Thanksgiving adventures!
Hmmmm yes so it has been forever since my last entry. My only defense is I have been busy I guess. For those who don’t talk to me very much, I am currently home from VE and living in Southern California working at an outdoor school as a science educator. So basically I take 5th and 6th graders hiking and teach them about science. It’s hard but generally fun and super rewarding.
Last week for thanksgiving I went roadtripping with my friends Aliza and James to San Francisco. The first day we drove up the coast, which was very pretty. We decided to camp out the night, and so went hiking in the dark up this steep slope to find a place to put the tent. About 15 minutes up we found a relatively flat clearing and dumped the stuff, then James asked, what kind of plant is this? and we found ourselves in the middle of poisen oak! So we put up the tent as little in the stuff as possible and slept in our undies to avoid poisen oak in the sleeping bags. All would have been good except there were three tight in a two person tent and I was quite claustrophobic falling asleep, and appartently managed to slip out the bottom of the door while sleeping because I woke up looking up and thinking, why can I see branched above me? In the morning I found my head to be directly in a patch of poisen oak, but I think my crazy dreadlocks prevented the worst of the itchyness. Down the road just a bit we stopped and somebody waved us over and said, don’t go hiking here, there’s been a Cougar siting just down the road a bit….. basically exactly where we were hiking! Kinda scary I must say.
The next day was mostly driving up the coast and we came in the SF pretty late at night. We picked up Aliza’s friend Maggie who is really cool and went driving for a long time to find somewhere to camp, finally found a closed campground and had to hike in to set up camp. SF is a groovy city, although not as full of love as I had expected. When asking at a bar where the hippies hang out, the bartender replied “In Hell, I hope”. However, there were many ragabonds on the street playing music and plently of fun conciencous people to talk to in bars and such. The next night in SF we went to the same campground but were too lazy to hike in, so slept in the car for about an hour until awakened by police banging on our window and telling us it is illegal to sleep in the car. WHat damage we were doing, I don’t know, but instead of sleeping harmlessly we drove back into the SF area tired and with the window constantly fogged up so I couldn’t see at all, much safer for society I’m sure. We slept instead in the Denny’s parking lot.
After this we decided to head north to Oregon where Aliza has family and a cabin in the woods. The cabin was very nice, wood heat, a cat, a shower, all the comforts of home. For thanksgiving we drove to the fun city of Medford or something like that, where we had an amazing dinner and spent the next day lazing in the hot springs and in the sauna, then dancing to reggae. Here we had another incident with the police, being pulled over for speeding while giving this kid a ride home. So we were 5 in the 5 person car, and I was in the middle with a bicycle entirely over my head. But the police didn’t even look at me, just handed out the ticket and moved on. Stange the things that are illegal or acceptable. Looking to make quota I expect.
On the way back through SF we wandered around Golden Gate Park which is really nice. Lots of paths and places to play ball or run or whatever, and even a botanical path with plant species labeled and some info about primitive plants and stuff. Very enjoyable. Driving back Aliza wanted to go to In and Out burger, which is a CA fast food chain of decent at least fresh food but still cheap, but I didn’t feel like paying so I walked in to the super busy store feelling like a real fool with a bag of bread and a head of lettuce and some salad dressing. I was wandering around feeling really stupid and looking for seating when this random cute dread head came up to me and said, “the real way to do it is to bring your own water bottle to put pop into, as well” showing that he had one. It was pretty funny. He asked where I had gotten the food, and I think if I had said dumpster diving he would have jumped me right there. Random the things that are sexy to some people. Works out for me though I suppose.
So overall a good trip. I didn’t kill any of the people that I went with and even did some good bonding, although it was a heck of a lot of car time and I was going crazy and hated them all at times. I am now back in the LA area and begin teaching again tomorrow. So unprepared feelling!!!!!!!!!!
Unfortunately I have no pics of our trip because we managed to loose the only camara brought, along with my jack knife and the food (several times). Damn being a group of absent minded hippies! However, I will add some random pics soon, so check in soon!