DaveandkaraUStour2011: Days seventy and seventy-one.: zeroenthusiasm

zeroenthusiasm

DaveandkaraUStour2011: Days seventy and seventy-one.

Sep 12, 2011 22:22

151 miles.

We woke up feeling completely destroyed. We were shivering uncontrollably and by six had given up on trying to sleep any longer, as the crinkling of the tarp and our inability to keep ourselves wrapped up in it well enough to protect us from the unusually chilly weather made it nearly impossible. So we got up and retreated to the Burger King, where we feasted on French toast sticks, paid for by the generous donations the night before. We were pretty fed up with trying to hitchhike at that point and were just way too tired to move. I ended up sleeping while sitting up in my seat for almost four straight hours. Then we were back to the corner by the on-ramp to resume our attempted escape. Some kid gave us $5 almost immediately, which was uplifting, albeit totally unhelpful. A fat black man waved to us and pointed to the parking lot across the street and then pulled in. We thought we were finally getting picked up. He got out and waved us over, so I ran across the street to him. He wasn't picking us up. Instead, he was handing me two thick, soft-covered copies of the Holy Bible, each with a $5 bill stuck in it. "One for you and one for her. God bless!" I thanked him and walked back to Kara, laughing. Not very surprising, he was going south when he drove back out. Typical Christians: they think they can help you with a Bible and a couple bucks. A few minutes later, a chubby guy in a tiny car pulled over and offered us a ride, saying he would pull in across the street for us. We ran over excitedly with our two new Bibles with us (only because we didn't want to litter). I don't remember his name, but he was a science teacher who taught single classes around the state, shifting between subjects like slime and explosions and stuff like that. He also was into rockabilly and played upright bass in a folk band called He's My Brother, She's My Sister. He said he was going to Long Beach, which wasn't too significant a distance, but was worth taking at that juncture. He was a pretty funny guy and said he picks up hitchhikers every now and then. He told us that cops in Long Beach shot a drunk white guy in the bar scene part of town twenty-seven times because he was holding a hose nozzle and shooting it like a gun. "If a white guy gets shot in Long Beach, you know there's a problem!" he noted. He said he was off for the day as it was and had nothing else better to do, so he brought us a little further to an area called Newport Beach. He told us we would have a better shot at getting picked up there, standing on the sidewalk by a lot of small shops and places to eat (like a cafe called Al Cappuccino) near the beach.

It wasn't long before I'd realized two things after he dropped us off: 1.) I had forgotten my pigeon sweater in the back of his car, and 2.) I had been in this lot before! The last time I was in California, we had all went to Balboa Beach, which was right around the corner, and came to this lot afterward and went into their pizza place. Weird coincidence, I thought. Oh, and I was bummed about my lost sweater, which was the only preparation I had for cold weather I had on me whatsoever. It was brutally hot, but traffic was high. After a while, it was clear that he was equating heavy traffic with higher chances of getting picked up. Sadly, those two things do not have any relation to each other in Southern coastal California. An hour and a half went by with nothing more than a hippie in an RV going the opposite way telling us he would have picked us up yesterday. We decided we'd try the bus that had already stopped once or twice near us. Kara put our Holy Bibles in one of those plastic houses for free job classifieds and we waited by some pigeons and crazy locals. It was indeed headed south, but it wound up taking two hours just to get twenty to thirty miles away from where we were, which made it feel like a huge waste of time. We took it to its final stop, right outside of a Carl's Jr/Green Burrito in an area that was otherwise unpopulated but filled with parked cars from people visiting some nearby beach or military base. We were hungry, so we went inside and stole a soda and bought some nachos with guacamole and fries. Fast food was beginning to seem not so cheap. After we finished, we walked to the on-ramp, which was only a short stroll around the corner, although we didn't see nearly enough traffic to insight any hope. Nearly every car that did pass by being driven by a member of the military still in uniform, snarling and with a sociopathic blank stare. We were pretty certain none of them would ever pick us up. A sheriff pulled a u-turn and swerved over by us, carelessly blocking oncoming traffic, who just sat there helpless and had to accept it because they were behind a sheriff. We weren't in trouble or anything. He had literally pulled over to us just to ask us questions for fun, it turned out. He held up traffic just for his own entertainment and to ease his own curiosity and boredom.

He asked us a bunch of routine questions, to which I eventually got frustrated and angrily said, "Do you want us to just give you our IDs?!" He didn't want them. He knew we weren't breaking any laws. Once again, this idiot cop was totally baffled by the concept of hitchhiking. "You just get into a car with a stranger? Aren't you afraid of getting killed?" I explained to him that while being a cop might lead him to see the worst in people, hitchhiking has shown us the best. He shook his head with a condescending grin and said, "You're crazy." I had to ask him to repeat himself and then said, "Okay." He made sure to tell Kara three times in a row that riding in the backs of pick-up trucks on the highway was illegal in California and then drove off. A few minutes later, a shitty red car stopped with a younger military guy in it. He motioned his head to the back of his car and mouthed, "Get in," like an action movie star. He pulled into the shoulder and we hopped in. We couldn't believe it. He was only a little older than me and had joined the Marines straight from Baltimore. "I did some things I wasn't proud of... this was my way out," he told us. Never giving up an opportunity to get an insider's perspective on something, I asked a bunch of questions the entire ride. "Everyone in the military is like that: poor backgrounds, troubled upbringing," he continued candidly until his phone rang. He had a kid and a wife already. When I asked him if he enjoyed what he did, he got kind of upset and complained, "I do, man, but... you do seven months of duty, come home, and everyone treats you like straight shit!" He had just as many questions for us and our lives and told us he was jealous of what we were able to do. "I commend you!" he exclaimed to us. His mother called and they had a hilarious, vulgar conversation with each other. When he got off the phone with her, he asked us, "Do my ears really stick out that bad?" They totally didn't. They were unusually tiny, even. I asked him how much longer he had on his contract with the Marines and he said, "A year and a half and I'm up out this bitch!" He brought us to Oceanside and dropped us off at a roundabout by the interstate ramps in the middle of hotels. There was a huge shoulder, but the cars weren't really receptive to us being there. I called Cameron in hopes that he'd offer to come and get us. It was beginning to look like it'd be another night without us getting to El Cajon.

An hour and a half later, just as I was trying to organize a plan with Cameron to pick us up, a tiny, messy white car with one backseat window completely gone pulled over. A pretty, thirty-year old dark-skinned woman in neon blue tights offered us a ride to Encinitas, where she had to clean up a yoga studio (she did this in exchange for free months of yoga). She looked way younger than she said she was and was really pretty. She had kids and a husband and told us she had backpacked through Hawaii once. She was very perky. She pulled into the Coaster station in Encinitas when we got there, since we figured we'd just pay to get to El Cajon at that point, as the sun was beginning to set. She gave us $20, some tiny, brown bananas, and an orange, and said goodbye. Then we found out the Coaster wasn't running anymore, anyway. We called Cameron and offered him the $20 we had been given to pick us up, since he had already whined about his car only getting fifteen miles to the gallon. He didn't want to drive there alone, even though he was only about forty minutes away, so we had to wait for his friend to get to him before he could leave. We used the time to explore the main street of the town, which was mostly tiny shops and cafes and expensive restaurants, none of which had vegan food. A fancy, lit-up ENCINITAS thing arched over the street. We found a small Hawaiian-themed place called Kealani's that had teriyaki tofu on the menu, so we ate there. It was really yummy, too. Our booth was underneath a roof made of hay. While waiting for Cameron back at the Coaster station, we realized that we would no longer be needing our SOUTH sign. In fact, we wouldn't be going south again for what would probably be the remainder of the trip. It was strange to think about.

A little later, Cameron finally showed up. He parked around the corner and walked to us with a really cute girl who came with him named Elizabeth. Hugs were exchanged and he said, "Ah, I missed that punk smell!" We drove back and caught up on the way. When we got to El Cajon, we pulled into Cameron's apartment complex parking lot and just sat there. We couldn't go in his house because six people live there and he sleeps on the living room floor. So we just sat in or around his car in the parking lot until the pathetic security guards who patrol it enforced the 10pm curfew and told us we had to go inside or leave. While Kara and Elizabeth went to her car to sit in it together, Cameron took me for a personal stroll to break some news to me: He started eating meat again. I don't know why, but he thought this would be a really big deal to me. "I knew you'd be bummed and Kara probably won't even be able to take it. So I just wanted you to know that you basically wasted your time coming here." It was like he was coming out as gay to a conservative family or something. But I honestly didn't care. We talked about it for a little bit and I told him that he should do some research and attempt to do it more healthily the next time. We drove to Chad's apartment complex parking lot after that and continued sitting in Elizabeth's car, mostly in the dark, talking. We had called Chad to see if he wanted to hang out, but he never showed up and now we were outside of his apartment. He too had started eating meat again, we found out from Elizabeth, and had even broken edge. Cameron and I eventually went to his door to get him and he stumbled out, rubbing his eyes, groaning about being tired. He made a brief appearance by the car and then we left with Elizabeth to go to her home in Crest, where she still lived in a giant house with her parents. They had already told her we couldn't stay, but she insisted on sneaking us in for the night. I adored Elizabeth almost instantly. She was hilarious and, even though she spoke in a valley girl voice and repeated things like, "I know, right?!" in response to everything she agreed with, she was actually pretty intelligent and going in what I see as the right path. She was eighteen and vegan. She was free of certain hypocrisies we'd seen all too often within individuals who claim they're radical, or feminist, or whatever. Even though she lived in a huge house with her parents still and illegally drove a huge car she got from them without insurance, registration, or even a permit, she had been working to mostly support herself since she was sixteen, until she recently quit the shoe store she had been working at to pursue enjoying life more.

Her room was a total mess. She had told us over and over on the way there that she was embarrassed at how dirty her house was. We didn't think much of it and assured her that I probably lived in worse. When we got there, we could hardly open the outside door to get in because her bedroom floor was invisible, hidden entirely by everything she owned being strewn on her floor. She wasn't kidding, but it still wasn't a big deal. She was taking the couch in her room and offering us her bed to sleep in together, which felt magical as soon as our sore bodies landed into it. We sat around and talked for a while. Everything she said was funny or adorable and I couldn't stop zoning out at how cute her face was. We met her cat, Truman, who is a girl. We used some Wifi and went to sleep a little later. In the middle of the night, I woke up with a furious piss inside of me. I wasn't sure where to go, but stumbled in the dark over objects soft and hard anyway out of desperation. I found a doorway and tried to push it open, though there was so much stuff on the ground that it wouldn't budge. I felt around for a light switch and got lucky. I walked over what was mostly dirty clothes that looked molded in place where they lay and to the toilet, whose seat was down with one final corner of a hardened, old PB&J sandwich and a hair straightener on it. I lifted the seat and the inside had a pile of tiny, black worm-like things at the bottom of the water, writhing around. I dropped the seat and ran out like a little baby. I fell back asleep and woke up later drenched. I felt around and my shorts, shirt, and my side of the bed was soaked. I thought to myself, 'Did I seriously just wet the fucking bed?! Someone else's bed?!' I scurried to my bag and snuck outside to change into dry clothes and grab a towel to put over the bed, in hopes that it would dry before morning.

I woke up at 11 and went out into the kitchen. The whole house was lit up enough for me to see how fully it was a total trainwreck. This was probably the messiest house I'd ever been in before. The floors in the kitchen and living room were more bare, but the counters weren't. The microwave had no door and dishes looked like they hadn't been cleaned in weeks. However, Elizabeth did make us oatmeal, which was sweet of her. Not once did I volunteer the fact that I potentially pissed all over her bed. I hung out with her while Kara remained unconscious. I put our dirty clothes in the washer and dryer and we both took turns showering, which felt great, though the bottle of placenta shampoo kind of freaked us out. Around 4, we got out of the house and drove to San Diego to spend the day in the city. She seemed giddy about being our tour guide for the day. First, we stopped at a zPizza and ate. It was yummy, but not enough! Elizabeth took us to Balboa Park, which was huge and had several museums located within it. We strolled around this big, beautiful park and got to see their large ponds, where koi fish and turtles lived and then stopped at a fountain where we took off our shoes and socks and walked in it for a while. A couple shitty punk kids laid on the grass nearby. We walked around some more and went over a really high bridge that Elizabeth told us gets decorated with suicide notes during a Suicide Race that happens every year. Weird. We went to the dog park and watched dogs for a little while and then drove to University Heights to hop from cafe to cafe until 7 when we were supposed to meet Cameron at a free show happening at a cool DIY art space called The Park Gallery. San Diego was really nice and the particular neighborhood we were in, mostly directed toward college kids and hipsters, was really nice with lots of places to eat and hang out. On the way to the gallery, a guy ran up behind us and asked, "Didn't I serve you guys a smoothie in Seattle?!" It was totally this guy who made us a smoothie at a Tully's while we were in Seattle a month ago and he recognized us. Not only that, but his touring band was playing the show we were on our way to. It was the first time someone had ever recognized us in another state later on.

Around Balboa Park.

White tourists ask for a picture with an African man, and pose as they see appropriate.

When we got to the gallery, Cameron was standing outside with his hood up, trying to look cool. We went inside and checked out the art, most of which was really awesome. Some stuff in particular, by a girl named Lauren Burke, really caught my eye, but I can't find her stuff anywhere online. The place was filled with really pretty girls. Cameron introduced us to a ridiculously attractive Asian lesbian named Josie. We kept going in and out during and between bands with each other and without. Cameron kept dragging me out to talk about things. The first band was pretty bad and their vocalist sang like someone who was trying to make fun of classic rock vocalists (but he wasn't, I assure you). Two really great bands played, though. One being Neighbors and the other being that guy from Seattle's band, Spillway, which he played guitar and vocals for. They were amazing, in fact. The headlining band was a co-ed acoustic trio called Sledding With Tigers, who were pretty good and kind of funny, too. The room emptied during their set and Kara and Cameron left once crowd participation was requested by them, but it was fun seeing and hearing them for the first time and playing along with their stupid gorilla song with Elizabeth. After the show, we left in separate cars, me with Cameron and Kara with Elizabeth, and headed back to El Cajon to eat at Denny's. Cameron refused to go to any one besides the one there. On the way, he played a Ramshackle Glory tape in a tape player he sat between seats. The batteries were dying, so the music sounded slower and muffled. One more reason why cassettes are an obsolete technology whose recent irony-based trendiness is unjustified. It was fun eating with them at Denny's. Elizabeth showed us how much she loved spicy food and downed two different hot sauces at once. Kara called out three sheriffs sitting in the back and staring at us like a bad-ass and got them to stop. Our waiter was brain-dead and messed up everything, so I eventually complained to him and got all of our meals for free. Cameron made us laugh and laugh and laugh; he is probably my funniest friend. It was a really fun night. Cameron asked us to stay longer than a week. We spent the night at Elizabeth's again. I was totally crushing on her, even though I had found out she had a thing with Chris Eugene when he still lived there. We decided we'd be hanging out in El Cajon for at least a week at that point.

I figured out that a thermos of water was caught up in one of the sheets after I got into the bed and it fell out onto the floor, spilling water on the bedroom floor. I could be wrong, but is probably what soaked the bed the night before. After all, I was more wet on my shirt when I woke up and it didn't smell like pee at all. Oh, well.

Spillway, rocking the fuck out.

Elizabeth "double-fisting" hot sauces. She didn't know what "double-fisting" actually meant, which was cute (and hilarious).

We drove behind this guy on our way to Newport Beach. He had a Pedobear sticker peeking up from his back window. We sped up to see who the driver was and he... was an old Asian man. Creepy.