March 1997-June 1997

My trip to California and back again has to be the trip that weighs the most heavily on my mind. I took the trip alone and by bus both ways and I have never had a more spiritual experience. It was amazing to see things I had only known about from pictures and maps and once I got into California it got very emotional for me. I'm pretty sure I can remember synopses of both trips, and I'm going to give it a good ol' college try.

Cortland, NY to Buffalo, NY - This was time spent wondering if I was making the right decision and trying to ignore doubts by listening to a lot of music. I had seen this area before and was not all that moved as of yet.

Buffalo, NY to Erie, PA - A very nice African man sat with me and we talked about why we were going where we were going. He was amazed I was going all the way to California. It hadn't sunk in yet so I could not say I shared his amazement. However, I had my first moving experience as it was a clear night and I could see the comet Hale-Bopp all night. It was obvious that it was pointing in the direction I was currently taking, and I was affirmed.

Erie, PA to Columbus, OH - Seeing Cleveland and Columbus at night was very cool. I was also sitting alone at this time and nodding off after writing a poem about the comet I had seen. I discovered I had an almost three hour layover in Columbus and was not pleased. I was also detracted after taking a walk and finding out much of the town smelled of sewage.

Columbus, OH to St. Louis, MO - In Terre Haute, Indiana, I was joined by a guy who had just divorced his wife and was moving in with friends in St. Louis. He was also amazed that I was going to California. After we got tired of talking, he shared his walkman with me by use of a headphone splitter and we drove into Illinois hearing "Sweet Home Alabama", of all songs. We stopped at a town in Ill. and I noticed the weather was getting noticeably warmer. When we finished our break and he sat with me again and he smelled of marijuana. I called him on it and he thought it offended me when I admitted that I also had partaken. He promised to share when we got to St. Louis, no prompting from me. There was a lot of rocky passages on the freeway and when it cleared about 5 miles outside of St. Louis you could clearly see the arch. That was the moment I realized I was really far from familiar places and that I was going to go all the way. Driving over the Mississippi River the phrase "miles in my mind" made its first appearance in my head. When we stopped at the bus station there the guy disappeared, which was just as well since I was enjoying the natural high I was getting.

St. Louis, MO to Pueblo, CO - I toured downtown St. Louis and loved it. No one talked to me and I didn't care. It was a beautiful sunny 80 degree day and I was joyous. I bought a CD that I still have (R.E.M.'s "Fables of the Reconstruction") and got back on the bus at 6pm. I talked with a Chinese woman all the way to Kansas City, which also looked very beautiful at night. I nodded off and woke up to find out our bus was rerouted on a southern bend through Kansas, which would make that part of the trip even longer. Kansas was very boring and I nodded off many times. When we got about a third of the way into Colorado the mountains just appeared out of nowhere. The closer we got the bigger they loomed, very quickly approaching, and I was enthralled. Then we stopped in Pueblo.

Pueblo, CO to Denver, CO - There were so many people going into Denver that we had to wait for a second bus. After the trip through Kansas I was unfettered by this and still enjoyed every minute of this part of the trip. I sat with a very attractive hippy guy all the way to Denver and he told me some of his personal history of Colorado. The highway we were on went right up against the line of the beginning of the Rockies and I was only half listening to him. Colorado Springs had the mildly amusing face in the mountain. When we got into Denver it seemed it was a crater surrounded by more mountains, and it was snowing. I stayed with an internet lesbian friend of mine, who picked me up in a car that's back window was covered with an at first unidentifiable substance. She explained that it was eggs thrown at the gay sticker she had on her back window, which was a little unsettling. I stayed for the weekend and was very bored until the last day, though she was very nice and fed me and let me use her shower. Going back to the bus station, I stopped at a music store and bought a CD that I still have (the Beatles' "Help!") and I left Denver in a seemingly mile uphill direction.

Denver, CO to Las Vegas, NV - I didn't see much of Colorado due to the fact that it was night, but the parts I did see while I listened to the Beatles were mountains nearly crowding over the highway. I nodded off and when I woke up I was in Utah. Our first stop was near a Sinclair gas station, which I had never seen or heard about before. It had a very tall sign with a dinosaur at the top. Most of Utah was very gray, ground and sky, and it seemed like one long rock with buttes and mesas every once in a while. When we started getting closer to Arizona and Nevada, however, the landscape changed dramatically. We drove into the northwest corner of Arizona and I have to say that it was the most picturesque piece of the trip. There were mountains that seemed to have been broken or carved in patterns that could have only been done in the passage of centuries of time. Once into Nevada, the sky and ground were red and spotted with a type of tree I had never seen before, only to find out later it was the same type of tree as the Joshua tree. Once outside Las Vegas, which looked very pretty from far away, I started to get an eerie feeling. I had an hour layover in Las Vegas and the bus station was on one of the main drags of the city so I got to see a lot of casinos. Sitting inside the bus station I had a strong feeling the place had a lot of evil and unfinished business in the air. I was glad to get out of that city.

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Las Vegas, NV to Barstow, CA - Nevada didn't last much longer but the desert was beautiful. We drove through more desert into California and Barstow was this run-down truck stop town that we stopped in. Nevertheless, I faced the early evening sun and looked out over very unfamiliar landscape and I had my first emotional rush. I knew I had made it across the country and tears made their way down my face.

Barstow, CA to Los Angeles, CA - The desert ended soon after that and it became lush and mountainous, like Colorado with much more vegetation. This included some very beautiful passages of scenery that you could only imagine could be in storybooks had you not seen them for yourself. The sun started to set as we drove into the city limits of Los Angeles and as we got to the downtown area the sun had just set and from my vantage point coming down a mountain, you could see L.A. and the ocean behind it. I had my second emotional rush as R.E.M. started playing in my ears, the song he wrote about Los Angeles called "Electrolite" and with the lyrics "Don't be scared, you are alive" it played right into what was going on.

Los Angeles, CA to Santa Barbara, CA - The bus drove highway 101, and there it was parallel to the infamous Mulholland Drive. It matched the movies pretty well, so there was a slight sense of vertigo as two vantage points of California merged. We drove 101 all the way up the coast to Santa Barbara, and even at night I could see that mountains went all the way to the coast. I listened to the Beatles "Hey Jude" a few times, which I guess I considered my theme song at the time. Once into Santa Barbara I met up with my friends and went home and took a nap.

I woke up the next morning and at first did not know where I was, which freaked me out at first. Then Jackie called later in the day to tell me there had been a small earthquake that morning heralding my arrival. During my time in California, I got to see the famous L.A. domed airport, the Sunset Strip, Santa Monica Boulevard, Long Beach, West Hollywood (and was cruised), Ojai, which was a town nestled between two mountains and was very red, and many more beaches and mountains. I had my first (and hopefully only) experience jumping off a cliff into water, which freaked me out a little too much to try again. I loved the area and wish I could have stayed, but things did not work out and I had to make a return trip.

Put some more miles on your mind