October 15, 2003

Well, as you might imagine from the fact that I haven't written anything in 10 days, a lot has happened since the last entry. I actually did an audio journal entry on minidisc, but you'll probably never get to hear that. So, I'll recap that as well.

I drove down to Humboldt County, CA. Humboldt is basically my idea of paradise, except that housing prices are really high. So, I won't move there. But I am going to go back up to visit for about a week once I have my itinerary worked out.

On the way down, I found a couple and their baby on the side of the road next to a broken down truck. This was about 20 miles from the nearest small rural town. At least they were in the middle of the redwood forest. He turned out to be a waterman, so we ended up talking about the peculiarities of West Coast fishin'.

The first place I went was to Arcata to visit Jeff and Thomas. Arcata is a small town, organized around a plaza. There is a mac store that provides wireless internet free there. There is also a bicycle library that lends out bikes. If you ever lose a bike, they keep your $20 deposit. Unfortunately, as with all good things, it looks like they might not have the funding to continue renting their garage out... so remember kids - get your hippie ventures self-supporting as soon as possible! I also learned on this trip that Thomas knows a bunch of Russian songs about geologists. Wacky.

Then I went to Petrolia and hung out with Sawyer. No one at the general store knew where he was, but I miraculously managed to get him on the phone and we met up at the local hippie-freindly bar. We went grape harvesting, gathered about a half-ton of grapes and then worked on his wine making venture a bit back at his place (a sort of rustic, back woods deal). Then we grabbed about 250 lbs worth and drove down to the Bay area with his freind Nunca - all in my car. No matter what I do, the thing just stays packed to the gills.

We visited Thomas and freinds' fish tent in the Presidio park in 'Frisco. Did some juggling and tried to hand out free grapes (with much success and receiving some free beer and so on).

Geared up to work real hard after that on getting my plane fare situation worked out - but I think I'm mostly on top of that. Also got a lot of work done on cleaning up my car - Sawyer had a high-powered vacuum at his parents house. So, I decided I'd trek with him and Nunca down to Santa Cruz.

On the way there, we found a woman who had crashed her truck off the side of the road. She was apparently in shock and was refusing help, in spite of the large bruises on her arm (which she admitted was broken) and face. But, we managed to find some people that knew her in town and could talk her out of the truck and get her to the hospital. My vote was to get paramedics - but she was crawling around anyway, so I suppose it didn't matter much if she got a ride in a car instead. As with much of the trip, I was struck by how we wouldn't have found her if I hadn't decided to go to Santa Cruz at the last minute.

And now we're in a high-end suburb of SC. Pretty Dank, to use the words of the locals.