aggienaut | Entries tagged with automobile travel

Friday, October 28th - Departed Leeton around 10:30am and headed northeast towards Dubbo. The road was a two lane highway with a speed limit of 110 km/h with few cars on it, that went fairly straight through a savanna of eucalypts and farmland, punctuated with small freestanding mountainlets.

   After three and a half hours I arrived at the turnoff for "The Dish," and just a few kilometers later the Dish itself was looming up ahead like a giant mushroom. The Dish is huge. Wikipedia says its 64m / 210 ft but I think that's the diameter. The "stem" supporting it is clearly at least three stories tall and dwarfed by the rest. Leaving the parking lot one encounters signs admonishing one to put their phone on airplane mode or turn it off, and there are such signs throughout the public areas, because The Dish is a radio-telescope and they want to minimize interference.
   The Dish was featured in the movie The Dish, which I haven't seen, I already wanted to but now I feel I really ought to.
   There was a gift shop and small but informative museum section, a small 3D movie theatre that played short films about the telescope, an outdoor viewing area and a small cafe that served indifferent food. I was rather pleasantly surprised while gawking at the telescope to find it suddenly commence moving! Slowly the hole thing rotated around about 30 degrees with a whirring noise and then settled down quietly on its new location.
   When I went to sign the guest book I noted that the two people before me had my mom's maiden name, Ransom, which is also my middle name, but I hadn't seen who had signed it! It amused me though because that side of the family is all quite rather into astronomy and science and such (my grandfather had had a fairly big telescope, like bigger than any random civilian usually has, mounted in its own dome housing in his workshop.) So just to be cheeky I signed with my full name, but of course I'm sure they never came back and looked at it.

   From thence it was about an hour and a half onward to Dubbo. Checked in to the motel. This one is fairly nice, except that the only window is a floor to ceiling window with curtains and a solid blind that comes down from the top. I'm on the second floor (at my request), but unless I have the window completely closed everyone in the parking lot can see almost the entirety of the room which is a bit uncomfortable. But I don't like having the window completely closed like I'm in a tomb. Ah well I'm only here for the weekend.

   By a complete coincidence my team leader from the beginning of the week, big Dave, happened to be in Dubbo with his wife. He hadn't been with us for the last two days of teh week because he had to attend a wedding, which turned out to be in Dubbo (another beekeeper, "we buried him with his hive tool and smoker and a sprig of mallee flowers on the coffin"). So he and his wife invited me to dinner at their hotel's restaurant, so that was fun. Come all this way and have friends to go to dinner with!

Saturday, October 28th - In the morning I was walking along the downtown area when I came upon the Old Gaol (jail), which had been recommended as something to go see, and so I went in. It was something like 23 roo bucks admission, but the jail was very well maintained with good informative displays.
   As I was leaving I asked the girl at reception what else there is to do. Everyone always recommends the apparently big zoo here with big open areas you can drive or even walk through with animals, but I gather its African savanna animals that are the big focus and draw here and well I've seen them in their natural environment plenty of times, I didn't come to Dubbo to see what I can see in Africa.
   The girl recommended a Royal Flying Doctors Service museum which sounded good. When I got back to my room I looked up the caves I also wanted to go to, and I could make it to them if I left just then but with only a few minutes to spare for the next tour so that was chancy. So I booked at 2pm tour and proceeded to the Royal Flying Doctors Service museum.

   Because Australia has a vast vast expanse of sparsely populated area, many people live very very far from any medical services. Therefore in 1928 the Royal Flying Doctor's Service was inaugurated, they operate small medivac equipped planes with doctors and flight nurses staged at currently 23 bases operating 67 aircraft. The museum (also $23) had lots of display screens like a high tech control center, displaying various information or videos or with interactive displays on them. Altogether it was very well put together.

   And suddenly if I left just then I'd only get to the caves 13 minutes before the new tour time! I rushed out the door and leapt into the car. Scrupulously followed the speed limits of course because Australia is aswarm with hidden speeding radars. I'm very nervous because just coming in to Wellington, right where the speed limit went from 80 to 60 I looked up and saw one of the radar cars and I'm not sure if I'd entirely slowed down in time yet. They're devilish like that.

   The Wellington Caves are a complex of approximately a lot of caves in the vicinity of extensive limestone geology. As our tour group of about half a dozen of us walked up from the main building I marveled at the number of large holes in the ground, now covered with gratings, that just disappeared into the darkness below. A startled kangaroo bounded off and I wondered how they avoid accidentally just jumping right in to a huge hole in the ground.
   But apparently they don't entirely avoid that, and some of the first fossils of extinct Australian megafauna have been found here. Notably the Diprotodon, giant goannas, giant kangaroos, and marsupial lions. And I'm not makign any of those up!
   The first cave tour was the "Gaden Cave" that had a lot of interesting crystals and shapes of stalagtites, including one referred to as "cave bacon." Our guide for this tour was a nice youngish fellow who when he learned I was a beekeeper had lots of questions about bees.
   The second tour I signed up for started right after that one finished, it was the bigger "Cathedral Cave" and the group was much bigger. The tourguide of this group was a woman with the demeanor of generic overbearing primary school teacher. Cheerfully calling out fun facts but I feel like she was enjoying hearing her own voice more than anything else. But anyway the cave was fun, this one was more extensive and the centrepiece of it was a beautiful flow of crystals down from the ceiling of a very large chamber.
   Nearly everyone else on both tours were family groups but there was one fellow who seemed to be by himself, a fellow of his late twenties or so of sub-saharan-african appearance, though my assumption would always be that any such person is just a normal Australian even so. But because he was by himself I tried to strike up a conversation with him in the cave but he just laughed at my comment, but I found myself exiting next to him and said something again, this time he responded and I found he had a thick accent, so I asked him where he was from. Turns out he was from South Africa, had been here two months now, was on a working visa, is a veterinarian.

   Returning home I got a scare from that radar car again. I really hope I didn't get any tickets. I try really really hard not to speed at all here but they try really really hard to catch you in a slip up because it's seen as good revenue generating for the authorities.

Sunday, October 29th - Today I drove to the town of Nyngan about an hour and a half away solely because it's the closest town that seems to be indisputably in "the Outback" and I've never in ten years now of roving Australia been to the Outback.
   The drive was to the northwest, and the landscape was very flat. At first there were a lot of trees, then there were fewer trees but it was still more a savanna verging on woodland than plains. A number of roadkill kangaroos on the road, reminding me to be on the constant lookout for live ones, though they're usually only active at dusk. Did see a family of emus running across the road just ahead. Not very many cars on the road.
   Nyngan was a small town but it seemed to have a steady stream of other tourists (by which I mean there was usually one or two other cars at any given time) arriving at the central square. Families taking photos with the "big bogan" statue. I went to the museum which was very extensive and had a lot of stuff from the previous 140 years of the town in the old train station. Though it wasn't really in a coherent chronological order. I took a picture of the "Big Bogan" myself, dipped a toe in the nearby Bogan River and crossed the bridge to the other side in case anyone might in the future say the Outback begins across the Bogan or something. Found a "Welcome to the Outback" sign and took a selfie in front of it, and headed back to Dubbo.

   Looking for somewhere to eat today I noticed a place that had a way higher rating on google than anywhere else, at 4.7. It was this cute little Italian place with a chic open air eating area wih red brick decor, strings of lights (though I was there at 5pm and it was still bright as afternoon out), and a burbling fountain. I was the only one there when I arrived in fact but I'd imagine it gets pretty happening later in the evenings, it seems like a really nice place. Had some delicious pasta. So if you find yourself in Dubbo I recommend you eat at "Down the Lane"

   Tomorrow I'm off again, to Kempsey on the coast, about a seven hour drive from here!

Current Music: Seeker Lover Keeper - Even Though I'm A Woman

   In Theory on Monday I'd take the train to Albury, 7.5 hours, and then drive from there to Euston (5.5 hours), and that would be that. Not so simple it turns out.

   In the morning (6:11am!) I found googlemaps directing me not to my local train station but bus stop. I don't know how it knows when the train has been replaced by a bus (or "coach" as they call it to sound more classy) but all one can do is trust google maps implicitly. So road the train-replacement-bus about forty min to an hour in to Waurn Ponds on the outskirts of Geelong, where we were all able to transfer on to a train. Train from there to Melbourne's Southern Cross station (1 hour, 25 min). Had about 40 minutes there (8:45 - 9:26) which was perfect for grabbing a hot cheese-and-ham croissant at a station cafe for breakfast. Then train another hour and a half north to the town of Seymour (10:56). It seemed like half the train's occupants got out here, but a lot of them must have been ending their journey there because only two v-line (train company) coaches were boarding passengers for onward journeys, and the Albury bound (pronounced Aubrey) bus was less than a third full, one person per row-side. Two hours on this bus headed east north east to Albury.

   I thought I'd be popping in to the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) office there to get oriented/inducted/whatever but clarifying it via email I was informed I was just to go to the car rental place there to pick up a car. Which, being as Albury is a substantial distance the wrong direction from my final destination I thought the whole reason I was coming here was because it was the closest DPI office to me. Anyway, walked from the train station to the downtown area to have lunch at a Vietnamese place. Seemed like a nice town, weather was pleasantly in the 20s/70s c/f. Car rental place was 3.1 km out of town, I didn't feel like walking it, for one thing that would add time I couldn't afford to add on to an already long journey. Uber didn't come up with anything so had to call a yellow taxi. The journey up to this point had cost me $18 in train fares, this taxi cost me $23. Hopefully I'll be reimbursed -- the DPI had said they couldn't cover my travel outside of NSW but Albury was in state so..
   Taxi driver was an immigrant from Pakistan (15 years ago). It's funny, being a fellow immigrant, I always get a happy feeling of comraderie from fellow immigrants whereever they're from. We're a secret club.

   Got the rental car, and then it was a 5.5 hour drive from there west to the final destination of Euston, through small towns and small rural highways. I was surprised by how few other cars were on the road, even passing through the small towns the streets seemed deserted. Sun set. I was afraid of hitting kangaroos but didn't see any, just a fox that cheekily crossed the road just in front of me.

   Arrived at the hotel at 20:24 -- 14 hours after setting out! I've been on plenty of 14 hour flights, people act like thats a shocking and miserable amount of time to be on a flight -- I can tell you 14 hours on a flight is sheer paradise compared to 14 hours of coach-train-coach-taxi-car.

The hotel here is gaudy like a casino, and indeed has a section off the spacious restaurant portion full of slot machines (it is after all the "Euston Club Resort," though we're staying in the "Euston Club Motel" section).

Checked in to my room and then returned to the restaurant as i was by now very overdue for dinner. Kitchen was closed of course but there was a very decent large meat pie on a warming rack i was able to get -- but not before being sternly chastised for wearing a hat. I don't know if it's a literal law that hats can't be worn in "clubs" or this is just a piece of etiquette Australians feel very strongly about but, while i don't think it's enforced in pubs or restaurants, anything that quantifies as any sort of "club" will remind you to take your hat off in a tone dripping with poisonous disdain.

And my "schooner" (half pint?) of (alcoholic) ginger beer cost $13 (roo bucks), which i felt was a bit high!

And that was my Monday. Having called and texted our team leader with no success in attempting to find out what we were doing the next day or when and where to meet, I went to bed without having any idea what was in store the next day.

Friday, June 9th, Day 36 - Late yesterday evening I learned today we would be going on a long drive to a town called Bunkpurugu where a bunch of our trainees last year had come from, and we would meet with them, see how they're doing and look at their apiary sites.

   04:50 I woke up, and we departed at around 05:30. We being Dr Courage, the driver Rasheed, Samuel, Williams and I -- the photographer (whose name I have still failed to learn as its not a name I'm familiar with) stayed behind as we didn't have room.

   First we headed north, as the sun rose large and orange from the mists above the shea tree savanna to our right.

   After about two hours we reached our old stomping grounds of Walewale and turned east. The ecosystem seemed to change slightly -- there were now what I'd call palm trees, though my colleagues said these are not palm trees but called something else. They looked like palm trees to me, just not the classic tall coconut palms, more short and stocky type.

Then as we passed through the village of Nakpanduri (which I don't think shows up on the embedded map above unless you zoom in, but should be right by the N2 marker) we pulled over to examine the back left wheel, which turned out to be flat!

We had a spare but Rasheed apparently knew of a tire repair place not far away so he hopped on a motorized cart (these things that are the cargo version of what I've been calling auto-rickshaws -- the front half of a motorcycle attached to the back half of a cart) with the tire and they drove off. The road on either side was lined with little shop kiosks in the buildings, and the proprietors of a money transfer business invited us to sit on the porch of their kiosk.

   We were nearly under the above-pictured antennae pylon so we fortunately had good cell phone service -- if this had happened in one of the places between towns we might have had none!
   I observed that nearby on opposing sides of the road were sewing shops with about a dozen young seamstresses each working away at tables with their sewing machines. This is one of the local industries that you see in almost every little village. Its nice to see local garment industries haven't been completely destroyed by people flooding them with their second-hand-donated clothing (I've griped about this before, no one in Africa is lacking clothing but people donate clothing feeling like they're "helping" but all their doing is destroying a local industry and livelihood). I noted that both sewing shops all the girls had a uniform dress, blue dresses with white highlights on the one side and green with red on the other, and for a moment I wondered why they needed to be in uniform while other cottage industries don't necessarily, and then it occurred to me that having their workers well turned out in a specific recognizable signature rig is essentially an advertisement for the sewing shop. It was only after we'd gotten on our way again that it occurred to me I might write about them and would wish I had a picture, so I took one of one of the shops through the car window as we passed back through.
   Also about sewing machines, back in Tamale Williams was jokingly flirting with our server at the restaurant and asking what a traditional bride price was here. I think she said it should be in cows, and he was saying in his hometown (which may be actually Togo?) it's traditionally a sewing machine. To the degree that if the prospective husband knows his desired wife does not want a sewing machine its still money in the specific value of a sewing machine.

   Anyway by and by Rasheed came back with the repaired tire and put it back on the truck and we continued. After Nakpanduri the road became very bad. Finally we arrived at our destination of Bunkpurugu around 10:30 after five hours of travel inclusive of the tire stop. We arrived at the new side of town, where there were relatively new buildings broadly spaced out with just mainly open space between them.
   Here we found Gloria, who had been my translator in Walewale and is an important local figure in the beekeeping community, at her place. She apparently thought we would stay the day and overnight and leave the next day. When we explained we only had an hour and a half before we'd start to head back again it was determined that there wouldn't be time to see the bee sites we had intended to see.
   So we just kind of sat in the shade under the dawadawa tree and talked idly until 12:00 when it was time to turn back. Courage bought two gallons of honey from Gloria, a lump of the fermented dawadawa (locust bean) spice. And then we commenced the long drive back pretty much right at 12:00!

   Bought ground-nuts (peanuts?) as we passed back through Nakpanduri. Stopped in Nalerigu for lunch. Cecilia, who goes to the nursing school there was able to come say hi while we ate. Strangely Sam and Dr Courage didn't eat, which baffles me because by then it was around 14:30 and we hadn't had lunch or breakfast. Once again this restaurant had a fridge with drinks in it but no coke/pepsi. Well stocked with beers but no sodas. I got the one non-alcoholic drink (other than water) they had, a slightly odd tasting pineapple juice drink. Ate about half my jollof rice before I felt full. I think my colleagues are becomign concerned that I'm not eating very much since I usually eat maybe a third of the rice dish we have for every meal, and then for dinner we just have watermelon and mangos. I'm rather surprised myself at how little I seem to be eating but I seem to feel fine regardless.

   Continued, bought watermelons where we saw them being harvested by the road just before Walewale. Stopped in at our old Guesthouse there to talk to the proprietor about something. He was excited to see us. We were disappointed the staff had gone to the market (main staff hospitality girl this year is Faustina, AKA Fausti. I always forget her name until I think about Faustian deals), so we missed them.
   Then we continued again. Stopped to buy yams halfway from Walewale to Tamale. As we approached Tamale the sun set, large and orange, to our right, the perfect mirror of this morning on the same section of the road.

   Finally arrived back at the hotel in Tamale at 18:30. 11 hours of travel for 1.5 hours of chatting under a locustbean tree. I ... wouldn't have stayed back at the hotel if I had the choice again and knew what would happen, because life is about the adventures ... though I was getting rather tired of sitting in the car by the end.

   Back in the hotel an hour or two later, Sam tapped on my door to deliver a hot rice dish ... which took me rather by surprise because we usually only have fruit for dinner and I was still feeling full from lunch. To this moment I still haven't touched it and will put it in the fridge next to two other nearly and entirely untouched (respectively) rice dishes.
   And then much more welcome, Williams stopped by with a bottle full of the "soboko" we'd been discussing with Rasheed. I had been told it was a local ginger drink and his wife (?) could make it. I'd been expecting the typical strong ginger drink I've had in West Africa, which I really like. Well when it arrived it wasn't the chartreuse color of ginger drinks I was expecting but dark dark red. In fact.. it looked a little familiar. I tasted it. I did a quick google. Yes! Soboko is IN FACT the local term here for the drink I'd been introduced to as "bissap" just the other week in Guinea! A hibiscus juice, apparently with ginger here. Which I loooorve so I was very pleased to receive it.
   I don't know why it always seems to be home made, and no one around here is commercially producing this popular drink. Or maybe making it at home is such a cultural tradition that it would be an uphill battle competing with that by trying to make and market a commercial version. Anyway, I certainly appreciate that it's always artisanally home made.

   And now it's 23:26 and we're planning on once again trying to leave at 05:00 tomorrow morning to go to Mole National Park, which should be exciting! So I'm off to bed!

   I was planning on writing the sequel to last entry the next day but gosh it's been a busy week and I've either been busy or exhausted from being busy every evening.

   Anyway so continuing from where I left off, I was hanging out with friends in the mountains of east central victoria (kind of like how in California we consider San Franscisco to be either about the center or even northern "northern california" when it's really only half way up, here in Victoria when people talk about "Central Victoria" they are usually referring to an area around the center of western victoria. Really Melbourne itself is about the center of the state (or north of melbourne), but the east side of the state seems to be generally disregarded the way we disregard northern northern California).

   Last Sunday the plan was to just four-wheel-drive down to an abandoned steel waterwheel way out in the bush but.. only two of us would make it that far in the end ::the narrator says in an overly dramatic tone::

   First we visited the dam site again because the two friends who had joined us halfway through the day before, councilwoman Kerstin and her boyfriend Dan, hadn't seen it yet. After this Billie's twin Lek, and Sel, departed on an important mission to console a friend who'd just been dumped by her deadbeat boyfriend. The remaining four of us proceeded up the dirt roads and fire roads to the east of the reservoir lake.
   Shortly after we turned off the main dirt access road onto a slightly more four-wheel-drivey road, we crossed a patch of thick mud Kersten and Dan's car became stuck in (wish I could remember what kind of car it was, which might inform the reader as to how well it could have been expected to handle adverse conditions, but I don't recall becaues everything about cars make me snoooore. Billie's car, however, is named Surf, because it's apparently a Hilux Surf which is the Australian name of the Toyota 4Runner, if it interests any of you to know these things). Quickly noticing they were no longer right behind us Billie somehow pulled a U-ie and returned to the scene, where we found them stuck in the mud. They were able to reverse out of it relatively quickly and it was decided that we'd all get in Billie's car, so the other car was parked at a convenient wide place just near there and then...and headed
   ...Billie's car wouldnt' start. She'd had some trouble with the (alternator? the battery not charging while driving as it should) of late. The timing and location of this problem coming up was really remarkably ill-chosen. We had jumper cables and at any of the other many times we'd stopped and started throughout the last few days we'd have had another vehicle to jump it but now we were quite pointedly on the wrong side of a mud puddle the other car couldn't cross!

   Fortunately after a little fiddling we got Billie's car started, and Kerstin and Dan and their two dogs (a greyhound and one of those small curly haired dogs that looks like some kind of teddy bear crossed with a dog.) got in and we proceeded. However, now in an unfamiliar car on a rocky ride sometimes proceeding down slopes at a precarious angle the greyhound was breathing heavily enough that Dan thought it was stressing out and about to hyperventilate or something. So they all got out and Billie and I proceeded down the track a further few hundred meters to see if it got any better, but it didn't, so we returned, re-collected them, and returned from whence we came, back across the mud puddle, and then bid adieu to them and they parted company with us.

   From there Billie and I proceeded up the main gravel road to the nearby summit of Mt Useful, upon which stood a fire tour, some communications antenna, and a whooole lot of guys with mullets and southern cross tattoos, wearing plaid jackets and shorts standing beside their four wheel drives drinking beer. Like literally 80-90% of them had mullets. There was a magnifiscent view from here looking south into the lowlands.

   From there, having studied the map a bit more, we determined that there was another route to get to the steel waterwheel (not that Billie's hilux couldn't have made it down the other track without a hyperventilating greyhound, though her truck is not currently in tip top shape, but mostly I think we had become a bit demoralized with the first track we attempted after having to abandon it halfway so taking a different route was at least a change of scenery.
   This new route proved do-able, the dirt track following along the steep side of the river valley. And it always amazes me that 4x4s going opposite directions somehow manage to pass eachother on these roads. One such vehicle that came past us happened to be some of Billie's former coworkers with DWELP (Bureau of Land Managment equivalent). They gave us permission to bypass the "trail closed" tape they'd just put across the trail to the waterwheel, advising us to just not lean against the bridge rail.
   Shortly later we came to the trailhead. There was space to park a few cars by the river, though we were the only one, and sure enough yellow caution tape blocking off the start of the trail at a footbridge across the river which made out of one solid log. We ducked under the caution tape and didn't test the structural integrity of the hand rails.

   Personally I much prefer hiking over 4x4ing and it was really great. It was a nice sunny day, the birds were chirping, flowering plants were all around us. As we hiked we reminded eachother several times that this was prime snake weather and season, and sure enough, by and by "snake!" Bille exclaimed, holding up her hand for me to stop. There across the trail in front of us was a large snakeB that she identified as a tiger snake, which is fairly venomous.
   Without further incident we reached the steel waterwheel, seemingly completely by itself in the wilderness, though after some searching I found evidence of a building foundation nearby. I climbed up into the waterwheel and Billie took a photo of me there that I think would have been a cool photo.... but her phone was accidentally smashed at work the next day and she hadn't sent it to me yet.

And I took a photo of the informational sign because I rightly foresaw that this same information wouldn't be as readily available on the computer internets

   From there we proceeded west along the 4x4 tracks, which included some crossings of severel-foot-deep rivers but Billie's truck had them well in hand. Just past one river crossing, quickly climbing again, I saw this perfect photo opportunity. Well it would have been better if half the photo wasn't in shadow but hey one can't help that. But 4x4s camped in a remote river bend, insanely steep 4x4 track running up the mountain behind them, this is the Australian offroading dream:

   From there we proceeded to Billie's place, ate the rest of the venison burrito/taco fixins, and I headed off, it being now around maybe 6pm? Which was way too late to catch the last ferry so I had to drive right through the dark heart of Melbourne which was as stressful as I expected. I think you can maybe get right through the city by taking a tollroad but I'm too cheap for that (despite that I'll pay $72 to avoid the whole thing via ferry, but tollroads are bougousie tools of the capitalist pigdogs! ..plus also I haven't the faintest idea how you actually pay the toll since there aren't toll booths and its deducted straight from your soul or something), but without taking tollroads one has to zigzag through surface streets with cars opening their doors along the curb edge (or "kerb" edge as these spelling maniacs spell it), nightmare inducing "J-turns" in the inner lanes, trams, and all kinds of other mischief. I took two wrong turns due to incomprehensible signage, may have been going wrong way in a major street for a moment, I'm not sure it was dark and terrifying, but anyway eventually survived the city to come out the other side and continue home, the end.

Monday, July 16th - My parents, cousin Kateri and I departed the cheerful Gilded Drifter B & B Monday morning and drove through the sunny Sierra valleys to retrace our steps. Through the hills and vales, down into the broad mundane valley of Reno, back into narrow mountain valleys on the 395 and... amid wildfire smoke and the smell of burning chaparrel to Walker Burger for lunch! Just as absolutely delicious as on the way up!

   From there we proceeded on down to Mono Lake and this time went to see the Tufa Towers. Apparently they form where there were underwater springs, the minerals in the spring water immediately precipitating out their mineral contents on contact with the cooler fresh water to slowly over time form a stalagmite-like tower reaching up from the bottom. The previously mentioned extreme lowering of the level of Mono Lake by Los Angeles' thirst for water has exposed these formerly underwater tower formations.

   A significant problem with the reduction of the water level was that formerly isolated islands on the lake critical to migratory birds became accessible to coyotes and other land based predators. In this picture we are looking at an osprey nest ... which though dramatic is probably not one of the threatened bird species. Wait Mono Lake has no fish (too saline).. is this actually an osprey? Maybe it lives here while getting fish from the tributary streams? Hmmm mysterious.

   From there we proceeded to a volcanic crater just beside the lake getting a little lost on 4x4 tracks in our non-4x4 prius on the way. To our west toward the Sierras at this time there was a solid white wall of wildfire smoke that was steadily getting closer to us and was a bit concerning. We poked around the crater nontheless, there was cool obsidian. We then continued.
   We stopped again a little later at another cindercone just near mammoth. What can I say we really like volcanic rocks.

I have a particularly large number of scene setting photos because I was updating a certain Venezualan senorita on roadtrip progress ;)

   Also at this time, President Trump was in the process of making news for insulting our NATO allies pretty much as much as he could at a recent summit and then meeting with his bff Putin and saying that Putin says there's been no Russian meddling and that about settles it. The world we're living in!

   We once again stayed at the same hotel in Independance. Got pizza at one of the immediately prior towns (Big Pine?).

Tuesday, July 17th - We proceeded on south, stopping in the flat hot bland town of Lancaster (has anything interesting ever happened in Lancaster? Has it even been the setting for any exciting stories? It seems a thoroughly bland place), for a picnic lunch in a park. Then west along the foothills north of Los Angeles which were often covered in orange groves or other hearty slope-growing crops. Finally emerging on the Pacific coast and proceeding north among expensive beach houses with the occasional giant palm tree looming over them like a toilet brush. Finally we arrived in Santa Barbara to drop off Kateri at the suburban house where she and her boyfriend rent some rooms on the upper floor of a stucco suburban house. Also met her boyfriend, whom I hadn't met before but apparently my parents have. He seemed a swell fellow. Some of these cousins are surely due to start getting married soon. I hope so I do enjoy attending weddings.

   Also I at once recognized my grandmother's style in a painting on their wall that I haven't previously seen. I do so love her paintings. All the relatives have them all about their houses and its fun visiting relatives whose houses I've maybe never been to before and seeing previously unseen paintings by "mum-mum."

   From there we could have headed home inland through the heart of LA but instead, as apparently my parents have been in the habit of doing (they come out this way fairly frequently because mom's dad lives in neighboring Ventura county), we went down the Pacific Coast Highway. This iconic road winds right along the coast practically in the spray of waves in places. In Malibu we stopped at a sandwich place (actually a sandwich bar inside an upscale grocery story) they are in the habit of visiting on this route. I ordered a mammoth sandwich at this upscaley place and then had to gloat to my friends in Australia because at whatever it came out to ($7? $8?) you couldnt' even get a dogfood quality fastfood burger in Australia. And this at a fancy place in Malibu frequented by people any one of whom looked likely to be a celebrity I didn't recognize!

   From there we continued on down the coast before eventually turning inland somewhere in Los Angeles county and finshing up with a quick slog through the urban sprawl unil we finally got home. The End!

One more picture of Mono Lake just because I feel I need a picture here

   Okay, now I swear tomorrow you get day 1 of the trip to meet Cristina in Dominican Republic!! (: It seems appropriate in anticipation to tease out this photo of her on the plane on her own flight to the Dominican Republic!

July 12th - "It's desert noir" I commented, as I snapped a photo of a ramshackle falling-down old house with junk around it, with Mt Whitney rising up behind it. Somewhere near the Manzanar internment camp.

I'd only arrived in the states just the day before and already we were on an epic roadtrip! My uncle was getting (re)married in a small (tiny) town north of Lake Tahoe, which would have been probably a 10 hour direct drive up "the five" through the middle of California, but we decided to take two days to go up the east side of the Sierras. In fact this plan was a major selling point for me to come to California rather than go back to Africa at this time. Also my cousin Kateri would be joining us, I wasn't quite sure why, but maybe she liked the roadtrip idea as well!

Because Kateri was coming from a different direction (Santa Barbara) we came up from Orange County to fetch her from a train station in the northern LA suburb of Van Nuys. This trip took us on different highways than we usually take and we actually found ourselves driving right through the middle of the cluster of skyscrapers at Los Angeles' dark heart. It took two or three hours to get through LA and we ended up arriving at the train station nearly an hour late... but by a stunning coincidence her train was also running about an hour late and we actually pulled up with just enough time to park and walk to the platform and greet her coming out!

We ate at a nearby In-N-Out and then proceeded through the foothills that surround Los Angeles to the north and east. This route on the 14 through the hills I haven't taken in recent memory and its a much broader less dramatic valley than Tejon Pass which the 5 passes through. On the far side is the low flat town of Lancaster baking in the desert sun, and a little later amid the sage and yucca plants of the high desert there's a boeing facility, which looks like a huge international airport in the middle of nowhere, in terms of hte number of large jetliners parked there. Somewhere around there is also Mojave Spaceport. Then the 14 joins up with the 395 and as we head north the Sierras begin to rise up on our left. By and by we see more extinct cindercones and other evidence of ancient volcanic activity.

Kateri and mom at Fossil Falls

Kateri, by the way, had just recently graduated from UC Santa Barbara as an English major. She's quite into writing, so we enjoyed talking about books and writing. I'm not quite sure why she has neglected to appear on livejournal, haunt of aspiring writers that it is! She quite prefers Young Adult books and writing, which is not quite exactly my favorite genre but still we had a lot to talk about.

Picturesque parking situation at Fossil Falls

When I was wee we used to drive up this way to Mammoth every summer but I haven't made the drive since then, so it was fun to see the barely remembered sights along the way. At the base of a memorable large red cindercone we turned off on a turnoff for "Fossil Falls," to do a little sightseeing along the way. After a five minute little drive we parked at the trailhead and amid baking 100+ degree weather (which I was loving as I was still trying to thaw my bones from Australia) we took a short hike to fossil falls -- which is a formerly dramatic waterfall through very artistic looking curvy volcanic rocks. Formerly because now the water that fed it is entirely rerouted to supply Los Angeles.

Dad gazes into the abyss

After about half an hour clambering about we were happy to get back in the air conditioned car and continue the journey. We passed the red cindercone (Which, melodramatically, had a large dust tornado in front of it as we went past), and despite the oven heat of moments earlier, soon rain was splattering across our windshield. A strange thing then happened: all of our phones suddenly started making an unusual alarmed warbling noise at once. Looking at my phone I saw I had "an emergency alert system alert" and it was a flash flood warning in our vicinity. Never had that happen before! Good to know the alert system works! We stopped in at the Mt Whitney visitor center at Lone Pine, it wasn't raining but clouds obscured Mt Whitney itself. Passed the Manzanar Internment Camp visitor center and it occurred to me that we've never stopped there and the present political climate makes it seem very apropos. Maybe next time.

just across the river

At Independence, a tiny little town just up the road from the bigger Lone Pine, we checked into a small motel my parents have apparently made a habit of stopping at (Thanksiving apparently has often these last few years been at my uncle's place we were now headed towards, and my parents have been going up this 395 route to get there). This little town apparently has no restaurants except a semi-permanent mexican food truck (it was actually semi integrated into an old gas station), so we walked over there and I procured a delicious authentic burrito (exciting being as, despite everything that had happened in the previous 24 hours, I still had only just arrived from Australia and not yet had a decent burrito in a year!)
After we ate we walked to a little park where there had been a steam locomotive, but it was gone, replaced by a sign noting it has been taken off somewhere else for repairs. By now it was evening and a pleasant temperature. A very pleasant babbling brook ran through the park and, crossing the river with a cute wooden bridge, a trail meandered out among the low sage that stretched out to the sheer wall of mountains. By the bridge there was a notice sign saying it could be dangerous around the river at times of flash flood and I noted that it was such a time -- we were in the dangerous intersection of the venn diagram. Needless to say we crossed the bridge and proceeded ti walk up the trail. There was that amazingly beautiful smell of fresh rain over sage desert. Even in the city the smell of fresh rain is famously delightful, but among the sage in the desert I think it's arguably one of the best smells in the world. Sure enough it was soon sprinkling, and the rain quickly got a bit heavier so we were thinking of turning back. I happened to glance behind me, and noticed a wall of grey obscuring the mountains approaching us. "uh, guys, look what's coming out way!" I pointed out the wall of heavy rain approaching to the rest of the family. We then more or less ran back down the trail, and it was coming down heavily already by the time we crossed the bridge. Spent the later evening sitting under the eaves of the motel reading my book as rain poured down around us, and the temperature still pleasant enough to be not wearing a jacket!

The wall of water approaches (on right!) also very slightly different version

::TO BE CONTINUED!::

Yesterday: I'm just starting up from the almost-complete-stop at the stop sign when the engine shuts down, leaving me slowly rolling in terror across a highway that has no stops, in what's called a "black spot" intersection due to the dangerous accidents that occur there. Muttering "no no no no no noooo" under my breath I look both ways expecting to see a log truck doing 100 barreling down on me but fortunately the road is clear. It's barely a week since I'd been standing amid the wreckage of an accident at a nearly identical intersection -- but whereas before I was safely wearing the flourescent yellow of the country fire brigade, now I was in a dead car broadside-on to oncoming traffic!!

   Of all places in the 30 kilometer commute to work, my car chooses the absolutely absolutely worst car-length to break down in. It almost defies belief, but I have little time to contemplate it heavily as I will the car to keep on rolling, which it does, until I'm on the conveniently wide gravel shoulder of the road beyond the intersection.

   The day had begun a bit ominously too. I had just cleaned up the house for the airbnb guests who would be arriving later, which involves tossing all miscelleneous objects into my office, which consequently looks a complete mess. As I went to close the office door the doorknob had come off in my hand. Leaving me staring at it. No clear way to solidly reaffix it. Well this would look pretty ghetto if the first thing guests see when they come in is a door missing a doorknob, or that door hanging open to reveal an epic mess inside. I carefully managed to get the door closed and kind of get the doorknob back on in a way that at least looks right, but it seemed like a bad omen, and apparently was.

   Also of note, the PREVIOUS day I had arrived at work to find the work truck wouldn't start. Had to have it taken in to the mechanic, turns out there was an air-leak in the fuel pump. So when my own car broke down the following day "oh come on this car too!" could be added to exclamations of "no no no anywhere but here!"

   Checking the basics, the engine was out of oil BUT in my defense I had checked it only like two weeks ago, though I've been aware it guzzles oil (and yet doesn't drip any, where it goes is anyone's guess), so I'm terribly afraid the engine might have done itself in by driving with no oil (but there was no smoke or anything, I'd have thought an oil-less related death would result in lots of heat and smoke?). Anyway as it happens there is an auto mechanic place around the corner from my house (the town is tiny but has everything one needs!), so I had them come tow me back to Birregurra and am now driving their kinda quirky loaner car.

   In other news I've had three airbnb guests in a row this week, which necessitated buying a lot more of all categories of linens so I didn't have to wash everything every day (filled three laundry machines when I finally went in today!). First couple was really nice, they were in the midst of driving the coast. I'd have liked to talk to them more but they kept to themselves in their room mostly. Second couple was also really nice, was here because they were going to local "45th best restaurant in the world" Brea for lunch on Saturday (they mentioned reservations fill up three months in advance, they booked this last October!). As soon as they had their stuff in the room asked "do you have a bottle opener?" ... we spent the rest of the evening having beers and chatting on the porch and it was great.
   Third couple arrived today. They arrived while I was still out getting the laundry done around 12:30, but I figured what can you expect when you ask to check in early and I had mentioned I had a previous booking, and they wouldn't be sleeping in the middle of the day right? Well when I got back it turns out they were but had brought their own bedding? But anyway, the noteworthy thing here is they kind of regarded me as an intruder in their own space when the guy finally came out to the living room and found me there and was like "you live here?" all surprised. I had gotten this surprised response once before from another older couple, who like this one had had trouble figuring out how to book on airbnb. So I guess people who are unclear on how airbnb works are... unclear on how airbnb works.
   And they have a small fluffy dog! My listing had said indoor pets to be evaluated on a case by case basis, which Ii realize was a mistake because everyone swears up and down their dog is the best and are you going to say no?
   And they've gone off to a wedding leaving me to dog-sit their dog, who has been whining. I didn't sign up for this :-/ I have now added "$50 fee for inside pets" to my listing and am thinking of trying to come up with the most seamless phrasing to emphasize that yes I god damn live here.

   Also, though airbnb keeps telling me if I lower my price I'll get "19% more bookings!" I was just having a gander at the listed "listing similar to this" for mine and they're all around $150 (mine is at $100. All prices OzDollars btw which is like 75 cents to the dollar), so I don't know why airbnb is telling me to lower my price, I'm _this_ close to raising it!

   Anyway, that's the latest. It's 107f today, a friend is having a pool party, and I'm here dog-sitting for some strangers, my car might be dead, and this doorknob keeps coming off in my hand.

UPDATE: Sunday now, this last couple just left. Among other things I noticed they were passive aggressively only using my back door and going the long way around to the front (the front door sticks a bit but honestly its not anywhere near unusable) ... I've got a feeling they're gonna leave me with an "interesting" review... :-X

Current Music: Plain White T's - Breakdown

( Beginning of This Adventure )

Tuesday, May 30th, Charleston, Oregon -The magical power of deep paranoia woke me up. Which is to say I woke up and looked at the time every ten minutes till 6:40, and then every two minutes until it was finally 6:50. Since I was sleeping in the crypt-like darkness of a ship's forecastle, a dozen sailors crammed in a space the size of a walk-in closet, I had a terror of my alarm going off.
   Despite my great efforts to get up without using the alarm, to my great horror, I apparently forgot to actually disable it and while I was getting dressed it started to go off at 7:00 and I leapt through the darkness like a blind cat to shut it off as fast as possible.
   Said goodbye to my dear friend Kori, who was of course asnooze and barely woke up enough to mumble goodbye. I covered her cheek in kisses until she chuckled sleepily and told her I'd swing by on my way back in the afternoon for a proper goodbye.

   And then up the ladder, pushing open the heavy wooden hatch and wiggling out with my backpack. The couple who was giving me a ride was there waiting in the fresh morning air. Surrounding us was a marina full of fishing boats and a thickly forested shore. We hopped precariously over the side to the dock -- the gangplank wasn't rigged, tossing our bags to eachother over the chasm. And then we were up the gently swaying floating dock, passing, as I mentioned, a salty former captain of mine coming the other way, who gave me an icy look and merest nod, as he secretly brandished his proverbial knife to figuratively slaughter the current captain of the ship and take over.
   Short taxi ride from Charleston to Coos Bay, past cute wooden houses and blackberry brambles. Rental car from there to Newport two hours north, along the coast but mostly you're not right on the coast so the sea isn't visible. Mainly thick pine forest and occasional bridges over rivers or big inlets from the sea, occasional small seaside towns. The couple was youngish and from Portland. The guy was an army reserve nurse, about to be sent to Korea to train people there, I think the woman may have been a teacher?

Newport - The couple dropped me off by my car, which to my relief had not been towed or ticketed, was left where I left it just beside where the boat had been docked. Had biscuits and gravy at the adorable little cafe that's right there. It's one of my favorite places, I guess I could literally say in the whole world. Just a really cute little cafe in what sort of looks like a little victorian house, right on the waterfront, with really good biscuits and gravy.

   Then I went to Englund Marine, a marine supply store, to get a ten pound spool of seine twine, a tarred twine I've been wishing I had for some time A sailor can fix absolutely anything with seine twine! It's the duct tape of the sea! Also from seine twine you make your Turks-head bracelet that is the secret sign of belonging to the ancient fellowship of sailors. I've had sailors randomly greet me in all sorts of places including once on a bus between Tanzania and Kenya due to the turks-head. It is said you earn the right to wear a turkshead by climbing to the very very very top of the mast, but I think it's also just as much also being able to make it yourself. And because you weave it directly on to your arm it cannot be removed unless cut off. I had removed mine a few years ago over fear of my hand swelled due to bee stings it could be very bad, but since my hand doesn't really swell at all any more I'd been wanting it back, and so as soon as I had a moment wove on the one in the previous link. I'll have to take a new picture tomorrow when the lighting is better, because now that it's not quite so brand new black it looks better I think.

   Does your occupation have any secret signs by which you can recognize a member out in the wilds?

   And then I retraced the trip back down to Coos Bay in my own car (which, I haven't mentioned in awhile, so I'll note I was borrowing me dad's prius). Unfortunately, when Ii got down there, the Lady Washington was out doing maneuvers so I couldn't go make proper goodbyes. But in Coos Bay town itself the other tallship, the caramel-and-blue hulled ketch Hawaiian Chieftain was moored up behind "The Casino." There was a little festival afoot, which is what had attracted the tallships, and also "the world's largest rubber duck" had been conjured up. It's about as tall as maybe a three story building, and the were in the midst of filling it with air. I took a picture but of course my phone later lost it.
   The Chieftain, as it turns out, was actually rafted to a barge thing that was moored to the pilings behind the Casino, but no gangway had been put in place yet and the gap was way too far to even contemplate jumping it. The crew was very busy up on deck doing various things and I happened to see the current captain, Gary, whom I had sailed under on a different vessel (the rather large brig Pilgrim). I called out to him and he came over onto the barge to greet me and express surprise that I was in the country. Two other sailors I've sailed with also came to greet me across the chasm, "Mr Sunshine," a thoroughly amiable older fellow (who's last name is Ray, which combined with his sunny disposition gets his name), and Shane who I think is maybe just a little younger than me and is also pretty nice (and at one time had an LJ even!).

Ugh look at that ten hours of driving and that's not counting the additional two hours of going between Coos Bay and Newport twice.

   From there I had to hoof it down to Davis/Sacramento in the middle of California, so I was off again! Would have greatly preferred to continue down the coast through the redwoods but was pressed for time at this point. Followed pretty much the route in the above map. I've described driving through Oregon a lot in this roadtrip so I won't spend much time on it suffice to say southern Oregon is mostly a land of thick forest and constant big hills / small mountains. Small highway is fun and swings through the landscape, then onto the Five which is more boring. Close to the border the landscape gets quite mountainous.
   Got off in a small town in the mountains near the border to get gas. Since this was still oregon an attendant came out to pump my gas, and she was so extremely cheerful about it and squeegied my windows as well, I felt I should tip her but wasn't sure how much was appropriate nor did I have anything smaller than a ten so I ended up not doing so, and she didn't seem the least bit phased by not getting a tip, cheerfully waving goodbye.
   And then once again a pulled an Australianism. The worst! Everyone's greatest fear when traveling between the countries. I stopped in the gas station driveway to look at my phone, then realized a car was behind me so quickly pulled onto the road and immediately onto the shoulder ... but what I didn't realize is doing this quick unthinking manouver I had pulled on to the LEFT SIDE OF THE ROAD, the side one drives on in Australia. Fortunately I was off on the shoulder but it was disconcerting to find cars passing me close head on! Quickly got to the correct side when a signal gave me a window of no cars on the road.

   Passed Mt Shasta in the waning gloaming light of evening, proceeded along the boring straight road betewen Redding and Davis in the dark -- and I had finished my audiobook so I was bouncing between unsatisfactory radio stations (even with the XM radio the car had!).

   Stopped in at Davis, where I had gone to college, solely to get delicious pizza at Woodstocks pizza there. Verily it was extremely delicious, and packed with students and many drunken students were hanging around outside since the G Street pub is right there. I looked at them all and found it hard to believe I had once been one of them. It seems so long ago now.

   From there I proceeded to Sacramento, just 11 miles across a causeway over rice fields. My friend Gabi is now living there with her mom and stepfather in the suburbs. Gabi (half Uruguayan I believe? Slight of build. Also a former LJer), has taken the unusual step of getting herself artificially inseminated, purposefully not wanting to have some guy have any claim on her kid. It was 9 or 10 when I get there so pretty much we just said our hellos and she showed me to the couch I'd be sleeping on.

Wednesday, May 31st, Sacramento, California - In the morning I met Gabi's little one, still less than a year old. She took about thirty pictures of me awkwardly holding said child and somehow my phone decided not to delete them. Gabi's mom made us breakfast and she kept referring to being part of the resistance to Trump with as much enthusiasm and sincerity as if she was spending her days engaged in partisan warfare. "Yes, but there's still us in the resistance! ... we will resist! ...we're gaining momentum you know! ...he can't keep us down!"
   She believed the repubicans would never ever ever impeach Trump, somethnig I've heard a number of people say, but I think when the republican members of congress realize that no part of their conservative agenda is going to get through with his blinding incompetence AND the stink of corruption is like that of a rotting whale (have you ever smelled a rotting whale? it's pretty bad), they'll absolutely cut the anchor chain on him.

From there I got back on the highway for the straight boring shot down the central valley on the five. Once again the dried grass was like the fuzz of a freshly shorn golden sheep. Once again I stopped at that roadtrip holy site, the In-N-Out in Kettleman City. Once again I got bogged down in absolutely shocking traffic in the LA area. And finally, as the sun was once again setting, arrived at my parents place in southern Orange County.

Now hopefully I can knock out my younger brother's wedding in one more entry and be done with this last trip!

( Beginning of this adventure )

Monday, May 29th - "Well, are you coming or not?" asked Kori, via facebook messenger that morning, "because I have not make the watch bills and need to know whether or not to put you on them,"
   "I really don't know how I'm going to manage it but I r eally want to, I'm trying desperately to figure something out but I haven't yet," I respond.
   "Okay well I'm making the watch bill and leaving you off." I'm sitting in my car in a gas station outside of Olympia, haven just driven down from Bellingham.
   I'm aiming to catch the tallship Lady Washington (of which Koriander is the first mate) in the small seaside town of Newport, Oregon, and sail as crew to Coos Bay, almost exactly 100 miles (98.3) south. The problem is I have to leave my car at one end, say the start, and then get back there. I thought it would be a simple matter, like there'd be an hourly bus running up and down the coast highway, right? Like a civilized place? No, there's a twice daily bus out of Coos Bay that would take me way inland to Eugene or Corvallis and I'd have to wait hours for a bus going to Newport. Google public transit routing puts the trip at like 26 hours! Renting a car looked to cost over $200 since I'd be only taking it one way. This was proving ridiculously difficult. I posted on facebook for advice from my Oregon based friends, and got back on the highway while racking my brain over the problem.

   It had been an easy two hour or so drive south from Bellingham along the big multi lane highway The Five, with no traffic congestion since it was still the middle of the three day weekend. The highway flies through Seattle raised up so high you feel like you're flying right over it and have a good view of the city as it goes by. I don't remember noticing Tacoma which comes just south, and Olympia is hidden by trees, it's odd you notice there's suddenly lots of exits and signs about the city but as you pass through Olympia, the state capitol, you might as well be in a forest as far as you can tell.
   To quote myself about Olympia, when we were there on the boat:
   Very ironically this is the first place we've been that doesn't have shore water or power or facilities of any kind for us. We had these things in tiny backwaters like Garibaldi and Sequim but here in the state capitol we've got nothing but the power we generate ourselves, the water we brought aboard in Gig Harbour, and we'll have to go find a pumpout dock to get rid of our crap.
   Olympia is a weird place. It has one street, 4th Avenue, that has a lot of bars and other cool stuff, but surrounding that is just muffler shops and other boring crap. All the locals look like cracked out vagrant-punks. In most towns we stand out for looking dishevelled -- in this town we all look positively clean and straight-laced compared to the locals.

Mt St Helens and Mt Rainier as seen from a plane on an earlier trip

   From Olympia it's pretty much a straight shot down the Five to Portland ("PDX"), and much the same as I described the Five south of PDX -- agricultural land with a five o clock shadow of trees growing anywhere anyone has neglected to keep them down, mountains in the distance. I want to say you can see Mt St Helens from the freeway but I might be transposing the good views of it when flying over this same airspace to SEA-TAC airport. Google tells me you can see it on clear days from the freeway anyway.
   There was a route to Newport that departed the five before PDX and runs down the coast, which I would have preferred, but I still didn't know if I'd be headed to Newport or catching a bus from Coos Bay or somewhere in between or maybe the whole thing would be impractical so I continued on down the five. Checking facebook just before entering PDX to see if anyone had any good advise yet (which I sweeearr I pulled over to do ::looks around nervously::) a friend I'd forgotten was in Portland had left a comment and as lunch was approaching I messaged her asking if she wanted to get together for lunch. She was down and I left it up to her to suggest a place, and she suggested one of the McMenamens -- McMenamen is a, I guess you could call it a chain but each location is super unique, they buy old sort of landmark buildings and turn them into restaurant/bar places. I was so glad she had suggested it because going to a McMenamens was definitely on my list but it hadn't occured to me this day because I had so much else on my mind.
   We were headed to the one called Broadway Pub. For some reason my GPS took me on an extremely roundabout way to get there and I only bothered to look at the big picture when it had already taken me on a wild goose chase. Anyway my friend, Hollie is ALSO from ye glory days of Model UN and PAXMUN and I don't think I've seen her literally since the last time I saw her at a conference. She now has a kid who I think is like 8 or 9 maybe? He came with her to lunch but shyly didn't say much. She is also married to a Brazilian airline pilot. Hollie has been working as a "promotional model" most of the time since MUN I believe.
   ***Plz allow me to insert here an incident I forgot to relate from up in Bellingham -- while looking at the menu I pulled another totl Australianism. In Australia "entrees" on the menu are appetizers, which I have to concede makes more sense. So I was looking at the menu and skipped over the entrees to look for "mains" and found very few (maybe just the specials), and was just starting to comment on the lack of selection of mains when it dawned on me.
   I had delicious cajun tater tots (I've been missing the McMenamen's tater tots!) and [? a burger?] (it's definitely clear to me while writing this that the terminal amount of time has passed since these events where I've practically forgotten everything that's not written down), and a pint of their excellent Tatonka Stout.

   After lunch it was time to get down to brass tacks and decide what I was doing, as I'd have to choose which road to go on right after Portland. I still had zero idea how I'd get back to my car or from the one city to the other. It seemed actually quite impossible.

...

   So naturally, I decided I'd go for it. I would leave my car in Newport and despite the apparent impossibility of getting back there from Coos Bay, I would just ... deal with that when I get there.

   Google maps tells us there's two routes from PDX to Newport, one along the Five most of the way and one that gets off the Five almost immediately. You can take a guess which one I took. It's an enjoyable drive through over hill and vale and through tiny farming communities and small towns. I had made this very drive one morning in January 2012 when I had a job interview with Rogue Brewery, first at their headquarters in Portland and then the next morning at their main facility in Newport, so the drive reminded me of that.
   Anyway it's about two and a half hours from Portland to Newport and despite being on the more scenic road for some reason I started feeling very sleepy and had to stop at one point and jog back and forth a bit to wake myself up. Also as I approached the coast a light drizzle began. The weather most of the trip had been amazingly excellent but the coast is famous for dreary weather. The last bit of the drive was through cute seaside towns.

[This would be the perfect place for the picture I definitely took of the boat at the dock there with with Newport bridge behind it, but that picture has also been lost]

   Finally arrived in Newport and the boat was right where I expected to find it. In fact, it was right where I had first joined the Hawaiian Chieftain to begin my seven month stint aboard. Swung aboard and found Kori in the aft cabin. There were several people in the crowded little space, including Daisy, who had been aboard the Chieftain when I first came aboard here, so we were excited to see eachother. I forget if there was someone else who knew me, but after at least Kori and Daisy (both shortish Hawaiian girls as it happens) were like "KRIS!!!" and hugged me. Captain Lazarus, whom I'm not sure I'd met before, did the same thing just to be silly.

   As this entry is once again long enough, and I feel descriptions of the boat and crew should belong to the same entry as the subsequent sail, I'll end this one here, where I have just come aboard in the gathering darkness of this memorable little town.

Current Music: Poe - Hey Pretty

   ( Beginning of this Adventure )

Monday, May 22nd - This day I was finally headed somewhere new (Spokane)! Unfortunately to get there I'd have to drive up the boring ole five a hundred or so miles to Portland, which I love, without having time to stop there, and then I'd be in new territory for the next several hours.
   As mentioned last entry, I left my friends Garian and Charlie's house in the morning just as they were leaving for work. I didn't really describe Eugene last entry but as I drove through it both coming and going I was really struck by how nice it seems. I've never been to any downtown area it may or may not have but everything I saw was tree lined streets and cute houses surrounded by lush shrubbery, it seemed extremely nice.

   Between Eugene and Portland the road is straight and boring. The kind of multi-lane highway that just steamrollers you through an environment, and even what you do see from it has been corrupted by it, as gas stations and businesses catering to the traffic crop up by the road and everything quaint wilts away from the concrete behemoth that breaths exhaust fumes and traffic noises.
   Still though, the surroundings are mostly farmland, and any little corner of undeveloped land sprouts a thick forest of trees as if the blanket of woods that once covered this land can only barely be held back.
   One shoots through the brief urban landscape of the state capitol, Salem, and then it's more of the same until you get to Portland, by far the biggest city in Oregon. Here you actually see highrises and overpasses and it took maybe half an hour to traverse the cityscape. Across the Columbia river, north of Portland, is "Vancouver," which is really just the northern suburbs of PDX (as locals call Portland), and this is confusing because of course if you were to follow the Five a few more hours north, you would arrive in Vancouver. Apparently Portland was founded by two very unimaginative men, one from Vancouver BC and one from Portland MN and they couldn't agree which of their home towns to name it after so they named one side of the river after one and the ther after the other (Oh if only they'd been a bit more imaginative and gone with Portcouver or Vancland or something). As it happens my travels took me off the Five here onto the 84, a somewhat smaller four lane highway that heads East from PDX following right along the southern bank of the Columbia river.

   ( Embedded map hates Coeur D'Alene for some reason, click here for whole map )

   The Columbia river is so wide you can easily see how it can be navigated by ships, and I couldn't help but picture the tallship Lady Washington out in the middle. My time aboard said ship has already come up many times in this present travelogue and I'm assuming it'll continue to. I first joined the boat in the Vancouver that's across the river from Portland and we sailed down the river westward to the sea, but the boat does go as far east upriver as, well, at least Pasco I guess. There's a fun song which I can't find audio of on the internet but the lyrics are here (if you want to use google fu to try to find an actual recording, the version I've always heard is by William Pint, and I note he does have a CD for sale with it on it that you can buy. If you're into sea shanties, it is worth a buy), about a time the Lady Washington sailed way up the river to Pasco in Eastern Washington. The last stanza describes the area:
      "Oh, Pasco is a dreadful place;
      It's a land that's seldom green;
      Where dust storms blow, trains do come and go,
      And tall ships are seldom seen, brave boys,
      Tall ships are seldom seen.

   For the first several hours though the road continues surprisingly straight along the southern bank for the river. The Columbia gorge was apparently blasted through the countryside by a torrential prehistoric floods from glacial lakes, which might explain why its surprisingly straight for a river. On either side the countryside was once again alternating thick forest or, where flat enough, farmland.
   Early on I passed a billboard for the "naked winery," in fact, I think I passed at least three billboards. At first I didn't even take note but by the third it had lodged in my brain and I was dying to know, what IS the naked winery?? Is it some swanky strip club with a winery theme? Is it an actual winery tasting room for nudists? Surely that sounds like a bad idea. When I stopped to eat and get gas in The Dalles, after I had googled what the heck the origin of the name of the Dalles was (apparently French for "the chutes," referring to the narrowing of the river here) I had to google the Naked Winery. Despite the innuendoes made on their billboards my very brief examination of their webpage seemed to indicate that it was just a winery. "Naked," is probably their chic way of saying they're organic like "naked juice," 'and other such "clever" hipster marketing ploys ::eyeroll::.
   Now as I may have mentioned I like to seek out non-chain little restaurants as I travel, and here in the Dalles I found a place called Burgerville that, I dunno if it has any other locations but I for one had never heard of it and it was new to me. I had a delicious hickery bacon burger with a side of DEEP FRIED ASPARAGUS which I think every burger place should have as a side from now on. And I once again pulled a flagrant Australianism. At first I tried to order a small drink, and the cashier said "are you sure, this is the small," holding up a tiny cup, and without thinking I exclaimed "THAT'S TOINY!!" and then as she looked at me with a "you're not from around here are you look" I ashamedly realized I had TOTALLY inserted an O in a word in which it didn't belong. Ironic because I'd expect a toiny drink in Australia, but in 'Murica, come on!

   Now getting gas in Oregon is something I find very tedious -- you cannot pump your own gas! The first gas station I pulled into in Oregon, remembering this, I waited for a minute or two at a pump but no one came up as I remembered happening. So I got out and looekd around and didn't see any obvious employees. Thinking maybe they had thank god changed the law I went to swipe my card in the reader but it wouldn't work. So I go inside, where I _did_ encounter an overweight man with a mullet and his overweight rat-tailed son filling up 64oz sodas ('Murica!), I asked the cashier how I pay for gas and he said I needed to bring him some sort of ticket or something, when I still looked confused he explained I needed to get it from an employee outside. So I go out and after some observation determined that there WERE employees pumping gas they just had no uniform or indication of their official status. Presently I was able to get one's attention, he wrote me up some kind of ticket thing that I went in and paid for and then I came out and he was pumping my gas finally .... altogether I found this to be a thoroughly tedious method of getting my gas paid for and into my car!!
   Interesting note on comparative gas pumping: In 'Straya, though they don't trust you to post-pay your restaurant meals, fueling your car, where you could easily accidentally drive off without paying, they always trust you to pay afterwords. And of course even though there's dozens and dozens of types of petroleum product we use in our daily lives, the one called gasoline is the one they call generically "petrol," and propane, butane, natural gas, and several other petroleum products they DO call generically "gas" ...

   Shortley after the Dalles, the landscape became more like the "dreadful place," described in the song. Clearly we were entering the priaries and the land around the river valley looked flat and grass covered. Then the highway splits, with the 84 itself veering away from the river and taking a south-easterly directly, and the 82 (which I took) turning north, crossing the Columbia, and then shortly crossing it again (at the infamous Pasco), because the Columbia also turns here and heads up north-west.
   From here the road leaves the river behind and just strikes off through mostly empty prairies for two hours until finally arriving in Spokane! Even though it seemed early for rush hour traffic (I think it was just before 3?) the traffic through the center of town was gnarly (and my phone GPS of course tries to avoid the most trafficky routes) and I think it took forty minutes just to get from the edge of town to my friend Brittney's apartment. Spokane itself looked a little smaller than Portland, I don't recall there being any particularly tall highrises, and I vaguely recall a number of old looking brick buildings in the downtown area. Having grown up far from Spokane all my life I've been saying it the way it looks like it should be pronounced (spoh-kane) but apparently it's (spoh-kenn) and I have serious trouble remembering to say it right.

This bridge gets mentioned further down in the entry but I'm putting it here to break up the text ;)

   My friend Brittney I met when I was on the boat (I told you the boats are really going to keep coming up on this trip. In this case the Hawaiian Chieftian -- the two boats generally hang out together but I started as a volunteer on the Lady for two weeks and then a few months later got a paid position on the Chieftain and was on for nearly seven months). They had actually let me off for once (we got a day off once every two weeks if we were really lucky) and I had been chilling for awhile in a coffee shop in the tiny town of Port Orchard in the Puget Sound and she had been working at the coffee shop. We've kept in touch in the intervening seven years, and though in fact one weekend I was going to fly up to see her in 2014 or 2015 but actually had fully booked my flight on the wrong weekend, which I discovered only when tried to check in to my flight, and the weekend I had actually booked I had something I had to do, so that was a few hundred dollars down the drain for nothing. So this was the first time I've seen her since she served me coffee in 2010.
   I've always liked to just skip over describing people because its hard but I'm trying to force myself not to shirk this (since originally posting the entries I've gone back and added a brief description of my friend Ben on day 0 and Garian in last entry). So Brittney, she's kind of slight, tattoos, lip rings in the position described as a snake bite apparently. While this description might make her sound kind of punkish, she these days is a conscientious mother to her three year old, Lily, and studiously undertaking online classes for a teaching degree.
   Lily is an adorable little blonde ball of energy. I had brought her a little stuffed animal kangaroo but then when I searched my bags to give it to her I couldn't find it anywhere, I don't know for the life a me where it got to. Searched my bags, the car, then my parents house when I returned, and even here, it has simply hopped off. In other news by this point I was starting to notice that all my friends I had visited had three year olds, this was turning in to Tour de Toddlers. Also I'd never seriously thought about it before but it also made me realize just about all my friends are either married with kids now or at least well on their way. I'm officially the man-spinster!

   So anyway, what is there to do in Spok-enn? Apparently.. leave and go to Idaho! After discussing what to do with the rest of the day we decided to go to Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, a mere half-hour east along the Spokenn River. Here in the bright summer late afternoon and early evening we walked along the docks beside the sparkling Lake Coeur D'Alene and ate at the rather nice restaurant in the hotel right on the water there.

Tuesday, May 23rd - Brittney had work as a nanny at 2pm but in the morning we went to a local botanical garden in Spokane. I love botanical gardens. One thing that was super impressive was the amount of pollen coming out of the tall pines in and around the botanical garden -- it was literally billowing like mist. A thick layer had accumulated on Brittsy's car in the mere hour or two we were there.
   The botanical garden was nice, there was a Japanese Garden there and I particularly love Japanese Gardens.
   After Brittsy went to work I drove to a state park just out of town on the west (downriver) side, "Bowl and Pitcher State Park." The camping and trailheads are on the inside of a bend in the river and there's a fun suspension bridge over the river here. Looking down, the river is moving so fast it's almost in rapids, and I saw some kayakers come shooting through. On the far side there's fun hiking trails all about. I spent the entire rest of the day hiking about here on the forest trails. Shortly I watching the sun set amongst the trees (nice and late in the evening) Brittney called to let me know she was headed home so I came back, and we watched Moina, as one does when there's a three year old girl about (actually I quite rather liked it as far as Disney movies go. It's about sailing and actually doesn't have any mushy romance at all! and my dear ex Kori is Hawaiian).

Wednesday, May 24th -
Woke up on the couch with Brittney's two cats again (Bella and Nightmare), all I can remember doing that morning is that we went for a walk (Brittney lives only minutes from the river... so far my impression is that everything in this area is somehow minutes from the river) and fed some Canadian geese.
And then it was time for me to continue on north! Which is a tale for another day!

(Beginning of this adventure)

Oh hey I found out how to embed a google map finally and it turns out it's pretty easy. Here's this day's drive:

Sunday, May 21st - Between Antioch, and my first destination, Davis, The Sacramento River spreads out in a tangle of marshlands and channels in an inverted delta. I've always wanted to drive straight through this area on one of the small farm roads that goes through there, but alas I had nearly nine hours of driving on my plate this day, so instead I woke up early, before anyone else in the house (jetlag was also still making me naturally wake up at 5:30), and crept quietly out ~~a window~~ the front door. I got on the boring major freeway, which took me Bayward to where the bridge at Bernici, which crosses the inner bay high up in a narrow place. On the south side refineries cap the hill like a dystopian crown, billowing steam from a dozen spires. Tolbooths, a rare thing on the West Coast, guard the entrance to the bridge. As you go over you can see the mothballed reserve fleet in Suisun Bay to the right and the California Maritime Academy training ship, which looks a bit like a small cruise ship, moored up just to the left of the bridge on the north bank. From there it's a pretty boring drive on major multi-lane freeways east on the 80 to Davis and Sacramento. An interesting note about the 80 though is that is you don't get off in Sacramento it'll take you clear across the country, and there's a somewhat startling/whimsical sign just outside of Davis advising that it is "3073 miles to Ocean City, MD." Once in Davis I made my way down the leafy streets to Crepeville, downtown, where a "hawaiian crepe" I'd been dreaming about for many many months was to be had!
   But since that's a fairly boring way to get from Antioch let me just transpose my transit of the same leg in 2010 to here. I had mentioned in last entry we sailed in to Antioch amid spiders blowing in the wind. From there we continued on up river to Sacramento:
   Friday morning we set off to continue up the river. The shore for much of the way consisted of golden brown rolling hills topped with giant white windmills. The sky was completely blue, and the sun so bright you couldn't even look in that direction. Presently the rolling hills disappeared behind 30 foot banks on either side. As these banks were often quite lush with vegetation and you couldn't see beyond them, if one didn't know what was on the other side one might think we were travelling through tropical jungles.
   One thing that strangely gets no mention here is that I dinstinctly remember we passed a half sunken old-timey stern-wheeler paddle boat off to the side of the river. Probably not an "authentic" steam boat but someone's more recent folly (there is, after all, a paddle-boat that still plys the river near Sacramento for fancy charters), but nonetheless a picturesque addition to the river.
   In Sacramento that October we moored up downtown under "Joes Crab Shack," and I left the ship after six months aboard, I got a ride into Davis (11 miles from Sacramento down "the causeway" over rice paddies) with Maureen, a friend of the first mate's.
   Now, 7 years later, as I sat at Crepeville enjoying an absolutely delicious crepe, and in a gratuitous bit of Americana nearby some college cheerleaders from Sac State performed cheers for a small race that was on through downtown that day, Maureen confirmed that she'd love to see me if I happened to be coming up to Bellingham. Bellingham, just about as far north as you can get in the continental United States, happens to be another place I had visited on the boats, and loved! I added it to my trip plans.

   But I didn't have time to linger here in Davis! I was soon on the road again, headed up the Five through the northern half of the state. The north/south divide in California is always reckoned to be somewhere approximately around, well, Kettleman City, with the Bay Area and Sacramento solidly being considered "Northern California," but it's easy to forget that there's actually half a state north of THAT.
   North of Davis the Five continues straight north up to Redding, which I think is a small farming town? I don't know, no one ever goes to Redding. The land up here has always been green whenever I've seen it, and there's once again a lot of almond orchards but that gives way to undeveloped land forested with oaks and undulating with low hills before Redding. From Redding you can see Mt Shasta rising tall and freestanding, symmetrical like a pyramid, clothed in snow, due north. The freeway leads up to the mountain, well I suppose you're already "in the mountains" by the time you get there, the road slaloming along the sides of valleys, surrounded by pine covered slopes, but Mt Shasta always looms up above, dwarfing any other promontory that could presume to call itself a mountain.

   I had taken note that for only an additional 20 minutes on the trip I could take a wildly divergent course to Eugene. The Five goes there directly, or, at the town of Weed (main export... shirts with the town name on them) get off on the 97 and go on a wide scenic detour.

   I feel I should explain that there's been a relative scarcity of my usually abundant pictures because my phone likes to do this thing where it works fine during normal life and for some reasno the moment I go on a vacation it starts failing to save pictures. Sometimes they would immediately appear as an unreadable file, or sometimes more insidiously they would seem alright and then anywhere from ten minutes later to days later become an unreadable file. What pictures I do have from this whole vacation are only the ones such as the one above which I had uploaded to instagram.

   The above picture was taken from a scenic turnout north of Mt Shasta, looking back at it. The 97 was much more enjoyable than the boring ole Five, a two lane country highway it swooped among the mountains and becomes the main street of small towns. Almost the entirety of my journey on the 97 was through forested mountains and at some point there was even snow on the ground on either side of the road. I discovered that Klamath Lake, which the road runs along for a bit, is actually quite big. I was also excited to drive right past Odell Lake, which is subject of a game I remember playing on the monochrome-monitor computer in computer lab in elementary school, which was essentially a trout simulator (man they don't come up with game ideas like they used to!)

   Finally came in to Eugene around 6pm (of course there were still hours of daylight). I had come to Eugene on Epic Roadtrip 2008 and also stayed with my friend Garian and her husband Charlie, though in the interim they've lived in Philadelphia for most of the intervening time (I visited them there too though at some point). But now they had a (six?) year old named Charlie (like his father) and a (three?) year old named Aramea (I think??). Garian had been a friend of mine freshman year of college, way back in 2001.
   Enjoyed catching up with Garian and Charlie and it was funny Little Charlie apparently took quite a liking to me (kept interrupting conversations to try to tell me things), and Garian kept saying "this is weird he's usually really shy!"
   And they still had their adorable pet corgi even though I think Garian said she/he is like 12 now!
   Garian, tall and blonde, but not in a bimbo-esque way, had been Navy ROTC when I met her freshman year. I don't recall when or why but I think she ended up deciding what she was doing at Davis wasn't for her and next I can recall she was studying architecture in Eugene. This is where I thought she had met Charlie but I learned in talking to them this evening that the story is actually cuter than that -- she had been back home in Pennsylvania when they met and he had moved to Eugene with her. Then as mentioned they had both gone to Philadelphia and gotten married and now were back. Charlie is ethnically Syrian, I think he grew up mostly in the States, he seems as American as anyone, but I remember him mentioning a home town in Syria near the Krak des Chevaliers that in 2008 he had said he'd like to take Garian to visit some time. I think that plan is probably curently indefinitely postponed :-/

   The next morning Charlie and Garian had to get the kids fed and dressed and off to school (or day care or wherever such aged kids go) and get off to work themselves and I got to witness first hand the circus of trying to get even well behaved kids through this process in a timely manner!
   And at the same time they were out the door I was too! Destination: Spokane! (for the first time on this trip a place I've never been anywhere near!)

Saturday, May 20th - This day began with a winding country road through narrow valleys as I worked my way through the hills from Camarillo to the main California northsouth highway artery. I had never driven through this particular area and it was interesting, orange groves and strawberry fields seemingly crammed into every flat place of small winding valleys. I was listening to a collection of Arthur C Clark's stories on audiobook and though I didn't realize the parallel at the time, it was a story about driving around on the mountains of the moon as I drove through this area, and now my memory of driving through this area is inexorably tied to visuals of moon rovers with big tires rumbling over craggy moon ridges.
   After maybe half an hour though I got onto the Five freeway and rocketed up over Tejon pass and down the steep automobile chute called the Grapevine into the broad empty expanse of the central valley.
   No sooner has one reached the valley floor than choose-your-own-adventure style one is confronted with a choice: the 99 or the 5. They'll get you up Sacramento way within minutes of eachother but the 99 goes through more towns and cities. I almost always take the 5 to avoid little mini traffic jams one might encounter in Bakersfield and Modesto. For that matter one can take the 101 which also goes the same route but goes through the foothills to the west of the valley -- it is far more beautiful but will add three hours to your journey -- and if you really have time to kill the 1 goes up the coast and takes forever but is by far the nicest -- if you ever are doing this journey as a tourist not native to California, absolutely go up the 1 and give yourself two or three days at it.

   The southern end of the Central Valley is flat and empty, as one takes the Five it passes an extremely smelly cattle feed lot and the experienced driver instinctively puts the AC on internal circulation before the first wiff of it. Once past it the road skirts the western hills and one can put the AC back on normal. The hills here can be rather picturesque in the right light. On this day they looked like the bristly coat of a freshly shorn golden sheep.
   About halfway on one's journey from So Cal to Nor Cal one comes to the exit for Kettleman City, and one stops here for food and gas. This town is barely more than several gas stations and restaurants just off the offramp. I'm vaguely aware that there are restaurants other than the In-N-Out but the idea that one would go to any of them is absolutely laughable. One goes to In-N-Out. This is the crucial caravanserias of California. This is the fuzzy naval of the state. The two crossed palm trees outside the In-N-Out are the axis upon which the state is balanced. As I turned into the In-N-Out on this occasion I noted that Kettleman City had erected a bizarre little tacky sidestreet of faux western facades. Lord knows what they were thinking when they decided on this.
   I pulled an embarrassing Australianism when I went into In-N-Out here: I rattled off my order like the native I am ("double double animal style no tomato diced chilies, fries and a small drink"), but then, THEN, I blithely waved my credit card in front of the reader like we do in Australia. The guy behind the register looked at me like I was absolutely insane (note for non-Americans, not only is this technology not available in the States, it's beyond even imagination. Someone waving a card in front of a reader must necessary be out of their mind).

   Continuing north up the highway it continues to be most of the same open spaces carpeted with dry grass, dotted with small towns off the highway (one of which is named Los Banos, which I believe is Spanish for "the toilets??"), some of which even also have In-N-Outs by now but Kettleman City is already a deep tradition.
   Eventually the empty grasses give way to orange groves. Shortly after entering the orange groves one sees highway signs advising of "Crows Landing," and then there's a facility with an enormous 30 foot tall fence around it, and every time I drive by it I wonder what it is but forget to look it up by the time I get home, and other people I've talked to who have done the drive say the same thing. Is it a prison? Is it a landfill? The world may never know. I could presumably look it up at this moment but that would violate the purity of my mind being in its original condition. There's traditions to be observed: thou shalt stop at Kettleman City; though shalt not look into what is going on at Crow's Landing.
   Also I always read the sign as more a warning sign to be on the look out for crows that are landing than that there's an actual place called Crows Landing.

   Then the orange groves give way to almond trees. Almonds are the most profitable crop in the central valley, and a few years ago farmers of other crops were pulling out all their apple or orange trees to make way for almonds, but almonds it turns out require a great deal of water, and there is now no more water to go around, so some fields have had their previous crops destroyed only to find they can't get the water to grow almonds. Also almonds are beehive intensive and the rapid expansion led to 70% of the bees in the country being demanded for pollination (or rather, enticed with pollination prices that rapidly rose from $40 / hive to $200). This in turn led to a greater stress on the bees as well as when even then they couldn't entice enough hives to come down, a perception of a bee shortage starting in 2005.

   A few hours north of Kettleman city one comes to another fork in the road. The Five continues to the right to Sacramento and onward to Oregon, Seattle, Vancouver Canada, and possibly onward to the North Pole as far as anyone knows. Okay I actually decided to google this right now, there's a Canadian route 5 that picks up near where the US 5 ends, and that joins the Canadian 16 and if you keep following it it meanders around and eventually seems to end as an obscure dirt "unnamed road" in a forest on a Canadian island. It would perhaps be an interesting roadtrip to follow it to it's very end!! If only I was legally allowed in Canada...
   The left fork on the other hand sends one through the windmill-topped hills into the Bay Area and a network of highways that end in -80 for some reason-- the 280, 580, 680, 880, etc. San Francisco is actually a picturesque city that is very worth visiting as a tourist, and my many friends who settled in the Bay Area seem to love it, but I myself hate traffic and therefore driving into the Bay Area.

   My roadtrip plan had been quite fluid over the previous 24 hours, there were friends I would have liked to see in San Francisco, so I was thinking of going into the Bay Area and ending the day there, and then perhaps making a short hop to the Davis / Sacramento area where I had gone to college. But My San Francisco friends turned out to be busy and my friend way up in Spokane turned out to have a day off on Monday so if I could hurry up and get there on Monday we could hang out all day. My beekeeping friend Doug was also near Spokane with an open invitation for me to come see him. I also sent my friend Maureen in Bellingham way up by the Canadian border an inquiry if she'd like to hang out, though for several years we'd barely been in contact so I wasn't sure if she would be amenable. And Koriander invited me to come sailing on the traditionally rigged sailing vessel Lady Washington, though it was unclear as yet when the most convenient time to do that would be.

   But anyway, here I was now at the fork in the road to take the 580 into the Bay Area or the 5 up to Sacramento and beyond ... and I decided to take The Third Path. The Middle Path, as it were. Since I hate Bay Area traffic, when my friend Nidia informed me in response to whether or not I could visit "sure but we moved out of the Bay Area to Antioch" as if it was a bad thing, I was in fact thrilled.
   Antioch is probably the furthest inland place that I would still consider part of the Bay Area. My first experience of Antioch was by sailing there on the sailing vessel Hawaiian Chieftain (not a sister ship of Lady Washington in that she's not the same design, but maybe a step-sister ship?). After sailing under the Golden Gate in the dark of night we turned North in the bay, several hours later (the boat doesn't go very fast) sailing up channel, under bridges, past the California Maritime Academy and their big training ship, past the mothballed battleships in Suisun Bay, and up river to Antioch, where spiders were blowing in the wind as we furled the sails aloft. The little spiders spun little para-sails of web and there were thousands of them blowing through the rigging on that swarm autumn afternoon. So Antioch conjures up for me memories of these spiders (I'm not arachnophobic so it's just classified as a great natural oddity in my head), as well as the quote from Mony Python and the Holy Grail about the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
   I took the 580 fork but not ten minutes later, before it enters the hills, I found my GPS guiding me off the highway onto smaller roads that zigzagged through small communities among the hills. My favorite part of roadtrips is getting off the main highways, but unfortunately on this one I've had to beat feet on too much of it and spend a great deal of time on the Five. I therefore enjoyed this bit of routing I didn't even have to coax out of my GPS. Apparently the fastest way to get to Nidia and Trevor's house from the south, it nevertheless felt like I was skulking into Antioch through some obscure back way.
   Antioch, it turns out, is more than just a marina blowing with airborne spiders. Nidia and Trevor turned out to live in an area of suburbs that looked exactly like the neighborhood my family lived in when I was in elementary school in Orange County. Stucco houses of seemingly possibly the exact same design as back home sitting on quiet cul-de-sacs.
   Nidia has a master's degree in math, I believe, and finally has a teaching job in a local college (for a long time she was stuck in administrative positions in math departments), and her husband Trevor has and/or is working on a PhD in questionmark something pertaining to either physics and/or microbiology? I'm a bit unclear on it all. And they have a three year old! Named [quick mom what's their daughter named?]! Ii had not met their daughter yet, since I didn't want to impose a visitation upon them in the first year and then I've pretty much been gone for two. Nidia is one of my longest running friends, having met at a Model United Nations conference when we were 15, and despite having never gone to the same school or lived within half an hour of eachother we've been continuously friends ever since.
   That evening we went for a walk, along with the little one, along a nice bike trail behind their house. I was really enjoying how long the sunlight lasts here in the northern hemisphere. Nidia and Trevor are really into board games and have a table permanently set up in their garage next to a bookshelf of board games. Unfortunately it was rather warm with the garage door closed but with it open mosquitoes would come in. Nevertheless I was still relishing these summer-like conditions! We played what I believe is a sort of expansion of the agricultural board game Agricola that involves caves. Perhaps I should have tried regular Agricola first but I was enticed by the idea of cavemen, although it was more dwarf-themed as it turns out. Ah well. Live and learn.

   Altogether it was delightful catching up with these dear friends. Like some kind of cave dwarf, I happily crawled into bed that night on an air mattress in their living room and their cat came and snuggled up somewhere nearby.

Up next, I get off the five and take the scenic route to Eugene, Oregon!

Friday, May 19th - The first leg of my journey north was a short hop past Los Angeles. It should be noted that "a short hop past Los Angeles" is my preferred method of dealing with Los Angeles. One of the biggest misconceptions I find foreigners have about the United States is that they've been falsely lead to believe Los Angeles is a delightful place. This is because Hollywood is in LA, and all the Hollywood types live in the good parts of LA with heaps of money and think its just wonderful and portray it so in their movies. But if you don't have more money than you know what to do with and spend your time at swanky parties in the hills, its an ugly traffic-snarled place where nothing is anywhere near walking distance to anything else. Sure there's cool things in the city, the Getty Museums, the La Brea Tar Pits, the giant botanical garden of Huntington Gardens the Museum of Jurassic Technology, but you've generally gotta slog for an hour through traffic at any time of the day to get from any one of those places to any other.
   And so it was we began in a two car caravan slogging through LA traffic -- my parents would return home from Camarillo in one car and I would keep going north in the other. I was in "the ravioli," mom's Rav4, with her, and dad was in his prius, though by being on the phone with us the whole way, piped through the dash system, it was like he was there the whole time, a disembodied voice. We were on our way to my mom's dad's place ("Roger," as he is known to one and all) for his 90th birthday. We popped into a Carl's Jr drive-through for food, where the Western Bacon Cheeseburger was on my to-do list .. and only after we were already on the road again did I discover they'd given me merely an ordinary cheeseburger, which was an educational experience for me since I'd never had their ordinary cheeseburger and, lo, verily, it is a miserable wretched excuse for a burger!
   Northwest of Los Angeles County is Ventura County, a rather pleasant swath of primarily coastal agricultural land between the sea and foothills. The traffic lasted all the way to the turnoff for my grandfather's house though. My grandfather's house is in the hills of Camarillo and is full of memories, as grandparents' houses often are. The back yard has a nice quarter acre or so of lawn that is quite pleasant on a warm sunny day such as this was, and is largely shaded by a big brazilian pepper tree under which my parents got married (though of course I wasn't present for this). The lawn looks off across a gully to where a single hacienda dominates the opposite hill. Slightly lower than the lawn there is a chicken coop and my grandfather's workshop, which is filled with all manner of big tools, circumnavigated by a model train track, and also contains a very large telescope and is topped with a big dome to accommodate said telescope.
   As to the house, it used to be chalk full of my grandmother's beautiful paintings. But alas she passed away, just over ten years ago now I believe. My grandfather remarried and his new wife cleared out all the paintings, all the family photos, and one day I came to find the fridge was covered not in photos of all the grandchildren and family members, but just one photo of Nora herself. But anyway.
   There's still Roger's bookshelf, full of thick dignified old books on locomotives, engineering, and old naval stuff ... the latter being the subject I most enjoy perusing.

   Another thing I often leave out of travelogues but find are interesting when looking back on them much later is the context of news at the time. On this day President Trump had just arrived in Saudi Arabia on his first trip abroad and I was finding myself reloading newsfeeds hourly for the latest hilarious / mortifying news. Of particular note this day, Trump was pictured with the Saudi and Egyptian leaders all with their hands on a glowing orb as if they were definitely summoning some evil power. That evening the whole family made a point to catch the nightly news to hear the latest political drama, which has never ever been a thing we did when visiting before. Aside from Trump summoning evil powers in Saudi Arabia, back in Washington a special prosecutor had recently been appointed to investigate the firing of FBI Director Comey and possible Russian collusion by the Trump administration. As the whole family gave its rapt attention to the TV I wondered if this was what it was like to live through Watergate.

   The next morning some of us were leaving, though still others, such as my older brother Tobin, were still on their way. Nora's health was poor so it was intentionally arranged to not have too many people over at once. Since Tobin oozes self satisfaction and a wheedling need for attention I made my exit before he arrived.
   The sky was blue, the air was warm, and I was on the road alone in a very fuel efficient car with thousands of miles ahead of me!

Wednesday, May 17th - The sky was blue, the weather warm -- in the 80s, which the people back in my other home call a hot day, but here we rightly know this is just delightful weather.
   There was just one problem -- I wanted to make the most of my brief return home --which is to say home home-- but all my friends had this thing called "work" during the day. I couldn't spend three weeks bumming around my parents house, that would surely fall well short of living life to the utmost, and there's no excuse for that. I tried to at least make evening plans with my friend Amber but she said the weekend would be better. I started plotting; I had friends all up and down the West Coast. "Mind if I stop by on Saturday evening?" I said to my friend up by the San Francisco Bay, "Mind if I come by Sunday?" I said to my friend in southern Oregon. "Hey what if I were to visit you on Monday?" I said to my friend in Spokane, Eastern Washington. The messages went out, the responses came back. The plan was coming together! Naturally some people were only available on some days and the plan kept changing, but that's the fun way to travel!
   And of course I needed a noble steed! Fortunately my dad retired just the other month and suuurely he can live without his prius (the gas mileage! the gas mileage!) for a few days. He graciously lent me its use with only a little grumbling.

   But there were still days to kill, since I had to be at my grandfather's 90th birthday party in Southern California that Friday, the 19th. As it happens, this girl I had matched on Tinder when I randomly had set my location to Israel on a whim (okay not 100% random, I was reasoning that Israeli girls are generally gorgeous. Though on this bizarre tangent, after randomly setting tinder to numerous different locations I think I scientifically concluded that Iceland really does have the highest concentration of beautiful women (and with names like Sigurbjörg, Valgerður, Hrafnhilder, and Sigríður (that last one is apparently the #3 most common name in Iceland!)) happened to message me on this very day saying she had just arrived in San Diego (no Icelandic name here, just Rechela). It wouldn't have been a terribly high priority for me to drive an hour to hang out with someone I'd never met before except all my friends were busy during the day, and I had been (vaguely) in touch with her for about a year. Also I wanted to go to the Stone Brewery down San Diego way though as luck would have it that didn't end up fitting in.

Thursday, May 18th - So on this fine Thursday morning I set off south for San Diego. I've reflected that one doesn't write about what one finds mundane, which is why to read about a place one must read travelogues by visiting strangers, rather than the reports of locals. So as I made this roadtrip, listening via audiobook to the epic travelogues of my favorite author, Paul Theroux, it occurred to me that I shouldn't just fast forward through that which is familiar to me as would be my instinct.
   And so let me tell you about this drive. Mission Viejo, my starting point, is a morass of "upper middle class" suburbs, part of some ill advised city planning idea in the eighties of "oh wouldn't it be great to create a city with no center," ... and verily it is not great, it is soul-less to have a city with no center. Just meandering homogenous suburbs one could get quite lost amongst.
   Fortunately that great artery of California transportation, the vehicular Mississippi of the west, The Five, runs through to demarcate the otherwise indistinguishable border with the "city" of "Aliso Viejo." Once on The 5 one can settle in, turn off the GPS navigation, and the currents will take you inexorably to San Diego and, if you miss the exit there, possibly on into Mexico by accident.
   During your first ten minutes the freeway takes you in broad sweeping motions towards the sea -- the seemingly impossibly high concrete overpass of the 74 toll-road comes swooping right out of the sky to join the freeway, and under it the golden beacon of an In-N-Out burger sign is bound to make the driver salivate for at least a moment. But barely has one shaken visions of delicious and highly affordable In-N-Out burgers out of one's head than there is the sea sparkling in the sun ahead.
   From here the freeway parallels the coast through the suburban city of San Clemente (which does have a main street, being incorporated before city planners were completely daft), and then suddenly one crosses a bridge over a gully that leads to the famous surf beach of "Trestles," which I regrettably have never been to (but it's seemingly constantly threatened, "save trestles!" having been a refrain I've heard all my life) and with jarring suddeness there's no more suburbs at all, just open space -- grassy foothills on the left and blufftops looking down at cliffs and the sea to the right. This is Camp Pendleton Marine Base, which is as big as all of Orange County and kind of accidentally an important natural preserve since most of it is reserved for occasionally dropping bombs on. Often on the sides of the road one can glimpse very exciting military training operations in progress, helicoptors landing troops, harriers taking off (back when they were a thing), tanks rumbling around. At the far end of the base there's a military hovercraft base but it has high walls around it to prevent peeking.

   But first at this near end there's another important landmark -- the "giant D cups" of San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, rising up like, well, yeah. Now recently decomissioned but still concretely dominating the grassy landscape like giant mammery monuments. Ozymandias, look upon my works ye mighty and be titilated.

   The freeway stretches on in more or less a straight line paralleling the sea, with, here's something that seems so mundane to me as someone who's seen it all my life that I'd almost not mention it but I've heard other visitors remark on it -- there's signs all along the highway with pictures of a ragged refugee-looking family crossing the highway, and amusingly sometimes they're going one way and sometimes the other. This is of course in reference to migrants-of-questionable-legality who may have crept across the mexico border and at this point can apparently be found crisscrossing the highway willy nilly. I have never actually seen any doing this.
   On the northbound lanes there's an actual checkpoint where you sometimes have to stop and immigration officers peer into your window and I assume make a snap decision as to whether you're white enough or not. But for really I'm assuming all this business is here because with the Marine base stretching for miles and miles inland any migrants would indeed be funnelled along the highway here.

   South of the marine base suburban looking towns begin appearing again first in the coves and valleys and closer to the city itself one can see track housing draped all over the hills again. Also the traffic gets noticably more viscuous. And then suddenly one comes upon the cluster of highrises that is downtown San Diego, just past the Sea World signs and first seen across the international airport in the foreground (I think there's few major cities whose major airport is as snuggled up to downtown as in San Diego).
   Rechela had communicated to me to meet her downtown. Which I later found out was merely because she thought that would be more convenient, whereas in actual fact I had to circle around for 20 minutes before finding a parking space in expensive metered parking, and later find out her actual hotel is in a less busy part of the city where I could have easily parked, oh well.
   Having met a few girls from tinder in my time, I've come to expect them to look somehwere between 50%-60% as attractive as they do in their pictures, if not 30%, so I almost didn't recognize her when I was first across the street from her because she was actually fairly attractive -- a tumble of curly hair down to her waist, denim skirt, those giant bug eyed sunglasses that I actually hate. Though I'll note from the beginning I wasn't looking at this as a "date" so much as meeting up with a penpal. We strolled around the Gaslamp District a bit, which I hadn't really done much before this. It's got that old timey look of, well, an era when cities were lit with gas-lamps. Lots of restaurants and bars opening on to the street and boutique stores, but not hideously pretentious expensive ones like in Los Angeles. This is what I like about San Diego, it's altogether pretty chill. It doesn't assume you have to be rich to have a good time. I went in a hat shop but none of the hats were as nice as the akubra on my head.
   Presently Rechela and I went into a Mexican place for lunch -- I've been thoroughly Mexican-deprived in Australia so I was extremely eager for this. For some reason the waiter, an elderly hispanic man with a gentlemanly mustache, seemed to be thoroughly ignoring us for the first half-hour, and I was relishing the opportunity to give him a poor tip (we don't tip in Australia so you have no satisfaction against poor service!), though in the end my icy heart warmed, especially when, after she just said "um, the chicken?" and I was about to direct her to the actual menu options, he put his hand on my shoulder and winked knowingly, and brought her a chicken burrito after all.

   After this we visited my old friend the clipper ship Star of India and while a docent explained basic sailing ship stuff to us I smiled and nodded and didn't bother letting on that yes yes I know all this. If this was to be a truly thorough travelogue I could fill in many paragraphs about the ships but I've written and will write plenty about sailing ships so we will indeed kind of fast forward here.
   Next we proceeded to Old Town, which I've always been rather fond of. It's about the size of a block, located just outside of the downtown area, and is a recreation of how the city would have looked in the mid 19th century or so -- adobe buildings of an extremely Spanish/Mexican style, staff in period attire, lots of good mexican restaurants with the smell of fresh tortillas being made wafting deliciously out their windows. I remember having cactus candy here when I was young.
   Much to my great alarm, barely had we entered when a staffmember in a dapper hat said to me "now where's that accent from?"
   "Guess?" I said, curious what he would say. And here's the truly alarming part. Without hesitation, and with great confidence, he declares:
   "Australia!"
   Later I polled two more staffmembers in the same manner and got more or less the same answer.
   I saw a sign pointing to the "Blacksmith" and down that way a bunch of people seemed to be paying rapt attention to whatever was afoot, so "hey let's go over there maybe there's a blacksmithing demonstration" I said to Rechela. Arriving there though we found that while the forge was lit and the guy in the leather apron may have recently been working on something, for the whole several minutes we were in attendance he was holding forth to a young man about the blacksmithing facebook groups he should join and follow if he wants to get into it. Blacksmithing in the modern age! We crept off after he showed no sign of imminently hitting heated metal with any hammers of any kind.
   We went into a "native american jewelry" shop because I wanted to show Rechela some native american art. Making conversation with the (Danish ... possibly named something like Sigríður??) woman in there I commented that it looked like the barrel outside was melting, as its hoops had come loose and the whole thing had shifted in a way that made it look like it was indeed melting.
   "Haha yeah and I think bees are moving into it" she responded. Oh really, I had to go out and have a look, and she followed me out. I didn't see anything, but
   "they were going in and out every few minutes earlier," she said, "maybe they're just scouting." Which was a remarkably accurate prognosis, exhibiting a degree of bee knowledge beyond most random people, and she said it in a casual way that was neither showing off her bee knowledge (as some people are wont to do) and yet presupposed I too would know what she was talking about.
   "Well yes, it's swarming season and this would be a perfect place for them," I said, eyeing the barrel, and she nodded as if she thought so too. And that was that. I just thought it was very odd that we just randomly entered into this conversation about bees as if we had already established we were both beekeepers or something. I never did find out if she had any background in beekeeping.

   And then it was time to go. I dropped off Rechela at her much-easier-to-get-to hotel and retraced my steps back north. Arriving just in time to change and join my parents on a journey up about thiry minutes further north to the top end of Orange County, where my younger brother's fiancee (to be married in two weeks at the end of my trip) had just graduated optometry school. There was a festive dinner at a japanese restaurant with many of her relatives, and other than that it was a thing that happened not really central to my travelogue, so I'll end it here and continue next time with the beginning of the journey north!

Current Music: Tom Petty - Down South

Thursday, July 30th,
Labe, 0700 - Ibro, Damba, Daniel, driver Mamadou and I got started bright and early on our trip back to the capitol, leaving the hotel promptly at 7. Monica had gone back to the village she's posted to the day before to pack for her upcoming trip to the Peace Corps training village near Conakry (to welcome a new group of volunteers), and had told me she'd be waiting by "the orange sign" by the road junction to Doumba -- which I knew well because last year's project had been in Doumba. She estimated it would take us about 45 minutes to get there. Also I only realized in the morning that while Monica and I had come up with this plan we hadn't really shared it with the others apparently, so it was news to Ibro we were giving Monica a ride.
   The morning was clear and quiet as we sped down the road past the lsat buildings of Labe, over a small river, past foliage and bush ... and twenty minutes later we were rocketing through the Doumba junction. "wait wait wait!" I exclaimed, "we're supposed to meet Monica here!" I made them turn around and go back but they were very doubtful she would be there, saying it was nowhere near Sintali, where she's posted, and after one return pass we were on our way, me wishing I had had Monica tell the plan to one of them so they'd have had a clearer understanding of it.
   Continuing to text with Monica via whatsapp we established she might actually have meant a different junction that also leads to Doumba and we got there closer to the predeicted 45 minute travel time. She wasn't there, and we were just about to go continue on to the nearby town of Pita for breakfast and then come back when I saw her coming up the side road in a taxi. So she joined us, and now with six people we were a spot crowded. But hey, I think we counted 13 (THIRTEEN) people in one of the local taxis (a regular sedan style car, with three people in the front, four in the backseat, two more behind the back seat, and four people actually riding on top). Apparently Conakry has no bus system, so to get from Labe to the capitol as a local your only option is to pile into one of these overcrowded taxis for the 350km trip, and breakdowns are the norm.
   Stopped in at a little shop for breakfast. We were after omelettes but the guy "didn't have eggs," which was kind of a mystery since there were literally people selling eggs all around us. We discussed the oddity of that people in Guinea will often decide they "don't do" some type of business, like buy or sell eggs, and no matter how much business sense it makes can't be budged. Or if you buy a coke or something and it comes in a glass bottle you can't leave the shop with it because they get cash back for the glass bottle -- which is good that they're all about recycling but annoying you have to finish your drink there. So you offer to pay them more so you can take away the glass bottle and sometimes they might go for it, but sometimes they might insist that no you simply cannot take the glass bottle away from their premises no matter how much you offer.

Mamou, 1400 - After several hours of winding through the green mountains of Guinea we came to the town of Mamou and dropped Damba off at his house, tucked into a backstreet of Mamou. A gaggle of little girls (nieces?) ran up to hug his leg as soon as they say him. From there we proceeded just to the edge of town to where the college of forestry is tucked away in a way that somehow makes it feel like you're not near a large town at all but just in a secluded grove. Here we found another landcruiser identical to ours, with the Organization's logo, waiting. We had met up with another project and Ibro would be hopping from us to them. The American volunteer in this case was an old professor with spectacles, working on some kind of occupational survey. After a short chat with them we were off! Now with only four in the car: Daniel, Monica, myself and the driver.

The ENATEF school of Forestry in 2014

Kindia, 1600 - On our way to Kindia we passed a police checkpoint where they made our driver show them all his papers and even unload all the luggage in the back so they could confirm there was a fire extinguisher there. Meanwhile their rigorous safety inspecting didn't seem to apply to the taxis puttering by with piles of people on the roof. The driver grumbled that really they knew NGOs like us are always in complaince but were hoping we'd bribe them to get out of the hassle.
   A few hours later (these times are very approximate) we came to the town of Kindia and stopped for lunch. Just past Kinda there was a waterfall called the Eaux de Khaleesi -- "the waters of Khaleesi." Another volunteer last year had reported it was awesome so I had insisted we plan on stopping there. Just prior to the waterfall we made a stop, the driver announced his wife had come up here for her sister's graduation and so we'd be picking her up to take her back to Conakry. So we stopped by some buildings by the side of the road and picked her up, and let me tell you, I think she was one of the most gorgeous women I'd seen in all of Guinea. And she didn't speak any English but she seemed sweet. She works as a nurse. Driver Mamadou has definitely done alright for himself!
   It was just a short drive off the main road. At the location itself a nice looking little hotel was under construction, a number of bungalows seemed complete. We paid an entry fee of about a dollar a person and a guide with a hard hat took us down the trail. Despite the development of the site the first area we were led to had an entirely broken bridge we had to cross very precariously walking on just two planks. There was a fair bit of water crashing over a short falls here but I was kind of thinking "this is NOT as cool as the other volunteer had made it sound like" and was pondering whether we had time for me to drag the group to the "Wedding Veil Falls" I had visited previously -- I was still in kind of host mode trying to show Daniel the best parts of Guinea, and Monica as well hadn't been to the waterfalls. But then the guide announced "and now for the main suite!" and led us across a meadow to a locked gate. Unlocking it, he led us down a series of steps curving down amongst big mossy trees. Mamadou (driver)'s wife continued along with us even though she was wearing high heels! At the bottom of the steps the trail continued meandering maybe 100 feet along the gnarled roots and frequent little streams of water and then reached a small waterfall comign from a cliff high above and slippery rocks. Continuing along the base of the cliff we approached a growing roar and finally came to a large pool where a truly huge waterfall was falling. There was a wooden boardwalk positioned opposite the waterfall but the water level was unusually high and we'd have to wade to get to it ... which Monica, the tour guide, and I did. Because the boardwalk was exposed to constant mist the steps leading up to it were green with algae and so slimy I could get literally not traction at all -- I had to maintain three solid points of contact and have my foot up against a crack or something, practically crawling up the boardwalk. Once in the middle there was a dry space and now directly across from the waterfall we could appreciate that this was indeed an epic waterfall.

Conakry, 1800 - on the edge of town we came by the driver's house and dropped off his wife, and his two young children came running out to give him a hug. Then we continued on slogging through rush hour traffic. Conakry is a long peninsula and our hotel was at the far end of it. We could have been home in maybe half an hour if there was no traffic but instead the hours stretched on one after the other. At one point we watched a pick up truck practically DISAPPEAR into a pothole, that was pretty alarming. That thing had to be three to four feet deep and the size of a car, the unsuspecting pickup go one wheel in and went over, half in the hole with the bottom of its chassis resting on the edge of the pothole and its wheels spinning in contact with nothing.

Conakry, 2100 - On a quiet street just blocks from our hotel we came across a barricade across half the street that said "HALT" on it. The driver stopped and looked around. There didn't seem to be anyone around, there were cars driving on the other side, and this was the way he wanted to go. So after a minute or two of thinking about it he proceeded past it. Immediately there was a whistle and he stopped as a soldier came to the window and started yelling at him. Then the soldier asked to see the car's paperwork, and inspect our luggage. The driver was visibly grumpy with all this, and things seemed to escalate between him and the soldiers. Daniel says he saw a soldier slap him, and the driver later reported he could smell alcohol on their breath ... which is really scandalous in a muslim country where no one EVER drinks.
   We were hoping it would blow over but they took him into custody, making him sit on the bench with them, and continued to argue with him. I distinctly heard the words "500,000," presumably they were trying to get a $50 bribe from him. One of the soldiers talked to me in a friendly manner trying to say in very broken English that there wouldn't have been a problem except that the driver is being so argumentative. I'm sure he was hoping that by playing the good cop in a sort of "good cop bad cop" routine maybe I'd offer to give him some money to make up for my driver's argumentativeness and it would all go away. Daniel and I were told we were free to go, and I kind of suspected if we left they might release Mamadou since their hopes of a bribe would be over, but I also couldn't just walk away and leave him there. I intentionally didn't let on to the guards that I could speak any French at all, because if they can't negotiate with you they can't ask for a bribe. My phone wasn't working, reception is terrible in Conakry, but Daniel called Ibro, who called up the pipeline to USAID, which called up the pipeline to the US Embassy, whom I talked to briefly, and then they called someone in the Guinean military who called the garrison commander who called the unit captain... after awhile a person with military bearing but looking like he had just been called out of bed emerged from the darkness and addressed the soldiers in a posture of parade rest with his hands behind his back. His tone was not angry or chastising, just kind of "these are announcements" and the soldiers listened attentively. They all saluted and the man disappeared into the darkness. Shortly later, Mamadou was released and we continued on our way.
   In related news, Daniel mentioned that when he first arrived Ibro had told him "there's a police station down the block this way ... avoid it if you want to avoid trouble."

   And just ten minutes later we were at our hotel finally!

   Up next, the epic 89 hour trip home, complete with cancelled flights, being stranded in strange new African cities, violent bouts of puking, and maybe even a little romance!

   This morning I finally got through to the Victorian Apiarist Association (VAA) -- the beekeeping club of the state of Victoria. I'd been calling them between two and four times a day for the last week because their annual conventions begins, well, tonight. They don't exactly have _any_ information about the convention on their website or anywhere on the great wide internet. Apparently it was in their newsletter, which I don't get since I'm not a member yet. My only lead had been that I'd gotten the date from the Geelong Beekeeper's Association newsletter, but they said to see the VAA newsletter for details. So all I had was the date.
   And I can tell you I was getting increasingly concerned as by this morning was pretty much the "eleventh hour." And granted the voicemail on their phone line does mention that the phone is only answered on a part time basis but boy had I been trying to get ahold of them.
   Anyway, so they finally answered and told me the town and hotel it would be in and that I could indeed register on arrival. Turns out the convention was in Wangaratta, at the other end of Victoria, four hours drive away!

   So I finished up making frames around noon, told Cato to hold down the fort for a few days, went home, threw a bunch of clothes OUT of my suitcase (it was all in my suitcase still since I just moved in the other day), and I was off!!

   Now this is certainly the most memorable thing to happen during the drive. I look in my rearview mirror and see nothing but the bull-bars and grill of a big rig right on my ass. So when I get a chance I merge into the lane to my left, the slow lane.
   But then I watch as this truck gets right up behind the next car, until it gets out of the way. And then it does it to the next. I'm talking literally half a car length, which is closer than you should get in a small car much less a giant truck. AND keep in mind that none of these cars were slow-poking it, myself and them were all going almost exactly 100 kph, the speed limit.

   Soo notwithstanding my earlier post about driving, there ARE apparently _some_ asshole drivers in Australia.

   Traffic was annoying as I passed Melbourne on the outer ring roads but then once I was out of town on the "Hume Highway" headed north it was less trafficky. The weather was off and on drizzle, but the road was pretty straight, and the scenery on either side was cow pastures and sort of sporadic tree cover. It was weird to realize I'd apparently already been this way, on a random roadtrip I went on with a friend earlier.

   Australia has some great funny place names, and when a sign came by announcing the next two towns to be "Violet City," and "Dookie" I grabbed for my phone to take a picture of the sign for y'all, but was far too slow.

   Unfortunately it was getting dark by the time I pulled in to Wangaratta, but it was about six and the initial social evening event didn't begin till 7:30. so I walked down the street to find dinner. Happened upon an indian place which sounded good. I was the only one there when I walked in which was a bit alarming but it later got quite a few more people in. The dining room was cozy and being the first one tehre I got to snag the table just beside the brick fireplace that had actual logs crackling in it, which was just delightful.
   And then when my food came (some kind of chicken stewed with fenugreek and garlic naan, and lassi to drink), omg it was to die for. Possibly the best indian I've ever had, including that place in Addis Ababa I've been raving about for years. If you're even in Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia, I highly recommend Tandoori Paradise!!!
   Spent ten minutes trying unsuccessfully to log in to yelp to give them a rave review (at the end of a tedious registration process it told me my email was already registered, but didn't like any of my usual passwords paired with that email address) and eventually threw up my hands and gave up on being a good yelp contributing citizen.

   Once the social evening began I determined there were probably about 100 people there. As usual they were mostly old stodgers and I could quite possibly have been the youngest person in the room. The few people I talked to often led off with "so you're getting into bees are ya?" which I thought was funny.

   Anyway, the conference proper begins in the morning, I'm looking forward to seeing how the Victorian Apiarists hold a convention! (:

Current Location: Wangaratta, Vic

   I have found driving in Australia to be fundamentally somewhat different from driving in California. Beyond the obvious driving on the left side of the road thing.

   In California, on highways with two or more lanes in each direction, such as The Five (California's main North-South artery) for most of its length, on paper the fast (left) lane is for passing only. I hear in other states they actually enforce this and people abide it and I assume all aspects of life are therefore better in these states and people wake up with a smile plastered to their face every day as a consequence. However, that is not the case in California. In California people get in the "fast" lane and sit there. Even if they are going the speed limit or even less. They expect slower moving cars in front of them to move to the slow lane to let them by and generally enforce this by tailgating, honking, light flashing, and/or generally being obnoxious and probably swearing a lot in the confines of their own car for the assumed benefit of their target. Long queus of cars form in the fast lane when someone won't move over, possibly because said front car driver is saying to himself "well I'm going the speed limit gosh dang it so I'm not getting out of the way."
   And that's another thing. The speed limit. Even on paper the speed limit is basically a suggestion, though I don't think they explicitly say you can go faster. Generally on the 5 the flow of traffic is around 80mph even when the speed limit is 65. But because everyone has a different interpretation of how much leeway they have, you are always passing and being passed.

   Now in contrast, in Australia the speed limit seems to be almost always 100kph, aka 62mph in the One True System. This speed seems a bit slow on the highways, and crazy fast on the narrow two lane farm roads winding through the gum forest. And on those narrow farm roads people generally DO go zipping around at 62mph, which frankly terrifies me. But on the major highways... people STILL go exactly 100kph. You see, the thing is, in Australia they apparently enforce a strict interpretation of their speed limits. I've heard of people getting ticketed for going 102. So everyone gets on the road, and get up to exactly 100 and sits there right on it. As a result, you aren't passed nor do you pass anyone else generally once you get going, the cars just move along the highway in line like they're on a conveyor belt.

   And generally everyone does stay in the slow lane util they're passing, but I found another thing happening. I am often turning on to the highway from small farm roads, so I need to quickly accelerate to 100 as cars are zipping by. So as not to impede everyone else, I found myself moving immediately to the fast lane (which I started doing after seeing other people doing it), until I get to 100 and THEN I move into the slow lane and move along with everyone else. I think other people do this too. Weird how the de facto use of lanes doesn't stay as intended.

   Holy cannoli, that last entry, the one about rants, was NOT supposed to be posted here. It has been relocated and please pretend you never saw it. It was meant for my other blog, the one that dwarfs this one with 402 friends-of and many many many more comments per entry.

   Anyway, last week I was in Davis, Lake Tahoe, Davis, Berkeley, and Merced. I meant to post a more thorough reporting of my misadventures, but at the present moment I only have an hour to pack before I leave for Atlanta.

   Some highlights however:

   Sunday (the 9th) I had Sunday Brunch with Allan Rae & friends at the Capital Garage in Sacramento (unlimited mimosas!) it was awesome. Then we decided to go look for the underground tunnels in Sacramento ... but couldn't find them. )=

   Tuesday through Thursday was the beekeeping convention in Lake Tahoe. I learned enumerable interesting things. Hung out with the researchers mainly. Was really neat to be having dinner with the researchers you'd been reading about for more than a year.

   Friday I met with members of the new ASUCD Supreme Court. Looks like things fell apart and they're trying to stick it back together again d=
   The weather in Davis Friday night was absolutely wonderful. Nice and crisp but not too cold at all (was fine wearing a t-shirt). Then I headed down to Berkeley that night.

   Saturday I hung out with my friend Nidia in Berkeley. Trotted around Telegraph, ate at Top Dog. That evening we BBQed on her back porch (so I had hot dogs for two meals that day, SCORE!). Later we watched the movie Seeing Other People, which was pretty funny, and then while she and her boyfriend were studying I watched The Graduate (which I heretofor hadn't seen) and Bitter Harvest. When I get half a chance remind me to do my usual movie reviews for these films.

   Sunday I drove down to Merced and met with a member of the ASUC Merced Supreme Court and talked about the numerous issues facing them as a new court in a new government in a new school. Sounds like their ASUCM Senate is more hostile to their court than even the ASUCD Senate was!! O= Such sauce.
   So of course I taught him jedi tricks. Like Yoda putting Luke through the paces in Empire Strikes Back. Jk.

   Eventually I arrived home. The end.

Unrelated Technical Problem: Whenever I post the post form detects a date/time exactly eight hours later than what is correct. My computer is set to my correct timezone however, and when I access my account from a different computer it uses the correct time... so I can only imagine there's some kind of weird miscommunication between my comptuer and LJ?

Car overheating on the grapevine. Coolant reservoir only barely below min line. Here we go again :-P

Brought the car to the shop this morning to make sure it wasn't about to explode.

Turns out it was. Will be at the mechanic till around noon.

Now our local mechanic.. its a special place. If you go in, you should pretty much expect to receive a serious sassing. Or this morning I had a long "is he ignoring me? ... this is awkward" moment but he was just thinking or looking stuff up and suddenly had answers for all my questions. Usually its more of just friendly teasing or a sparring of wits though.

This "Worst Service Ever" review really cracks me up. I can certainly understand that customers shock and frustration, but once you get used to how things are its endearing. And we trust him, and I'd much rather get sassed than have a shady mechanic trying to pull things on me.

So yeah my car is there until noon. It wasn't really about to blow up, but they gave me a loaner pickup that I think IS about to blow up. Good thing I only needed to drive down the block and back.

Picture of the Day

Drone bees, the only males in the hive, are slightly bigger than workers and can be best distinguished by their huge googly eyes. It looks like they're wearing those god-aweful huge sunglasses girls like to wear, you know the ones that can make any girl look not-attractive? Anyway, there are three obvious drones in this picture. See if you can spot them!

Current Location: still in Mission Viejo, CA d=

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The Agrinautica

Tales of a Beekeeper Errant

Entries tagged with automobile travel

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Mission to Nowhere!

Weekend Out East 2021 Part II

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Journey up the 395! Part 1

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Taking a Leap: Bellingham to Newport

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The Scenic Route to Eugene

To Antioch!

First Leg: Skipping Over LA

But Before We Go North, We Go South!

Guinea 2016 Part 3 - Roadtrip Guinea!

06 of 30 - Bound for Wangaratta!

02 of 30 - Driving in Australia vs California, a Comparative Analysis

Touch and Go

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A Fitting Start