The 3000 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues

Today was a finale of sorts. At around 11am Jon was dropped at the airport. Lauren and I immediately felt slightly strange. We looked at the backseat pensively. The car felt light. I got home and made a Broken Arrow joke, usually Jon’s domain (he’s a Slater fan). It wasn’t as funny. Lauren and I were far too scared to do our Chewbacca impersonations without Jon around to help us. Hers sounds like a dead pigeon. Mine a retarded dinosaur.

I’ll see Jon soon. But it’s been a great two months, we’re we’ve spent so much time together I’m wondering if this is what Siamese twins feel like when they’re separated. The fact that I’ve seen that man all day, everyday for over two months and I’m already looking forward to seeing him in two and a half weeks is a mark of the guy. (Hopefully these kind words will motivate him to ad some pictures to my words. Jon is the man behind the Flickr machine.)

Jon’s off to Tucson and Austin for a bit. I was traveled out, having had a five-week head start on Mr. Allan. I’m a little worn out after three and a half months on the road. I don’t know how many more times I can pack and re-pack my bag. So I’m heading back to Grass Valley in a few days, we’re I’ll be until the 15th. Cue the hugs in Toronto with Jon, and the commencement of Operation: Conquer Canada!

So it’s kind of a change in direction for Knots Tied in Strings, where Jon weighs in from the road, and I write in about the joys of being docile, sleeping till noon, and the effects of black coffee on my digestive system. (I’ve got a great rant lined up about the American primaries. Stay tuned, friend of Narnia.)

Long Shadows.  San Diego, California.

Jon also thrashed me at mini-golf, twice, and about five times in a row at table tennis before he left. Which hurt me. I’d always fancied myself as the Rain Man of table tennis.

Instead it seems I’m the Ian Baker-Finch of both. I even elevated the significance of my performance into a brooding omen of eminent World Cup doom. And if I’m right, I probably owe the country an apology. (Sorry New Zealand!)

One of the things I’ve loved on this trip is the peaks of conversation. There’s been debate a plenty. Usually centering around the media and political landscapes, which is fun for a media studies and political science major. We’re an intelligent threesome. If we’re not trying to place a finger on exactly what it is that makes Jodie Foster completely asexual, Jon and I are trying to place a conclusion on our continuing conversation on the merits of the American invasion of Afghanistan. Often conversations descend into just straight out Robinson diatribes on the sheer unflinching and brutal handsomeness of Barack Obama. But no matter whether it’s George Bush or the filmography of Ben Affleck under the microscope, the spirit of debate has always been alive.

So as a way of tying up Jon and myself’s initial journey, I’m going to rebunk the myths of traveling. (See I can play the role of overly wondrous traveler well.) I know Jon wasn’t backing completely what he said (it really was a lousy hostel, and it made us all a little grumpy at points), but let’s explore the other side of the coin.

In America at least, being foreign is always a little bit exotic.
In all major cities in my travels, the accent is a talking point. Shopkeepers ask you where you’re from. People take a little bit of notice. I remember in 2004 in San Diego, walking into a party every guy in the room would be suspicious of you immediately, as every girl flocked to the accent. I know this sounds arrogant, but it’s true. (And I’m no Tom Cruise. They just like the voice.) Even the most urbane and cultured still react a little. I’ve known people three years who still snicker at supposed mispronunciations. America is a country where everyone on TV is American. New Zealand is a country where virtually no one on TV is a New Zealander. The level of exposure to difference often just isn’t there.

No one makes a life-long friend in a couple of nights.
And anyone who really believes this invites my cynicism. But I don’t think that it’s the lifelong friends that entice people overseas, it’s the random encounters. The strange guy who sits down to have lunch with you out of the blue, gives you a pamphlet about Jesus and leaves or a surprisingly aggressive American guest at the table-tennis table. Sure, random encounters and surprise companions are minimized slightly when you travel in a gaggle, but they are still happening all the time. And in my experience, you remember them more. You don’t have the awkward memory of the “let’s keep in touch forever” broken promise. Or have to worry that the entertaining English guy who was buying you beers in a Melbourne pub might actually take you up on your offer of a room to stay when he eventually heads through Wellington

Travelling in first-world Western cultures there’s little that can truly surprise you, but that’s no reason not to go.
It’s true. Essentially it’s all the same, vaguely differing landscapes, houses, technology, systems of belief. But the beauty is in the nuance. For example, taking an uppity stance on gun control in Montana only to have my cynicism erode into being convinced into shooting a gun for the first time in my life, or cooking noodles in a Los Angeles hostel and listening to a conversation between two Hollywood wannabes about an open casting call, two people who obviously just weren’t going to make it. Even the most similar cultures are exponentially different. The most established clichés are still brilliant viewing first hand.

Covering a long distance in a cramped space is never romantic.
(Especially when you sweat as much as I do.) Even on the most romantic drive of the trip, the 130 miles that wind around the Big Sur on the Californian coastline, our attention soon shifted from the consistently breathtaking scenery to the windy road, cramped car and general moistness. Interstates are dull anywhere. But I’m still glad I ate Chips Ahoy! in Battle Mountain. Journeys can be hard yack, but each twelve-hour plus drive still had its great moments. And the destinations were all pretty neat.

A hangover is still a hangover, in any country.
Alcohol is expensive too. We could have drank ourselves silly every night. We just chose to do it a little less. But this added to the trip in my eyes.

Jon looked kick ass in a cowboy hat.
Like some kind of angel.

Seagulls: things that hang around beaches and refuse sites.

You want to know what I think about traveling? I think that there is no objective experience. There is no place that you’ll definitely enjoy. We so often neglect to recognize the most subtle of every day pressures (and even the less subtle ones) as a factor in how we react to our day-to-day surroundings. Prior to my departure for Argentina, I would be prone to lash out at Wellington in my head for its claustrophobic size, but now I miss Wellington. The truth is I was ready to leave. Wellington wasn’t any different to me, or for me. We project ourselves onto our surroundings.

I think that what makes us doubt traveling on the road is that we forget ourselves in the equation. Los Angeles is not going to make you a new you. You’re still susceptible to the mental effects of your physical situation. And so often, when how we felt on a certain day has slipped from mind, our estimation of a location, and a trip, always rises a few points.

That hostel was a dog, and subsequently Jon’s enjoyment of San Diego was lowered. (I came out of it down a couple hundred US dollars and a credit card). But really, when things like these happen, does the place even have a chance?

I brought my own element to the San Diego leg. Nostalgia.

This whole leg made worth it by old friends, walking round my old University, and eating an ice cream sandwich in the same spot that I used to eat an ice cream sandwich. (I never found that same brand anywhere else in the world.) Nostalgia is a funny thing. For some reason, being in the same place that I had such a good time in three years ago was important to me. To come back, remind myself, and relive. And I was proud of myself, because you always say you’ll go back. But when such distances are involved, often you never do.

I love San Diego for reasons I bring in that probably have little to do with the place itself. But still, San Diego is in my mind the quintessential Californian city. San Francisco doesn’t have the sun, and Los Angeles is dirty. But San Diego has all the crisp beach scenes the heart could desire. (Complete with jocks tossing footballs and sunbathing “babes”.) And all wrapped around a well to do pretty, conservative city centre and suburbia. San Diego is the one part of California that still consistently goes Republican, so there’s a base. La Jolla is kind of Beverly Hills-esque, but the beaches are more Venice Beach. So think of it as a delicious Republican Magnum, with a creamy liberal coating. The zoo rules and the park is nice. (I got too excited on the swings and almost fell off.)

Lauren: likes to gesticulate.

My core Southern Californian criticism? The sprawl. You never feel like you’re in one city and out of another. Twenty million live south of Santa Barbara. But you never ever feel like you’re crossing through a definitive metropolis. There is no core place for identity to wrap around in Los Angeles or San Diego. I miss the feel of a real city centre. A vibrant area for the realisation of the inhabitant’s culture and history.

I’ll stop, as this is nearing essay length. Lauren will be back from yoga soon, and we’re heading out.

Lauren’s bringing back dinner, between you and me, I hope it’s chicken.

To close out this (in hindsight overly philosophical) blog, here is a humorous anecdote.

Like the Ian Baker-Finch reference, who gets it, gets it.

I walked into a mini-mart, bought Vitamin Water (my new vice), Coke Zero for Lauren and some jerky. Wearing my eleven-dollar imitation Ray Bans, the shop-keeper says to me, “you look just like Buddy Holly”. I thought it could have been the effect of the glasses, and thanked him kindly.

On closer inspection I was wearing my Weezer t-shirt.

(On a hilarious side note, Lauren threw a cigar on my purchase pile, as a joke. I put it back. The shop-keeper looks confused. “Cigar?” He says. James replies, “close, but no.”)

Posted by James

Tags: Mini Golf, San Diego