california: september 30-october 2, 2011

Posted in california on October 20th, 2011 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, ocean, orange county

We left Minneapolis for LA at 5:30, which meant we arrived there just in time to see a pretty spectacular sunset in the valley.

 
We picked up the car and attempted to stop at In and Out Burger by the airport, but there were one million people in line. So we got right on the road to Costa Mesa instead; Matt’s conference was there the next day, so we were spending the weekend in Orange County.

Matt researched restaurants in the area while I drove. We weren’t arriving til around 9:30pm, and most places looked like they closed by 11. He finally found a place called Taco Asylum that looked great, so we headed to something called The Camp to find it. We quickly discovered that the place was mobbed, and people were circling for parking. I was tired and hungry and didn’t want to deal with it, so we decided to look elsewhere. After driving for a bit, though, we realized that was pretty much the only area with food open. We managed to find a spot, thankfully.

I was very glad we ended up there, because it was fantastic. The server told us that if we waited for 5 more minutes it was taco happy hour, so we grabbed a couple of Maui Brewing Coconut Porters and hung out. She came to take our order, and we each got three of them. I got one with wild mushrooms and two with curry and paneer, which were so good I wanted to marry them. (Sorry, Matt.)

After dinner, we swung by the liquor store for some beer for the hotel, since we didn’t want to be out too late. We went and checked in at the Ayers Hotel, guaranteeing that the Flo Rida ‘In the Ayer’ song would be stuck in my head permanently. We hung out on the couch for a bit, then went to bed.

We partook in the breakfast buffet at the Ayer-ay-ayer-ayers hotel, then met Matt’s coworker and his wife. We checked out and then I drove them to the college where the seminar was being held, after getting lost on the way there. Then I hopped on the 405 and headed south!

 
San Juan Capistrano is one of my favorite places in California. I’ve been there multiple times, and it still amazes me.

 
I got there shortly after it opened, and there were already several other people there, all of them with giant expensive cameras. It’s that kind of place.

 
After wandering around the mission for a while, I decided to drive down to the coast and then head up highway 1. I’ve driven large portions of that highway before, but most of it was north of LA. Plus any day I can drive along the ocean with the windows down is a pretty excellent one.

 
Orange County was pretty entertaining. It’s all gigantic, gorgeous houses in highly secure gated communities. Who exactly is breaking in there? My theory was that it was to keep the mere millionaire rabble out.

I parked in Laguna Beach (which was super-cute) and walked down to the ocean to get my feet wet. I had to, since that meant I was in the Atlantic and Pacific within a week’s time! I then sat on the boardwalk for a while, enjoying the sun.

 
I headed slowly back up through Newport and Huntington Beach, which we’d visited on the previous trip. I then turned back and drove inland to Costa Mesa, because I was meeting April and Jonathan for lunch at Eat Chow. It took me forever to find it, but it was worth it!

From there, I decided to go to Anaheim, mostly because I’m the kind of nerd who likes seeing other cities’ sports arenas. Google Maps led me astray so I went about 20 miles out of the way, but I got to see the mountains, at least. Once I was on the right highway, finding Angels’ Stadium was easy. I drove around that area for a while, then went to see Honda Arena, where the Anaheim Ducks play. (Blink-182′s tour buses were outside. Haha.)

I still had some time to kill before Matt was done, so I decided to go check into the hotel and get the keys. I headed back up the 405 to Seal Beach, circled the marina (which I loved), and found our cute little hotel in town. Our room opened out on the pool, though we wouldn’t have time to use it. I stayed there long enough to use the bathroom, and headed back to get Matt in Costa Mesa.

We stopped for food at In and Out Burger (did you know they have an awesome grilled cheese? It’s basically a cheeseburger without the meat, but it’s delicious), then ran to Hi Time, the liquor store with EVERYTHING. The power was out when we walked in, but that wasn’t stopping them from selling: everyone was just walking around with flashlights. We found a few bottles of rum with my phone’s flashlight app (it’s surprisingly handy!), then got in line at the counter. Since their inventory system wasn’t working, either, the employees were running back and forth to the shelves to check prices, then telling us to remember them and tell the cashier. Their resourcefulness was pretty impressive!

After that, it was time to go to Huntington Beach for happy hour at Don the Beachcomber. (I don’t think they had actual discounts then, but any hour you spend there is happy.) We soaked up the tiki ambiance for a while, then went to the hotel. We hauled our bags in, Matt changed clothes, and we headed out on foot toward downtown Seal Beach, just a few blocks away. Our destination was 320 Main.

 
We had great food (I hadn’t expected many options at what’s really a steakhouse), and the cocktails were as good as we expected. Plus we got to sit out on the patio only a few blocks from the beach. We unfortunately couldn’t stay all night, but we had places to be the next day.

We walked down to the beach so that Matt could also put his feet in the Pacific. The surf was glowing an electric blue color, and we kept trying to figure out where the weird reflection was coming from. It took us forever to realized it had to be the water itself that was glowing with bioluminescence. I couldn’t believe how bright it was, especially on bigger waves. (We didn’t know til we got home that we were seeing red tide. I assumed that meant it glowed red!)

Sunday morning, we got up, checked out, and headed up the 405 to Santa Monica. We’d been trying to get to Real Food Daily for three trips, and it was finally going to happen. We even got to Santa Monica before it opened, so we had some time to wander around.

 
After brunch, we walked down toward Santa Monica pier. For the first time ever, it was actually sunny while we were there! And just like the previous visit, I got a text saying that our flight was delayed. Go figure.

 
We walked around the pier for a while, then decided to go have a beer and people-watch. That was pretty fantastic, and we discovered the existence of the Primo Bombucha! We decided to just stay there and have lunch, and finally it was time to get ourselves back to the airport.

 
On the flight home, we got to watch the Minnesota Lynx win the WNBA championship on seatback TV! They clinched it just as we landed at MSP. Awesome.

los angeles: april 22-25, 2011

Posted in los angeles #2 on April 30th, 2011 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, los angeles

Matt had another regional conference to attend in LA, so we made it a long weekend!

(The entire photoset is here on Flickr.)

Read from the beginning below, or jump to each day:

• 4/22: Friday
• 4/23: Saturday
• 4/24: Sunday
• 4/25: Monday

friday 4.22.2011

Posted in los angeles #2 on April 30th, 2011 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, los angeles

Lately, Matt and I seem incapable of taking the same airplane on vacation. On the way to LA, he flew out in the early afternoon on Frontier, because he had a voucher for a cancelled flight to use up. I was flying Delta after work.

Since I have 24-hour parking in downtown Minneapolis, I decided to leave my car in the ramp and take the train, which is only a couple of blocks away. I would be arriving before Matt on the return leg, so that seemed to work out well. The airport was pretty much dead when I arrived, and the security people were barely paying attention to anything. I didn’t get scanned or patted-down, for the first time in a long while.

I got a sandwich at the new Surdyk’s at the airport, then climbed aboard my on-time, not-overbooked (!!!) flight.

 
We landed in LA around 7:30, and I found Matt near the rental car shuttle. We went to get the car and headed to our hotel, the Marriott at Marina Del Rey. It’s conveniently located near the airport and within walking distance of Venice. The hotel was super-fancy, way nicer than we’d normally choose, but his coworkers had picked it. There seemed to be some kind of ultralounge in the lobby, and an Indian wedding going on. The formal saris were kind of amazing.

We dropped off our bags and headed off on foot to Venice, where we had dinner reservations at 9:30. The place was about a mile away. As we headed down Ocean Drive, we suddenly heard a bunch of loud quacking, and turned to see these guys just standing in someone’s yard macking on a lady duck. They didn’t care that we were only a few feet away watching them.

 
We were very much underdressed for the Tasting Kitchen (their website says ‘casual’… not even close). We had a cheese plate, fresh bread, fries, and I had broccolini and lentils for dinner. We had a couple of cocktails, too, and their sidecar was the best I’ve ever had. Seriously, I’ve had some fantasies about it since. Also, our server was fantastic. We liked her a ton.

We walked back to the hotel after dinner, and this time it was past the ducks’ bedtime. Not to mention ours, since we’d sat down for dinner at 11:30 Minneapolis time!

saturday 4.23.2011

Posted in los angeles #2 on April 30th, 2011 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, los angeles

This was the view from our room on Marina Del Rey. It wasn’t overcast, just really sunny. So much nicer than at home.

 
We had breakfast with Matt’s coworkers, then drove over to the site of the conference at Pepperdine University (not the main campus, but the one near Howard Hughes Center). I dropped Matt off, then headed towards Griffith Park. On the way there, I saw a car burst into flames on the 405. Oh, California.

I ended up driving around Hollywood for a while looking for a place to get more caffeine and use the bathroom. This resulted in me using one of the scarier gas station bathrooms I’ve ever been in. Refreshed, I headed into Griffith Park.

I was hoping to do the same hike my sister and I had taken before, which climbs a steep hill and ends up overlooking the observatory and the rest of the valley. When I got there, though, I realized that was a lot harder than it sounded: there wasn’t one trail, there were many, many trails. And many, many people hiking them, which meant no parking spots. I decided to keep driving up the hill, to see if anything looked familiar. It didn’t, but I did end up at the observatory itself. Which was awesome.

 
There were a ton of people up there, since it was very nice outside. I climbed up to the top of the observatory to see the overlook first.

I then went inside the observatory and took in some science. There are a lot of great displays there, but it was way too crowded to spend much time in there. My favorite part was getting to see the actual telescope.

From Griffith Park, I decided to head into downtown LA for the Museum of Neon Art. It was around lunchtime at that point, so I was kind of half-heartedly on the lookout for food as well. As I turned down a street, I saw a bunch of food carts a few blocks away, so I headed that direction. It ended up being the Fashion District, and it was mobbed.

 
The Fashion District seems to contain several square blocks of stall after stall selling clothes, accessories, and pretty much everything else you could ever want. It reminded me a lot of every Caribbean port town. There were a million hot dog trucks, too: no other food, just hot dogs. I’d have stopped to do some shopping, but there was nowhere to park, and it took me a good half-hour to just circle a few blocks in that neighborhood. I decided to head to the Museum of Neon Art instead.

 
The museum was small, but awesome. I talked to the lady at the front counter for a while, then went in to see the exhibits. They had a good combination of classic signs and new pieces. She said they were building a new museum in Santa Monica that would be open next year; I really want to go back and see that, because the drawings of it looked amazing.

 
It was getting close to time to go pick Matt up, so I drove over to Kassava restaurant to pick up some Jamaican patties to go. They were way faster than I expected, so I ended up with time to kill. I drove through Beverly Hills, then got on Sunset Boulevard headed back toward LAX. At that point I was glad I had spare time, because there was an insane accident that had me sitting in the same spot in traffic for over half an hour. I was glad when Matt texted that they were running late, too.

I got back to Howard Hughes Center before they were done, so I parked and got a coffee at Starbucks. This allowed me to sit outside and soak up the California sun, which was glorious. Matt joined me after a bit, and we went to check into the hotel.

The Millennium Biltmore is hella fancy, and its lobby is famous for being in several movies, including Ghostbusters. The rooms aren’t anything super-extravagant, but it was very nice, and very conveniently located in downtown LA. Also, you can avoid the $40/night valet parking fee by parking in the garage across the street, which is only $15/night.

After dropping our stuff off, we headed to one of the greatest bars in the world: Tiki-Ti. Though it was only 5:30pm, it was already a standing-room-only crowd inside. (That was probably to do with their 50th anniversary celebration, which was just kicking off then.) The doorman was Ken, the same guy we sat and talked to the last time we were there. We only had to stand for a bit, and then a table opened and some people moved, so we got seats at the bar. The bartender let me fondle the 50th anniversary tiki mug, too. (We came home and ordered one a few weeks later.)

 
We needed some food, so we headed over to El Carmen (mostly because we knew it was full of luchador memorabilia and good drinks). The host told us there wouldn’t be any open tables for a few hours, but we were welcome to hang out by the bar. We grabbed a less than optimal spot and started to look at the menu. Soon afterward, the host came back and told us they had a cancellation, and we could have a table. Score! Our food was excellent, as were the cocktails. Matt had a mezcal that tasted like scotch. We’d have stayed longer, but that would have meant taking a cab back to the hotel, so we headed back to the Millennium and parked the car for the night.

From the hotel, we walked the mile or so to Caña Rum Bar. We’d been reading about it forever on the internet, and needed to go. You enter it through a parking garage, and it’s very small. The tables were full, so we went out to the enclosed patio (it was kind of like a greenhouse), which we had to ourselves for a while. The cocktail menu there was amazing. We had a couple drinks, then decided to go inside the bar because it was getting chilly outside. There, we were served by Allan Katz, the GM and rum-nerd celebrity (I think Matt was a little star-struck). He poured us a personal tasting flight that was fantastic.

We would have stayed all night, but we’d probably never have found our way back to the hotel.

sunday 4.23.2011

Posted in los angeles #2 on April 30th, 2011 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, los angeles

Sunday morning, OpenTable was kind enough to get us reservations for brunch at Susan Feniger’s STREET. We kind of kept forgetting that it was Easter.

 
STREET was amazing. I had the Kaya toast, which is covered in coconut jam and served with an egg and soy sauce. I’ve been having fantasies about it ever since. We both had excellent brunch cocktails, too. I couldn’t believe the place wasn’t more crowded on Easter.

From there, we headed to Venice Beach. We’d driven through the area and saw enough to know it was awesome, but hadn’t been to the actual boardwalk. It was time to fix that, and it was gorgeous outside.

 
We wandered down the boardwalk, taking everything in. There was a lot to look at. Then we handed over the best $5 we ever spent, and went in to see the freakshow. It was fantastic.

 
I bought two pairs of sunglasses from a vendor on the boardwalk, and then we decided to stop at the beer garden and hang out in the sun for a while. Of course we both managed to get sunburnt within less than an hour.

 
Somehow I always manage to forget how massive the beaches in California area. Seriously, they’re huge.

 
On the way back to the car, we stopped to buy an awesome calavera from a vendor on the boardwalk, and then for food at a couple of walk-up windows. Matt got samosas, and I got a falafel sandwich from a man watching Armenian television.

 
It was then time to head southward. Our goal was Costa Mesa, home to the well-known (to booze nerds) Hi Time Liquors. They were only open til 4 on Easter, so we had to time our departure well! On the way, we saw the Goodyear Blimp hanging out at its home.

 
We got to Hi Time with only 15 minutes to spare. That was plenty, though, because we managed to find not only some of the rums we’d sampled the night before at Cana, but our original goal: Lemon Hart 151. It’s just been recently imported into the US, and it’s extremely hard to find.

Our dinner reservations weren’t til 6:30, so we killed time wandering around Newport Beach. We saw the little town, did some shopping, and wandered out onto the pier. We then stopped into the Newport Beach Brewing Company for a beer, and managed to see the Anaheim Ducks get knocked out of the playoffs. Hooray!

 
It was then time to head up the PCH to Huntington Beach, where we had reservations at Don the Beachcomber. It’s hard to express how excited we were about that, but holy crap. It was great.

 
Our table was a little slow to be cleared (actually, we were pretty early), so the server asked if we wanted to sit in the lounge instead. That was an excellent stroke of luck, because the lounge was fantastic, and we probably would’ve missed it if we had sat in the dining room. We got a round table, ordered tiki drinks, and settled in to watch the Hawaiian band. I loved every minute of it, to the point that I didn’t even mind their complete lack of vegetarian food (I ordered a salad without meat).

We sadly had to leave Don the Beachcomber and head back to LA. We wanted to stay all night, but then we’d be sleeping in the car in Huntington Beach. On the way back to Hollywood, we ended up in a traffic jam on the 101. At 9:30 on a Sunday. What the hell, LA? (Our theory: everyone in LA is issued at least 2 cars, and is obligated to drive them as many hours as possible. There’s no other explanation for why the traffic is so insane there 24 hours a day.)

We finally reached our destination, the Dresden Room. Matt really wanted to go there, as he’s seen Swingers something like four million times.

The Dresden Room was awesome. They had the typical round tables and oldtimey bar, and a bartender who looked like he’d been working there since the 50s. He made a great Manhattan. There were only a few other people there, but I did manage to eavesdrop on a very dramatic conversation between some Hollywood-types. The lady was going on and on about how hard it was that day with all the extras on the set.

After the Dresden Room, it was again time to go drop our car off by the hotel for the evening. We parked and headed in the direction of Cole’s, which has an awesome speakeasy-style cocktail bar called Varnish in the back. It was midnight as we arrived, so we were appalled to find the managers there closing the place up. (We’d yet again completely forgotten it was Easter.) We asked if any other place was open, and they pointed us next door to a bar called The Association.

The Association was an awesome little lounge with a good variety of classic cocktails. But what mattered more was that we befriended the DJ and his other friend at the bar, and ended up talking to them the whole time, which then resulted in shots of Fernet seeming like a really great idea. When Fernet seems wise, you know things have reached a certain point.

Our friends insisted on buying us a cab back to the hotel, even though it was only 8 blocks or so. We’re pretty sure they didn’t believe us when we said we were walking, since nobody in LA actually walks. They’re all too busy driving their multiple cars.
 

monday 4.24.2011

Posted in los angeles #2 on April 30th, 2011 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, los angeles

When we woke up Monday morning, our heads hurt a lot. Thanks, Fernet! We packed up, checked out of the hotel, and headed to Santa Monica to try to find some brunch before leaving LA.

When we arrived there wasn’t really enough time for a sit-down meal, so we decided we’d try to find something else. We went to the co-op where I’d found California Suncakes before (seriously, it’s a sick obsession), and I really wanted more of them. The store had just been remodeled and was right in the middle of restocking, so of course they weren’t in the same place as before. I found an employee and asked about them; after 20 minutes and consultations with a few other employees, still no Suncakes. They were apparently still hidden in the back somewhere. SIGH.

We grabbed some lunch food (I got a surprisingly good vegan ‘chicken’ salad sandwich, and Matt had sushi) and sat outside the store eating. It was kind of the appropriate lunch for our hangovers: shoving food in our mouths in a busy parking lot.

It was then time to head to the airport. We dropped off the car, and said goodbye in the terminal because we were flying different airlines. At least our flights were only 15 minutes apart this time! I had no line at the Delta gates, but of course had to go through the body scanner. (I survived.) Matt had to wait in a huge line. My flight was direct and landed in Minneapolis early; his was delayed leaving Denver.

I got to the airport, hopped on the train, and went to retrieve my car from the parking lot. That was a pretty good system, though if I didn’t have an excuse to take the time, I think it’s probably worth it to just take a cab home. I went home, unpacked, and went onto Flightaware to keep an eye on Matt’s flight. It kept getting later and later, and I was getting sleepier and sleepier. I finally resorted to walking in circles around the house just to stay up til he got in.

I headed to the airport around 11:30, and finally had my fiance back!!

san diego: march 25-27

Posted in san diego on April 9th, 2011 by jenni | 2 Comments »
Tags: california, san diego

Matt headed out to San Diego to schmooze with his coworkers on Friday morning, while I waited until after work to leave, as I’ve been conserving vacation time for The Honeymoon. I had an entertaining dinner with my parents, and then they dropped me at the airport around 8pm. I was not the slightest bit thrilled to see the huge security line and the body-scanning machines in use. But because I’m tricky, I managed to avoid both the scanner (and the pat-down, nothing short of a miracle) because I chose the right line and got stuck behind someone who irritated the TSA to no end. Their distraction was my win.

When I arrived, Matt texted that he’d be picking me up in an egg yolk. He wasn’t kidding:

 
Since it was already after midnight and he had to be at a conference in the morning, we headed right to the hotel to sleep.

The next morning, we got up and had breakfast with his coworkers, and then I dropped him off at the nearby University of San Diego. I decided to go over and see Balboa Park first, because though I’d been to San Diego a couple times before, I’ve never seen it.

I got there just as the run/walk for autism was dispersing; it took me a while to realize why there were so many people with numbers attached to them wandering around. By the time I found parking, not only had the crowds cleared, but so had the sky. It was sixty degrees, which for a Minnesotan is almost summer: I was in a sundress and flipflops, while all the locals had jackets on.

Balboa Park was gorgeous. I’m obsessed with anything Worlds-Fair-related, too.

 
The park is huge, too, so I drove around it as much as possible, then did my wandering.

 
In a part of the park that was meant to look like a rainforest, I encountered Demandey the Squirrel. I was worried he would chew my face off if I didn’t produce a snack for him.

 
I wanted to see more of the international village, but only the main house was open. The Ukrainians had it for the day, and were demonstration traditional handcrafts. I realized it was weird to look at the pysanky (Ukrainian eggs) and think, “eh, that’s old hat”, but I totally used to make them as a kid. Just ask my mom, she’ll be happy to show you her collection.

From Balboa Park, I headed toward Point Loma. On the way to Cabrillo National Monument, I noticed a sign for Shelter Island and decided to go check it out, since we had dinner reservations there later that night. I sat and watched a sailboat race for a bit, and wished Matt was there to see it too. He’d probably want to commandeer a boat himself, though.

 
On my way back, I got a text from April asking if I wanted to meet her for lunch. I did! We decided on Old Town Mexican Cafe, so I headed back that direction. I was pretty early, so I planned on wandering around Old Town and shopping to kill some time. Of course I’d forgotten how hard it is to find parking around there, so I spent most of that time driving around looking for a spot for the Yolk.

Lunch was excellent (I had vegetable mole enchiladas and a margarita), and it was great to get to see April again! I hadn’t seen her since our previous trip to Las Vegas. She had also supplied us with many many suggestions for later dinner and cocktail entertainment, which served us very well.

After lunch, I headed back toward Cabrillo National Monument. I’d forgotten that you have to drive through a naval base to get there, so that freaked me out a little. At the overlook, I met this little dude, who was missing half his tail.

 
The view from Cabrillo is excellent. I think you can see Mexico from there.

 
It was getting close to time for Matt to be done, so I headed back toward the university, listening to the Butler-Florida game on Sirius. The game reached the final minute of as I arrived, and I was very relieved to find a parking spot so I could freak out safely as they went to overtime. Matt arrived shortly thereafter, and we went to the hotel to watch Butler win, and so he could change out of his business clothes.

From there, we went to Coronado Island. As I constantly torture him with Don Henley songs (he hates the fuckin’ Eagles, man), of course we had to go see the original Hotel California. Plus there’s beach!

 
It was really windy and overcast on the beach, but we still saw multiple weddings going on. Also, some pretty impressive sand castles:

 
Because they had patio heaters, we were able to sit outside Babcock & Story and have cocktails and an appetizer. The people-watching at the Hotel Del Coronado was amazing, and there were a ton of people in Coast Guard uniforms with fancy ladies wandering around for some kind of ball that evening.

From there, we went over to see the Embarcadero, which I’d also never seen before. Because I’m super-classy, I changed out of my dress into jeans and a hoodie in the car. It was getting chilly outside, and things were shutting down, so we wandered and saw the ships, then headed back to the car.

 
We had some time to kill, so we drove back up to Balboa Park so Matt could see it. After circling around for a bit, we headed over to Shelter Island for dinner at Bali Hi.

We figured we’d maybe have some oldschool tiki drinks and alright food, but everything was way better than expected. They had excellent vegetarian options, and of course the tiki drinks were great. Also, I got to bring this well-known guy home with me:

 
After dinner, we headed to the Tractor Room, a bar April had recommended. It was fantastic; they made really inventive cocktails, and the bartenders were awesome. We hung out there for a few hours, and then it was time to go back to the hotel.

The next morning, we dropped the Yolk off and shuttled to the commuter terminal at the airport, or “the place all flights to LAX originate from”. We got to walk to our tiny plane on the tarmac, which is always exciting! The flight was really short, and we could see the coast of California the whole time.

 
We had a 2-hour layover in LA, so of course we had to return to our favorite “beach bar”, where we’d spent many hours being delayed on the way to Hawaii. This time, at least, Delta chose to be on time for once, so we were home with plenty of time to hang out on the couch that evening.

saturday 10.2.2010 (minneapolis to LA)

Posted in hawaii #2 on November 8th, 2010 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: bally, california, los angeles, tiki

Saturday morning around 9:45, our friend Bill picked us up and drove us to the airport. I felt a little bad about making someone get up so early on the weekend, but he had a new baby at home. He said he was used to it.

We got to our gate just in time for the agent to announce the flight was delayed due to “a mishmash of mechanical issues”. (If there’s any way to instill confidence in travelers, it’s not that.) A bit later, they told us that the plane had a broken windshield, so they were going to replace it at some point. With nine flights scheduled over the next week and a half, we’d expected to spend some time in airport bars, but we hadn’t been counting on that quite so soon.

Delta managed to do something right, because the new plane was delivered fairly quickly, only about an hour delayed. We boarded, and the captain said we could blame him for not wanting to fly with a broken windshield. We were totally fine with that decision; I’m more alarmed that Delta was willing to leave it at the pilots’ discretion.

We touched down at LAX around 2:30, picked up our rental car, and headed into Beverly Hills via Santa Monica Boulevard. Our plans kept adapting to the time we spent in the car: we were hungry and hoping to find an In-n-Out Burger or Del Taco, but eventually we became so tired of driving and being hungry that we were just looking for anything decent. We ended up finding Good Microbrew and Grill on Sunset Boulevard, and it turned out to be an excellent choice.

We sat out on the patio having awesome beer and really good (i.e. California) food. (I can never get over the huge difference in the quality of produce between here and there. It’s very noticeable.) There were Minnesota beers on the menu, too!

After dinner, we headed a few blocks down Sunset toward our primary destination: Tiki-Ti. I won’t bother trying to explain it, since the website says it all. It was even more spectacular than we’d hoped.

The bar sat 12 people, and there were tables for maybe 20 more at most. An old guy propping up the end of the bar scooted over and greeted us with, “Hello king, hello queen.” He’d obviously spent some time in Jamaica.

We had some tiki drinks, then I got up to use the bathroom. When I got back, Matt had made friends with the guy on the other side of him. He introduced himself as Ken, and told us that his dad was Filipino and his mom Scandinavian (hence the Minnesota connection). We spent the rest of our time there talking to him about his experience living in LA and his visit to the Philippines.

We didn’t really want to leave, but knew we’d never get out of there alive otherwise. We said bye to Ken and the bartender, and went to go check into the hotel.

We picked Stay because of its proximity to the places we wanted to visit on our short trip to LA. It’s very conveniently located right in the middle of downtown, on Main Street. The building is very strange but awesome: the rooms are updated with modern art, and everything is very clean. Half the rooms have shared bathrooms in the hallway, but we got one with a private bath. The only downside, though, was the lack of air conditioning. While it wasn’t too terribly hot, the importance of that fact wouldn’t become apparent til later.

After we became situated, I started looking up our other stops on the map on my phone, only I couldn’t make sense of anything on there. I couldn’t even figure out where we were. I finally laid down when I realized I was having a huge blood sugar crash, obviously due to the tiki drinks. It was very strange because I’d felt totally fine til right then; usually you can feel any blood sugar disturbance within half a minute. At any rate, I passed out for 20 or 30 minutes, and experienced the very unpleasant delirium of the rush of insulin. Within the hour, I felt fine again, just really exhausted.

We walked to a nearby pizza place for a slice, then moved on. We’d initially been planning to go to Caña, but it was about 2 miles roundtrip and I wasn’t sure I could make it. We added that to the ‘next time in LA’ list, and went here instead:

(We’re both graduates of the University of Minnesota, and huge Gophers hockey fans. The bouncer asked for our drivers licenses and made the connection right away, so we loved him.) The Golden Gopher is a super-classic bar, though it didn’t look too much like it on the inside. We got there around 9 and it was fairly empty, so we grabbed seats at the bar and ordered manhattans.

Around 11pm, the bar started to fill up. It wasn’t hatefully douchey or anything like we were expecting in LA, but it was still pretty different from our usual crowd; the most common drink ordered was Grey Goose and Red Bull. Seriously, you’d pay $11 for a drink involving Red Bull? At least don’t bother with the Goose. Once it became crowded to the point that people were leaning on us, we headed out.

We got back to the hotel around 12:30 and had to switch our usual places in the bed so that Matt could be nearer the open window (he’s the one who’s always way too warm). It was then that we realized the true downside to no A/C: not the heat, but the noise. It was a combination of people yelling, cars honking, music, and possibly even a brass band from 1am til sometime after 4. Needless to say, it was not the greatest sleep of our lives.

sunday 10.3.2010 (LA to oahu)

Posted in hawaii #2 on November 8th, 2010 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: bally, california, hawaii, hollywood, honolulu, los angeles, oahu, santa monica

Our hotel starting blasting dance music from the lobby at 8am. It would’ve been way more painful had it not been for the time change that made it feel like 10am, and the vacation adrenaline. I get up way earlier on vacation than I ever voluntarily do at home!

I went to get coffee and a giant croissant in the lobby while Matt finished showering, and then we headed out to see more of LA. Stop one satisfied the geology nerd in both of us: the La Brea Tar Pits.

(It’s always bizarre and confusing that that exists right on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Before the first time I visited, I assumed it was in the middle of nowhere.)

From there, we drove up to Hollywood Boulevard for the obligatory super-touristy stop.

It was gorgeous outside, but apparently not gorgeous enough for all the impersonators to be out hassling people for photos. We were pretty glad about that.

Matt and Bally picked their favorite stars on the Walk of Fame. Shortly thereafter, we named our rental car ‘Ponch’.

We stopped at Jack in the Box for a quick lunch (we’d still been unable to find In-n-Out or Del Taco, even though California ads led us to believe they were on every street corner). Matt visited the restroom on the way out, and said he’d seen a guy enter the stall with his hamburger and heard him continue eating on the toilet. CLASSY.

We hopped on I-10 and drove to Santa Monica, where we sat in the same insane traffic as the two other times I’ve visited Santa Monica. What the hell? We finally found a parking spot and walked down to the Promenade so Matt could check out the dinosaur topiaries and awesome street performers, the best of whom was Biggie Smalls painted completely silver.

From there, we walked down to the pier. Though these pictures make it look really overcast, I don’t recall it being that dark at all! It was just the typical Pacific coast fog.

I’d told Matt that the first time I visited the Santa Monica pier was on my three-week solo roadtrip, and it was one of the only places I was sad to be alone, because it was kind of romantic. I wanted to fix that, so we did.

The pier was as crazy as I’d remembered. There were buskers (including Mongolia’s only pro contortionist), the amusement park, and vendors selling things like unflattering caricatures and your name on a grain of rice. It’s basically exactly what you want from that kind of spectacle. We walked down to the end of the pier, saw the fishermen and the end of Route 66, then headed down to see the beach, which had a different kind of spectacle:

(The crosses represented the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Horrible.)

We went down and dipped our feet in the ocean. It was freezing, so we were pretty excited to be heading to Hawaii very shortly…

…or so we thought.

As we climbed the steps back up to the pier, I got a phone call from Delta. I missed it and called right back, knowing what it would inevitably mean. The agent said our 6pm flight was delayed 2 hours, but that we would still have to be at the airport at the correct time, ‘just in case’. AARGH.

We still had some time to kill before heading there, so we did some shopping at an awesome British grocery (the snacks we got there made it through the entire trip with us, on various flights), then stopped at the TNB BBQ truck for Korean tofu tacos. We may not have made it to In-n-Out, but we did get to experience one of LA’s finer taco trucks!

We took highway 1 down the coast toward the airport, passing through Venice (which was awesome) and Marina del Ray. By the time we arrived at the car rental place, Delta had called again to notify me (via friendly robot) that the flight was now delayed 3.5 hours. That would put it into Honolulu dangerously close to midnight, and I knew we were starting to run the risk that it wouldn’t leave at all that night. While I’d have loved an extra night in LA, I’d prefer it to not come at the expense of our trip to Hawaii (and also missing the next day’s flight to Kauai).

We checked in, and the Delta machines spit out a couple of $6 meal vouchers as apology. (Nice work, guys.) We decided to turn them into drinks, and headed to Malibu Al’s Beach Bar, to attempt to pretend we were somewhere tropical already. Also, it was right by our gate. We ordered long islands, played cribbage and canasta, and later ordered pizzas from CPK (located across the way… they just carried them over).

We eventually got sick of Malibu Al’s and crossed over to the Cantina just for a change of scenery. There, we ordered margaritas and watched the Giants game. We were so tired and punchy that everything I saw was the funniest thing ever. Finally, after 5+ hours at LAX, they announced the boarding of our flight.

We were glad to be in row 19 near the front, and to have already been supplied with blankets and pillows. I was also really glad to have the window seat this time. I napped on and off for 4 1/2 hours or so, then spent some time staring out the window at the stars and ignoring the reruns of stupid comedies on the overhead screens. We landed in Honolulu around 12:15, and the passengers on our flight were the only people left in the airport.

We grabbed our bags and headed to the shuttle bus, which of course had to wait around for a long time for other passengers. We finally headed off into Waikiki. Matt and I were dying of exhaustion, and kept ourselves awake by counting the number of ABC stores we saw on the way to our hotel (11 of them!). We arrived at the Castle Ocean Resort, close to 2am. They’d roped off the lobby and were cleaning the floors, but there was still someone waiting at the desk to check us in.

When we got up to the room and found that our keys didn’t work in the door, I thought Matt was going to die. I left him with the bags and ran back to the lobby, and thankfully everything worked the second time. We barely took time to plug in our phones and brush our teeth before collapsing in bed. This time, with air conditioning!

saturday 7.30.2005 to tuesday 8.2.2005

Posted in las vegas #2 on August 3rd, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, casino, desert, mojave desert, vegas, visiting friends

So here’s the Vegas stuff I have decided to tell you about! The rest you will have to imagine with your twisted little minds, amigos mios.

• It’s not that I didn’t lose the money I gambled, but I took a really really long time doing so on video poker. I make up in luck what I absolutely lack in card-counting ability.
  The people around us didn’t seem as amused by us yelling, “FIVE OF A KIND!!” as we were.
• I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard in my life as I did playing Dance Dance Revolution. I was out on the street hopping around like an idiot, trying to devise a communication system based on arcade game dance moves.
• Aerial acrobats are freaky, but still not as freaky as buskers. Or giant clowns.

  

• I screamed my fucking head off on the rollercoaster at New York, New York. LOVED IT.

  

  I also went on the Big Shot on top of the Stratosphere, the thing that catapults you up a pole like you’re going to shoot off the top of the building. I didn’t scream like I wanted to on that, because I was with three drunk fratboys:
  Attendant: Check your pockets for anything loose. Is that a cellphone, man?
  Drunk Fratboy #3: Dude, that’s my DICK!

• Paul took us to tapas at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba at the Fashion Show Mall, which apparently used to be superghetto but is now fantastically equipped with stores like Diesel, Quicksilver (see my Hawaii travel journal for my feelings about surf shops), and Paul Frank (the Julius monkey is way old, but the skully and Wienermobile and pirate shit rocks hard).
  Two things of note:
  1. I’ve never been able to go out for tapas. It’s usually 100% meaty. This was unbelievable. The drinks were just ok, but I’m not complaining because I take 4 sips of a martini and I’m good. to. go. Cheap drunk!
  2. I LOVE PAUL. You don’t realize how much you miss someone until you spend time with them again. We reminisced like a couple of old-timers. He remembered all the stupid jokes we used to have, even some I’d forgotten. It was so awesome to see him again.
• I think we saw all the casinos on the strip except the trashy ones I’d seen before, like the Boardwalk, the Frontier (free bikini mud wrestling!), and the Barbary Coast.

  

  My favorites are the Aladdin (the shopping), Caesar’s (the shopping), the Wynn (the most insanely opulent and miraculously least-tacky), New York New York (the entertainment), Paris (the insane gaudiness), and Mandalay Bay (the restaurants).

  

  MGM struck me as the stupidest, but maybe because I had to walk something like two miles through its vast cavernousness to a Starbucks that was technically right across the street from my hotel.
  Have you ever really noticed casino carpet?

  

• BTW, Americanos cost $4-5 in Las Vegas. Fuckers.
• We had a great view of ass from our room at the Tropicana.

  

  Also, Tom Jones on the giant video screen at MGM. He wasn’t there til next week, though. SIGH.

• Walking around in 100-degree weather after dark is disturbing. It’s fine during the day in the sun. One day we walked from the Tropicana, at the south end of the strip, to the Stratosphere and back. Ouch.
• The Fremont Street Experience would be most excellent if you were totally baked, dude. Otherwise, it’s just bizarre.

  

  I’m a little sad that the cowboy is under that gigantic big-screen-TV-canopy-thing now, too.

• On Monday, we went to rent a convertible. They were out of Mustangs, and only had Sebrings. Shudder. David the Budget Man pointed at the parking lot and said, “What about that one? It’s a V8.”
  “We’ll take it,” I answered.
  Two hours later, Hot Park Ranger Man found us in the middle of the Mojave Desert, our Bright Red 50th Anniversary Edition Thunderbird Convertible parked half on the road, half on the sand, just past a wash-out, with both doors and the trunk open, music blasting, roaming in the scrub looking for scorpions (me) and taking photos of the approaching storm (her).

  

  He said, “I seriously hope you girls are turning around and heading back.” Perhaps we seemed a little unprepared for desert survival?
  Was it the flipflops?
  He hung out for a while and told us the travails of a park ranger, which are basically that he wants them to mark more hiking trails in the park (there are currently two, even though the reserve is something like 90 million square miles of nothingness), and that his job is mainly to keep people from dying in the heat. Which apparently they do at an alarming rate.

  

  It was actually only in the 90s in the desert that day, due to the occasional rain. We wandered not too far from the road on the hiking trail closer to I-15.

  

  

  I spooked jackrabbits and white chipmunks from under fallen Joshua tree branches as I crept up to this broken-down shack at the intersection of the railroad tracks, near the Cima Store (WE ARE OPEN! KNOCK LOUDLY!).

  

  There was rusted sheet metal and old pre-pulltab cans scattered around it for a hundred feet, and a pile of untorched kindling in the middle of the crumbling floor.
  We raced through the desert from Baker, California to Las Vegas, never going under 90. It was so Fear and Loathing, minus the beat-up sun hat.

  

  And the ether.

friday 04.08.2005 (day one.)

Posted in los angeles on April 24th, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, los angeles, malibu, santa barbara, santa monica

I’ve had some bad luck with Northwest Airlines. After some time spent on the de-icing pad at MSP International (it was 70 and sunny), a drunk-sounding head flight attendant, and a pilot who regaled us with fascinating details about turbulence, we made it to LAX pretty much on time. We hopped the shuttle to the rent-a-car place, where we found them out of the basic mid-size cars. We were excited about maybe getting a hot car in California. We were so wrong.

We ended up with a Chrysler 300, the pimpmobile for the geriatric set. My dad loves this car. Us, not so much. Before even leaving the lot, Stephanie declared her undying hatred for it. I hoped it had ‘I AM A RENTAL’ stickered all over the back so people wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking we owned it. We promptly named it ‘Dick’.

It was sunny but too windy and cold to head right to the beach per the original plan, so we decided to drive up the beach to Santa Barbara, one of my favorite sights on my west-coast roadtrip. We got lost on Sepulveda Boulevard (I preferred ‘Sepultura Boulevard’ instead, which meant that I had to mention the band every single time we saw that street after that, no less than 50 times). We finally found our way to Santa Monica, and from there, the PCH. I wanted to take that up the coast, since that was the only stretch I missed when I drove down from San Francisco.

We stopped for burritos at a little place on the side of the road in Malibu, and sat out on the patio in the sun with the too-stereotypical surfer kids. I was thrilled to be having my first perfect California moment of the trip. In Zuma Beach, we were slowed by a movie or TV show; cops were escorting a trailer up and down the highway past film crews in a parking lot. We stopped at Starbucks for iced coffee, and I knew I was in California because the soymilk was out on the counter. It doesn’t happen anywhere else. Also, I love all the crazy beach vehicles in SoCal. It sucks that dune buggies are so impractical in Minnesota.

After the beach towns and naval bases, highway 1 heads inland towards produce farms and industrial-looking towns. We stopped at a roadside stand for fresh strawberries, then drove like crazy to Santa Barbara. I was hoping to get to the beach there, but it was so windy it hurt, and the sun managed to go away the second we arrived. I still love Santa Barbara for the cute little downtown and tall, skinny palm trees lining the beach. Stephanie was unimpressed; we decided to head back to Santa Monica.

After our first run-in with the huge mess that is LA traffic, we made it to the 3rd Street Promenade. I had been there before and was kind of unimpressed with the shopping (although the crazy street-performers and people-watching and dinosaur topiaries make it worth the trip). However, I knew they now had a Kid Robot there, so I had to visit. Also, I really wanted a pretzel, and Wetzel was happy to sell me one.

We wandered for a while, but were tired from all the flying and driving, so we went to check into the hotel. Priceline had secured me a very swank room for a very very low price, right on Century Boulevard near the airport. After unpacking, we decided we needed pizza, but didn’t want to pay $11 to get the car out of the lot. Stephanie had seen a CPK sign nearby, so we set out wandering down Century to find it. We finally stopped into a hotel to ask, and were told it was actually their training center, not a restaurant. We went back to our hotel and ordered room service instead, delivered by a little guy named Pinkey. Then we crashed.

saturday 04.09.2005 (day two.)

Posted in los angeles on April 24th, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: beach, beverly hills, california, hiking, hollywood, los angeles, santa monica

Saturday morning, I had trouble with the time change thing and woke at 4:30am. I forced myself to go back to sleep til 7, lest I encounter a beating from my sister. We were on the road around 8, in search of coffee and then tourism, in order of importance. We drove up to Griffith Park, having heard the observatory offered the best view of the city.

We found the path up the hill and figured it’d be a short hike to the overlook. I had put heavy-duty sunscreen on my new tattoo but had neglected the rest, figuring we wouldn’t be spending much time outdoors until we got to the beach.

Well, the hike was a lot longer than we thought. And steeper. And incredible. Halfway up the mountain, you have excellent views of the whole city to the southwest, as well as the Hollywood sign. Closer to the top, you can see the mountains to the north, and at the summit you have a 360-degree view.

Stephanie kept swearing she wasn’t going to make it, and I was doing my best with the irritating persistence: there’s a path up a mountain. Getting to the top is like winning. It’s inconceivable not to make it. So we did.

There were a lot of people getting their daily workout on that hill. I was marveling at the joggers, some of whom were moving at a pace not much faster than our walk. I couldn’t believe people would run up that path, so I had to try it. It was exhausting, but somehow not as bad as I thought. I spent the rest of the hike wanting to run a lot, but knowing I might get a) yelled at or b) dehydrated.

We sat on a table at the top for a long time, enjoying the sun and the view and the amazing luck of a fairly un-smoggy day in Los Angeles. There were people on horses up there, people being in love, sweaty half-naked guys showing off doing pushups on tables, old Chinese men singing as they hiked, kids scrambling around, and a couple garbagemen who totally cheated by driving their truck up to the top. We finally decided to walk back down; the whole hike took about 2 hours altogether. The view is not to be missed.

We got Dick (the maturity level is high with us, yes indeed) and found ourselves a Trader Joe’s near the park. We bought fresh fruit and such for a picnic, then headed back to the beach at Santa Monica. The place was crazy, with the people on the promenade and the pier. It was sunny and would’ve been pretty warm if it weren’t for the wind. We crossed to the pier, went down to the beach, and had lunch, and then I laid on the blanket for a while. When it got too cold, we headed up to the pier, walking down to the end where we were nearly blown off into the ocean.

The pier was the same as the last time I was there: tacky gifts, people fishing, and stray street performers from the promenade. Also, I found about 10,000 potential boyfriends for Stephanie, and I don’t even think she appreciated it one bit. We decided to head back into LA to cover the obligatory touristy stuff, hoping we’d get more time at the ocean when the wind wasn’t quite so intense.

One of Stephanie’s favorite things about LA is KROQ. Even if they’re not playing great stuff constantly, it’s at least listenable 99% of the time. I was happy to hear them playing Hysteria by Muse, even if it kind of sucks when a song you like a lot becomes a radio single. But there there were two songs that began to plague us within 24 hours: that one about Beverly Hills by Weezer (which was funny for all of 10 minutes because of the novelty of being there), and this song by Pepper that goes, ‘why won’t you have some dirty hot sex with me?’ Which was funny for probably 2 seconds, and then became the worst song ever to be played over and over and over on the radio.

We stopped for coffee before heading to the La Brea tarpits. Stephanie was amused at the Chinese businessmen in Starbucks who kept reading my hoodie; I was just hoping it didn’t say something offensive.

The tarpits surprised me. See, you walk through the gates next door to LACMA, and you smell tar. I didn’t know they were active! I thought it was all prehistoric and such. But no, even to this day, you could stumble right into a tarpit and in hundreds of thousands of years, the robots of the future can excavate you and put you in a museum, too! That’s some exciting shit, if you ask me.

After the tarpits, we went over to see Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. We parked a few blocks away, one car in front of a guy who looked exactly like Johnny Knoxville (but looked lost enough to not be Johnny Knoxville), and two cars in front of a burnt-out car, which was pretty awesome. The insides of the windows were all black. I don’t think there were bodies inside, but we couldn’t have known for sure.

There was some big event going on at the Kodak Theatre, the whole red carpet/limo bit, and the impersonator-folks were out in force. We saw Darth Vader and a Stormtrooper, Superman, Catwoman with her ass exposed, Beetlejuice, a fat Spiderman, and various others. Grauman’s was mobbed as always. We took a look at the footprints and the stars on the street, and were generally unimpressed. Hollywood celebs don’t do a whole lot for me.

We wandered down Hollywood Boulevard, trailing Beetlejuice. There was a couple sitting on the street holding a sign saying they were pregnant and stranded from Pennsylvania. We walked past a booth full of geeky-looking folks and I heard the familiar beep of AIM; it cracked me up that a dude was sitting on the street IMing. I just now looked up what they were all about: liningup.net. Hahaha.

We took Sunset Boulevard into Beverly Hills, and spend some time driving through the neighborhoods gawking at stars’ homes. Again, not so impressive. We drove way up in the hills, and then down again, and could smell Dick’s brakes. We decided to let him rest for a while, so we drove down to Rodeo Drive to check out the shopping. I didn’t expect I’d find anything to interest me there, but then I found the Taschen store. I love their books. I didn’t see anything different than what Amazon could sell me for cheaper, but it was cool to see all their stuff in one place. We went up to Via Rodeo and saw the really high-end stuff. I admit it’s an irritating habit of mine to get pissed off about it, but I do. God knows I can shop, but there’s a level at which spending that amount of cash on something becomes really obscene. Anyway. My sister pointed out a Maserati on the street, which I guess was a big deal. We’d been seeing Bentleys all day, so I wasn’t sure how it was different.

We needed food and still wanted pizza, and were beyond trying to drive around and find something with all the vegetarian healthiness I needed and the general goodness of pizza (I have found this place; it’s in Minneapolis, and it’s called Pizza Luce). So we went for what we knew: CPK. We found one at Beverly Center, quite possibly the most irritating mall ever invented. We were amused at the other patrons waiting for tables: there was a very friendly boy-band, and a woman named Sammi with her passel of kids, who was so Beverly Hills it wasn’t even funny. Throughout dinner, we could hear her smoker’s-voice reverberating in the restaurant as she referred to herself in the third person. LA is awesome like that.

sunday 04.10.2005 (day three.)

Posted in los angeles on April 24th, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, coronado island, los angeles, mission, san diego

Sunday morning, I started flopping around again at 4:30, but stayed in bed til 7. I got up and headed off down Century Boulevard in search of coffee. It was awesome outside, and finally not windy. I walked past a bus stop with a homeless guy on the bench, and was pretty sure he was jerking off. I walked faster.

I found Starbucks at the Marriott about half a mile down the road. The lobby was packed full of teenage girls in town for a dance competition. I got the hell out of there quick, too.

We were on the road to San Diego around 8:30. Our first stop was San Juan Capistrano, my favorite of the missions I saw the first time around. The gardens there are incredible.

I’m not sure why I have such a thing for missions. I’m not a religious person, and am fairly disgusted by the history of missions in general; I think it’s the combination of the creepy and beautiful that’s fascinating. Also, I’m drawn to the bizarre trinkets in the gift shops.

Right as I walked into the mission, my camera informed me that the memory card was full. I spent too much time going through and deleting duplicate photos so I’d have some space for the many pictures I was compelled to take there. On the way out of town, I told Stephanie we’d have to find us an electronics store so I could get another memory card.

In La Jolla, we found a store called Good Guys, which wasn’t so much good as merely sufficient. I got myself 256MB of photo-storage happiness, and we were on our way to Old Town for lunch.

Last time I was in San Diego, I thought the Gaslamp District and Old Town were the same thing, and I disliked the Gaslamp District a lot, mostly because I couldn’t find a vegetarian restaurant, and the stores sucked. Old Town was at least something more to look at. The parking was a horror, but Stephanie exercised remarkable skill in navigation. She had already successfully backed out of a miniature parking lot that wouldn’t allow the world’s largest car to turn around, and then she was about to back into the tiniest, most cramped spot in the city when Dick died. Just shut off. I may have mentioned how much he sucked.

We had lunch outdoors at a Mexican place recommended by the parents (the second they knew we were on our way to San Diego, they were inundating us with travel-advice-filled phonecalls), which was pretty touristy, not terribly authentic, but good for what it was nonetheless.

Because Old Town is so touristy, it features excellent people-watching. We spent lunch trying to figure out what the deal was with all the people around us. I told Stephanie that she had to be sure to look at this girl behind us on the way out, because ‘she has a certain completely non-charming innocence.’ She laughed really hard at me and declared that ‘a patented Jenni Ripley diss’. I was proud.

We wandered around Old Town in a post-burrito coma, examining all the crappy souvenirs we could’ve been buying in Tijuana for a quarter of the price, but ten times the hassle. It didn’t seem much like a state park, because it’s so damn commercial. It’s strange to have shops in all those historic buildings. They had some cool gardens, though, and I kept threatening to toss my sister’s ass in a cactus. Then I made her take my picture in front of the largest aloe plant I’d ever seen in my life, after which I examined the photo about 50 times, saying, ‘THAT’S THE HUGEST CACTUS EVER!’

I am so easily amused.

Leaving Old Town, we got some sugar-free ice cream. It was awesome and made me really sleepy and goofy. We were in such hysterics on the way to Cabrillo that she was begging me to stop laughing so we didn’t get in an accident; I wasn’t even driving.

Per the parents’ recommendations, we drove out to Cabrillo National Monument, which had an awesome view of the city, the harbor, and the ocean on the other side of the peninsula. We walked up to the lighthouse, then drove to see the tidepools.

After that, we drove through downtown San Diego, got caught in cruise-ship-loading-and-unloading traffic at the Embarcadero, then found our way to the Coronado Bridge. You see, my sister has a fetish involving the Hotel Del Coronado, the legendary Hotel California, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it involved Don Henley in some way. I don’t ask.

We parked along the beach and walked around the hotel. It has a mall for rich people in the basement! I admit I got a little crabby again, just like I did on Rodeo Drive. It’s just so much. So much money, just to get away from poor people. I got a kick out of wandering around there looking like a total slob. It’s what I’m good at.

We went in and enjoyed the very swank marble bathrooms. We saw the atrium and the multiple pools and tennis courts and patios and restaurants. I had a really bizarre moment when I rounded a corner, caught of a glimpse of someone, thought, ‘hey, that girl looks interesting,’ and realized I was looking at myself in the mirror. I swear to god, I’m losing it.

On the way back to the beach, we passed a 7-person tandem bicycle contraption. I really really want to see one of those in use, but we were not so lucky. We spent a long time laying on the beach in the sunset. I wandered along the water, which was so cold it numbed my feet. While she stood on the shore watching the ocean, I tried to warm my feet by burying them in the sand. Then I had an excellent idea and set to work making myself a new foot. I took a bunch of pictures and sat there giggling, hoping someone would come along to see it.

It was getting late, so we decided to head back to LA and hopefully find dinner along the way. Stephanie drives like I do (although with less phone-talking and text-messaging), so it only took a little over an hour. We decided to pull off for dinner in Huntington Beach. As she dodged cars on the exit ramp, she yelled, ‘DICK, DON’T FAIL ME NOW!!’ Which of course began the driving-off-the-road-laughing routine again.

We froze at dinner; the sunburn seemed not to help. We ate half our food and headed back to our hotel for the night.

monday 04.11.2005 (day four.)

Posted in los angeles on April 24th, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, los angeles

Monday morning, we went to the farmer’s market on Fairfax. It’s confusing because the outside looks like a cross between an outlet mall and a regular mall. I figured there had to be some kind of farmer’s market action in there somewhere, just based on the name, and we did find that at the center. They had a bunch of booths; some of them were actual produce stands, but mostly it was all manner of different foods and souvenir shops. It would’ve been awesome for lunch, but it was a little early in the day.

By now, the sunburn had reached the painful stage, and no amount of sunblock seemed to be preventing further scorching. I could feel my arm burning as I drove. We spent a lot of time in the car, just getting around the rest of LA; we decided to go see Chinatown, so I headed off in the direction of downtown, not realizing how monstrous that place is.

We drove through a business district on Melrose I thought was downtown, until we happened upon the real downtown. We found the original pueblo, so we stopped and walked around there for a while. They had another large array of Mexican-trinket shops there as well, so of course I had to look at them all. We thought the pueblo would be a bigger deal (or perhaps one specific building), but it was interesting anyway. We decided we wouldn’t have time for Chinatown, and I wanted to dine at my favorite LA restaurant from last time around, so we headed over to Real Food Daily on La Cienega.

I love this restaurant not only because it’s next to Trashy Lingerie, but because I can eat every single thing on the menu. That never, ever happens. I had a bigass bbq tofu chop salad, and she had a bean and tempeh burrito. She didn’t seem thrilled by the weird food, but I was loving it. After that, we drove down 3rd, drooling over all the shops I really needed to go to, even though I knew I shouldn’t. We passed them all except for one irresistable one: the Paul Frank store. I’m not a huge fan of Julius the monkey, but dude! I got skull flipflops, a Wienermobile hoodie, and another sweatshirt with amps on it. Stephanie got a pink skull purse. It’s impossible to not love that store.

Sadly, it was then time to head to the airport. In true Dick form, our rental car almost got himself backed into in the parking lot right as we returned him. He made the most horrible noise as I slammed on the brakes. I’m pretty sure it caused me a mild heart attack.

At the airport, we waited in security for the hour that felt like three days. We finally got to our gate, and found a rather small plane awaiting us for our totally-booked flight. We both had middle seats on opposite sides of the aisle; Stephanie got to spend some quality time with the extremely angry dude who talked to himself a lot. I talked to a nice lady about her son, the doctor in Wisconsin, and then every single person on the plane stopped by to examine the flames sweater I was knitting. Or it felt like it, at least. I was a little weirded out when the flight attendant held up beverage service for a long time just to talk knitting with me; later when I went back to use the bathroom (I always use the bathroom on planes, because I enjoy the novelty of peeing at 35,000 feet), she grabbed me again and made me grope her yarn and the scarf she was knitting. Dirty.

Apparently Northwest Airlines has some Dick-service of their own, because we landed on time and then had to sit on the plane waiting for a gate, because some other plane forgot to leave or something. After they finally loosed us upon the terminal, we all sat waiting for our luggage to be vomited out onto the carousel for another hour. They have really excellent service.

My parents were nice enough to drive my car to the airport, so all I had to do was rush on home, whereas Stephanie got to ride back with them, and listen to my dad complaining about the flight delay. Lucky girl.

[Note: I didn't want to be all duplicative here, so you may find ten different favorite photos from this trip (in larger format) on my journal.]

friday 10.1.2004 (day one.)

Posted in san francisco on October 24th, 2004 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, fisherman's wharf, san francisco, visiting friends

Our trip got off to a good start. We arrived at the airport early, and found the flight delayed an hour due to conditions in San Francisco. We boarded and discovered that we were on a brand new A330, with the new-plane smell and everything. The thrill of that realization wore off the second the captain came on the intercom to tell us that they weren’t quite ready to fly yet; there was still some paperwork that needed completing before SFO would allow them to land. A while later, he told us they were awaiting an engine check: they had to run the engines, shut them down, check for oil, and then start them up again. It would probably take another hour or so. People on the plane got a little uptight about that, but we were trapped. And I was a little concerned maybe they had just assembled the airplane right on the tarmac, and which case it hadn’t even been checked for airworthiness yet.

We passd the time arguing about whether the airplane left the planet when it flew. She said that the atmosphere was part of the planet, so technically no. I maintained that she was full of crap. An hour and a half later, we were flying. They passed out headphones and switched on the back-of-seat entertainment for free, to quell our collective crabbiness. Stephanie announced, ‘Dude! They totally pimped this ride!’ and started watching The Notebook, even though I told her I’d make fun of her if she started bawling over that movie again.

I didn’t want to be in-seat entertained because I was knitting, but I did switch on the map. Man, that map is awesome. It told me where I was flying. Like South Dakota and the corner of Wyoming and Utah. Finally California. It told me we were averaging 550mph, how far we had come, how far we had to go, and that it was -60 degrees outside. And then all of that again in metric, as if I cared. It showed the entire western hemisphere, in case we got hijacked to Venezuela. If it involved the Middle East, we were on our own.

We arrived in SF around noon, and took the AirTrain to the BART. Being the awesome travel planner that I am, our hotel was located about 20 steps from the BART station at Powell Street. We checked in and then wandered through the Metreon and Yerba Buena Gardens on our way to find us some Pad Thai.

After lunch, we took the trolley to Fisherman’s Wharf. I was so less-than-charmed with Fisherman’s Wharf the last time I was there than I had missed the sea lions, so I was on a mission to see them. They were awesome, as long as their smell wasn’t wafting in our direction. They reminded me of my cats. I even made a movie of them.

We wandered through Fisherman’s Wharf, down to Ghirardelli Square. I don’t really get the whole chocolate empire thing, but it seemed to be a big draw. For some reason, we had already managed to do a ton of walking, even though I swore I was going to lay off and take public transport as much as possible (I was still having trouble with my ankle from the 3day in September). So we hobbled over to the cable-car turnaround nearby and waited to go up Russian Hill, one of the steepest in the city. Last year, I climbed it. This year, I was riding.

We dismounted at Powell Street and walked through Chinatown on the way back to the hotel. It was getting cold, possibly even colder than in Minnesota. On the way back, we discovered that the hotel strike has just begun. The sound of bullhorns, whistles, and banging on overturned buckets was to become the soundtrack to our stay there, together with the much-more-charming ‘dingding!’ of the cable cars.

Back at the hotel, we put on warmer clothes and headed over to meet Jay for dinner at the ‘fake-meat Chinese place’ in the Tenderloin. The tamarind beef was so good, I considered replacing my usual fantasies with memories of dinner. Tired as hell, we made our way back to the hotel, weaving our way through street people and hotel strikers. I promptly passed out because I can sleep through anything; my sister stayed awake most of the night listening to cable cars (we were right above the Powell St turnaround), the resident street preacher, and sirens.

saturday 10.2.2004 (day two.)

Posted in san francisco on October 24th, 2004 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: california, san francisco, stadiums, visiting friends

On our trip, I promised Stephanie she could sleep til 8. Saturday morning, I couldn’t sleep past 6, so I got up and went for coffee. I chose The Barbary Coast, figuring one couldn’t go wrong with a pirate-themed coffee shop. I was actually very wrong; there was nothing pirate about it but the prices.

I went back to the hotel to pester her awake, and we jumped on a bus to Haight-Ashbury, for breakfast at The Pork Store. How could a vegetarian not like the idea of a restaurant called The Pork Store? We got there early enough to avoid the lines at the un-greasy spoon. The server girls were awesome. So was the food; we split a veggie scramble with salsa and biscuits and veggie-gravy. Also, it must be noted that I love eating with people like my sister, who is not vegetarian but doesn’t mind eating that way at all.

After breakfast, the shops had not yet opened, so we went to wander around Golden Gate Park. We figured we’d go see the Japanese Tea Garden and the buffalo herd. But our map, it wasn’t quite accurate. It said that the scale changed past Divisadero, but didn’t say how much it changed. After walking what felt like 20 miles, we found a map that told us we were not even close to those sights, which were located near the other end of the park. Like, by the ocean. So we turned around and went back, and by the time we reached Haight Street and wove our way through the street people sleeping in the park, the shops had opened.

I found a Buddhist jewelry store and got myself a spinning prayer ring for my thumb. It had my favorite mantra on it, although I admit that reading Sanskrit is a personal failing. We stopped at one of my favorite stores in the world, no, the universe: Kidrobot. I fell in love with gloomy bears, although the last thing I need is a new collection. The girl behind the counter was so enthusiastic and loveable it was hard to leave. She told us to check out the reggae festival in the park (which we had wandered past on our trek), and the Love Parade.

Only SF could have an event called the Love Parade.

We went to more shops. The guy at Yak Pak insisted we go to the Love Parade. We said OK! in that we’re-totally-lying-just-to-make-you-happy kinda way. And bought our stuff and left.

With really good intentions about not walking so damn much and taking buses instead, we walked up and down the hills of Haight Street towards the Store for Working Pirates. We stopped at Flax Art, which is also on my top-ten list of best! stores! ever! We were both trying very hard to not spend a million dollars on our trip, being all newly budget-conscious and responsible (at least, that was my excuse). It was a huge challenge. I think we both did pretty well.

Though 826 Valencia was only 8 blocks away, they were eight of the longest blocks possible. We stopped for lunch at a taqueria with the magic word on the front: I yelled, ‘HEY! HEALTHY!’ and that was enough for me. But holy crap! It was good. Healthy Mexican food is a near-impossibility in the friendly midwest.

Refreshed, we made it to the pirate store. They were selling way more pirate-themed merchandise than before, which was both gratifying and goofy. I was hoping Dave Eggers’ new book was out, but no. So I lusted over McSweeney’s books, and then we left.

We got on a bus and rode up to Japantown. Because apparently, Saturday was all about my favorite places to shop. I’m not thrilled with Chinatown in San Francisco, but Japantown is the best. I could spend weeks in the bookstore alone, spending all my hard-earned cash, as well as some future savings. I bought a ‘tofu: the better white meat’ tshirt, which means my vegetarian tshirt collection has reached ridiculous proportions (I have three). I also added to my ridiculously-cute stationery collection at the paper store. And got the required netsuke and such. All good.

We took the bus back to the hotelish part of town. Powell and Market is near all the expensive boring shopping, like Nordstrom and Armani and crap. For some reason, Powell Street was insane that time of day, crawling with shoppers and strikers and people carrying signs that meant something to someone, I’m sure. The preacher at the cable car turnaround was on a roll, and would continue until late into the night.

We went upstairs and Stephanie laid down for a nap. I was going to scribble in my notebook (it’s like analog blogging) and knit, but I ended up dozing off and drooling on the bed for 20 minutes. Then I got up and speed-walked to two different Starbucks, as the first one had a line out the door. Since there were 10 of them within a three-block radius, it was pretty easy.

I have to note that I love my tourist-walking in big cities. I think it’s the only way to really get to know a place: walk out the door of your hotel by 7am, walk all day long, and walk back in sometime that night, completely worn out. Do that for a full week, and you might as well have lived there for months. This trip, it wasn’t as possible due to the ankle and the fact I wasn’t traveling alone. Which ended up being really good, too.

I called and pestered Jay for directions, and we set off on the MUNI train to see SBC Park, per Stephanie’s request. She’s not so much a sports enthusiast as a sports freak. The park was very cool, though, and we’d have seen a game there if they were playing. We did, however, get to see the remnants of the Love Parade. All I can say is that San Franciscans like to get either fuzzy or naked. Sometimes both.

We found our way to the California Street cable car and stood, freezing our supposedly cold-prepared asses off waiting. The cable cars like to taunt you by sitting on the opposite side of the street forever, and then creeping very very slowly in your direction. It finally arrived, and we rode over to the other side of Chinatown, to the Dar Bar Indian Restaurant, which I loved so much the first time around. Dinner was great, as expected. And as usual, we should’ve taken the bus, but wandered our way back through the Tenderloin to our hotel instead.

sunday 10.3.2004 (day three.)

Posted in san francisco on October 24th, 2004 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: alcatraz, california, fisherman's wharf, san francisco, visiting friends

Sunday morning, I got up and did the coffee thing. I wandered around looking for a breakfast place in the neighborhood, but could find nothing good. We decided to ride down to Fisherman’s Wharf, which was a big mistake. An hour later, I was sitting with my head in my hands in a back stairwell because I was too dizzy to stand. Stephanie was on recon for food, while I ate my emergency box of raisins. After 15 minutes, I could walk again, so we went to Starbucks and a found a fruit and cheese thing for a ridiculous amount of cash. It was worth it anyway.

We took the bus up to Coit Tower. It was pretty foggy, and even Christopher Columbus was looking chilly. The elevator music was ‘What a Feeling’ from Flashdance. We giggled the whole way up to the top.

You can hear the sea lions all the way up in the tower! I love that. We wandered around, took lots of photos, and then headed back down the stairs. This time, I managed to not remove the skin from my knuckles and wrist on the way down, so I considered that a huge personal success.

We took the bus back down the giant hill into North Beach, and went for lunch at the same place I visited last year, Cafe Delucchi. The food there was just as good as I remembered. We ate panini and watched a woman eating with her tiny little dog in a tiny little sack strapped to the front of her body. He sat and stared at every forkful longingly, but she seemed not to notice. We decided that a tiny little dog in a tiny little sack was unquestionably a sure sign of a very high-maintenance girl.

More buses! This time to the Presidio. We rode through Cow Hollow, which looked to have amazingly good shops, so we were smart enough to not get off the bus. Our ultimate goal was to get over to the coast, but we had to figure out how to get around the Presidio first, and all we knew about that was that 1) it sounded intimidating and had something to do with the military, and 2) Metallica tried to record an album there. Unsuccessfully. So obviously, the odds were against us.

We walked down and saw the Palace of Fine Arts, the only remaining building from a 1915 expo. It’s attached to the Exploratorium, but the most we saw of that was the bathrooms.

After wandering around a while longer, we decided there was no way we were going to reach the ocean that day, time and energy levels being what they were. Also, it was cold and foggy. We took a bus through the marina and hopped off to see Lombard Street (the crookedest street in the universe!), then got back on another bus to head back to the hotel. It went down Stockton, right through the middle of Chinatown, and I had never in my life seen such bus insanity. We were already so packed together we couldn’t breathe, and there were a hundred more people cramming in the back doors. The bus driver was yelling at the passengers. Then he stopped and fought with another bus driver, and they switched. I watched him stomping angrily down the street as we drove away.

Back at the hotel, we put on even more clothes, then met up with Jay. He said, ‘What did you do today?’ Stephanie said, ‘Rode buses!’ We hopped on the trolley back to Pier 39. When we got to our tour boat for Alcatraz, there was already a huge crowd waiting in the cold. We couldn’t find seats inside, so we got to enjoy the elements out on the bay.

The night tour of Alcatraz was awesome, though. A guide led us up the hill and told us about the history of the island, then we took an audio tour inside. I have trouble paying attention to audio tours, but it was still good. The prison itself seems to be in pretty good shape; the other buildings on the island are gutted.

We heard a lot of stories as told by prisoners and guards. They talked about a few escapes, and the fact that there are no known successful escapees, but a few prisoners unaccounted-for. We got to go in the cells, including isolation.

We went to hear the presentation about the 1969 Native American occupation, which led us back down the hill in the even-more-painful cold. Stephanie kept wandering off to stare at the bay. I concentrated on the story so as to not notice the lack of feeling in my extremities. I didn’t like the tour guide’s attitude. Not one bit.

We made a point of rushing back to the boat and managed to get seats inside. Back at the pier, we got on the crowded trolley again. At the stop after ours, the driver yelled at a bunch of boarding tourists, ‘Girls up front! Boys in the back! Girls up front! Boys in the back!’ The men confusedly headed for the back door. The women climbed on, and the driver cracked up. He said, ‘I was just messing with you!’ and broke down in hysterics again. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Near our stop, I felt my bag being jostled, so I pulled it around in front of me and saw that it was open. My phone and wallet were still inside, so I figured I had left it open when I put my transit pass away. Then I noticed the shifty-looking dude next to me with his coat over his arm, and I knew I had just almost been pickpocketed. I tried to make eye contact as he moved away from me. A bunch of people got on and Jay ended standing up right in front of him, so I whispered to him to look out. He said afterwards he saw the guy try the same thing on another woman, also unsuccessfully.

Near-pickpocketing! I was excited. More excited than I’d have been if he had actually gotten my wallet.

We had dinner at a Thai noodle restaurant in the Tenderloin, because I guess Jay seemed to think it was funny to make us walk through that neighborhood every night. Their pad thai was great, and the house music was amusing. We left there late, full and tired, and dragged ourselves one more time back to our hotel in the cold.

monday 10.4.2004 (day four.)

Posted in san francisco on October 24th, 2004 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: beach, california, ocean, san francisco

I got up, did my usual coffee-rushing, and we got food at Le Cafe Powell (which can only be said with a ridiculous French accent). We boarded the N train to Ocean Beach, because we were determined to see the coast before we left.

The train took an hour, but we made it. It dropped us right at the beach bathrooms, which were scary but also necessary. It wasn’t as cold at the beach as we expected.

We walked a long ways along the water. I was searching for whole sand dollars and beach glass, both of which are usually hard to find but seemed in abundance there. Stephanie was freaking out over the jellyfish, especially when we found a huge one laying there, still quivering. We tried to decide whether it was still alive, and whether it made sense to try to push it back into the ocean. It washed back out anyway, and by now has probably stung an unsuspecting surfer.

My favorite find was the mini-pumpkin with ‘ADDICTION’ scrawled on it in Sharpie marker. What did that mean? Was it some kind of therapy? Write your issue on a gourd and toss it into the ocean? I found it fascinating. I threw it back, on the off chance it might help the victim somehow.

We walked up to the corner of Golden Gate Park, by the weird giant windmill, and caught the bus back to Market Street. It’s a mighty pleasant neighborhood a few blocks down, one where you walk fast and don’t, under any circumstances, make eye contact. We picked up our bags, rolled them down to the BART station, and took the train to the airport. We had to walk about 30 miles to the terminal, since apparently Northwest Airlines hasn’t been keeping up with its protection money payments.

After going through security and discovering they had removed all the food from our terminal, we walked 30 miles back to the main one, shopped at the SFMOMA store (since we didn’t get to the real thing), and ate a veggie burger at BJ. Yes, BJ.

When we got back to the gate, we hung out for a while until they announced they had moved our gate. We went to that one and it was packed with tired-looking Minnesotans. They told us the plane was overbooked. I went to ask the desk people about my meal, wanting to switch it from diabetic to vegetarian, which has better odds for me. The guy told me they didn’t do special meals anymore. I asked if that meant it was safe for everyone, and he didn’t know. I bought some trail mix at the shop just in case.

When they served dinner, our choices were salami (which ended up being pepperoni, to Stephanie’s dismay), and turkey sandwiches. I asked the flight attendant if they had a vegetarian meal. She looked at me as if I had just told her I was hijacking the plane to Venezuela. She said, ‘Well! This has mineral water and carrots, and this protein bar thing.’ I took my meal, since she made me feel as if not accepting it could land me in some trouble with the law.

Within an hour, I had run out of knitting. This was a crappy old 757, not the pimped-out A330 that had just the other day been built specially for us, so there was no in-seat chick flick or overdetailed map to enjoy. I read the in-flight magazine with Lily Tomlin on the cover. I perused the gift catalog with immense interest, offering to buy my sister half the useless junk for Christmas. She seemed to enjoy being interrupted from her reading every 5 minutes.

With an hour and a half left to go, I was bored to death. I took photos out the airplane window. I wrote a poem. I wrote down the pattern for the throw pillows I was making, because I just made it up but they were coming out beautifully. I ate some trail mix. I interrupted Stephanie some more. I organized my bag. I kept trying to check the time on my phone, and kept finding it turned off. I peered out the window at South Dakota, and finally Minnesota. And then we were home, and it was even colder than in California.

sun 7.6.2003 (roseburg, or -> manchester, ca)

Posted in west coast roadtrip on July 30th, 2003 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: alonetrip, california, camping, highway 1, northern california, ocean, oregon, roadtrip

I got up at 6:15 and practically ran out of the Econolodge. Oregon Boy #1 was still at the front desk when I checked out. I said, “Hey! You’re still here.” He said, “Hey! So are you.” I replied, “Not for long!” He told the whole red-hair story to the girl at the counter. They directed me to a drive-up coffee cabana, where I scored a triple-shot americano for $1.50. Shit is cheap in Oregon, my friends.

I got back on the 5 and headed south to Highway 199, which cuts across to the coast. 60 miles later, I found myself in California. Never having been before, it was a big moment for me. Some guy in a truck with Oregon plates seemed to think he was off on the trip of a lifetime, but I had him beat. I was hoping for the California border produce shakedown, but I guess they only do that on the interstate. I was a little disappointed, but pressed on.

I drove through Redwoods National Forest, which was beautiful. I was really glad to have a sunroof. Furthermore, I was extra glad I had had the brakes done in Seattle, because I would have been miserable driving through the hills to the coast. As I got nearer, I started to notice weird clouds in the sky to the west. It took me forever to realize that it was the mist from the ocean. I had never seen anything like it before.

I arrived in Crescent City around 11am, and got my very first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. It was less spectacular than I expected; not that it was the ocean’s fault, but it was about 50 degrees and overcast, and Crescent City seemed deserted. I walked out on the pier, took photos, and talked to some kids who were netting crabs.

I got back in the car and headed south, finally on the 101. It was a little disconcerting to see mile markers in the 900s, and realizing I was probably going to be driving every one of those miles. The fog was incredible. It hung over the road, and occasionally the sun filtered through and made rainbows. I wished it was sunny, because I wanted to stop and sit on the beach, but the cool weather was a nice change. I stopped a ways down the road at a black-sand beach and got out to see the ocean. The beach was covered in driftwood, oysters, and crab shells. I climbed amongst the rocks, looking at the seaweed and above-water anemonies. The rocks were slippery, and I decided to leave before breaking my bones.

I drove past Trees of Mystery and saw the statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Until recently, I wasn’t aware that Paul Bunyan was a big deal anywhere outside Minnesota. It made me a little homesick. Then I saw some elk, and many, many redwood trees. At that point, I was 280 miles north of San Francisco, and wasn’t planning on getting there until the next day. That meant I could take my time along the coast.

Based on advice from Road Trip USA, I stopped in Arcata for lunch. The book said the Utne Reader (also a Minnesota original) described it as ‘the most progressive tiny town in the US.’ It was really cute, with a town square surrounded by little shops and restaurants, and totally hippie; all the girls were wearing peasant shirts and sarongs, with their long hair up in ponytails, and the guys had dreads and wore cutoff shorts. Also, almost everyone I saw was college-age. I felt old.

I stopped at the Big Blue Cafe and ate a tofu burger. While I was sitting there drinking my cappuccino, a couple of college kids came in for lunch. They turned down the first table they were offered because it had bad feng shui. The second table was acceptable. I half-listened to their conversation as I wrote. The boy was babbling about Echelon, which I found interesting because I thought that kind of government-conspiracy paranoia was exclusive to the right wing. He went on and on until my hands started to twitch, wanting to wrap themselves around his throat. The conversation eventually drifted to living in Arcata. The girl said she liked living there now, but wouldn’t want to raise kids there, because they’d end up as drug dealers. The boy said, “Well, that would be OK, as long as it wasn’t crack or heroin or meth or something.” At that point, I knew I had to leave, or I’d soon be overturning tables in a rage.

I wandered around town for a bit, getting a really weird vibe. There were a bunch of drunk guys laying on the sidewalk outside a bar, and in the town square. I went into a cute glass shop and talked to the guy there for a long time about the weather in northern California, and the possibility of tsunamis, which I somehow found really amusing. He seemed starved for human contact. I stopped at the natural foods store and stocked up on protein bars and produce. Then I drove to Eureka, which was a super-cute, artsy little town. I got coffee at the bakery and shopped at a few galleries. Once again, the place was almost deserted. One of the women working there said that you could never predict when it would be crowded. It was kind of cold and overcast, but it was still a holiday weekend. I stopped and talked to all the people working in the stores, and everyone was really friendly. One girl I met said that it was hardly ever sunny there, but you could go 15 miles inland and it would be 100 degrees.

I went into a shop (OBJX) that I could have spent hours and all my money in. It was like a museum, with bizarre junk from everywhere. My favorites were brooches made of ear bones, bingo cards from a mental hospital, and the hundreds of glass slides from medical schools and colleges. I bought three slides of patients with facial deformities to bring to Jay. They totally creeped me out.

I got back on the 101, then exited at Ferndale. It’s the kind of town my mom would love: all victorians. The cemetery was amazing; it reminded me of New Orleans. It wasn’t a port like the towns north of there – at least, there was no huge waterfront. Lots of beef and dairy farms. A lot like Wisconsin, actually.

I was a little tired of driving, and considered whether to take the 101 (faster), or Highway 1, where it began further south. I figured if it stayed foggy and cold, I’d stick to the 101. All of a sudden, it was sunny and beautiful, and my decision was made. I must have been far enough inland, because it went from 60 to 80 degrees. I opened the sunroof and windows, even though I was going 70. It was so perfect. I exited at the famed Avenue of the Giants, a 35-mile route that parallels the 101 through the redwood forest. I stopped and saw the Immortal Tree with a bunch of Japanese and Indian tourists. It probably goes without saying, but I love that there’s this entire route devoted to giant trees. It’s kind of amusing. I mean, people like giant things. Biggie fries, SUVs, redwoods. Put them all together, and you’ve got yourself a party. Unfortunately, this time it was just me and the trees. I drove on, and finally, I stopped for the big event: the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree. I pulled up to the booth and the little old man inside asked, “Just one?” I said, “Yep, just me for the drive-thru tree today!” He laughed and asked where I was from, and commented that I was far from home. I considered telling him that I had driven all that way just to drive through his tree, but I couldn’t lie to a cute old man in a booth. He gave me a coupon for a FREE postcard at the gift shop. $1.50 for the drive-thru tree and a free postcard. How could I go wrong?

I sat and waited for the dumb woman with 15,000 kids in an SUV (and probably some biggie fries) to nudge her way into the tree in her gigantic vehicle. It was 7′x7′ clearance, and she barely made it. They had to fold in the mirrors and everything. It took forever. Finally, it was my turn. Chico fit easily, of course. I took a picture looking up out the sunroof through the hollow tree, then pulled up so I had enough room to get out and take a photo of the car inside the tree. I was pretty damn happy with myself, and thankfully no one was watching.

I went into the gift shop to claim my FREE postcard. There were two old women sitting in there. One of them said, “Girl, you got such purty hair!” I thanked her and ran away as fast as I could. This wasn’t the first evidence I had that northern California was actually part of the South.

I got back on the 101, laughing to myself. I decided that I was indeed going to take the 1, because it was beautiful outside. I exited and immediately, it became a tiny, twisting mountain road. At that point, I was positive that blowing a tire was a message from the god I don’t believe in to get the brakes done right away. I would have hated myself otherwise. There was no way I’d have made it to San Francisco, or at least I’d have had to stick to the interstate, and missed the whole coast.

Highway 1 wound up and down for 40+ miles. I had to keep putting on and taking off my sunglasses; one moment, I was blinded by the sun, the next it was dark from the overhanging trees. The temperature dropped 20 degrees in 20 minutes. I had to use 2nd gear most of the way down. With all the sharp turns, it was like slaloming, which was fun for a while, but quickly started to wear me out. With all the mountain driving, my arms and shoulders were killing me.

Half an hour later, I drove up another big hill and came around a curve that finally had no trees. The sun was glaring. I got to the top and started to round the curve, and my jaw dropped. It was the Pacific Ocean – the rocky, rugged coastline I kept hearing about but didn’t really believe existed. The water was perfectly blue. I pulled off at the overlook and started crying. I couldn’t believe how incredible it was. It was perfect.

I took about a million pictures at six overlooks. I thought about stopping at the beach, but it was getting late. The road began to straighten out at various points along the coast, so I drove as fast as I could, feeling my stomach drop as I went speeding up and down hills. I was the only one on the road for miles. I drove through Fort Bragg, then decided to stop in Mendocino for dinner around 8pm. It was a cute, tiny little town (Road Trip USA told me it was the idyllic scene for many movies and TV shows, including ‘Murder, She Wrote’). I decided against trying to get into Cafe Beaujolais dressed the way I was, so I picked a place next door: the creatively-named 955 Ukiah Street Restaurant. The servers there were kind of snooty, but nice. They put me upstairs in the very back corner. I ordered a salad and cappuccino, and got out my notebook. A short while later, they seated a couple of women at the table right next to me, even though the upstairs was almost completely empty. The next time the server came back, they quietly asked to be moved. I laughed. Was it me? I hoped so.

I still had no idea where I was spending the night. Based on my book, I was hoping to reach Gualala, because it was one of the few places along the coast with relatively inexpensive lodging. I was amazed at how remote some of the coast was. The towns were few and far between, and the fact that I could drive 40mph at the most on Highway 1 made everything seem even farther apart.

It was getting dark by the time I left Mendocino, and Gualala was seeming really far away. I had gotten used to the fact that it was light until after 10pm in the Pacific Northwest. The fog made it seem a lot darker, too, and I was feeling like I was really out in the middle of nowhere, completely alone. I drove and drove, looking for a motel. Finding nothing for miles, I decided to just camp in my car, because there were numerous state-run campsites all along the beaches. So then, my goal became to find a payphone so I could call home and reassure them that I was alive. I had been out of contact for over 24 hours, and the last anyone knew, I was in Portland. Also, I had forgotten the two-hour time difference, which made it after 11:30 in Minneapolis.

I finally arrived in Elk, California. It struck me as a nice coincidence, as I had just read an article in a travel magazine at my mom’s house about this tiny little town called Elk that no one knew about, but which was worth the trip. It was about 10 buildings in total, and even though there were cars and lights at the resort, it seemed deserted. Not even a gas station. I ran into the post office, looking for a phone. Finally, I saw the glowing green PacBell phonebooth at the side of the road, looking ominous. I rushed to call Heather. She yelled at me that mom my was in a panic, and wanted to call the highway patrol. I have to admit I loved the idea of Eric Estrada coming to my rescue, but she wasn’t so amused. I was in a hurry to find somewhere to sleep, and it was getting later and later. She agreed to call my mom, and I ran back to the car. A hitchhiker carrying more than his own weight in packs came staggering up just as I started the engine, and scared the hell out of me. My car went screeching back onto the highway.

I headed south again and finally saw a camping sign about 10 miles down the road. I couldn’t find the state beach, but there was a KOA. I pulled in ten minutes before the office closed. The woman at the counter was super nice, like a mom. She put me in a campsite near the bathroom, and told me that she’d let the security guard know I was there, so he could keep an eye out for me. Not that they ever had any problems, but I was a woman on my own, sleeping in my car. I found my site, parked, and hauled my sleeping bag and blankets out of the trunk, setting up a semblance of a bed in the backseat. I ran to the bathroom and washed up. The restrooms there were way nicer than I expected: private, and really clean. If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have showered.

Sleeping in the car wasn’t as bad as I expected. It would have been pretty comfortable if I hadn’t been so sore from mountain driving and falling down. I had the sleeping bag on the seat, my big pillow against the door, and three blankets. I woke up and flipped around a lot, but otherwise I slept well, and I knew that the next night I’d get to sleep in a real bed.

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random notes from my travel journal:

i’m dressed like crap and i look like i’ve been beat up, but i totally fit in here anyway.

there’s no cell phone reception up here. isolated in california? go figure.

omg. he just said, ‘the way of the tao’. why do i hate them so very very much? and why do they serve so much meat here?

is it weird to have all this redwood stuff for sale in the redwood forest? i mean, aren’t we celebrating the majesty of the living trees?

holy shit, gas is expensive in california.

further evidence that norcal is part of the south: i’ve had no signal all day. i’m within 150 miles of sf! wtf?? i feel like i’m in montana. although i suspect calling people and raving about how unbelievable the ocean is might be unpopular anyway. man, i’m totally going to have to find a payphone.

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mon 7.7.2003 (manchester, ca – > san francisco)

Posted in west coast roadtrip on July 30th, 2003 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: alonetrip, beach, california, highway 1, norcal, ocean, san francisco, visiting friends

I woke up at 6am, feeling a little stiff. I got dressed, which consisted of putting on my shoes; I was going to arrive in San Francisco wrinkled and smelly, and didn’t really care. I went to the bathroom and put on my bra and contacts, shifted my hair around halfheartedly, and was on the road by 6:30. I ate a protein bar and drank a Red Bull (the poor man’s meth) and was wide awake. It was cold, in the 50s and foggy. I drove south, looking for somewhere to have breakfast by the beach. The roads were deserted until after 7am. It was still all tiny, winding highway, cattle farms, run-down houses, resorts, state beaches, and road construction. I was within 120 miles of San Francisco and might as well have been in Iowa.

The sun came out around 9am, as I arrived in Bodega Bay. I came across The Wharf, which got my business because it had the word ‘breakfast’ out front; everything else I had encountered up to that point had been closed. I had oatmeal, which I ate very slowly while I wrote postcards and in my journal. I almost peed my pants with excitement when I realized my cell signal had returned. There were a bunch of messages from home from the day before when they were considering sending out a search party. I messaged Heather, and decided to drive to the beach to hang out for a while and make some phone calls.

I went to the post office to drop off a huge bundle of postcards, then stopped at the espresso shop. The surfer dude running the place said that the beach north of town was the best in the area, but the currents were really dangerous. Even if I had wanted to swim, it was still too cold and windy. The beach was the southernmost of the Sonoma Coast state beaches, and it was incredible. I had the whole place to myself for a little over half an hour. I laid out my blanket, took off my shoes, and walked along the ocean. Then I sat down, grabbed my phone, and realized I was once again without a signal. So I wrote some more, then just sat and stared at the ocean. I looked down and noticed that I was writing with a pen from the Glacier Gateway Motel in Kalispell, Montana. It seemed so long ago.

Finally, I got up and decided to head back into town so I could call home. Before I did that, though, I felt like I had to get my life back in order. I opened the trunk and all the car doors. I dragged the entire contents of my vehicle into the parking lot, then set out to reorganize. I rolled up my sleeping bag and folded blankets. I emptied souvenirs from their bags and consolidated all of them in one large bag. I tossed out all the trash, dug wayward CDs out from under the seats, and spent a long time peering at my map to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Then I went and had the Port-A-Potty experience I never wanted; I knew I had packed antibacterial wipes for a reason. My car organized (and, therefore, my sanity restored), I was on my way.

I figured my mom would yell at me for scaring her the day before, but she was just happy to hear from me. I talked to her for about 10 minutes, and then lost the signal again on the way out of Bodega Bay.

I drove a couple miles off the highway to see Bodega, the little surfer town where they filmed The Birds. From there, Highway 1 heads inland. I drove along Tomales Bay and saw oyster ships. Point Reyes Station was really cute, and one of the last towns before crossing into the Bay Area. I decided to stop there for lunch. I had time to kill, and I was worn out. I had a really good veggie burger at a restaurant I don’t remember the name of. I walked around the main street, stopping into a few shops, then got back on the road.

I decided to drive up Mount Tamalpais to get a view of the city I’d soon be visiting. About halfway up, I remembered that I really, really hated mountain driving. I went up and saw the amphitheatre, then drove all the way up to the lookout. It required hiking, which I was even less thrilled about, but I had to do it. I climbed up to the top and sat on the rocks at the base of the fire tower. I took a million pictures and tried to get my bearings by picking out features I could see: the Golden Gate. The Bay Bridge. Alcatraz. I once again could use my phone, since I was essentially sitting right by the cell tower. I called Heather and talked for a long time. I tried to tell her everything I’d been doing, but I was so tired that it was all a blur. Then I called Jay and got directions to his apartment. I wrote down everything he said: bridge – famous – red. s 101. downtown/marina. fork – right. 45 mns. I started back down the mountain and ran into some talkative old people. We compared cell phones. They welcomed me to California. One guy said he could tell I was excited because I sounded so enthusiatic on the phone. For a minute, I actually regretted my constant casual swearing. Who wants to offend friendly old people? Not me. At least, not these particular old people.

I drove down the hill and found myself lost in the wilds of Marin County. After a while, I managed to get myself back on the 101. Within five minutes, I was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

I didn’t mind paying $5 to enter San Francisco, but I wondered what they do to you if you don’t have cash. Shouldn’t they warn you about the tolls in advance? Anyway. It was clear and sunny, 60 degrees, and incredibly windy. I hated the hills instantly. I drove around for a while looking for a parking spot. When I finally found one two blocks away, I worried that it wasn’t a real spot, because it seemed too good to be true. I finally understood the street cleaning thing, too. What city cleans its streets every single week? I think it’s just an excuse to give parking tickets. I called Jay and he was just leaving work, so he told me where to find a Starbucks nearby. The guy behind the counter (I have trouble calling guys ‘baristas’) begged me to sell him my superspecial Starbucks card. (I haven’t mentioned this before, but my Seattle Starbucks card made me a celebrity everywhere I went. The baristas always wanted to know where I got it. Apparently, quite a few of them collect the cards.) I told him no way, I drove all the way to Seattle for that card. I sat and wrote and stared at the passersby, happy to be in a city again. At 4:30, I walked back up to Jay’s. His apartment is so cute. Also, he is correct about it being a fishbowl, which is pretty cool. The building has one of those old elevators with the gate you have to pull shut. Awesome.

We sat around and talked for a long time. Or, actually, I rambled, he listened. I couldn’t believe what a relief it was to see someone I knew after so long. We went to get my stuff out of the car, and I finally showered and changed clothes. He had decided to park my car over by Michelle’s where it would be easier to find a spot we could leave it in for a while. We drove over there, and the three of us went to dinner at a Thai place with trippy artwork and weird music. I had almost forgotten what tofu was. After dinner, they dropped me off at his apartment. I got my email, took another shower, and crashed. Hard.

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random notes from my travel journal:

i wondered how long it would take me to start talking to myself in the car, and now i know: 8 days. it’s more a function of disconnect with the outside world, though – remoteness and lack of cell signal – rather than time, i think.

at 8 days, 3300 miles, that means i’ve averaged 400 miles a day. insane.

i saw an accident on hwy 1 – a timber truck had overturned on one of those hairpin curves. yesterday on the 101, i saw a camping trailer that had turned over and dumped its contents everywhere: cabinets, beds, luggage. it looked like it had been packed full. (is runawaytruck.com available? probably not.)

i have my own roadtrip inside joke: the garage magnet. it sucks having inside jokes only with yourself. sigh.

why do sf cops look like the village people?

i’m worried about my brakes here, even though they’re new. my car knows it doesn’t belong here, so it hates it.

is my butt orange from sitting on that mountain? i wonder if i look like a hick. cool.

i have a bruise on the palm of my hand from driving.

i hunch when i’m writing. i have to stop that. i don’t need a hump. not that kind of hump, at least.

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