Love and Baguettes

Swiss bread & cheese on the train

At first sight, Paris is very much as I imagined. In my mind I only had snapshots though; I had not contemplated scale or intensity. Both were nearly overwhelming. Tall, old, beautiful buildings, yes. Tens of thousands of them? Everywhere? Didn’t expect that. Baguettes are popular, right? A baguette in every shopping bag? Never would have guessed. The city of love, I know. But couples making out at every opportunity, seemingly all the time? It was worse than South America. Although, it didn’t seem especially romantic, or any more so than anywhere else beautiful. Not to be down on it, but I guess I was surprised to be totally comfortable, even by myself.





I arrived from St Gallen a little before 10. My roommate suggested the Eiffel tower at night, which seemed perfect to me. I got subway instructions from the front desk and nearly ran there. He had said that I would see it when I got out of the subway, but there were half a dozen exits and once back on street level, no sign of it. I’ll warn you the video is a little jarring, I was holding the camera in my hand by my side so you couldn’t tell I was filming. But you can see that with a little wandering, I definitely found it.


The next morning I just set out wandering. I stopped at a café that had internet and had this smoked salmon tartine (salmon, cheese, pickles on toasted thick brown bread).


I wasn't really on any kind of schedule and was just wandering, so after I finished eating I decided I would get up once I saw somebody with a baguette. That seemed likely based on stereotypes but I figured it would give me ten minutes or so to relax. This is what I saw (and captured on film) in the 2 or 3 minutes following:





The street signs are very small and actually on the corner buildings, so they are hard to see. There are lots of place signs though – directing you towards Notre Dame, Arc de Triumph, etc. I followed one such sign to Butte Montremar and stumbled upon this:

Um, wow. It started to sprinkle when I walked up to it, so I waited it out under this:


Once the sun came out again, a few minutes later, and walked around the building. I was again, like with the Eiffel tower, blown away.



I continued to wander around the city, but with diminishing returns. It actually gets a little tiring being surrounded by such awesome examples of human achievement all the time. By the time I got to Notre Dame, I was less than impressed. Partially because I was practically drowning in a sea of tourists and given the (gorgeous) 85 degree weather, very thirsty for a Fanta (which I couldn’t find anywhere).

I finally found an iced green tea in a Chinese shop, which helped. I sat down in the gardens outside the Louvre to relax a moment. The spot I sat in


was pretty cool, but the rest of the garden paled in comparison to how amazing the architecure is. I guess you can’t focus on everything. As I admired the fat statue, a somewhat weird guy came up to me. I instinctively pretended I didn’t speak English, only Spanish, so there was no way for us to communicate. I did, of course, understand what he said, and it went like this: I am a student, I would like to practice my English with you for a moment. (I shake my head no.) I am a student, a student of massage (as he reaches for my flip-flopped foot) and you have the most beautiful feet. (I pull away my foot, No! Ciao!) Why? (I just give him a dirty look.) He sulks away.

I went back to the hostel and took a little nap. When I got up one of my roommates was there and we lamented the lack of social life and very young crowd (I’m talking almost entirely under 21) in the hostel. We decided to get some beer and hang out in the lobby to see if we could find a crew to go to dinner. We ended up gathering quite a crowd and making trips to the corner store for food and more beer. It was the usual hostel fare: Australians, Americans (Canada & US), Brazilians & British (these were actually Irish in this case). One of the Australians looked like Russel Brand and there was a rogue German guy who looked like Robert Pattenson. As I mentioned before, except for me and the Irish guys, everyone was around 20 or younger. It was strange - in South America, the travelers were much older. Anyways it was really fun until one of the American girls (from Washington, DC) got too drunk and started preaching about gender inequality…at which point it got kind of awkward and I went to bed.

I moved to a different hostel the next day, a little farther east. It was run by an American lady and had free wifi, yaaay. I got caught up on work and phone calls and cooked some couscous with a tomato chickpea sauce. I went to be early and planned to have a quick meeting on skype in the morning followed by meeting Kelly, a UCSD Cognitive Science friend, at the train station around noon.

Don’t worry, there are still lovebirds and baguettes throughout this story. I wanted to do a serious of pictures of them, and given the obvious downsides to photographing people making out, I chose baguettes. They were really everywhere except the very touristy places, but didn't spend enough time alone just sitting to get any others than those above. Guess that means another trip to Paris someday...


So, Kelly has a friend visiting Paris who has a friend from CouchSurfing who lives here, so I knew once I found Kelly I would not have to stay in any more hostels. This was good because it is busy season and I didn’t make any reservations (which is why I had to move hostels). I was standing next to a girl waiting for the same train as I was, she seemed like she might have been Kelly’s friend, and she even waited for all the people, like I did, since Kelly never got off the train. I thought about talking to her but decided against it since high likelihood of language difficulties if it wasn’t her. I wandered around the station trying to find change (the metro tickets can only be bought with coins) and finally found a cheap place to buy a candy bar. Lo and behold, Kelly is there doing the same thing. Woohoo.

Hangin out on Thomas' balcony with matching expressions

We took the metro to the apartment where Kelly’s friend, Elaina, was staying with her friend, Thomas. Of course, Elaina was the girl standing next to me but either way, somehow we all found each other. Thomas had cooked us a zucchini and tomato casserole thingy and we ate it with Canadian bacon, baguettes and goat cheese. I finally understood why people have the baguette: so they can eat cheese. It all makes sense…delicious, delicious sense. For dinner we went to the store and bought more cheese and some wine and then we took off for a little dancing.

Sacré-Cœur on the top of the hill above Paris (the same church from the above pictures) as seen from Thomas' balcony

I was expecting a club or something, but we walked up to a park with large circular cut outs on a canal edge. It was a full moon and every area had a different crowd of dancers surrounded by spectators and musicians. The first we came upon was salsa, the next capoeira, the next tango. It was gorgeous and really what I would have thought one could find in Paris. That was romantic. Not couples making out in subway corners, anyone can do that. But crowds of people dancing under the full moon by a river on a random Tuesday? Oui.

One city's homeless is another's traveler

I woke up and was pretty much ready to leave. I got all of my suitcases together and repacked my backpack and a small duffel for my travels and put the big bags into lockers. I didn’t even want to ask if it was ok to leave them for an extended amount of time, but it seemed unlikely they would notice. I had the hostel breakfast, an international norm of bread, cheese, ham & yogurt, with your choice of coffee, tea and juice. The difference with this one was that everything was pretty much epically delicious. There were little signs saying all of the meat and dairy was local (ah hah, backyard cows!) and it tasted the part. I had heard from my Swiss air traveling friends that Swiss bread was waaaay better than American, but my extensive experience with American bread had me well-trained to be afraid of a plain, untoasted piece of bread for breakfast. I put butter on it under the cheese and ham to mediate the assumed dryness. Even though it turned out to be perfectly soft and delicious, as the girl had said, I continued with the extra butter layer every morning. Homemade butter is goooood.

I headed directly to the MBA office. I wanted to do the following: get my student visa, open a bank account, find an apartment and buy a train pass. I stayed for two more days but accomplished none of those. I went to the Rathaus (city hall, great name huh?) but could not get my visa without 120 CHF (Swiss Francs). So I went to the bank to open an account, hoping to avoid all of the fees for foreign transactions through CitiBank. Well, duh, you can’t open a bank account without an address. So I withdrew the money and went back to the Rathaus. Oh, you can’t get a visa without an address either. Trainpass? Need both the visa AND an address. Finding an apartment leapt to the top of my list.

I arranged to see a place in the afternoon and hung out in the MBA lecture hall sending email and catching up on work. I met all of the people who admitted me to the program (I had tried to dress as nicely as I could, but I still was carrying a duffle and a backpack, so how classy could I look?) and they were great. Very friendly and at least pretended not to mind that I hung out there for the next two days, all day on the internet and left my suitcases in their closet.

The first day I met a current MBA student from Malaysia. We got Thai for lunch and he gave me some tips about St Gallen and Singapore (Malaysia’s southerly neighbor). After I looked at the apartment I went back to the school and we got to talking again. Turns out it was his apartment I had looked at…weird right? He confirmed all of my fears about the place: overpriced, bad landlord, not having a living or dining room sucks, kitchen is too old and small to cook in much. I’m still considering the place as a fallback, but it is definitely not ideal.

The second day I went to lunch with a Nigerian MBA student. I got a few more tips about St Gallen and a bit of interesting info about Nigeria. Both days the guys’ immediate suggestions for lunch were McDonald’s. Both times I hastily declined, stating that I just didn’t eat there. Both refusals were met with shock and something along the lines of ‘oh, I thought you American’s couldn’t live without your McDonald’s.’ Good god, McD’s, what have you done to our poor country’s reputation? You and Bush, man.

I looked at another apartment that second day (Thursday), but it was not my kind of place... On my way though, I got lost and found myself in the southern part of town, outside of a massive, 7th century Cathedral. It was quite a sight to behold, but I again didn’t take any pictures in my rush.

So, let me clarify my situation slightly. Every day I was hoping to find an apartment, move my stuff in, get my visa/bank account/train pass, and bounce. The hostel I was staying in was not very accommodating as it didn’t have wi-fi (which pretty much made it only worthwhile for sleeping and bathing). So everywhere I went I had my backpack and duffle. I was pretty much homeless. On Thursday night, I walked up the big hill to my stupid hostel and they didn’t even have a room for me. Ms. Particular (who ended up being fairly cool) sent me to the Pilgramage Hostel. What is this, you say? I’m not sure actually, but it involved an old lady (think the mother from Sideways) and a tiny apartment through a doorway so small I had to duck to get through. It turned out to be half the price of the hostel, and was my first experience of rule-bending in Switzerland. It required membership to this hiking Catholics club, but the lady (who spoke no English) let me stay anyways, thank heavens.

I walked around town looking for food but couldn’t find anything with a menu I could even remotely understand. Then it struck me: McDonald’s. No, I am not insane. From the plethora of billboards and my new MBA friends I had gathered that in Switzerland it is required that all meat be not only local but meet some sort of quality standard. So, I figured, perhaps McDonald’s is good here. It has been probably ten years since I ate there, although I can’t even remember any specific occurrences. I am as adamantly against McDonald’s as any other good hippie. But I gave it a shot.


Now, check this out. Price: 12.50. Ketchup: weird packaging. Fanta: yellow and COMPLETELY unsweetened – I am talking OJ in club soda, about 20 – 80 ratio (just the way I like it). Burger: deliciously cheesey-greasy. Fries: normal. I don’t know, maybe McDonald’s is delicious in the US. Maybe I was just really hungry. Maybe I just wanted it to taste substantially healthier than an American burger and fries. But it was goood. And I didn’t even feel sick afterwards. I won't go back unless pressed, I don’t want to support McD’s no matter where it is, but it was interesting. Oh, and I couldn’t even understand their menu, and it was in English. And they had shrimps. Hehe.

I slept pretty well except for a dreamy visit from a large gnome (who knows, the place is ancient, maybe it was real) and planned to go to Starbucks (no, not because I wanted to, don’t worry I haven’t morphed into a different person overnight) to use the internet. The lack of internet is a reoccurring theme here in SG. I was starting to lose it – I couldn’t work, call all of you, look for apartments, nothing. It was wearing on me. As I sat there using my $7 half an hour of internet (well, it included an iced chai with a shot of espresso – they don’t have iced tea!) looking at nobody being online (damn 9 hour time difference) I got antsy.

I stood up, bought a loaf of bread, hunk of cheese, cucumber, bell pepper, carrot, small container of yogurt and a train ticket to Paris. Enough is enough. No more wandering around a small Swiss city homeless. No more hungry long-distance trips either, for that matter. It was becoming increasingly apparent that even if I found a place, it wouldn’t happen as quickly as I wanted, and this was no town for those without an address.


Oh, and while in the market getting food, I saw this old lady with ankle sweet tattoos.

Touchdown EU

Just landing in Germany was a pretty big event for the entire plane. We were all pretty thrilled to have actually gone somewhere and had become something of a summer camp crew thanks to all of the tour buses, crappy lodgings and time together in close quarters. My friend Mark took off (he lives in Dusseldorf) but I picked up a new group of 5 young people all going to Zurich. We practically ran to the coffee stand (I had a beer, it was about 10p my time) and out the front doors to fresh, German air. It generally looked and felt just like the US, maybe in NYC cuz it was kind of grey. We chatted, they smoked. Three Swiss girls were returning from two weeks in NY, another (somewhat insane) Swiss-American guy was moving to Zurich after failing to find a job in LA and the last Swiss guy was going home to get work done on his teeth (yeah I didn't really understand either). They gave me lots of tips - only cross the street when it says to, never be late. People pretty much say the same thing everywhere, even the Swiss themselves.

We had to go through security again to get back to the boarding area and the Swiss-American guy got stopped. The lady talks with him for a moment and then calls the rest of us over. She holds up his bottle of Johnny Walker scotch and instructs us to finish it so he could go through. She pours what will fit into his small flask, stuffs it back in his bag and hands the rest to us. This is the security lady. Not someone this guy paid or a friend of some sort. Security. The German version of TSA. She doesn't even know that we aren't jet-lagged and on US time...it's 6 am and she's having us drink scotch out of the bottle. Welcome to Germany they all said.

The rest of the trip was less entertaining. Something about having locals, or at least people who speak the language, or at least people, around is very comforting. Maybe because they helped me carry my luggage. Anyways, I am kinda proud of myself for even making it to St Gallen. I don't know how I got on the right trains. And on the subject of timeliness, they weren't just on time. They arrived approximately three minutes early, then left at the exact minute posted.

I gave up on public transit once I arrived and got a taxi to the hostel. At this time I had been up for nearly 24 hours, had too little to eat (damn plane food...) and was sore from the bags of rocks I was dragging around. I couldn't have been much happier to arrive at the hostel, surrounded by green rolling hills with the faint ring of cow bells in the back yard. [Sorry I don't have pictures yet, it's hard to want to dig the camera out of the bag and think about a nice composition for a picture with all this stuff on your person.] I heaved all the bags onto the ground and walked up to the door (my friends assured my you can leave your stuff anywhere, nobody steals in Switzerland). I knocked on the door and pretended (to myself) not to see the 'Closed until 5pm' sign. It was noon. I walked around to the private area where the owner lady was sitting to attempt a classic shpeal about why I should be the exception to the rule, or even offer a bribe if need be. Who takes five hour lunch breaks anyways?

There are downsides to order and dependability. When a sign here says open at 5, they open at 5. You can't talk them out of it, no normal bargaining technique will work. No pity, anger, manipulation, nothing. I've decided it is an American (as in both north and south), or at least non-Swiss, specialty to be able to use such methods of persuasion successfully. So, I wandered around St Gallen after stashing my bags under Ms. Particular's hostel deck. I figured that although they wouldn't like it if they found them there, what are they going to do? Throw them in the trash? You can't fit all that shit in a trash. Call the police? Well, that could be a problem but I was hedging my bets.

I dazed (and somewhat confused actually) as I walked down into town. It was warm and sunny, really beautiful weather. Imagine the green hills of upstate New York in spring, with southern California summer-time weather and 7th century European architecture. I wandered through the streets looking for food, the place is a maze but so small that it doesn't really matter, there are restaurants everywhere. I finally couldn't go any further and sat down for a plate of pasta (I thought it would be the least abrasive thing I could put in my poor, tired body).

Ok, one hour down.

I finished reading the paper (they give you your choice of a half dozen papers on Air Berlin flights). I bought a bottle of water and an apple. I walked really, really slowly. I was really, really dirty in addition to being tired and I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I doubt I actually did. People always spoke to me in German, so at least I didn't appear to be foreign, but it's so tiny (I already have seen the same people more than once), I still worried about being labeled a transient or something. I laid down in a park, but was afraid to sleep. I imagined being woken up by police wondering why I was sleeping on the ground and if those suitcases at the hostel were mine. All this rule following is scary! You will understand when you come here. I mean, I saw a woman run across a crosswalk when the light was red (not even the middle of the street, a crosswalk. there were no cars in sight, not one) and a lady on the other side visibly shook her head in disapproval the entire time it took for her to cross.

Anyways, I managed to kill the time and got a room. The last half an hour was pure terror when I walked up to the hostel to find a biking team checking in. I didn't have a reservation, but was prepared to stage a sit-in if they didn't give me a bed. They had one though, and after a much-needed shower, I put on my little Air Berlin eye mask, popped in mom's trusty ear plugs, and slept for 13 hours.

Why compulsive food-hoarding on planes is not a bad thing

LA

NY

I stopped by Tacos Por Favor in LA to meet Cy for lunch before I left. I gave him some things to mail home (my broken camera, Amara’s dress, etc) and bought three burritos. I ate one there, took one to Lindsay in NYC and planned to eat the last for dinner on the plane.

My flight was more or less on time, 3pm, and I decided to eat ‘dinner’ at 6 so that I wasn’t too hungry when I landed. I was taking Super Shuttle from the airport to Lindsy’s house and it is always extremely slow. I also checked bags and so I was guessing the earliest I would be able to get more food would likely be after midnight.

Around 5 I started thinking about that delicious bean and cheese burrito stuffed into the depths of my backpack. By 515 I had done enough figuring to let myself go for it, mostly based on the fact that I had lunch before noon and so it was suitable to have a correspondingly early dinner.

I also watched 17 Again (great movie, many plane-inappropriate LOL moments), read the rest of ‘Power Travel’ (great book, lots of insider information about how the airline industry works which would become very useful later in the trip…) and took a little nap. I arrived, got my baggage and successfully wrangled the Super Shuttle all within forty minutes or so, not bad for JFK. I got in the van and tried to avoid talking to the overly-social concierge turned PR for the SF zoo lady. I eventually made it to Lindsay’s about 3 hours after landing, thanks to about 10 laps through JFK picking up stragglers…I was surprisingly ok with it. Probably because I was channeling the dance party Lindsay, Stephanie, Kristen and Sebastien were having while waiting for me.

Yes, we had the whole crew. Lindsay got me really excited with a ‘surprise’ waiting for me in NYC. I had a feeling it was Kristen, and I knew Steph was already there for a part-time gig at her old employer on Wall Street.

We spent Friday wandering around the city in search of vegetarian food, happy hours and dance parties; we were very, very successful. There was Steph’s favorite vegan buffet by her work, a random fresh juice bar in Alphabet City, a birthday party in what turned out to be ‘a primarily Asian affair’ (quote by the bouncer when we showed up) and an after-party at an Irish bar in late-night-food no-man’s-land. Steph and I had to hunt around for twenty minutes to find some hummus. Overall an incredibly successful day, although it’s hard not to be successful with the four of us around. We are unquestionably devoted to the good life. Ahhhh.

The next day was, well, pretty much a repeat with all new locations and a few new players. We had the vegan crepe cart in Washington Square park, Euro-cocktails in the Lower East Side, The Hummus place (per my absolute insistence – I DREAM of this place – you must go – it’s just amazing), rooftop German party and a few random not hot bars followed by one of the most epic pizza binges ever.

It was both quintessential NY (walking, massive variety, all day-all night) and the same thing the four of us has done in California for years (laughing, various food and drink binges, a beautiful lack of planning yet always doing the exact right thing). A great final send-off from my lovely little country. Or so I thought.

I ate the last slice of pizza in the morning and the ladies saw me off. I decided to curb my food on a plane obsession. I got a nice meal in the airport, but didn’t buy twenty dollars worth of crap to bring on board like I usually do. This was an international flight, so they provided food. Yay. Ticketing, bag checking, boarding, all normal. For a moment I though I might have the window seat next to me (I was in an isle) to myself. When my neighbor, who I would later find out is a German fellow named Mark, arrived we thought maybe we would be able to spread out to the empty row behind us. The occupants showed up last minute and we resigned ourselves to the small, bare and terribly terrible seats we had. I found a new McCullough book at the airport bookstore, 1776, so I got started passing the time. The pilot warned us that JFK has bad runway traffic, to expect at least a half hour delay. I’ve sat there for hours so I wasn’t surprised. I tried not to think about the thunder I heard as I stepped from the jetway onto the plane and I settled in. I passed out within about ten minutes of push-off from the gate. I woke up a bit later to a stiff neck and the pilot announcing something in German. Another twenty minutes at least, he finally said in English, long enough after a unanimous groan circulated through the cabin for me to know something was wrong.

He also announced it was a six hour and forty minute flight, much better than I was expecting, so I was still pretty even. Then he announced the twenty minute thing again. And again. And again. After about three hours, he announced we didn’t have enough fuel to make it all the way to Dusseldorf, so we went back to the gate. The weather combined with JFK Sunday night traffic was too much for our lil Airbus 330 gas tank (139,100 liters, FYI). After another hour or so he announced he was waiting for info from flight control for his next action because after waiting so long the crew may be over the legal amount of on-duty time once we flew. After nearly five hours we unboarded and picked up our luggage. It was just like flying, but without actually going anywhere….yeah you can imagine.

That sounds unpleasent, but let me remind you of my new, non-hoarding plane meal strategy. At this point it was definitely dinner time. Did they serve us those meals? No, they only had hot food and could not serve it unless they were off the ground. No big deal, I can just get dinner once we get back to the hotel they sent all 400 or so of us to. NO. It takes hours to move that many people. I think my delivery channa masala showed up around 215am, 12 hours after my last meal. After I waited in line to: get my baggage, put my baggage on a bus, get my baggage off a bus, get a hotel room, get in the elevator, get into bed (might as well have). And not just any baggage: Two. Hundred. Pounds. Of. Baggage. Luckily I had a friend, my neighbor Mark, to keep me from getting too bitter and help with a bag or two when it appeared as if I might not make it.

Yeah, so it wasn’t really that bad. I didn’t have any plans, I wasn’t missing anything. But you know what have made it way, way better? Food. Why do you get a deep fear of starving when you get on a plane? Why do you uncontrollably buy gross, overpriced airport food? Because you might just be stuck on there for a while. Don’t fight it. Stock up, my friends. And travel light. Shit, man. Travel light.

I finally got my airplane food.

Camera Crisis Averted

The stairs down (up?) to Point Dume

I got one last picture at the beach on Friday with my phone after my camera died. I took it back to Will's and charged it up for the wedding. We got all done up, Amara lent me one of her dresses and we headed downtown. About 10 minutes before the ceremony was to start Brett called to say the bartender was MIA and they needed ice. We stopped at the closest 7-11 and bought fifteen 7-lb bags of ice, which made us late. We caught the bride walking into the building as we pulled up!




As soon as I tried to take pictures of Cy, Brett, Will, Vanessa and I (the old MTV crew) I realized my camera had totally died, not just battery-wise. Luckily there were half a dozen professional photographers, although the pix might take a while to trickle down to me. So for now you just get a few videos and a written description...it was a beautiful wedding in a big. downtown LA loft. We had BBQ ribs for dinner and I am praying that one of the photogs got a pic of Vanessa in her wedding gown chowing down on a rib or two. It was so fun to be back with all my besties from MTV - we used to spend 80 hours a week together and it's been hard to be apart for the past few months.



A few of us met up for a beer on the Santa Monica pier this afternoon after Will and I stopped at Costco for me to get a new camera and him to grab a few things for his new place.

Logan the 6 year old photographer genius captures us following the LAPD ghetto bird in the sky

I was happy I have absolutely no room in my bags to buy anything other than a tiny little Panasonic, otherwise I would have gotten a 20-pack of socks, a set of four foot tall vases and a food processor or any of the other things I am really needing in my life. Anyways, the new camera is a dream and it was even charged enough straight out of the box for me to take a few (like 95) pictures at the pier. I used to run here occasionally, but had never been as a tourist, so it was fun to stop traffic to take silly pictures of hazy skies and tiny roller coasters.

Take Off

I wanted to wait til I was actually excited to start writing. As the initial milestones passed, as I bought my plane tickets, I moved home, I started packing, I went on my last camping trip, I had my last dinner in my house, I left Nevada City, I flew out of San Francisco, as everyone asked if I was excited or not, I realized that it wasn’t going to happen. I think I wait to be excited til I'm actually traveling, when weight of the trip actually hits you, rather than in preparation. I was missing too many little details to wait any more. So here I am, kind of gone, kind of not, beginning to write about what I have been calling (to myself mostly) Switzapore Adventure Camp. Petrina suggested Switzapore, as I had been calling it Singerland, after my brain began to merge the two given their proximity in my conversation for the past few months. Really anything is better than saying 'Switzerland and Singapore,' that's just a mouthful.

Before I tell you where I am now (ooo isn’t the excitement overwhelming!) I should explain ‘Adventure Camp.’ Straight up, it’s a 14 month MBA program. I’ll be in Switzerland from September to March and Singapore from March until November. But in my mind I have always sort of imagined this to be more of an adventure than business school. I guess that’s partially because business school is not really the main reason I’m going, but more of an excuse for funded travel and something to keep me busy. Yes, it will be very useful as well, but this is not too highly focused of a trip. So that’s where Adventure comes from. Now these emails I get, from both St Gallen and Nanyang Technical, remind me of camp. Its a small group of us (40 and 120 respectively, 6 of us cross over into both classes in the double degree program), there are all sorts of little packing lists and maps and get to know you activities and various other tidbits don’t remind me of college so much really. Combined with the fact that its so short, my mind brings up camp. Friends who have been through masters programs tend to laugh at me when I say that, but we’ll see.

Ok, so back to reality. I left Nevada City on Thursday morning, an hour late, at 6am. Molly, Warren, Hannah and Oso packed up the truck for their own adventure up to Ekone Horsey Camp (yeah I have amended its name too, but it really is all of those things). Amara is staying home to work, which is really exciting for her – a first summer at home with a car. I hadn’t finished packing when I went to bed on Wednesday night and when I couldn’t fit my toiletries, the bottle of Maker’s Mark Bram gave me for a going away present, my tweed briefcase or Vanessa & Leonard’s wedding gift, I decided (right about the time we were supposed to leave) to repack. I took out my computer monitor and sleeping bag, crammed the true necessities in and threw it all in the truck. I ate one last Lewis Road burrito and we took off.

I had to go to a mobile conference and I was significantly less than thrilled about it. Violently less than thrilled actually. Great combo, right? Leaving when it’s still dark, saying goodbye to your home, car and friends and heading to a conference. About phones. When I got there the first speaker was in a ballroom with green lighting around him. All I could think was that there were no windows and green lights sure suck compared to trees. Luckily the second panel was in a room with windows and was about mobile gaming, something I have been spending a substantial amount of my time doing and have a vested interest in. I started to finally come around and by the time the brought out lunch I was nearly recovered. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still REALLY sad to be leaving and I think about the trees pretty much every minute, but I wasn’t so angry about it. I remembered what I had set out to do and that I did somewhere, deep down, under all of the camping and farming and bluegrassing and Americaning, I do want to get some other shit taken care of before I lay down my hat.

So off I go. We left for the airport from Petrina’s house pretty late (surprise, surprise) but I made it no problem. My bags were still overweight and I got a text from Will saying he had to run up to SF and wouldn’t be able to pick me up from the airport in LA, but I still made it. I got a rental car and I drove into Crenshaw to get Phat N Juicy Burger as soon as I landed. Sadly, PNJ had been downgraded to a B health inspector rating and per a rule made long ago, I could not eat there. But, worry not. There was a Louisiana Fried Chicken right next door! Seven minutes later I had three chicken strips, spicy rice, BBQ sauce, a large coke and a hot roll. All is right in the world.

I drove north from there, planning to get up to my favorite beach, Point Dume in Malibu. When I saw signs for the Getty Villa I made a snap decision to go there instead. I pulled in and was asked for a ticket, which I obviously had not. The guy asked what I was doing, where I was coming from and why I was there. Even though he said the Getty isn’t a spur of the moment kind of place, he let me in and gave me a free ticket.

I wandered around the gardens til I found a good spot to make some phone calls and lounged around until they kicked me out, very pleasantly, “The Getty apologizes for interrupting your meditative state. Please come back again.” Since Will wasn’t coming in for another few hours, I drove up to Point Dume. It was 5 so the traffic was slow, but I put on some fiddle music and blissed out in the setting sun. It’s hard to mind traffic when you have no agenda. I also know I won’t be enjoying driving again for a long time, and although I didn’t have my lovely little Honda, I was still pretty happy to be behind the wheel.

Apparently Point Dume is a totally different world in the summer. The front parking lot was packed, the back lot (my favorite place, where you can sit in your car and watch dolphins, sea lions, pelicans AND the waves) was $7 and the secret beach was about a foot wide. No less epic though.


I made it to Will's finally and in the morning I'll be off to Vanessa's wedding.