On Monday morning, I woke up in Kirkland, Washington and drove out around 7am. A bit after midnight on Wednesday morning, my car was back in my garage in Las Vegas.

It was about 1600 miles in about 42 hours. My solo drive home was broken into two parts. A 21 hour drive from Kirkland, WA to Santa Clara, CA. Then a few hours of rest followed by a 13 hour drive from Santa Clara back to Las Vegas.

DAY 1. Washington to California:
I didn’t originally plan on having the first half of my trip taking 21 hours. My initial route was to get to the coast for a bit, stopping in Tillamook in Oregon (I heard the cheese factory there was worth visiting) and then getting back on the I5 and driving south to California. It would have taken about 13 or 14 hours.

But as I drove down the Oregon coast, I saw some of the most beautiful sights I’d ever witnessed in my entire life. It wasn’t hard for me to decide that I’d stay along the 101, all the way to San Francisco.

Everyone needs to see what I saw that day. It was overcast and misty that morning when I left Washington. It was like a Bob Ross paintings (you know, the white dude with the huge afro). The skies cleared up by noon when I reached the Oregon coast. Driving south meant I was right along the coast line so I got to see everything right in front of me.

The sun began to set behind me as I entered California. By the time I reached Redwood National Park, it was starting to get dark. I ended up driving through a lot of it in the pitch black of night. Toward the end of my drive, I passed by the San Francisco skyline and arrived at a friend’s place in Santa Clara around 4 in the morning (sorry about that Sherry!), where I slept for a few hours before heading out again at noon.

I had been driving for 21 hours, with a few stops along the way at random beaches when I felt so inspired. Various energy drinks kept me going through the last few hours.

Day 2:
I always wanted to see Big Sur. And so on Tuesday, I did.

From Santa Clara, I headed to Monterey and drove around Carmel for a while before heading south along California 1. Again, beautiful coastline, but with a slightly different feel from what I saw in Oregon. The drive along Big Sur reminded me of the road to Hana in Maui, but with more gift shops and with less palm trees (just as many tourists, though).

Heading south, I thought I was clever and figured that I’d save some time by turning east before getting to Los Angeles. I ended up turning around Morro Bay and went down a road called Hwy58. It was on that road that I experienced the scariest 90 minutes of my life.

Okay so I’m from Hawaii. I haven’t been driving around the mainland for too long, but I figure that when a road is called a “Highway”, it’s going to have a bunch of people and be surrounded by gas stations every few miles. So I jump on something called Highway 58 with a half tank of gas. About 15 minutes in, I notice that I haven’t passed any cars and that I’m surrounded by nothing but hills and grass. Also, my cell phone doesn’t work out there.

I really got scared when I realized I had just crossed a point where I didn’t have enough fuel to go back the way I came. The GPS told me that there was a gas station in about 40 miles though, so I kept on the twisting and hilly road.

With the needle near E, I reached what the GPS said was a Chevron gas station. It was a Chevron oil refinery (Oh yeah I was surrounded by oil derricks there, too). That’s about when I started panicking a little more.

To my relief, I did end up finding a gas station. It was a weird gas station in the middle of no where. No little snack mart, no air/water pump, not even anyone staffing it. It was just a bunch of pumps with a single credit card reader in the middle, and a payphone off to the side. And that day, it was the most awesome gas station I’d seen in my entire life.

I just spent about 15 minutes trying to find it on google maps. Here it is:

View Larger Map

(link)

I know it looks like there’s stuff around it, and it also looks like it’s near a small town. But I swear to God, when I was there… I really thought I was going to run out of fuel, die trying to walk somewhere with cell reception, and then get eaten by vultures. (I was a little scared, in other words).

All’s well that ends well though. I refueled, continued East, hit a bunch of small towns, and made my way back to Vegas.

It was only after I got back home to Vegas that I realized the last time I had food in my stomach was over 50 hours ago, when I had dinner in Seattle with Doug and Cat on Sunday night. During the drive over, the only thing I ate was a cupcake that Cat had baked, and half of a ziploc bag of chex mix that they also gave me, which I had been slowly snacking on during the way over.

So I ate me a huge loco moco, and passed out for the night.

Like I said, during the past two weeks the car put on 4356 miles. Pretty epic stuff. I got an oil change in Vegas right before heading out, and was due for another one right around the time I passed through Astoria, Oregon on the way back. The bumper is covered with bugs now from four different states and a different country. Hell, even the antenna ball caught some bugs, and so did the Canadian flag I have on my antenna (that I picked up in Vancouver and flew all the way back here).

The old Hyundai’s been good to me. Sometimes I still can’t believe I picked it up for less than what I sold my motorcycle for.

It’s been an interesting week. I was picking raspberries in Washington on Sunday, driving down the Oregon coast on Monday, the California coast on Tuesday, and then yesterday I was eating seafood buffet in the middle of the desert and playing slot machines again. Home sweet home.

I got back home in Vegas a little after midnight last night. When I did, I realized that it had been over 48 hours since I last had food in my stomach (that is, aside from the half eaten ziploc bag of chex mix that Cat gave me back in Washington before I first headed out).

I’m still blown away that when I woke up two mornings ago, I was in Kirkland, Washington. A 21 hour drive down the coast along the Pacific North West on Monday, then a 13 hour drive east from California on Tuesday, and now I’m back home.

My solo drive back from Washington was the end of an amazing road trip that I took with my brother and his girlfriend, who flew out from Hawaii to Los Angeles. I drove over from Vegas to pick them up, and we went to San Diego, then up to San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, and then back to Seattle where I dropped them off at the airport.

In the past two weeks, I’ve seen and done more than I’ll ever fully recall. Off the top of my head:
- I saw a panda take a dump at the San Diego zoo
- I saw sea lion killing a sea gull under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
- I saw group of about two dozen people riding bicycles alongside Pike Place Market in Seattle, completely naked (that was the most penises I’ve ever seen at one time since PE class back in high school)
- I saw a family of racoons (a big one followed by three or four small ones) walking around Stanley Park in Vancouver
- I ate some awesome ramen on Robson Street in Vancouver
- I picked raspberries with Doug and Cat on Whidbey Island in Washington. This was the first time I’d ever seen berries that weren’t already in a tray in a supermarket.

The vacation lasted two weeks. From the time I went to pick them up on July 4 until I arrived back home last night, we had driven a total of 4,356 miles. This was epic, especially for a couple of kids from Hawaii where you can drive around the island and be back home again in about two hours.

Now that I’m back, I think one of the first things I’m going to have to do is take the car in for an oil change.

It’s been a while since I last posted - it’s one of life’s small ironies where when you don’t hear from someone in a while, it’s either because nothing’s been going on with them, or because so much cool shit’s been happening that they haven’t had time to update you.

It’s been the latter for me. So I got back to Hawaii two weeks ago and right before that, baby bro was up in Vegas visiting me. It’s been a month of fun, and now it comes down to this afternoon, with me sitting here in front of a packed suitcase with my little dog lying down next to me. I think he knows I’m leaving. He was staring at me while I was packing up, and now he’s just lying down next to me as I write this.

Hawaii’s been nice. I’ve spent most of it chilling out at home and spending time with family. It was nice to spend the day with mom again (except for the parts where she started asking me when I was going to get married and give her grandchildren).

I also: got to see Shakedown perform again, went riding, ate a ton of ramen, checked out First Friday, spent time with friends (but not all of them; sorry to anyone I missed), partied with Reid in Hawaii for the first time since our College days, and found out that in Hawaii, “bottle-service” just means “bottle”.

Now it’s back to the desert.

San Diego = what you get when you drop your waffle on the beach.

It was a five hour drive, but a great trip. I got back a few days ago, but have been in recovery ever since. In fact, the only reason I’m really writing about this now it because I’m still feeling faded from dollar bowling/dollar drinks over at South Point earlier this morning. And since I’m halfway gone, you can only expect a half-assed report of my hotmess weekend!

In San Diego, I:

- realized what a beautiful city that place is.
- saw a hummingbird while walking around Little Italy
- learned that if you dance by yourself in the middle of an empty dance floor, the staff will decide that you’re too drunk and escort you out of the venue, while your friends are all still inside, wondering what the hell happened to you (that was fun)
- learned that a good percentage of those rickshaw taxi bicyclists are from Brazil (I rode one!)
- ate nothing but hash browns the entire trip. God damn I was so happy to eat rice again when I got home.

All in all it was an awesome trip, and I met some awesome people. Thanks, guys!

And now, some pictures (thanks for the photos, Kim and Caryn):

Me and Caryn before all the madness happened (ie: we were still sober)

We’re all completely hung over here, but this was the morning after, over at the House of Blues for breakfast.

I don’t even remember this picture … but Happy Birthday, Kim!

Again, Happy Birthday, Kim! It was awesome… and a true testament to you that I drove down from Vegas, Caryn flew from Alabama, and Kristina came from Washington, all for you!

I was hanging out with Kerri on Saturday and she’s like “What do you want to do?” and I’m like “Dude let’s go to LA!”

Completely spur of the moment. Kerry went online and booked a room, I filled up my gas tank, and we headed down. Then about five hours later, we were eating at Santouka Ramen and snacking on Hello Panda’s during the drive over to the Getty.

We also walked around Santa Monica, which I only found out about a week ago when Annie was nice enough to show it to me. (I know very little about California).

And of course, before we came back on Sunday afternoon, we made sure we ate at the Boiling Crab again. There were some monster crawfish in our bag and a whole lotta garlic, which made for a pretty pleasant car ride back to Vegas.

I put a little over 600 miles on the car in a 24 hour period. And then there’s San Diego in two weeks. It’s been less than two months since I got the oil changed in my car, but I’ll probably have to take it in again by the end of April. Good times.

I got back to Vegas yesterday afternoon. Pretty eventful past few days … I’m still trying to process everything, but off the top of my head, I:

- Slept all by myself in a scary ghost house
- Spent two nights near LA in two different homes
- Used an automatic toilet (the kind from Japan)
- Sat through a real California earthquake
- Spent a day with a black girl who taught me about ethnic hair products
- Wandered around the MOCA and Donwtown LA by myself
- Ate ramen three days in a row. Awww yeah.

Mission accomplished on that last one. I’m glad to be home now though.

I’m still processing everything that happened and I’ll try to post more later.

So I got something in the mail from The Rio the other day. It was a big post card saying that if I could come in to get two buffet vouchers (their buffet there is pretty huge by the way).

I had to do something weird, though - I had to go to the hotel and contact someone called “The Asian Host” (there was a phone number listed on the post card). I also noticed that the postcard had photos of only asian people on it (playing slots and table games).

So I went to the Rio and called the “Asian Host” who told me they were set up at a bunch of pai gow tables. When I got there, there were a bunch of tables wrapped in yellow, playing weird games I hadn’t seen before in town - like Pai Gow with what looks like domino tiles.

Okay so … I hardly ever go to that casino, and was wondering why I suddenly started getting offers from. Vegas Seven recently had an article about wooing visitors over from China. I also noticed a lot more Chinese New Years decorations around town last month.

So I’m guessing someone just went through the customer list for the Rio and filtered out everyone with Chinese last names. I feel like I just got profiled, but then again I’m also going to be able to pig out this Saturday. I think I remember them having portuguese sausage there. Awwww yeah.

Literally.

So Kerri’s got some friends in town right now and I took them over to the club. We’re drinking AMF’s and having a good time.

Later in the evening, I’m talking with Reid and hanging out. Then the security manager (this really big black dude) comes over, rushes me from the front, and in basically one move, picks me up, moves me about ten feet, and puts me back down.

He starts laughing and said “holy shit that was a lot easier than I thought it would be”

“Dude what did you expect? I’m like a buck twenty!” I also told him my life just had flashed before my eyes, and it was pretty much the most awesome thing ever.

All in good fun - I was talking to him earlier and he told me that Sundays are basically his ‘Friday’ (he’s got Mon/Tues off). So he was probably just excited like how everyone gets on Friday.

What a goof ball! Anyway here’s looking to a great weekend, dude.

…I apparently like to go to the library, and then buy even more beer on the way back home.

So I’m at the Liquor Outlet for the first time in my life this afternoon. I bring a case of Miller High Life (the Champagne of Beers!) to the counter. There were two guys there.

Guy1: “I’m going to need to see your ID, obviously..”
Guy2: “Yeah sorry about that, babyface”

Guy1 proceeds to tell me about this guy who’s like, 4′11″ who rides up on a bicycle and looks like a little kid. The first time he carded him, he found out half pint is 32 years old. You don’t easily forget someone like that, so he never carded him again on subsequent visits, but other customers would always ask “Why didn’t you card that boy?!”

So I bought a case of High Life’s at Liquor Outlet, and while doing price comparisons, I stopped at the corner gas station and bought another case of Milwaukee’s Best (aka: “The Beest”, right Evan?). 5.9% alcohol yo! (Oh I bought Best Ice).

And I found out that between the Liquor Outlet and the Gas Station, the Liquor Outlet prices High Life for less, but the Gas Station prices Beest for less. Interpret whatever social commentary you will with that information. And discuss.

Crazy night at Revolution last night with a bunch of High Life’s (the champagne of beers!) I woke up on Reid’s couch this morning and could not, for the life of me, find my shoes. I drove home this morning in my socks.