I’ve had a lot on my mind in the past few days … more specifically (or not), how I can go into a week firmly believing one thing, and then over the course of the week, having my faith shaken. Is it just my own issues, or something else? Not even being able to answer that question shakes me to the core.

I’ve been in a slump this past week. I still am.

You can’t really tell, but the transmission isn’t on the left side, where I was looking around for it. It’s on the right side, and belt driven.

So I’m standing there, staring at it and this dude walks up next to me to stare at the bike too. He’s got a big picture of a vtwin engine on his shirt (I noticed that only cruiser guys really wear shirts with pictures of engines on them. Sportbike guys wear shirts with either the full bike or just a company logo ..or in my case, they dont’ wear either).

Anyway I’m shooting the shit with him, and ask him what the deal with belt drives are (I’ve never had a belt driven bike; everything I’ve ever ridden was either chain or shaft driven).

He says: “Chains are old school. I’m not sure why they still use them. Belts are a lot smoother, and last forever”

Without thinking, I replied: “Oh …wait so you wouldn’t be able to lift the front tire with a belt, huh?”

As I put my foot in my mouth, I noticed him staring daggers at me, so I wished him a good trip and got the hell out of there.

It’s been a few years since I’ve stopped riding, but in my day, I’ve owned about a dozen sportbikes, and two cruisers. I wave to anyone on the road regardless of what they’re riding. But I always noticed that the people most reluctant to wave back are the ones on cruisers, when I’m on a sportbike (when I’m on a cruiser, a lot more people on sportbikes tend wave back).

In fact, the only time a guy on a cruiser ever talked to me was when I had a Tl1000r (he wanted to know if he was hearing right and asked if the bike had a vtwin engine).

….okay wait this entry was sort of pointless. But I wrote it out anyway, so whatever.

When I bought my first one, even the lady at the cash register said “WAT? TREE DOLLAH ONLEE?!” She asked for a price check and started opening my beer thinking maybe they were selling for three dollars each while I was like “Yeah, that’s why I bought it. Stop touching my beer.”

Anyway, I found that it tastes great, and went back for more!

The lady actually remembered me when I went back a few days later. She was like “Oh! You back for the beer, ah?!”

Apparently this is 7-11 store brand, and not even 7-11 sells it for this cheap. It goes down super smooth, and is 3.8%ABV. The stuff gets you there, and I’ve got about 80 of them! That’ll last me until the end of the month, at least!

- Rice (1 cup): 40cents
- Eggs (x2): 30cents
- Mushrooms (3-4oz.): 80cents
- (I didn’t factor in whatever butter, shoyu, and salt I used)

It’s about two bucks and 20 minutes in the kitchen. I’ve been paying $8 for pretty much the same thing (but with more butter) at Zippy’s. Go to hell, Zippy’s.

Enjoy!

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’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.

In about two hours I’m going to leave on an epic roadtrip. First stop: LA to pick up my brother, who’s flying in from Hawaii. Then we’re driving to San Diego, then from there, going all the way up to Vancouver with stops in SF and Seattle.

We’re spending America’s birthday with America herself. Comon Hyundai, don’t fail me now! COMON!!

I’ll try to update through the trip with pics.

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.