right on bro!

Ugh, I’m sick. Got the bird flu virus from too many Asian people in Vegas. Happy new year all.

I will have to say that being unemployed was pretty cool for the first couple of months, and now it’s starting to become a drag. Since I got back from my monthlong road trip, it doesn’t seem like a lot has changed, except the landlord finally sent the plumber by to fix the leak in my kitchen sink and I now have excellent water pressure in the tap.

I find myself falling back into the same routine as I did before, except you can substitute Halo 2 for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The thing is, there’s only so much video gaming, news reading, and TV watching that one can do. My friend Joey asked if I had resorted to watching the court shows, but I have not.

I feel like I’m in purgatory - I’ve got a few things on the burner, and other things are slated to kick off in January, but I’m just trying to kill off the rest of the year. Exception: I am greatly looking forward to seeing my parents next week, and I’ve been glad to hang with the fools here, even though it may not seem like it. I am a firm believer that at the end of the day, family and friends are what count the most. Awww.

By the way, on my trip, the cheapest gas was in Amarillo, Texas ($1.63/gallon). The most expensive was Blythe, California ($2.39/gallon).

I’m caught up on the TV shows that I watch. But there’s no new TV episodes for the shows that I watch, for the next two weeks.
January 5th is my next Happy Day. And the new season of Alias gets going, to boot.

Umm, watched a couple of movies this weekend (The Cooler, the Bourne Supremacy). Also, it was Brian’s birthday on Sunday so we went to the Union Cattle Co. in Hermosa, where Brian rode the mechanical bull and managed to stay on for quite a bit of time. Then we went to a glow-in-the-dark mini-golf course at the Bridge, which was pretty cool. Happy birthday, Brian!

Official Results of the 1st Brian Reasler Open Invitational Cup:

Guess I’m gonna be playing Halo for the next week. Not down with the holidays this year…

Can someone explain to me what’s so allegedly cool about the tabbed browsing feature in Mozilla Firefox? You can do the same thing in any browser, by opening a new window, and it goes into the Windows taskbar, and then you have a bunch of windows to select from there. They don’t look like tabs, but they perform the same UI function - displaying a series of clickable objects that contain the pages you’ve requested. Whether those objects are at the top of the screen or the bottom of the screen, it’s essentially the same interface. Either way, you have to right-click on a link and select “Open in New Window” or “Open in New Tab” on either browser. It’s the same amount of work you have to do to navigate through multiple pages. What makes it any better than using the Windows taskbar?

Personally, I hope the next revolutionary browser is one that interacts directly with my head by feeding the visuals straight into my brain. That way I can stay in bed, lie the way I want to, and still surf the net.

Yesterday I went to Anaheim to see Matt and Michele. We went to Downtown Disney for dinner and drinks. Ate at a place called the Jazz Kitchen or something - a New Orleans-themed restaurant with an overly peppy waitress and a live piano player. They had turducken on the menu, so of course I had to order it and try it out. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a combination of turkey, duck, and chicken. I’ve never seen it before, but I read about it.

Matt had the best description for the dish when it arrived - it looked like one of those Hungry Man frozen meals. I thought it was going to be some super-cool thing, but it just looked like somebody mixed some chunks of turkey, duck, and chicken together, and then threw some mashed potatoes and gravy in there. And that’s what it tasted like, too.

A bit anti-climatic but hanging out was fun. We went to some other bar in Downtown Disney and they were announcing last call at 10:30. I guess that’s Disney for you.

Other than that, I got in a bunch of Halo yesterday. I think I’m getting better as I learn the maps and where stuff is. Been mostly sticking to Slayer games unless the 81st Street fools are online - I love playing CTF and team games but not when you get paired up with random clowns. Favorite map so far is Midships, least favorite map is Colossus.

Yesterday I went to buy an Xbox, but found out there’s an Xbox shortage. Went to four stores and they were all sold out, except for a hamshack in Glendale that was selling a wack package that meant paying more for 6 games that I didn’t want, and they refused to sell the system separately. I finally found an Xbox from the Sears at Santa Monica & Wiltern, of all places - and it was the very last one.

You would think that there would be plenty of Xboxes available, but whatever. I got one. I celebrated my acquisition by vowing to set everything up last night after dinner, and then falling right asleep after dinner, waking up at 6:30 A.M. this morning. I guess I needed the sleep pretty badly.

Other than that, it was just stuff like handling bills, unpacking, re-stocking the fridge, and what not. Oddly enough, it feels like nothing much here changed while I was gone. I was hoping somebody would construct a Gap here in Los Feliz to drive away the cool people and therefore make parking a lot easier in my neighborhood, but that didn’t happen. Maybe next road trip.

Something useful: The feds have mandated that we get a free credit report every year from each of the 3 major credit agencies. If you live in the west, you can get yours now from annualcreditreport.com. East coast people are gonna have to wait until next year. You answer a bunch of questions and they generate the report on the spot for you, which is pretty cool. What’s not cool is I found out I have some other names (that aren’t mine) attached to my account, so I’m gonna have to clear that up. But it doesn’t look like anyone took out a mortgage in my name, so that’s good.

Yesterday: Left Van Horn, Texas, and drove north into New Mexico, and then to the White Sands National Monument. Right before I got there, I had to stop at a checkpoint, where an armed policeman asked if I was a U.S. citizen or not. I said yes, and he let me pass.

White Sands is pretty cool. It’s one of the few places where the climate is right to produce gypsum sand, and there’s a grip of it. The area looks like a giant white sandbox. Kids brought sleds and were sledding down the sand dunes. I’d forgotten that my parents took me here when I was a kid to do just that.

The rest of my trip was just I-10, which, quite frankly, is a boring-ass road. Fortunately the speed limit in New Mexico (road sign: PRISON NEARBY - DO NOT PICK UP HITCH-HIKERS IN THIS AREA) is 75 so I managed to make pretty good time. I stopped in Deming, New Mexico, and had a steak at the Grand Motel, whose roadside sign advertised “Best Steak and Prime Rib” It was broiled and awful. Stopped in Tucson last night and stayed in a sketchy-ass cheap motel, which spurred me to wake up early and drive the 450 miles back to Los Angeles, only stopping for gas. You could see the smog, starting in Indio, and that and the traffic just got worse from there. I stopped in Monterey Park to pick up some Chinese food and boba tea, and that was it.

So…I’m back. After nearly a month (just a few hours shy of 30 days) of traveling around the country, I’m home. It was a pretty cool journey - approximately 8,000 miles - and at the end of it, I’m glad to be back as well. America is an amazing place, despite our faults sometimes, and I’m glad to have seen a big part of it. Cross this one off on my to-do list.

I’ll put up the final set of pictures soon, and write up a couple of things I have been thinking about along the way. It’s time to unpack, take a long hot shower, sort through a month’s worth of mail, and what not. I’ve also got a grip of CSI and Lost to catch up on, and have to collect on somebody owing me an Xbox and Halo 2, so those should both be fun.

Thank you all for coming along with me on my journey. I really enjoyed all of the comments as I’d read them from wherever I was - you kept me company along the way.

Went to the Alamo yesterday. I was there a long time ago but everything looked completely new to me. It was here back in 1836 that Texas had declared its independence (indeed, the United States recognized Texas as an independent country for about ten years). General Santa Anna, the self-proclaimed dictator of Mexico, was pissed off about that, and sent thousands of troops to crush the insurgents. The Texans (along with some volunteers, including David Crockett and his troops from Tennessee) hid the women and children in the Alamo’s inner sanctuary, and Colonel Travis allegedly drew his famous line in the sand and asked his troops to cross the line and stay with him. (One person left.) A 16-day siege of the Alamo ended in an early morning attack on the last day, when the Mexican army overran the Texans, and the Alamo fell. Later on that year, the Texas army captured General Santa Anna and forced him to leave Texas alone.

Also strolled along the Riverwalk - which is more like Creekwalk, but it’s certainly nice enough - restaurants & shops that line a river (creek) that runs throughout downtown San Antonio. Ate lunch at the Original Mexican Restaurant. If it were truly the original, I think they would have just called it a day for Mexican cuisine - La Parilla in Los Angeles kicks its ass any day of the week.

That was it. Jumped back along the 10, and drove west. Southern Texas looked like New Mexico a little bit - desert hills again - for about two hours, and then it got dark. I smelled oil around Bakersfield, so I figure there were some oil rigs around there, but wasn’t able to see anything.

I stopped at around 11 PM in Van Horn, Texas for the night. Van Horn is kind of a sketchy little town about 125 miles east of El Paso. I ate dinner at a truckstop restaurant, and this is where something cool happened - I got a ten dollar bill with my change, that was stamped with a wheresgeorge.com stamp. You can go to this site and enter the serial number of any bill you have, and it’ll show you where other users have had the bill. It’s rare that you encounter one of these stamped bills (since defacing U.S. currency is illegal), so there aren’t that many bills on the site, but it’s worth checking out. I’ve gotten one other bill in my lifetime, and that was in Vegas, and the site showed that the bill had been in Vegas before. This is much cooler - my ten dollar bill started in Columbus, OH back in January. I wonder how it got to Van Horn.

I’m eager to get out of Texas. I’ve been traveling for a week and a half since I left my brother’s place, and I’m a bit anxious to get home, since Arizona and New Mexico aren’t new territory for me. I think I’ve got one more thing to see, and then I might just do a straight drive home. We’ll see.

I’ll upload photos either at my next stop, or early next week.

Yesterday morning I had breakfast at the Waffle House in Beaumont, Texas. I’ve never been to Waffle House before, and it was on my list of places to go. It’s like Denny’s but way better. I think I’m going to eat there at least one more time on my trip.

After breakfast, I drove to Houston and went to the Johnson Space Center. I didn’t have much time before they closed, so I missed all of the films, but I did manage to take the tram tour through the place. Got to see the old Mission Control center from the Apollo days, some X-38 prototypes, and the astronaut training center - the latter which is a huge warehouse full of life-size replicas of the space shuttle, the Russian Soyuz capsule, the robotic arm (CANADIARM2) on the International Space Station, and more.

It took me quite a long time to get out of Houston, because I left Space Center right around rush hour. Houston has the most ridiculous toll road I’ve ever seen - the Sam Houston Tollway. It’s a nice highway, it’s just that I had to stop five times to pay tolls along the way. Even though I had to pay, traffic was jammed up all around the west side of Houston, and it was even worse on the 10.

Finally things on the 10 calmed down in the outskirts. I stopped in Sealy to eat at Hinze’s BBQ, which was an okay roadside restaurant. Made it to San Antonio, which is where I am now. I ended up doing some laundry tonight - it was too late to go out, and for some reason, I was out of clean clothes even though I should still have some. Maybe I left some stuff scattered around the United States or something.

Yesterday’s Space Center photos.

Hey April - thanks for the recommendations!

Oh wow, I just looked at the publishing date. It’s Friday already?

I spent yesterday morning walking around the French Quarter. It was pretty much empty except for workers and a few tourists. Went to Cafe du Monde near Jackson Square, where old Filipino ladies in white paper hats were serving chicory coffee and beignets in a great outdoor cafe. I’ve never had beignets before - they were really tasty.

Went back to the hotel, updated the blog, checked out, left my bags in the car, and then went to Mother’s Restaurant for an early lunch. My brother recommended this place and it turned out to be excellent - an old counter-top joint serving po’boy sandwiches, that reminded me of Phillippe’s in Los Angeles. The roast beef sandwich was excellent. I have to say, the South so far has been the best for food - Athens, Biloxi, and New Orleans.

Popped into the Harrah’s casino right down the street for a minute and played craps for a grand total of two minutes - rolled one point, then seven’ed out, took my money, and left. Walked back to the hotel, got my car, and then it was goodbye, New Orleans.

The day’s destination was the McIlhenny’s Tabasco factory on Avery Island, out west on highway 90 through the bayou country. It started raining again, and as I approached Avery Island, it turned into a complete downpour, and I ended up having to drive real slow. Paid my 50 cent toll at the island’s entrance, and then here I was.

The Tabasco factory was okay. I was the only one there, and the tour guide spent five minutes explaining how tabasco is made and how Edward McIlhenny started up the brand back in the day. Then she left me in a theater to watch a 10-minute video describing again how tabasco is made, the global reach of the Tabasco brand, and encouraging watchers to patronize the country store and buy their new chipotle tabasco. I learned that tabasco is mashed up and aged like whiskey in used oak barrels from the Jack Daniels distillery, except the tops of the barrels are covered with a layer of salt to prevent crap from getting in during the 3-year aging process. Then I got to see part of the bottling plant, which was pretty cool. I shot a couple of movie clips of the bottling, but unfortunately they’re too big to upload right now.

That was it for the day, really. I got back on Interstate 10 (the same 10 that goes all the way to Los Angeles) and headed west. Stopped for a wholly uninspiring dinner at Walker’s Cajun Restaurant in Jennings, which turned out to be a Cajun version of Denny’s. The weird thing about the 10 is that there are all of these little casinos on all of the highway exits. I looked in one it was all video poker machines. After I left Jennings, I ended up driving into a full-on thunderstorm, which was really nerve-wracking - rain was coming down so hard it was impossible to see again, except for when the lightning flashed. I was going to drive to Houston last night, but ended up stopping in Beaumont because it was so bad. Picked up some food from Whataburger (local fast-food chain), and that was it.

So, I’m at the part of my trip where I don’t have any stops planned. I could just stay on the 10 and quickly drive back to Los Angeles, or I could mess around the last three states I have left to pass through. (If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.) I’m not particularly anxious to get home - this trip has been cool and I could spend even more time just kind of driving around and checking things out. But I do have to get on with my normal life at some point, and somebody callled me yesterday about a job. We’ll see.

Photos from yesterday are here!

How come nobody’s updating their blogs?