Day 11

Today, the G-Man and I spent 15 hours on the road, making our way to Austin, TX.

There's very little to report, since we only arrived in the city at 2:30am, and the rest of the time was spent on the road or eating bad food at burger joints or peeing at gas stations.

I can tell you that the temperature right now is kind of sucking ass (it reached a high of 17 Celsius near the beginning of our journey, and is now around 6 degrees - at one point it was -2). However, the sky has been cloudless and beautiful to look at, and the sun coming through the windows has felt really good.

The trip southeast out of Arizona was actually really beautiful and fun to drive: It was a winding stretch of two-lane blacktop that wove its way through forested mountains, at a decent enough speed to make the ride a fun drive. It stayed like that for almost 3 hours. It ruled.

There was a little bit of that kind of driving fun later on here in Texas, as we approached Austin from the West - however, that trickery was mostly due to construction making the roads a bit of a labyrinth. During the day, with traffic, it would have been annoying as hell, but empty it was fun.

I can also report that when it gets really late, G-Man's sense of humour gets even sharper than normal, and even a little punchy, and he makes me laugh that kind of laugh where you're wheezing because you're pretty much dying from good-times overload. He was the same way last night, starting at about 1:30am.

Tomorrow, we'll be exploring Austin and planning out what bands to go see in the evening. We've taken our extra Vegas day and switched it to an extra night here in "The Music Capital of America", so there should be some good times ahead. After just driving around at 2:30am for half an hour, watching the nightlife spilling out on to the streets, coupled with the architecture and the general vibe of the city, I already dig it lots.

G'night!

Day 10

Yesterday, we went to Las Vegas.

We left L.A. in the early afternoon, and landed at the bottom of the Vegas strip.

Vegas is hell.

Any semblance of the old world of gambling as an activity of those with flair and a taste for the finer things of life is a thing of the past. Vegas is a gigantic mall, crawling with slovenly, mindless sheep and ignorant, tasteless douchebags. The games are all geared at the lowest common denominator. Tables for card games are rare, and they mostly look like cheap plastic folding tables you can get at CostCo. 90% of the floor of every casino/hotel we wandered through was covered by slot machines. SOME OF WHICH WERE A JUST A PENNY TO PLAY. Classy.

There's no party. There's nothing interesting to see. There's just a combination of mall mentality and Disneyworld aesthetic, all of which is just a backdrop for people interacting with nothing but machine buttons and currency.

G-Man and I took a ride off the strip, checking out some of the off-the-beaten-path streets, but everything was either depressingly frightening, or as vapid and plastic as the Las Vegas Boulevard.

It took us three tries to find a hotel on the strip that had any vacant rooms. Despite the obviously at-capacity nature of the city, the whole thing seemed dead.

We'd originally planned to stay two nights in Vegas, but we decided to save our money and our souls and get the fuck out of town a day early. I'll just have to die without ever having seen the Carrot Top stage show. Sorry, you scary, carrot-topped bastard.

We are now on our way to Austin, TX. We've stopped for the night in the only recognizable hotel chain for 30 miles in any direction. It's a town(?) of some sort, called Springerville. It's in Arizona, half way down the state, right next to the New Mexico border. The temperature has dropped to a goddammned minus three degrees Celsius. We do, however, have a bit of a sunburn from the few hours we had the top down when we were leaving Vegas - it was only 17 degrees at that point - not feeling the sun's heat, we forgot to put on sunblock.

On our way here, we took a small detour back through Flagstaff, AZ. On my way to L.A., I'd stopped in Flagstaff, and left my beloved Ben Sherman jacket on the back of a chair in a hung-over daze. The 24 hour breakfast diner still had the jacket for me, so I was a happy man.

On our way out of Flagstaff, G-Man and I found an old-school 50s diner that served me an awesome Fiesta Salad (kinda like nachos, but on salad with a side of cheese quesadilla), and served G-Man the worst food he's ever eaten in the form of steak and potatoes. The real banana milkshakes were the highlight of the visit though.

Tomorrow, we make the long run to Austin by way of El Paso.

Tonight, we're enjoying a few Budweisers (bought at the local gas station - weird) in our classic Best Western style motel room, and planning what to do in Austin when we get there.

G'night!

Day 8

At some point I'll be filling in the gaps between Day 1 and today. In the mean time, here's the latest:

Yesterday G-Man and I headed down to Venice Beach.

It was a little chilly, so the beaches were deserted, but there were still lots of local weirdos, skate kids, and crusty people selling hippie necklaces and hideous drawings of other states of consciousness.

Then later, back at G-Man's house, we won the election, and a few of G-Man's friends came over to visit.

Somehow we got REALLY drunk (again - this keeps happening while I'm around the G-Man), but things were made a bit better by walking the 4 blocks to Astro Burger. It was there that I consumed a super-delicious, gigantic burger topped with bacon, cheese, and AVOCADO! Their fries were also kick-ass: crispy and tasty. Their onion rings were sub-par, but still good enough.

On the walk back home, I tried the door of a strip joint called Paris House, because the hours on the door said it closed at 8pm - which I just couldn't believe. The door was locked though, so it would seem the sign was right, as insane as that is.

I'm kinda glad the door didn't open, since it looked like the shadiest peeler bar I've ever seen in my entire life.

Today Gareth and I will be making our pilgrimage to Las Vegas.

We're gonna go see Carrot Top. Oh lord.

There are a bunch of pictures to post, but a lot of them are stranded on my phone due to technical difficulties. Keep your panties on.

Road trip: Start

This is simply a record of my trip from Toronto to L.A. and back, with some deliberate stops along the way.

Today was the first day. I wanted to be out the door and on the road at 8am.

I only finished preparing for the trip at 7am.

So.

Yeah.

Stupid new iPod and GPS took forever to get loaded and updated and stuff. When was the last time you heard someone complain about iTunes? Was it just 3 seconds ago? And did someone else (or the same person) just complain about it 5 seconds before that? Well, that's not enough complaining: iTunes sucks. You know what I'm talking about, so I won't get into it.

Anyway - after allowing myself 5 hours sleep, I was finally up and finishing off all my prep, and hugging my cats goodbye, and then I was in the yellow butch kinder surprise I call Colonel Mustard, and I was driving. It was 4pm, but it was actually happening, so it was sweet-ass.

Oh wait, Packing Drama: In order to get my trunk lid to close properly with the roof folded down alongside my packed Adidas bag, I had to unpack three pairs of socks. That's how much of a science loading up that car is.

And if we're keeping with the science analogy, then I think I might have blown up the lab, because now I have only 4 pairs of socks, but 9 pairs of underwears.

That's just bad science.

I drove as long as I could. I got pretty far, and I have hopes of doing super long hauls tomorrow and Friday to make up for lost time. It was insane to think I could reach L.A. in three days, but in two and a half? Pass the pipe.

I found a hotel tonight after missing the exits for a few and also after fleeing from a scary one. I finally stopped driving at 2:30am.

I'm just outside Auburn, Indiana, just off I-69 (insert sex joke here).

There's wireless here. I don't know if it's free. I probably should have asked before I downloaded all my mail and spent lots of time on this here internets, finding my way back in to this once-defunct blog of mine.

Vive le Resurrection!!

Free Days Inn breakfast in the morning! Scary!

G'night.