For those just checking in, I’m on a road trip. I left from San Francisco to Los Angeles and stayed a night in Downtown at my friend Alina’s. She and I took a Greyhound into Vegas. The plan was to hitchhike from Vegas to Reno and then take Amtrak to San Francisco, but we’ve been told that might not be a good idea. Not because of lunatics on the road, but a more natural born killer: desert heat. The highway north is number 95 and goes through ghost towns and desert. Temperatures are in the 100′s and the nights are cold. The road winds along for over four hundred miles and neither of us have a backpack or a tent. We did bring a guitar. If anyone reading this has any ideas, please help. We may be trapped in Vegas at the Main Street Station with no way out.
August 31, 2008
this iPhone is like stoneage implement when it comes to blogging. The pages load incredibly slow and often freeze up before they actually hit the Internet. There is no way to edit the photos, and the tiny touch-sensitive keyboard is a typist’s nightmare – stuck pecking with the two index fingers I’m operating at one fifth the capacity of normal.
I don’t recall the crew of Star Trek ever complaining that their technology was not living up to its promise. Sure, Scotty was a broken record about the engines, “I’m givin’ ‘er all I got,” but no one ever went off on the manufacturer of the warp speed, or pulled out the old saw, “This is Stardate 2591, why can’t we have a holadeck that makes me look ten years younger?”
So it goes. I’m a complainer. Letting everyone know things aren’t living up to their promise. My friends call me The Judge because I make them feel guilty about their lack of perfection. An ugly trait, but heck, no one’s perfect!
I got started down this road because my travelling partner, Miss Alina, has already begun complaining that I am stuck in cyberspace all the time. We arrived in Vegas this morning at 6 am after a painful and delayed Greyhound trip – we both found ticks on us this afternoon – and I haven’t looked up from this here phone once. The one time I let her use the thing she snuck that comment in under the photo below of the Vegas buffet diners.
All this damn technology is so alienating, we sit at the dinner table and text as our friend tries to finish his story, we excuse ourselves from the noisy bar where the work crew is celebrating to take a call. Even standing in line at a store, the phone rings and you, standing there live in person, get put on hold.
I’m not saying anything new, just pointing out a reality about this road trip, calling attention to the price you pay when you decide to to out and “meet the people” and document their lives; you turn into a self absorbed jerk!
Luke Skywalker didn’t have wife. If he did, she’d be constantly at him:”Luke? Luke? Are you using the Force again? Honey, why can’t you just talk to me?”
August 30, 2008
boyle heights
In the heat of LA, heading to the best tacos in town and deciding on sopes instead. A fried tortilla shell open face taco so to speak. deliciously crunchy.
August 29, 2008
BART. Bay Area Rapid Transit. You might recognize the upholstered seats and streamlined feel of 1978. It takes travelers directly to Terminal One at SFO, the international airport.
This is the start of a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Reno back to S.F. A large circle ringing desert and mountains, a lot of land that I have no name for, that exists in the American consciousness as Death Valley, a sense of barrenness, four of the most sinful cities in our country. San Francisco with it’s Gay Pride, Hollywood’s glorification of vanity and violence, Las Vegas’s reputation for gambling and whoring, and Reno, the battered stepchild who has all the same problems, but the poverty compounds them, turns them dirtier than the same manifestation in the rich.
The point of this trip is to better understand the latter two cities, Vegas and Reno. Vegas is growing every day, it’s a dream city, built on stolen water and shifting sand, the promise of riches luring church groups and farmers to the million watt Strip where they can drink and gamble 24 hours a day.
Reno on the other hand, who goes there? Old timers who ride in on a pack mule with a gold pan in their knapsack. A stray busload of elderly gamblers who rode up the 80 on a chartered tour. There aren’t amusement parks in Reno. It isn’t billed as kid friendly. It’s up in the mountains, like a citadel, not far from Donner Pass where good folks turned to cannibalism not so long ago. And you think you can resist the tempation of a one armed bandit? No, the pull of sin is too strong in Neveda, be it Reno, Vegas, or anywhere in between.