Progress Report

We are still in Los Angeles, and I think we will stay for a few days. Yesterday we hung out around downtown L.A. and today we are doing Beverly Hills. And we're causing trouble. Take the pedestrian signal thing. We are totally not used to people's following pedestrian signals. We crossed the street onto Rodeo Dr., and a cop approached. Because he had a green light, we didn't cross into his lane and just stopped in the middle of the street. As we waited for him to drive by, he didn't. He stopped his car and began making some hand gesture at us. We thought he was being one of those crazy yet pedestrian-friendly L.A. drivers so we kept on walking. Actually, he was blown away that we walked out in the middle of the street without a signal right in front of a cop car. After we crossed the street he rolled down his window and asked us, "Are you serious??!" We kind of laughed and then he asked us where we were from. We replied "New Awlins," and he kind of gave us this look of pathetic understanding and kept driving. Wow.

Hollywood

I'm on my computer now at a Starbucks on Hollywood in Hollywood. A bunch of people described Hollywood to us as a freak show--even moreso than Venice Beach--and that's pretty accurate. I doubt there is any way to really stand out because everyone stands out. It's whacky. This picture pretty much sums it up. More on this later. Last night we celebrated New Year's in Hollywood in a place called "The Room." All the bars in Hollywood seem to be super clean and glass/mirorrs type place. And everything is expensive and expensive looking and uber hip, dude. We had fun exploring what is definitely a West Coast dance style that's hard for me to describe exactly. 

New Year's in L.A.

We went to "The Room" in Hollywood for New Year's.

Venice Beach

After the crazy overnight drive, we passed through Beverly Hills on our way to Santa Monica. It was crazy hard to find a parking spot, but perserverance prevailed and we got lucky. However, both of us were pretty smelly and wearing nasty clothes, while everyone else it seemed in L.A. was looking pretty good. We parked in one of the neighborhoods and changed clothes in the car and took off. We wondered around and ended up meeting some cool people and some crazy people. There was --definitely L.A., but very legit-- Beyond O2 Waterhouse, the guy at the wine store that randomly offered to buy us as much medical marijuana as we wanted since he had a card that let him into the plethora of herb stores around, and others. No we didn't take him up on it. We were recommended to walk down Venice Beach to Washington Ave where we could drink our wine in a cafe. Venice Beach is probably the craziest place on earth. I mean there were some serious whackos. The piano dude, the guitar dude, the medical marijuana street vendor, the Canadian hat salesgirl, and so many others. We couldn't afford the cafe or much of anything else around.

We made it to L.A.!

Here you're looking at the sunrise in my rearview while we are headed west on I-10.And here are a bunch of windmills in California.


Check out the windmills!

Progress report

We've been in Big Bend, TX for a while without internet. We are in El Paso for a few minutes, right about to do an all-nighter to San Diego. I'll be updating the blog for a while so stay in tune.

El Paso

We hit El Paso in the early afternoon of December 30. Todd was driving and despite my warnings he went straight into Mexico, or more specifically the no-man's land between Mexico and the U.S. The picture is the last sign we saw. At the last minute before passing the point of no return, he slammed on the brakes and we pulled into a no-parking zone that held about two cars. There was a line of cars that strecthed as far as we could see trying to head into the U.S. through the customs gate. We ran across the interstate to ask a Boarder Patrol guy whether we needed passports and he waved a gun at us and told us to go away. So we stayed there for a bit and tried to communicate in Spanish with a Mexican girl who got dropped off next to us. Eventually another Border Patrol agent pulled up and he warned us not to go--that we would get lost. He neglected the 4000+ murders and even more kidnappings in 2008. We were finished with Texas anyway, so we decided to pull an all-nighter and spend the New Year's in Los Angeles.

Big Bend National Park, TX

The drive to Big Bend was the more isolated than smiling faces at Harrah's. Everything was dusty, but the road off the I-10 had a bunch of flood gauges for the rainy season. On the same road we saw a javalina (like a small boar) and tried to chase it down, but it was way faster than both of us. We saw what we think was a jackrabbit, too. It's so hot during the day there, but in the night it dips down to the 20s. Wild wild wild. We arrived to this little store outside of the national park, and it was the hub of activity in this desolated little space. There was a group doing mammology research (the leader of which Todd is talking to in the picture). Todd has talked to so many random people in strange contexts--but the crazy thing is that he does it even quicker than me!

Camping in Fredericksburg

When we finally found the camp, a woman in a truck pulled up next to us and started giving us the third degree in the most polite of Texas ways. She was the owner and said she was in a hissy because one of her campers had just got arrested and she had to bail him out of jail. She was really freaking out. And she warned us something about the cops being nazi about drinking. But we had to go explore, of course. Before we went out to the bar in Luckenbach, we cooked dinner--boiled corn, green beans, and fried some Italian sausage. Only we had to do each separately because we only had one burner.

Us cowboys

We visited Luckenbach, TX (population 1) yesterday. We camped outside the nearby town of Fredericksburg. It was cold. But inside the Luckenbach bar it was quite warm with the wood-burning furnace. We mingled with some legit cowboys and looked totally out of place. Fortunately I had reminded Todd to remove the Oakleys sitting on top his head. The bartender stared at our ID's for minutes it seemed, considering whether to serve us alcohol. Finally she caved, we got the official TX cowboy beer--Shiner Bock--and I aggravated our absurdity by taking lots of pictures and video for our readers. I think almost everyone in the bar had a guitar, and they exchanged seats with one another at the guitar circle, and played some country/bluegrass stuff. Some more upbeat than others, nothing I've ever heard before, and very cool. They even had a genuine upright bass player that sounded great until he left and some guy came back with a stick a piece of string and a tub that was all somehow manufactured to produce low notes. That actually sounded pretty good, too. We got to learn all about what it is to be a trucker from a guy next to us. And as the beer set in, we got fewer stares and glances with every movement of our mouths. We were actually the last ones to leave the bar (in true New Orleans fashion). 

Progress Report

We spent the day in San Antonio, and now we're trying to find Kerrville, TX and a little campground there to spend the night. We'll tell our stories about San Antonio a little later...

San Antonio

We checked out the Alamo, found a great parking spot on some unoccupied property across the street, and walked riverwalk back and forth and drank some beer we bought for 89 cents )) We decided to get a camp outside the city, but we left really late so we had to set it up during the night and it was cold and painful.

December 28

Progress report:

We left Houston at 11, and we're on I-10 toward San Antonio. We filled up yesterday for $1.33, and bought some fresh groceries. I'm working on my law school applications in the car now while Todd is driving...

A little climb...

Last night we were passing through Houston, and Todd told me we might be able to spend the night at his mom's empty apartment: one night without camping hassles, with Sony HD, enjoying the Houston nightlife, etc. Sounded good, but we didn't have a key or anything else to help get us in. Now we wouldn't let a little thing like that stop us. Todd managed to jump the front entrance gate and let the car in the exit. The front door was locked and so was the window. But maybe the balcony was better? ONly one way to find out--I climbed the 25 or so feet to the third floor and checked. We got lucky. And with dinner, too--I improvised a chicken dish that turned out quite well.