Mom Says I’m Running Away

A Week Before Christmas:

The Second Annual Santa Pub Crawl went down last Saturday night to another raging success.  You can never understand, without being there, what a small army of Santas can do to a bar or just a common city street; horns honked, crowds parted, shots were bought, beer flowed and we must have posed for a hundred pictures each.  This year we gained 6 Santas, to get us up to 11, and next year we are shooting for 18-20 Santas!

Of course we drank a little much, but fortunately no one was arrested (as opposed to last year where 3 of my friends spent the night in jail dressed as Father Christmas).

After Not Dying in Death Valley:

I did the unthinkable and decided to test my mettle by living in Southern California without a car, with the intent being on trying to lower my personal carbon footprint (and saving on gas/insurance). Last Saturday I sold my car and now my primary form of transport is Moanahh II (above); combined with an assortment of trains, buses, bummed rides, and borrowed cars. It represents my first major step in fighting global warming in my way.

Today is my fifth carless day and so far everything is going well, the Metrolink trains and buses allow Moanahh II on with me and I haven’t been late to work in Downtown L.A. yet. Other than battling the cold winter mornings it’s actually a little easier than driving, although they both seem to take roughly the same amount of time. Some of you out there in blogland might just give it a try. I’ll keep you updated as the next couple of months progress through this experiment.

Other than becoming what my brother-in-law refers to as a full blown bum (i.e. no car, no permanent address, no permanent job, no bills), life has been going pretty well since my return from Singapore. I have spent vast hours in my favorite aisles at the bookstore (below), worked a bit on a couple of T.V. shows and concerts in L.A., and shot some pictures of the family at my cousins wedding.

I have decided on my next little getaway; In early March myself and a certain cute Asian girl are going to spend three months wandering around Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and possibly Bolivia. I know thats still 10 weeks away, but it will be the first chance for her to get away from her job and take off with me, so I just figured on waiting here and filling up my bank account for the rest of this years travel before we go.

Day: 341

Today was pretty routine for being in a National Park; driving around visiting Scotty’s Castle, doing some hiking in Titus Canyon and scrambling over the dune filled desert. Once again the sun hit the horizon far to early and we were left to wander about in the dark until we became tired.

Day: 340

Waking up slightly before our 11am check out, slightly hungover, Daniel and I quickly gathered our stuff and headed back to the Hybrid to get to Death Valley.  The plan was to get there, find a camp, do a little exploring, and  wander aimlessly in the dark when the sun goes down.  A few hours of driving and eating fast food and we made it into the valley just after two.

Unfortunately for us, after a quick visit to the Badwater salt flats (the lowest spot in the western hemisphere, -282ft), we made our way to the Devils Golf Course where the sun started dropping rapidly in the sky just after 4:30pm.  We shot a few new pictures of Daniel for his myspace page and as the sky went black we headed off to the campground; now completely engulfed in darkness.   A leisurely dinner of tuna sandwiches, mac and cheese and beers got us to 6:15pm.

We had now been up for only 7 hours and were sitting in the pitch black drinking beers trying to figure out what to do in our current alert state.  Some meandering got us to a ranger presentation on the U.S. national parks and that kept us busy until 8.

Then I found WiFi outside of the ranger station and we we’re able to check emails and stuff.  Daniel, being the pimp that he is, has a hard time not responding to the ladies for a couple of days and needed to check who was after him today.

We really just did nothing for the next couple of hours until we could manage to sleep, hoping to get up somewhat earlier tomorrow and try to catch more of the park before the sun sets on us.

Day: 339

It must have started as a small child. At the age of four or five my Grandmother took me on my first road trip alone with her across California, into Nevada, and finally into Utah to visit relatives whose houses always smelled awkward. This was my first trip to a casino (which of course had the cheapest rooms in our journey across Nevada) where I was introduced to gambling. Grandma though it was just good, clean fun to sneak me into casinos to watch slot wheels spin, the quarters fall, the flashing lights and see her eyes light up at the chance to win fortunes. Even when gambling laws prohibited anyone under 21 from entering a casino, for some reason Grandma didn’t think that applied to us and would habitually sneak me into the casino anytime one was near because she thought it would be proper excitement for me to pull the handle, watch those cherries spin and have the chance to be rich; at least to my eyes as a child. It was forbidden and I was nervous, knowing we would be caught and asked to leave, but even after being escorted out of gaming floors across Nevada she continued to force me to gamble with her. To tell the truth, I loved it.

This was our special time, just Grandma and me out there tearing it up on the road in her huge baby blue Monte Carlo, stopping every once in a while for some illicit gaming. I soon learned my roll to appear as small as possible, like I almost didn’t exist; yet I was a smart kid, and as soon as we were at those machines in the back corner, away from the security desk, in a time when cameras were not quite as prevalent, I would be given a handful of quarters and with an eye over my shoulder play at the machine next to her. Sometimes I won, most times I lost, and almost every time we were asked to leave. There was not a security guard in the state that could match my 68 year old Grandma’s at banter or sheer willpower at arguing; I mean, who would really want to arrest a an old woman and a 5 year old boy, I could just imagine the paperwork on that one.

So, while other kids got money to play pinball, I was taught to gamble and it stuck. The bright lights of Vegas always attract me and even though I know its not a wise way to spend my money, I still find myself with the dice in my hand at the craps table screaming the point number or praying for 21 at blackjack. Every trip (a mere 3 1/2 hours from my house) for the past 7years has got progressively more expensive. I drink more, I play more, I do more. I always have a good time and I usually go home wishing I hadn’t spent so much.

When Daniel and I realized we both had the week off, we decided to pile in the Hybrid, spend a night in Vegas and then head over to Death Valley for a few days of camping. I knew what I was in for. I knew I could lose fortunes here. I prepared. I planned. I locked my ATM card in the safe in the room and set out for the night with a mere $51.

I won, I lost, I drank too many beers, I threw dice, I played blackjack, I was up to $150, I was down to my last $10, and finally I had around $42 around 10:30pm. I was quite drunk and before leaving the room I informed Daniel this was all I had left for the night and we still had to eat. We made it downstairs to the bar in our hotel the Tropicana, I spent $7 on two beers for us. Then, he made a mistake of walking us past the craps table on our way out to the strip…

We had chicken sandwiches at Burger King for dinner and went to bed early, broke.