travel log day 1: meeting peoples and hauling ass
Made it to El Centro today. It's a little larger than the bumblefuck towns I stayed at on the way here, with the result that you can get a decent deal on a room that doesn't smell like hay. I'm really tired but I'm less than an hour out of Yuma, which is damn good time if I do say so myself.
It took me around six hours to get to LA. I cannot believe now that I ever felt frustrated with the duration of the drive from the East Bay to LA. It is chump change; a pleasant Sunday drive. Mist covered the road for the first hour or so but after that it was smooth sailing. I got in with enough free time to bumble over to the Go For Broke monument in Little Tokyo.
"Go For Broke" was the motto of the Japanese-American soldiers who fought in WWII whose exploits all Bay Area children got the digest version of via public service announcements. My grandfather and step-grandfather (if that's how that works--the guy my grandma married second) both served in the 100th battalion during WWII, a group of Hawaiian National Guard members which was later combined with the more famous 442nd. I ran into a few 442nd veterans as I was looking for names on the monument. They gave me crap for waiting so long to get there (the monument went up in 1999) before asking me about my family and where I came from. I should have asked them about something, anything, but I mostly just called them "sir" a lot and thanked them for their help. They gave me a free calendar. I'm not sure I want to keep track of the days of the week with pictures that make one recall facts like "80% casualty rate".
I had lunch with ghoumschloqie a few blocks down the street at a ridiculously good ramen place, and bought nerd goods from the Kinokuniya in the same building. The ladies behind the counter giggled and pointed at their regular customer's new friend. I don't know why Kinokuniya employees always give you shit when you buy something geeky, but it seems to be universal.
Getting to San Diego actually only took two hours, although at least a quarter of that was agonizingly slow LA freeway traffic. Here's a fun exercise: pull up LA on your favorite online map service, center the screen on the sinister web of freeways, and zoom in and out until you feel nauseous. This is sort of how it feels to be stuck in traffic at 3:30 pm of all freaking times.
My aunt in San Diego has a son who's going to become a drum corps member. He confirmed that the power-scanning machinery from Drumline does not actually exist.
Between San Diego and El Centro I was pulled over so they could check that I wasn't an illegal Mexican or carrying illegal Mexicans in my car. It was both an infuriating waste of my time and utterly unbelievable as a deterrent for anything.
I'm still not sure where I'm going tomorrow.
It took me around six hours to get to LA. I cannot believe now that I ever felt frustrated with the duration of the drive from the East Bay to LA. It is chump change; a pleasant Sunday drive. Mist covered the road for the first hour or so but after that it was smooth sailing. I got in with enough free time to bumble over to the Go For Broke monument in Little Tokyo.
"Go For Broke" was the motto of the Japanese-American soldiers who fought in WWII whose exploits all Bay Area children got the digest version of via public service announcements. My grandfather and step-grandfather (if that's how that works--the guy my grandma married second) both served in the 100th battalion during WWII, a group of Hawaiian National Guard members which was later combined with the more famous 442nd. I ran into a few 442nd veterans as I was looking for names on the monument. They gave me crap for waiting so long to get there (the monument went up in 1999) before asking me about my family and where I came from. I should have asked them about something, anything, but I mostly just called them "sir" a lot and thanked them for their help. They gave me a free calendar. I'm not sure I want to keep track of the days of the week with pictures that make one recall facts like "80% casualty rate".
I had lunch with ghoumschloqie a few blocks down the street at a ridiculously good ramen place, and bought nerd goods from the Kinokuniya in the same building. The ladies behind the counter giggled and pointed at their regular customer's new friend. I don't know why Kinokuniya employees always give you shit when you buy something geeky, but it seems to be universal.
Getting to San Diego actually only took two hours, although at least a quarter of that was agonizingly slow LA freeway traffic. Here's a fun exercise: pull up LA on your favorite online map service, center the screen on the sinister web of freeways, and zoom in and out until you feel nauseous. This is sort of how it feels to be stuck in traffic at 3:30 pm of all freaking times.
My aunt in San Diego has a son who's going to become a drum corps member. He confirmed that the power-scanning machinery from Drumline does not actually exist.
Between San Diego and El Centro I was pulled over so they could check that I wasn't an illegal Mexican or carrying illegal Mexicans in my car. It was both an infuriating waste of my time and utterly unbelievable as a deterrent for anything.
I'm still not sure where I'm going tomorrow.