drinks, the show is running at Shindig through November 6th.

I actually did it – I climbed the unclimbable mountain! Bow down before me everyone, for I am your king!

September 20, 2011 5 Comments read Pacific, The Great Outdoors, Travel, USA, Washington, West

While my dad was in town, we hiked up Mount Rainier. This time, I actually brought supplies (more water, a lunch, a jacket, rain gear) and was the worse off for it, because now I had to lug a pack up with me when I’m far more accustomed to merely lugging myself around. I eventually had to hand my bag over to Jason due to shooting pain in my “unergonomic shoulder”–the desk I worked at for the last five and a half years was too high for me, which forced my arm up into an awkward position in order to use my mouse, which did a number on my shoulder over time. Now, when I carry something heavy, or have my arm raised for anything more than a few minutes, the shoulder lets me know I’ve gone too far by responding with deep stabs of pain. More often than not, Jason will end up carrying my bags, which means I really should try to coordinate with both outfits instead of just one.

By far, one of my favorite genetic traits I inherited from my mother is my inefficient cooling system. Essentially, while performing any sort of physical activity, my face turns as red as a ripe tomato, regardless of how my body feels, prompting those around me, friends and strangers, to ask if I am currently embroiled in the process of dying. This red face sticks around for hours. In school, I would dread the days we’d run in gym class, knowing that I’d be displaying evidence of the activity for the remainder of the day. No one wants to ask Beet Red Bobblehead Betty to the prom, and that’s a fact.

We hiked up to the snowline and decided we didn’t want to go any further, since none of us particularly relished the idea of a potential fall into dirty, icy snow, and/or possibly sliding to our gruesome deaths. I’ll pack a sandwich, but crampons are overkill for a casual hike. Since we stopped early and had energy to spare on the way down, we cast hate rays at the families of people who were diverging from the trail, stomping the fragile meadows. Why try to keep anything nice for anyone else, right?

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