On to LA

I met up with my rideshare, Berta, at a bus station in Oakland. I was on the phone with her trying to figure out where she was but it was proving difficult as I have never seen her before. She had a very thick accent and at times was hard to understand the landmarks she was trying to describe to me. I finally parked and told her to just look for the white truck near the front of the lot. The moment she came around the corner I knew it was her. She was tall and slender with short brown hair that was shaved in some spots and left a little bit longer in others. She had a single braid behind her left ear. There were tiny black dots on each of her bottom eyelids and one on the top of her lip. She approached with a smile as I got out of the truck to help her put her enormous backpack into the back of my truck. We shook hands to formally greet each other and climbed in to start the long drive. Berta was a very fun road companion even though about two hours of it she spent sleeping. She was a photo journalist back in Lithuania and told me of jobs and stories she had covered and all the exotic places her work had taken her. I asked her what kind of music she liked and she said "I like...heavy music?" with a bit of uncertainty and followed that up with "But sometimes I like soft music" Heavy it is. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful besides some good conversation. As we approached the Grapevine I told her it wasn't far now. It was dark now and once we peaked the hills you could start to see the vast amount of lights that start to make up the Los Angeles area.

"There it is." I said. We both sat silently for a moment looking at the sea of light. Not even an hour after I said that we were completely stopped in LA traffic. "Welcome to LA" I said, jokingly. We finally got off the freeway and I took her to her destination. I dropped her off and gave her a hug and thanked her for keeping me company and pitching in on gas. I'm really glad I got to meet her and hope to run into her again.

Luckily the place Berta was going was only 10 minutes away from my destination off of Hollywood Blvd. I was so tired of driving that I kicked it into overdrive and immediately could have competed in the National "LA Driver" competition. I eventually made it in one piece and called my friend Travis to let me into his buildings garage. I parked, grabbed some clothes and went upstairs where I laid on the couch that would eventually become my bed for the next long while.

Coming up next...

Living like a celebrity

Oakland

I arrived in Oakland mid afternoon the next day and met up with my friends Chelsea and Elyssa at Chelsea's apartment in Oakland where she lives with her boyfriend and my good friend Dion. Unfortunately Dion had to take a trip to the Bahamas the day I arrived so I didn't get to see him for the majority of the time I was there. We started out by going to Dion's place of work which is a fancy shmancy bar in San Francisco called The Heavenly Dog. We rode the BART back and forth from SF to Oakland which made me feel bad for Chelsea and Elyssa because at every turn they were hooted and hollered at by the various riff raff at each stop. It was pretty hilarious to me trying to picture Dion working in a place like this because he is the most un-fancy person I know. Everybody there was really nice though and was hooking us up with all sorts of crazy cocktails filled with booze I have never even heard of before. One particular type (I forget the name) is made by Buddhist Monks who have passed down the secret recipe for generations. It's so secret that no one single monk knows the entire recipe. Three chosen ones are selected to learn a third of the recipe so as to not leak this magical drink. It tasted like Ginger and Black licorice. We dined on $30 a plate meals and sipped our cocktails with our pinky's firmly extended.

After our time at The Dog I called my friend Kris who I've known for years back in Olympia, to see if he wanted to hang out. He accepted my request and asked us to come to some house party that was not too far from where we were at. We cabbed it over there and found a pretty raging birthday party going on for some girl. He walked us in and started introducing us to everybody. We went into the kitchen which was covered in chocolate and spilt beer. At one point the birthday girl put on Andrew W.K. on the stereo and cranked it to 11. A dance party erupted in the kitchen which probably wasnt the best idea because of the slick floor. Imagine 10-15 people drunk of their ass trying to bust a move on a freshly zambonied ice rink and that's what it looked like. Bodies were dropping left and right and yet no one seemed to slow down because of it. Over all it was a good time though and after the dance party ended, Chelsea, Elyssa and I cabbed it back to her place in Oakland.

The next day we went to a friend of Chelsea's restaurant which was also fancy as all hell where, again, we were treated to delectable cuisine and fine drinks. At this point I had decided to stay an extra day so that I could surprise Dion when he got back from his vacation. The next day Elyssa left to go back home to Portland and Chelsea and I took their hurse (yeah, they drive a hurse) to the airport to get Dion. I climbed in the back where I waited for him to arrive and smoked a cigarette which gave me an overwhelming feeling of irony... smoking a cigarette in the back of a hurse...
Dion finally arrived and climbed into the front seat, completely unaware of my presence. After letting him vent about the plane ride for a minute I jumped out and grabbed his shoulders shouting "HEY FUCKER!" The look on his face was priceless. It transitioned quickly from sheer terror to delighted surprise though. I spent that night at their apartment one more time and the next morning said my farewell's and went off to go pick up my next rideshare. A Lithuanian photographer named Berta. On to LA!

Hicks and Trailers and Weed, oh my!

I found a rideshare out of Portland. Her name is Rebecca and she is a very nice girl. After receiving multiple responses to my ad from 60 year old men asking if I did drugs Rebecca’s email was a glimmer of hope. As with all the responses I got I tried to do as much internet sleuthing as possible to find out who these people were so that I wouldn’t end up sharing a long drive with a crazy. I found Rebecca’s Facebook profile but it was private so being the crack detective I am I looked under her listed family and found her sister thinking she might shed some light on my would be passenger. Once I clicked on her pictures a strange familiarity came over me. I know this girl. She had pictures of her with her friends who just also happened to be my friends. She had a flyer on her page for a memorial benefit show for a friend of mine who passed away earlier this year. Her name was Kat and I had met her on several occasions at my work in Seattle. With an overwhelming feeling of “small world” taking over me I went back to Rebecca’s email and called the number she left. I awkwardly told her over the phone that I knew her sister and explained how. We laughed for a minute and then she responded with “well at least I know you wont kill me now!” Indeed.

I met her at her friends house and followed her to a place she could drop off her car. We stopped to get coffee at a little shop on the corner before we started our journey. As we were pulling away from the coffee shop I spied someone that looked kind of familiar. As we got closer this person looked like a dear friend of mine from back in Olympia but I thought there was no way it could be. I mean, I’m on a random street corner in a secluded part of Portland, two hours away from where this person resides. To my surprise, however, it actually turned out being my friend Nate and his girlfriend Ciara and their baby daughter. I couldn’t believe it. How random! I immediately pulled over hoping that they would share my feeling of joyess surprise. I yelled out “Nate!” a couple of times eventually getting his attention. They walked over to my truck with a puzzled look on their faces and after a few moments of processing a smile broke out across their faces and we all shared a good laugh at the random situation. And with that we said our goodbyes and my new friend Rebecca and I were on the freeway heading south.

The drive was pretty uneventful. We shared stories and talked about music for a while and that was pretty much it. I drove for the majority of the 9 hour drive but after about 7 hours I had had enough and let her take over. Besides, I had no idea where it was she was actually going. She just kept saying it was “outside of Sacramento.” After about an hour and a half we entered a city called Marysville.

“We’re getting close!” Rebecca exclaimed. “Smartsville, here we come!” Smartsville? Where the hell is Smartsville? She explained to me that it was a small community of about 80 people outside of Marysville. This was her destination, and as long as she had gas money I was fine with it. The highway started to get smaller and darker until eventually the only light to be seen for miles was that of my trucks headlights. We were winding our way into the darkness when I finally asked her to layout the plan for the night seeing as how it was almost midnight.

“We’re going to my favorite bar called ‘The Tack Room’. My friend Claire is there. You’re welcome to stay the night on her property if you want, they have trailers.” She told me.

“Trailers?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty big property and there is a trailer you can sleep in.”

Ok. Up until this point my plan was to just keep driving all the way through to the bay area but once I realized what time it was I decided it would be best for me to crash somewhere for the night. I then asked her why she was coming out to the middle of nowhere. She proceeded to describe this place we were going and how gorgeous it is and that she comes out this way every now and then to work on the farm. Now, in my head when she said “farm” I was thinking red barn, horses, cows, chickens and a quaint little farmhouse. This was not that kind of farm but I’ll get to that in a bit.

We pulled into The Tack Room parking lot where I could hear top 40 country hits blaring from inside. This place looked like a hunting lodge. Deer heads adorned the walls, fishing gear hanging above the back of the bar along with pictures of locals with their prize catches. There was a total of about then people in the whole place including Rebecca’s friend Claire sitting at the bar. We walked up and took a seat where I was immediately introduced not only to Claire but to the kind middle-aged woman behind the bar. I felt like I just showed up to a strangers family reunion. Everybody knew eachother. They even knew Rebecca and were all coming up to say hello and how much they had missed her. Feeling out of place I did what I could to mingle which ultimately ended up in me staring at a basketball game that was playing on a flatscreen on the wall at the end of the bar. I don’t even like basketball. As I was zoning out to the fast paced NBA action I hear a very angry, low voice out of the corner of my ear.

“Hey! What are you looking at?” The voice said. It took me a second to snap out of my daze and I started to look around until I caught eyes, or, eye, I should say with a very large man who was seated just to the left of the t.v. The reason I say “eye” instead of “eyes” is because this man only had one. His face appeared to have been horribly burned at some point in his life. His nose was barely there and his skin looked like plastic. He had dirty blonde, stringy hair that laid in long patches around the top of his head. He said it again, “Hey! What are you looking at?” At first I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me so I did the awkward, look-over-the-shoulder thing to see if there was anybody around me who would respond. No such luck. So I pointed at myself and said “Me?”.

“Yeah you. You got a problem?” I sat there kind of bewildered for a moment. Rebecca and her friend were both in conversation so they didn’t seem to notice what was going on.

“I’m watching the basketball game.” I pointed to the t.v.

“I could have sworn you were giving me the stink eye.” He said with a smirk.

“Nope, just watching the game.” He stood up and started walking in my direction. I stood up with a million thoughts running through my head. Is he going to try and fight me? Should I fight back? Is it socially acceptable to hit a disfigured person even if they are asking for it? As he got close he smiled and said “Alright, good. Thought we were gonna have a problem.” And then left. At this point I was ready to leave The Tack Room. Thankfully the girls just finished their drinks and were ready to go. I followed them out through one of the most winding roads I have ever driven on out to where the farm was. When we pulled up it didn’t look like a farm at all. There was a fairly large house atop a hill and it was surrounded by valleys. There were a few mobile homes on the property as well but as far as I could tell there were no cows or horses. When we got out of our cars I asked them if this was in fact, the farm Rebecca had told me about.

“Yeah,” Claire said “but, we don’t grow corn.” She said with a smile, “We grow weed.” It turns out this is her Uncle’s “farm” and they grow Marijuana for the local medical dispenseries around California. After that they showed me to my trailer so we could call it a night. Let me tell you, it was not the most pleasant of sleeping arrangements but I’ve definitely done worse. The trailer was COVERED in mouse shit. Pretty much everywhere except for the bed you were bound to find a little black turd. I pulled my heavy duty sleeping bag out of my truck and curled up on the tiny bed and went to sleep. The next morning they invited me to breakfast but at this point I had had enough of Smartsville and wanted to get on the road towards Dion and Chelsea. So that’s what I did. I bid my farewells to the ladies and was on the road again. Only this time by myself but oh well, it’s only another 3 hours. Oakland here I come.