Seeking An Extraordinary Life - A Travel Journal

It's 6am and it's pretty cold in Santa Barbara, but I warm up quickly lugging my gear out to the onramp for Route 1. Santa Barbara is clearly a rich area - all perfect little villas, arty shops and manicured greenery. I begin to suspect I'm still in a hitching black hole.

The location is good - unusually the "Pedestrians Prohibited" sign is at the top of the onramp not the bottom, so I can stand on the shoulder of the onramp itself as the vehicles roll up past me, almost a perfect location. As the traffic slowly picks up a lot of it consists of oldish, well-used trucks and vans, also a very good sign.

After three hours I reach the end of my tether. It's not as though it's a horrendous time to work - I've waited three hours elsewhere before getting a ride - but yesterday has sapped my confidence. I've also lost my little MP3 player somewhere along the way and without music it's really hard to keep morale up after the two hour mark.

I trudge back down the onramp having concluded that California in general may not be the place to hitch. Back in Canada and Washington I shrugged off the warnings of people who told me you couldn't hitch-hike any more, but in this state it might actually be true - people here do seem really insulated from the world and other people in a way I haven't found elsewhere.

Back at the station I buy a very reasonable ticket for San Francisco - I'll travel the first part by train, then switch to a bus for the last stretch. While I'm sure this is the right choice and hitching would be impossible in the time I have, I'm still depressed and let down at having really failed at hitching for the first time.

I have almost two hours before my train so I walk back to a nice little cafe I saw on my way to the onramp, and settle in with a cup of coffee and a really good breakfast burrito. My spirits slowly rise again with good food, caffeine and warmth, and the realisation that I'll be in San Francisco by evening, the city I've looked forward to seeing for years, and have been anticipating since I started travelling.

The train is another Surfliner commuter unit, comfortable and fast, and the bus connection is smoothly arranged. Through the afternoon we roll into northern California, and the mirrored buildings of Silicon Valley flash with sunset colours on either side of us. I'm sitting with Ronnie, a student who lives in San Jose to the southwest of the Bay. She's been away for some time in a small university, and talks dreamily about her mum's cooking.

It's just getting dark when I step off the bus on the Embarcadero, the main street which runs along the bay-front of the city. The bulk of downtown stretches away from me, an extraordinary range of skyscapers and beautiful buildings, and the crowds are pouring up and down the street and over the crossings on all sides.

My first priority is to track down Gadget, who's promised to sort me out a cheap or better place to stay in the city...I need to find an internet cafe and locate Cozy Castro Cottage, where he lives. I know it's in the Castro area, the gay district of San Francisco. I ask a friendly dreadlocked jewellery-seller about internet cafes - he reckons the Castro is the best place to find them anyway, and directs me to the nearest transit station.

San Francisco has two major transport systems - BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) and Muni (the Municipal transport network, which technically covers all buses, trams and cable cars but is usually used to describe the city's unique hybrid tube train/tram network). BART, essentially a very fast over/under train system, has only a few stations and is mainly useful for longer journeys going outside the city centre, but in this case it'll deliver me conveniently to Civic Centre which is handy for the Castro area.

Descending into the station I have some doubts about locating Gadget tonight - it's already about 7pm and I have no idea where this place is or even if I'll be able to reach him there. I stand rethinking for a while, then dig out a wad of printouts - my last emails from India House, including one from Deidre regarding her arrival for Decompression. I had thought she was coming in on the Saturday, but my sudden suspicion is confirmed - she's actually already in the city if she's running to schedule.

I find a payphone and ring her, and we have a joyful telephonic reunion and arrange to meet by her hotel near to Union Square - it's just up the road from the Powell BART station and it takes me around ten minutes to get there. I walk up the road to Union Square through the craziest part of downtown San Francisco - the crowds are swarming, there's neon and glass on all sides, the road is thick with cars, taxis and buses.

Union Square is lit up all round and surrounded by huge brand-name stores. I search through the crowds and finally locate Deidre on the corner, joyful shouting and hugs are exchanged. We walk to the nearest internet cafe talking over each other as we exchange travelling stories - Deidre's just come back from an amazing business trip to Kyoto.

At the cafe the search for Gadget stops dead - he hasn't replied to my last email and Cozy Castro Cottage has no phone number. I leave another email for him, and one with the CCC email address asking them to tell him to get in touch with me. There's not much more I can do.

Still swapping stories and slowly getting up to date Deidre and I return to her hotel, and I start ringing around hostels. Most of them, as anticipated, are booked out with incoming Burners. The only one I can find is on the Haight, San Francisco's legendary historical centre of hippiedom and bohemia - a cool place to stay but it's miles out of the city centre.

Deidre's still waiting for her friend Brian to arrive by train, so I decide to get the bus out to the guesthouse, get signed in (their front desk closes shortly) then come back into town and we can all have dinner together. The concierge gives me directions and I head out to the bus stop.

In practice the directions are dreadful, taking me all the way out of town one way then back in again, and it takes me almost two hours to reach the Haight. By the time I'm booked in (the girl on the desk almost refuses to let me in as it's so late) it's midnight and not worth going back into town - I ring Deidre to tell her to go ahead and eat without me, and crash into bed. I'm frustrated, hungry and a bit miserable but I'm also shattered, and I quickly fall asleep.

Labels: amtrak, Bay Area Rapid Transit, California, Embarcadero, hitchhiking, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara, surfliner

I wake up at just after five, check the clock, prepare to go back to sleep then battle sheer horror as I realise that this is actually the best time to be up if I'm going to make an early start on my hitch-hiking toward San Francisco. Just shy of an hour later I'm showered, packed and on my way out of the hostel into the surprisingly cold morning air.

Once the initial trauma is over, I find the familiar buzz settling in at getting back on the road and I make my way to the onramp with high spirits and a cup of evil Starbucks coffee in my hand. I sip coffee, munch on the remaining third of my calzone and make myself a San Francisco sign on the back of a good durable cardboard tray. Then there's nothing to do but wait.

And wait. And wait. It's over three hours before I get my first ride, which gets me exactly 10 minutes down the road. I'm grateful to get moving at all though, and the new spot looks better - out of the centre of town, slow moving traffic, great visibility...I reckon I shouldn't have any trouble getting moving.

After two and a half hours I take a break to get lunch at a nearby In 'n Out Burger - and it's the best burger I've had in a fast food joint. In 'n Out have the admirable policy of keeping pretty much the menu they opened with as the first drivethrough in California - hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger and fries. That's basically it. They don't do much, but what they do they do really well. The patty is really good beef, goodsized and perfectly cooked, on a freshly-baked bun, and the fries are crunchy and flavoursome.

With renewed energy I get back out on the road, find a slightly different spot further down...

And stand there for another three hours before getting a ride 20 minutes further out. This time I'm dropped on the side of a major highway, again near an onramp but here the traffic is moving at breakneck speed and the location doesn't look at all promising. I drop my bags and raise my sign. By now I've been standing holding the thing for almost ten hours and I'm exhausted, but I don't have another option - I'm miles from anywhere, certainly nowhere near a place to stay, and there's no cover out here to sleep in.

I keep the sign up as long as my arms can hold it, and then I switch to the thumb - a last ditch attempt as the road here can go either way and I really need to be able to indicate which direction I need a lift in. Just when I think I'm really going to have to give up and start walking down the highway back into town, a car pulls over. But it's no good - he's going back into San Diego. I give up - it may be possible to hitch out of southern California, but I don't have the time it's clearly going to take.

I gratefully accept the ride back into San Diego, and decide I need to make at least some progress north today or I'm going to be in trouble tomorrow. The new plan: I'll get the train and bus north to Santa Barbara, about half of my journey time, stay there overnight then try and pick up the hitching again from there. I'm determined I'm not going to let this state beat me.

I'm on the train with Russ from San Diego, another of America's ubiquitous sweet-natured chunky rock dudes. He actually works in a club in San Diego and knows a whole bunch of places I should go if and when I do return...including the brewpub home of the awesome Arrogant Bastard ale I enjoyed in Seattle. It's well-known around here - in fact, once we're settled on the train he disappears to the bar car and comes back with a bottle for each of us. It's a very civilised journey to L.A. after that, drinking ale, chatting and watching the little towns flash by outside the windows.

Russ hops off a couple of stops before Union Station with promises to keep in touch, and I ride on to the central terminus, arriving with about twenty minutes to spare before my coach to Santa Barbara. The Amtrak Thruway coach is comfortable, a little more luxurious than the Greyhound equivalent, and I'm feeling my lack of sleep over the past week and a half not to mention my severely early morning, so I doze part of the way.

Arriving in Santa Barbara bus station it's almost midnight, I'm thoroughly exhausted and there are wide, smooth wooden benches which look very inviting - someone's already sleeping on one of them. I spread my sleeping bag on the next and settle in. Another fellow-traveller is preparing to settle down for the night, but he's arrived in only his t-shirt and the air is really cold. At his request, with some misgivings, I lend him my fleece. When I wake at 5am he's still sleeping under it, but after I sleep again from 5 to 6 he's gone, taking my fleece with him.

Labels: amtrak, bus, California, hitchhiking, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Union Station

A whole day spent on Amtrak, and I'm glad once again that I've chosen this mode of travel. On Greyhound this amount of time would be interminable, but on the train there's space to move around freely, comfortable seats in which I can sleep almost normally, and the landscapes from the huge observation car windows are dramatic and always-changing as we roll across the huge expanse of Texas.

The previous night the others started yet another drinking session in the bar below the lounge; I stopped in to chat but didn't feel any need to join in. I couldn't sleep until quite late, so I stayed up in the observation car writing up my journal notes and watching the odd sparse lights passing by or the occasional orange-lighted main street as we rolled through a town.

In the evening we finally pass out of the Lone Star State and into New Mexico, then Arizona. Now the landscape is serious desert, barren sand with cactus everywhere and craggy, jutting hills on all sides. California is coming closer.

Labels: amtrak, arizona, Austin Texas, new mexico

I wake feeling tired and ill and angry at myself yet again for my inability to stay away from the drink for a few days. There's something going on in my head lately that I keep gravitating to alcohol when it's about...a kind of longing for something I can't really figure out. I feel lost in a way I haven't felt before, maybe even beginning to be tired of the nomadic life.

All the same the familiar excitement builds as I get my equipment together and prepare to head out for the train, say goodbye to everyone functioning at this time of the morning and walk out to the streetcar. At the car I meet yet more hostel folks, an Irish boy and English girl who are travelling together - we've only exchanged a few words up to now but it's nice to have some familiar company, and they're taking the same train.

On the ride down the streetcar picks up Molly who is walking with her luggage, and when we get to the station it turns out that Ellie and Laura, James and Molly, an Australian called Mick who I've chatted with a bit before and another Aussie called Brad are all taking the same train with us - several of them are going to Austin, funnily enough, and are changing in San Antonio.

It makes for a very sociable day on the train - once we've all got our seats and stowed our gear we convene in the observation car, a lounge car with windows from the floor up, wrapping round to go almost all the way across the ceiling. The end third of the car becomes a mini hostel get-together and we hang out there pretty much all the day, chatting, playing silly games and watching the countryside go by.

Labels: amtrak, austin, New Orleans, san antonio

Feeling a good bit fresher and more alert than I have been, I get into town relatively early and explore Bourbon Street for much of the middle of the day. By daylight it's a completely different environment, the beautiful old houses with their wrought-iron balconies and peeling bricks have a quiet dignity which is the complete opposite of the street's night-time frenzy.

For lunch I stop into the Cajun Grill on Decatur for an alligator kabob, which to my surprise turns out to be exactly what it says. The alligator is in the form of highly seasoned sausage, and it's kind of hard to make out the flavour (particularly since, to my enormous aggravation, I have another cold coming on) but it's savoury and has a nice extra level of chewiness. It comes with beautiful crispy sweet potato fries.

Arriving back I finally get the next leg of my journey planned - going over the map I find that once again I'm out of hitch-hiking range, so I spend almost an hour trying different routes on Amtrak's infuriating website before finding that I can make it to San Diego for quite a reasonable price by the third of October, and then hitch up the coast to San Francisco with time to spare. It'll be a long journey, mind - two full days on board train. But with a good supply of reading material I reckon I can make it through, and anything's luxury after long-distance Greyhound.

In the evening we gather for the hostel's weekly barbecue by the pool, munch great steaks (eaten with our fingers as the hostel doesn't have steak knives) and chat. It's a really nice crowd right now, and a very mixed one - several other Englanders, Australians, French, and folks from all across the States. After dinner pretty much everybody seems to want to see Liquidrone, who are playing across town at Le Bon Temps, so we muster taxis and form a sizeable party.

The band are pretty good but I don't really appreciate them fully because I have yet another money panic - the ATM in the bar rejects my card about half an hour after I arrive. I have $15.00 to my name and I haven't yet paid for my hostel room for the last two nights before my train leaves. Tired, a bit drunk and panicking over how I could have miscalculated so badly again I end up ducking out of the bar and walking home, a journey of over two hours.

Labels: alligator, amtrak, barbecue, Beer, cajun grill, New Orleans, United States

I stay home and spend most of the day working on the blog and organising and packing my kit for the early start in the morning - my Amtrak train leaves for New Orleans at 0615. In the evening we join Bronwen for pizza at Fuzzies, an unpromising joint on a slightly seedy lot which turns out to make really amazingly good pizza, with a thick bready crust and piquant toppings. I'm in bed by nine with my gear lined up ready to go.

Labels: amtrak, houston, New Orleans, Pizza, Texas

The plan for today is to get to the motel, get our gear cleared out before checkout time, then Gadget will return to the hostel (he's decided to stick around a few more days) and I will get a bus out to a suitable hitch-hiking point and begin heading towards Houston. Frankly Hagey has recommended I come back to the hostel too and use the net to trawl for Burners or others heading that way and willing to provide a lift, but with three days to go I'm feeling really antsy to get moving and I'm afraid of how long it may take to get a lift. I need to be in Houston by Thursday in order to meet my fellow santas Tonya, Kelly and their friends, who are taking me to the Austin City Limits Music Festival at the weekend. With this in mind Hagey drops us to the transit centre early (he's an early riser and has been up for two hours) and we get the bus back to downtown.

We get all our gear packed and out of the motel room just in time as the manager comes knocking to tell us we should be checked out, hand in our keys and move on to Quiznos for breakfast/lunch, in my case a Peppercorn Beef sandwich on a soft toasty white bun, easily one of the best subs I've ever eaten. Once we have a moment I spread out a map of the state which Gadget has given me, and begin planning a hitching strategy, but it quickly becomes apparent that this is going to be a nightmare to hitch. Repeating a mistake I can't seem to stop making, I've drastically mis-estimated the journey time - it's going to take three days to get to Houston even with the best hitching I've had. The roads all go in the wrong directions and I'm going to be really stuck trying to avoid the freeways. In short, it's a pretty near impossible hitch.

Frustrated, I look at my options. Gadget recommends Amtrak, and although initially I balk at the price as I have before, I recall that I did reckon to take Amtrak at least once on my journey and this trip might be a good time to do it. The office is closed for lunch and we wait at the station for half an hour with me getting rather twitchy at the time being lost. When the staffer returns the news is bad - Amtrak from Reno to Houston would have to go via L.A. and would cost over three hundred dollars.

Next option: My old friend Greyhound. We walk out to the station to find that Greyhound to Houston is also very roundabout, will cost $177.00 and take almost two full days. Not appealing. Finally I admit that Hagey was right and I need to try rideshare first. We stop into the cafe and I place entries on Craigslist and the Burning Man forums requesting a rideshare to Houston or somewhere on the way. All there is to do now is wait and return to Hagey's, which is actually a real relief after this stress.

However, on the way out I go to take some cash out of the ATM, and get the response "Temporarily unable to complete transaction". Panic. I walk up the road to a corner shop and try a different machine - same result. We walk back to Virginia and I try a casino ATM on a different network. Same thing. I'm really scared now - could I have miscalculated so badly that I've drained my account already? I would have to be thousands of dollars out...

I walk up to Bank of America, thankfully a lot closer to downtown than banks usually seem to be in North America, and the teller, although unable to check my status with Visa, kindly lets me use their phone to call Barclays' Lost and Stolen Card line - I'm beginning to get an inkling that the same thing has happened as in Niagara Falls. I wait for a full half hour on hold for what should be an emergency service, and begin to suspect that something larger has gone wrong at Barclays, when the teller returns to tell me they can't have me on an international call any longer but if I come back tomorrow I can try again.

Still deeply worried, I walk with Gadget back down towards the transit centre, but remember that in Niagara my card would still work at point-of-sale - this would be a test of whether the same thing has happened again. I stop into a grocery store and buy a few bits, and to my enormous relief find that the card works. We return to the station with just enough cash between us to cover our ride back to Sparks, and James comes to pick us up and bring us home to the BRIBH.

Back at the hostel a shopping trip is being arranged for dinner ingredients - James does most of the cooking and is winding up for a big pasta, salad and stirfry project. I decide that if I'm going to be here another day or two I want to be able to pitch in with a contribution, so I decide to go along to get ingredients and make scotch pancakes for everyone in the morning. It's pretty daunting since I've never cooked for more than four people before but it's an exciting challenge too, and a chance to cook real food for the first time in a long while.

I go along with Lore and Pickle, two guys who've been packing up the city for several days and have just returned. They're fanatical about food too, and they, James and I have a great multiway discussion about the virtues of meat, fast and slow cooking, baking vs cooking and other fun topics. Fully equipped we return for an immensely enjoyable group cooking effort with at least six people at all times chopping vegetables, slinging things in and out of the oven, waving red-hot pans about and generally endangering each others' safety at every turn, accompanied by passionate discussions, mostly around food.

Labels: amtrak, black rock international burner hostel, Burning Man, greyhound, Nevada, reno