Boregon/Udaho/Missing Parts

Where do I begin: It’s been a few days, we’ve been out of service, sleeping outside, and have not slept. Our current location is Missoula, Montana. Let me tell you how we got here.

Lets bring it back to Friday, San Francisco, day 2. We head out early in the morning to catch the trolley down to the fisherman’s warf which is basically a collection of piers that have back to back chowder/crab roll stops. We barter with a captain of a small boat who is bantering out, “Under the golden gate, around Alcatraz”, he is also eating a huge raw carrot. We figure he’ll be perfect. It ends up just being the 4 of us on an hour and a half tour around the bay. We went, as stated, under the Golden Gate Bridge, and around Alcatraz Prison. He tells us that from the top of the bridge tower to sea level is 746ft and a 2% survival rate if we felt like jumping…No chance. We about face and see some dolphins 30 yards off our port and starboard sides. The water is too rough and they show up too sporadically to get a good shot. We, as stated, circle Alcatraz aka “The Rock”. The whole time I wished our captain would talk like Sean Connery from the movie “The Rock”, but he didn’t, we tipped him anyway. We grabbed some seafood at the local shacks and grabbed a trolley back uptown.

We leave the city and get to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and not pay for it (usually $15)!!!!!! I guess northly traffic does not have a fee. It was amazing to be that high up and get a great vista of the bay and the city. We quickly hit a brick wall of traffic for at least a solid 1-2hrs. We wonder where all the freaking cars are coming from on a Friday at 1:00PM. Then we realize it’s Memorial weekend. We then realize we have absolutely no concept of time anymore. We drive north and north and north through wine country and finally into the Redwood National Forest. Adam is in the drivers seat and we are locked up in traffic, so feeling a little anxious he reaches for the dip. Peanut and I look at each other and know exactly what flavor he’s putting in his mouth. Then we watch him get it in his eye, don’t ask me how he did this. But it was funny because he was temporarily blinded and was screaming. Peanut reminded Adam that he shouldn’t dip because it’s bad for your eyes. Adam drives for what seems like forever and then become a little delirious, unannounced to the innocent victims in the car this delirium includes thinking red lights are green. Yea, he ran a red light bad, I mean bad enough to have to cut the wheel 90 degrees, tires squealing, and violent enough for me to see the fear in the oncoming traffics’ faces. He then says he needed to go to CVS that was in on the other side of the intersection. Adam, get the hell out of the drivers seat, your done.

We hit the Redwood National Forest and visit a tree that most cars can drive through. It was estimated to be 2400 years old and was 315 feet tall. The thing was massive. We take pictures inside the tree like millions probably have before us (dull). We make it to Elk Prairie campground in the forest by nightfall and get the last available campsite. We set up camp in the dark and rough it…kinda. And by kinda I mean we cooked 3 rib- eye steaks, 3 baked potatoes, 3 husks of corn, a skillet of mushrooms and peppers, and of coarse smoked amber beer, our good friend Jack Daniels, and some corncob tobacco. We eat without utensils like our ancestors and sleep at the base of the redwood trees. In the morning we take an hour hike through the forest, truly humbling to be amongst trees thousands of years old and are larger than life, puts anyone in their place right quick. Oh did I mention that on this hike Peanut leaves his Crocodile Dundee knife, actually I’ll call it a sword, but does remember to bring his cell phone so he can text the entire time, or text to the mountain lion or bear to get away.

Onto Boregon, I mean Oregon. Oh my fucking god, it took forever to get through this goddam state. We drove all day following the coast and driving through costal town after costal town. We never made it to our final destination of Astoria. We stopped less than 1 hour shy, we couldn’t take it anymore and B-lined for Seattle. Everyone in Oregon drives at least 10mph under the speed limit and do not like it when you tailgate (2 brake checks from the locals), except that is for the high speed chase we saw, SWEEET!. Either way they don’t like our speed-limit-following and usually careen off the road to let us fly by…doing the speed limit. BUTTTT, I will say but with Oregon, we did stop at the National Sand Dunes Recreation Area. We pulled over at a small state park area, and hiked for 35 minutes heading west through the thick pines towards the ocean. We round a bend in the path and then what we see almost stops us in our tracks; a scene that could have easily been transplanted from the Sahara Desert. Sand Dunes as far as the eye can see easily a hundred feet high. We chuckle because we are so blown-away at what we are looking at. So we can’t just stand there and look at em, lets climb! We get to the top of the biggest dune in our immediate line of sight and all we see is more sand dunes. Actually, let me give you the 360 degree panorama: east thick pine forest, north sand dunes, northeast a river running through the dunes with naturally formed lagoons, west the ocean, southwest more river and lagoons, south dunes. It was incredible. So what can we do after climbing them…jump off them! We find a dune with a cornice (ledge) and have Adam post up with his camera. We de-phone, shoe, sock, money, camera, hat and chuck our bodies as far as we can off the ledge of this dune. Jumping off sand dunes, check. One funny thing to mention, we hike back to the car and actually work up a sweat for the first time a few days, we get back to the car hot, sticky, sweaty, and covered in sand, and if anyone can related to being sweating on the beach you know sand sticks to you like it’s electrically charged. So we are all dumping the sand out of our shoes, socks, pockets, etc and then I look over and see Adam using my shower towel to scrub his scummy, sweating, sandy toes. That asshole.

I killed a bird this day in the car, it was bound to happen. At least it wasn’t a buffalo.

More Boregon. We drive all freaking day it seems (8-8). We stop at “The World’s Largest Sea lion Cave”, this seems cool right, wrong!!!!! I realized something was wrong when we paid $12 each. We take a elevator 200ft down into the cave and when the doors open we see the cave and its fenced off. So we can see the sea lions but can’t get within 75ft of them. I’m not sure if it was because we were tired, hungry, cranky, whatever it was we stayed for maybeeeee 3 minutes and headed back up. Did I mention Peanut will most likely spend his afterlife in purgatory??? No, alright, let me elaborate. We are walking back up the path towards the gift shop and we walk by a group of middle-aged handicap people obviously on some sort of group outing. They all look very excited and are all wearing smiles, one of them then asked Peanut, “Did you see anything down there?”, Peanut replies, “naaa, just a few birds”. HAHAHAAH What the hell?!?!?!?

We’re depressed, upset, tired, and hungry because we just spent $12 on something dumb (Adam did buy fudge though). I tell Adam we need some uplifting music, he peruses through Peanut’s music brick (yea its old and big) and comes up with Backstreet Boys - I want it that Way. We have a mini music video shoot in the car, the song ends and we are all depressed again. We drive through a place called Clovesdale, OR which self-proclaimed itself to be Oregon’s best kept secret…their brains must have holes from all the pesticides because there was nothing, actually there were cows, and a gas stations, and the road that ran through it.

We hit 5,000 miles.

We convince Peanut that he shouldn’t text while driving at night on some of these roads, so he lets Adam text for him which means we get to hear what the hell he is actually saying. His dialogue is out of control, I’ll leave it at that. Highway 47 in Oregon is downright scary. It’s dark, no cars, every other turn is a switchback, we are 1200 feet in the air on the mountains edge with no guard rails, and to top it off Peanut is driving. Adam and I gargle burps and fight to keep dinner down while Peanut sings country music swinging his head side to side with a big smile on his face.

We drive east for the first time in 2 weeks, a weird feeling to know we are on the last leg of this trip, but still have 4500 miles of driving.

Lets get outa this corner of the country, it’s like a black hole. We decide to drive through the night. The guys hand me an empty gallon jug of water and tell me its our new bathroom. We cross through Washington in the darkness of night only evidenced to us by the dotted line of the GPS. It was a rough night of driver switches, 5-hour energy shots, and heavy eye-lids. It didn’t bother me much though, I was sleeping in the back, haha. Adam pulls over at 3:30AM to a rest-area to sleep, he closes his eyes for 6 minutes and then starts the car back up. “I can’t sleep, I’m fucked”. I fall asleep again and wake up again at a campground, what the hell is going on? We are now going on a few days of no shower, sleeping outside, hiking, sand in cracks and uncomfortable places, and spending 24hrs in a car. We need to shower, bad. We find a shower at a campground that is for registered guests only but hop in and out before we can catch any flack from campground security. Clean and now awake breakfast sounds good after a good nights rest, hahahaha. We are eating and I have not the slightest idea where the hell we are,
“so guys, where are we?”
“Idaho”
“ I DA HO???? What? No, no, U DA HO.”

Adam and Peanut fall into comas after breakfast and I drive through Idaho and bring us to Glacier National Park. A few times I put the camera on the steering wheel because the roads and scenery were crazy. So I film the scenery and then zoom the camera on these two kittens; Peanut (sleeping the co-pilots seat) and then Adam (sprawled across the back of the car). We are also down to our last sets of clothing, I’m wearing my last pair of boxers, Adam has one left, and Peanut has a pair left that have a hole in the grundle area big enough to take a poop with them on, no joke. We do laundry in Big Sky Montana at a laundry mat with a casino attached, now someone was thinking. We fight the temptation to give them our money, we are spending enough as is. We are at Glacier and Adam feels left out because he does not have a knife, he wants one, poor baby. We have to pull over and he buys one, it’s still the smallest. Most men here have noteworthy facial hair configurations, I’m just trying to fit in. Handlebars baby.

Glacier National Park is unreal. We planned on driving the “Going to the Sun Highway” through the heart of the park but were informed that it was still under 10 feet of snow. Oh well, note to self, come here in July. We enter Grizzly country and are reminded of this before we start our 3 hour trek by a sign that asks us to look for “missing parts” of a backpacker who has been missing for a couple years. We hike up into the snow covered mountains to Avalanche Lake. There are waterfalls shooting off the mountain, big horned sheep traversing the mountains edge, a lake mirroring the mountains, and a forest so thick with mammoth cedars that looking into them makes us dizzy. We hike was silently, with minimal talking, I think our minds were busy though, with thoughts of our trip and all that we‘ve seen and accomplished, the beauty of where we were, and home and the people we miss. Talking would have ruined the serenity of where we were. The silence is broken though by the sighting of a patch of snow 30 feet off the path. We make snowballs and take pictures. Adam says we should throw them at the next kid we see…Adam turns and walks 10 feet up the path and Peanut pegs him from point blank range in the neck, hahahahaha. Awesome.

The weather was a bit sub-par for sleeping outside, which was our plan for GNP, so we decide to head south towards Yellowstone. Adam falls asleep instantly and Peanut and I bs while the sun sets along Flathead Lake. Wait a minute, its 10’o’clock and it’s still light out, weird.

Enemy number 1: time.
Enemy number 2: driving.
Enemy number 3: sleep
Enemy number 4: weather
Enemy number 5: laundry

Things we’ve learned:
1. Peanut adapts to every environment he’s in. In Texas in muscles got bigger, and when we are in San Francisco he has become a homosexual. He still acts this way once we get to Redwood National Forest so Adam and I make him sleep in a tent by himself (true story).
2. The only thing the person sitting in back can really do is either sleep or spend your time getting stuff in back for the people in front. The back has it perks though, we are able to make a make-shift mattress out of all of our sleeping bags or anything soft and you can actually lay down on top of all the luggage. We also realized that there is an invisible sound barrier between the front and back and the person in back can never hear a single thing the people in front are saying. This equates to a lot of inappropriate “yeas”, smiling and head nods.
3. Did I already mention Peanut has a problem with texting, he does it all day.
4. We have filled up 18 times in 2 weeks.
5. Adam buys something every single time we stop the car. It’s usually jerky, chips, crackers, whatever he buys he never finishes and usually throws out. I estimate he’s spent at least $100 on crap at gas stations.
6. You can’t pump your own gas in Oregon, I don’t like that.

We just booked a cabin outside of Yellowstone. Adam wants to sit on a geyser, lets see how this turns out. Blog when can. Peace.

Nose Candy (we don't like candy)

We leave San Diego and head North towards L.A. The drive went something like this: BMW, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Mercedes, Porsche, Porsche, Lexus. We fit right in… I think the guys are sick of me screaming out names of cars. Whatever, I don’t care.

First stop Long Beach. Not too shabby, I don’t think we caught the full local scene though. We walked down one pier, I worked on my olie with my long board (I will get this before the end of the trip), Peanut wished he had a fishing pole, and Adam wished he had a long board. We head to Venice Beach….wow whata trip this place is. People of all different walks of life, free-styling rappers, dancers, a guy dressed as Tarzan harassing people, skaters everywhere, people tweaked on methamphetamine, whatever you need to float your boat. We leave here with the addition of two more long boards, one for Adam, and one for my sister.

We meet up with a buddy from UCONN in Santa Monica on the Promenade which is basically a street with stores and restaurants. He refers us to the best burger meal we’ve had thus far at a place called “Father’s Office”. We watch the some of the Celtics game while munching on sweet potato fries and these hand-prepared burgers. Boom Banging. We head to Hollywood Boulevard in Beverly Hills and do the tourist thing. We buy a $5 map of the stars on the Hollywood Blvd that we don’t open once. We spend the majority of the time looking for a sticker for the mini van, which is looking stylishly tacky at the moment. My sister said bring it back loaded, we’re working on it. We take pictures of the Kodiak Theatre, the Chinese Theatre, a couple stars in the boulevard, the Hollywood sign, etc. We meet up with an old friend from my hometown whose place we plan to crash at for the night. Then I get a call from a good friend of mine from my hometown who literally lives 2 blocks up the road and listen to some of his music that he and his band have been working on. Awesome stuff. So let me clarify this for everyone, there are 4 people from Wolcott, CT who traveled 2,000 + miles across the country to Hollywood, CA of different ages and friend groups who left to get away from the townies and now all live within 5 minutes walking distance from each other. That's unfortunate.

We get advice from the girls that people don’t start moving in L.A. until around 9AM. What the hell were they/we thinking?!?!?!?!?! We hung out in traffic for about an hour and a half before we finally hop on Route 1 North, the Pacific Coast Highway. We knew this would extend our trip to San Francisco but we really didn’t care, let me tell you, it was well worth it.

Our first of many stops was at Pepperdine University which was referred to me by a friend as one of the nicest campuses in the country. They weren’t kidding. Situated in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains directly across from the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Imagine watching the sunset from your pimpass dorm room every night. Ridiculous right? We were bitter and had to use the bathroom so we all took dumps inside the athletic facility and then Peanut and I took hummingbird baths in their sinks. Much better.

45 minutes later we meet Johnny Law. Or Peanut does anyway. HAHAHAHA.
“How fast were you going son?”
(Peanut chewing gum and wiping his clammy hands in his shorts) “73”.
“Actually I have you clocked at 83 in a 65”
“Oh”

So I bet everyone is wondering how much the ticket was right, we had wagers on it too, but I guess it’ll be a surprise waiting for him in his mailbox in about 2 weeks, so until then, fuck it. Oh by the way, Adam got it all on film.

If you have been religiously following this blog like we hope you have you might remember the last entry where Peanut and I were messing with Adam that he would have to fill up in L.A. and it would cost him like $10/gallon. That didn’t quite happen, Adam filled up on Sunset Blvd for $3.09. Not bad at all. Once we got into the heart of the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) it was Peanuts turn…$4.77/gallon. Hahahahahahahahaha.

Peanut always seems to be on peanut butter and fluff duty, or maybe Adam and I have just outsmarted this little leoperacon and wait until he’s sitting in back to ask for a sandwich. Whatever it is, luck was not on his side and today’s sandwich made me cry. We were driving on a road that was definitely the craziest road I have ever driven on. Switchback turns, mountain face on the right with rock slides and cliffs to the Pacific Ocean on the left. I had my hands at 9 and 3 and was focusing on maneuvering all 4,000lbs of the minivan around these turns, like it was a Porsche of coarse, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Peanut in the meanwhile was in the back struggling with a loaf of bread, a big jar of fluff, a big jar of peanut butter, and a knife. So he’s bitching in back, “Oh man can you relax a little on the turn, uh eh uh , (huff puff)”. Then we hear “awwwww man”. I adjust the mirror and I see the fluff half of one of our sandwiches stuck to the center of his chest and he is laughing hysterically. Adam and I start laughing which then turns into me crying, a bit dangerous for the driving conditions.

The PCH was spectacular and it worth a visit. I even heard Peanut say that he enjoyed it more than the Grand Canyon, that’s how epic it was. I can honestly say I was really excited to drive for the first time on this trip. We felt like we were in the movie Jurassic Park, without the dinosaurs, but with Zebras (yes we saw Zebras I have it on video), a squirrel that we hand fed and actually had doing tricks for us, and with elephant seals, equally as cool. They flop up on the shore and all bark at each other for messing up their comfy spots. We talked about maybe heading down there to slap one on the ass, but decided their teeth were too big and would probably end up either eating or adopting Peanut or Adam as their young.

We end the PCH by stopping at a In-n-Out Burger chain that Peanut has been raving about. I order "animal style" which means I get my burger smothered in carmelized onions and thousand island dressing or twice the hypertension, diabetes type II, hyperlipidemia, hypercholesterolemia, and liver cirrohsis. I hate my life. Adam and Peanut get "protein style" which means their burgers don't come with buns but instead wrapped in lettuce. We wash this crap down with liquid crap; milkshakes. Awesome.

We make it to San Fran to see part of the Sunset and stay at a Best Western downtown. What catches my eye is the sign in the lobby that says that staying at this hotel could cause cancer and birth defects. Sweet. I like em both. We ask the gay man behind the desk (starting to see a theme here) where we can go to grab a beer and he tells us to “be careful”. What the hell does that mean, well what that means is we would be like fresh cuts of meat in a butchers case if we walked into a gay bar, which are more prevalent than straight in the area we are in. We find our way to an Irish Pub, discuss how cities ruin the earth and how dirty they are, and then whatyaknow. Peanut and I have another therapeutic conversation with a middle-aged man at the bar who seemed a little down’n’out after being divorced by his wife and after “paying the bills while she went back to college” and having kids that don’t like him. He’s a nice guy and loves the road trip stories. We don’t buy him a beer, but what we do is give him the link to this blog. Rutrow.

Things we’ve learned:
1. People in California drive with their windows up, no matter how nice it is outside. Spoiled.
2. I guess license plates are optional in California.
3. Things such as mountains, trees, boobs, lips, and cocaine addictions are also bigger in California.
4. There are no Dunkin Donuts here.
5. Toe prints on the front windshield are from me and foot prints on the dash are from Peanut and Adam.
6. When we smell vanilla Adam is dipping. (can’t wait until those are done)
7. We realize the last time we saw a CT license plate was 14 days, 4500 miles, and 9 states ago.
8. Our country is fucking huge and we are really, really far from home. And we still have a day or two of driving further away. Damn.
9. Peanut has one of the craziest Ipod’s I’ve ever listened too. Emo rock that reminds me of high school, rap music that a hard hitting gangster would be listening too with the windows quarter down and a low brim hat, country (I despise him for this), and then songs like “Barbie Girl” which he knows all the words to and actually acts out in the car, or Jennifer Lopez’s “Waiting for Tonight” which again he sings or practically knows the moves from the music video.
10. Peanut says his farts make him hungry, they make me gag and drop the windows as if the smell were a liquid and I was drowning in it, and they make Adam look up from texting on his Blackberry.
10. Adam and Peanut argue about who is going to be the bigger spoon when they share a bed (as I type actually)

Tomorrow we are going to wake up early, by the way we drove from 8:30am-8:30pm today which makes this at least the 4th time we‘ve been in the car for this long; catch the trolley down the shore and hopefully hop on a fairy that’ll take us around the bay. Then to the Redwood National Forest. We’ll catch up in a couple days. Peace, love, and harmony.

Super Silver Purple Haze

Let me bring you back to Arizona,
first pit stop and Adam wants to write his name and number in a bathroom. What he gets instead is almost puking after the woman using the bathroom before him clogs toilet he is trying to use. Karma.

Somewhere in the Arizona desert I convince Peanut we should stop using our cell phones for the day. He loves the idea and I blindly throw our phones over my shoulder and into the chaos that is the back of the mini van. 5 minutes later I can see his fingers tapping, his knees jittering, and he just doesn’t look good. He looks back at me and says “this was a bad idea”. I’m laughing and love watching him squirm. I’ve diagnosed Peanut with an addiction to his cell phone. It was maybe 6 hrs, (I just asked Peanut how long it was and he responded, “Ohhh god, too long, way too long for someone to function, worst idea ever“). As you can see he’s still bitter. When we got our phones back he went on a 3 hour binge of doing nothing but looking at his phone. His phone was smoking.

Pacific Coast Time

We head into a border patrol check before we head into California. Here’s how the conversation went,
“Where you coming from?”
“Connecticut”
“Do you have any fruits or vegetables?”
“(We pause, puzzled at this statement), Ahh yea, a banana”

So wait a second, they don’t care if we have drugs or weapons, just if we have any bananas. We pull out of the stop and then Peanut starts hysterically laughing, unannounced to me he had put the only banana we had in my bag, don’t ask me why. Actually I do know why, he said he put it in there because he thought I was allergic, WTF??? So if we were to get caught with this illegal banana, it would have been at my expense and I would have detained.

I fill up the mini van before he head into the desert, $3.80. The attendant says that nothing compared to what we will pay in L.A. We then figure out that it’ll be Adam’s turn to fill up in L.A. We joke that we are going to drive up and down Rodeo Drive until we run out of gas. He’s not laughing, it’s more funny like this.

Let me first start off this next section by saying the Mohave Desert is beautiful. We drove in this desolate wasteland for maybe 2 hours on interstate 95 South that was straight for as long as the eye could see and that also sat perfectly in the middle of a mountain range on our left and a mountain range on our right. Now that I’ve brought you there mentally, let me tell you what we did. I wanted to long board in the desert. So I got out a few times and carved a few turns here and there while the guys filmed in the breakdown lane hanging out the sliding door. That wasn’t enough for me. How could we make this more epic? I’d like to thank my mom for getting me a safety kit for the mini van with included flashlights, jumper cables, a blanket, first aid stuff, and last but not least…a tow rope. Wuahahaha. We pull over, attach the tow rope to the hitch on the mini, and off we go, trunk open and Peanut filming myself being dragged across the interstate in the middle of the Mohave Desert. Adam cruises up to 20mph and cruise controls it. I carve away. I board for 3.5 minutes carefree carving in and out of both lanes of the highway until having to stop because I loose feeling in my feet from the rough terrain. Long boarding on a desert highway, check.

CAL - I - FORN - I - A. The only place you can see palm trees and snow covered mountains in the same line of sight. The only place where you can see 10,000 + wind turbines. The only place you can grow marijuana after telling the doctor you have back pain or buy it legally at a “Pot Store” which happen to be right next to doctors offices. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because marijuana has been proven to be an effective reducer of pain and actually has never been linked to any forms of cancer or addiction, do your research folks. To each their own.

We arrive @ Baldwin’s place of work, in Carlsbad, CA at a Hilton Garden Inn right on the Pacific Coast. We walk the coast a bit, watch some surfers and laugh at their misfortunes. We watch the sunset from a lifeguard tower. Adam sleeps in the car and Peanut and I feel homeless/displaced for the first time as we hang out in the hotel lobby mooching internet service, expensive comfy couches, and free cookies. Did I mention we were supposed to wake up Adam after 15minutes of napping. We told him it had been 15mintues, but in reality it had been closer to 2hours, he was so groggy I don’t think he realized.

We crash on Baldwin’s floor. Did I mention he has a rope swing from the top of his house into his back yard? Oh coarse we used it. We try to watch our videos after doing this, Adam and I's video 30seconds long, Peanut's 3 minutes 30 seconds.

1st of three oil changes. Clapped out the air filter and straight dirt came out (from the dust storm).

We head to a locals only style beach and body surf some 5-8ft swells. I think we stood out as “non-locals” as soon as we took off our shirts to expose our pasty white torso’s. Everyone has mop hair, looks like they’ve been applying “juice” instead of sun block, and are all wearing stylish sunglasses.

Went to a place called “The Wave House” on the pacific ocean. Outdoor bar/restaurant/patio where you can pay to ride artificial waves. We were all cocky and gungho about this until we got there and saw what we would be dealing with, we had second thoughts until we realized there was a beginners wave on the other side of the patio. So how it works is water is thrown at you 30mph and it’s your task to try and stay upright on a board. It requires more leaning back then you would think and 100% of the time ends in a narly crash. Watching each other fall never got old, we “OHHHHHHed” every single time. I was feeling a little concust after leaving, almost similar to receiving a knockpunch square in the center of my forehead. This morning I feel like I was in a head on collision. I hate Motrin, but I want 1000mg.

After The Wave House we head into downtown San Diego to the Hard Rock Hotel rooftop terrace. Pretty baller up there. We also felt a little out of place. We had a beer, sat on the couches, positioned our faces into the sun, and silently wimpered about our crashes with the artificial wave.

We eat Sushi, about freaking time.

We head to stone brewery, and in the next stent of writing, you will be reading what Peanut thought:
“Stone Brewery, WOW, where do I begin. This place is so arrogant they don’t even have a sign on their building. It is located in northern San Diego on the outskirts of the city set back from everything. They don’t like to advertise their brewery because they just know it’s the best, reminds me of myself.
This place looks completely different from any other brewery I’ve ever seen. I am smiling from ear to ear looking like an Asian tourist, taking pictures of EVERYTHING! So we walk through the botanical gardens and end up at this monstrous foyer, its gorgeous, I wasn’t sure at first if we arrived at the gates of heaven or if this was still just the brewery. So we enter and the first thing I notice is a bar with 36 tap heads, all of which are unlabeled, wtf(confused a little, how does the bartender remember where each beer is located), oh well. I look behind the bar and there is this huge glass wall which looks into the actual brewery, where the beer is made, it is incredible, my dimples light right up.
So we all start off the night each with a different choice brew from Stone, most of their beers are like 8% or higher, which means Adam is gunna be hammered after 1 beer. We head outside to check out the gardens, it’s a perfect night, no bugs, we see plenty of stars, the moon, and are surrounded by trees, waterfalls, and the pleasant sound of frogs and crickets chirping. This is a very quaint setting, completely opposite of what I thought judging by their fierce gargoyle icon. So we stumble across 4 Adirondack chairs drink our beers and I make fun of Adam for being a fag, Neil for not knowing his beer, and Baldwin just because I don’t know him.
We have a few more rounds and Neil says to me did you check out the bathroom Peanut, “No, why?” (thinking to myself im not Adam, I don’t need to rate every bathroom we come across) Neil says “just go in and be very observant… and bring your camera”. So I check it out looking at everything, 7 urinals, 2 shitters, 3 sinks, 964 floor tiles, what is Neil getting at, it’s a bathroom, I wash my hands and im looking at the wall and there is barely stuck all over the walls, he thought it was cool, me, not so much, it looked more like mold.
We shut this bar down, as we did with all the others. Stone, Check.”
Things we’ve learned:
1. Peanuts says, “chicks are for fags, and he ain’t gay”. Wrap your mind around that statement.
2. Peanut resembles Joe Rogan, the guy who used to host Fear Factor (look it up).
3. Peanut likes beer, a lot. He’s your every day beer snob.
4. Baldwin is the man.
5. In Arizona instead of dogs inside of cars, they have goats. I thought about petting the goat until I noticed it had a pink dog collar on with the name “Nibblet”. Good thing I didn’t.


L.A. to check out Venice Beach and the touristy stuff, buy a couple long boards, and meet up with a childhood friend who was nice enough to let us crash at her place for the night.

You wouldn't believe it if it wasn't documented

BUZZZZZZZ!

We wake up early without a problem for the first time since this trip started. Peanut and I head to a breakfast buffet downstairs. This is what he literally ate, two bites of scrambled eggs, 4 home fries, and 2 cut up chunks of pineapple, then looks and me laughing and says he's full. He gets up walks around and contemplates his lack of appetite, sits down and gets a piece of bread and one chili pepper which he just plays with. He is now officially the sissy.

Onto the Canyon!!!! We were a little disappointed the other day when crossing from Texas into New Mexico because nothing changed. I think we had figured we would cross the border and there would be a line in the landscape dividing the two, that was not the case. Today though, we felt like we were in New Mexico; sand dunes, red rock, 1000ft raised rock formations, and Navajo Indian reservations. What we weren't expecting was snow...yes, snow on top of a particular mountain that had elevation over 11,000ft, which I guess makes sense, but it is still not something we expected and also the extreme poverty of these people. It made us reflect on what we have at home and how privileged/lucky we are to be brought up the way we have.

But first we stop at the Petrified Forest National Park. We buy a one year pass for $80 to all National Parks since we will be hitting a few more of them. We get out of the car at the first scenic view and it is really windy, windy enough to lean into the wind. We see a fence and my explorer intuition tells me to jump over it and head down the ravine into what looks like the planet Mars. Sand dunes of red and white. Unbelievable. Peanut and Adam follow and we film each other running up 200ft sand hills. Elevation 6000ft +. This does not go over so well for Peanut, he actually requests a 45% o2 non-rebreather mask which in the nursing world is something you give to a patient who is severely lacking oxygen. After this I actually think he has a pulmonary embolism, lol he's struggling to breath and has a weird dry cough that won't seem to disappear. We leave, its windy, and we still have a couple hours driving to get to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon.

That's when it all started...we see this ominous sign that says "Highway Closed due to Dust Storm", we joke about it and plan to buzz right through it. Well, that didn't go as planned because the highway was blocked off by highway patrol and we can see why because on the horizon it looks like the high priest Imhotep from the movie the Mummy has just created a dust storm ready to swallow up our Mini Van. We find a way around the road block and head into the middle of the desert to bypass the highway. We drove right into the belly of the storm, I'm talking 30miles thick. It was unbelievable and quite frankly one of the coolest things I have done ever!

The Grand Canyon, wow there really is not much more to say. Please visit here before you kick the can. That shit is really Grand. No joke. We were mostly speechless and smiles ear to ear. But that didn't last for too long because there were fences to go around and goating to do. We also have to convert from wearing sneakers, shorts, and t-shirts to boots, pants, and sweatshirts because it was 41 degrees outside and very windy. AND then it SNOWED. It flurried for about 30 minutes with us on the canyon's edge. Unbelievable. We stop at multiple look outs and see how close we can get to the edge without loosing continence. We watch what was left of the sunset and hit the road.

It was dark, we had just ate, I was tired, and my turn to drive so broke down and took literally 2 sips of a "5 Hour Energy" drink, which wasn't so bad if anyone is wondering. This makes me feel like I am on PCP. I have the mini van cruise control on 90mph and listen to old school techno and contend with the strictly 18 wheeler traffic (Unbelievable. I saw 3 regular cars in 2hrs of driving). Peanut then proceeds to tell us that he drank 2 of these when we got in the car. He is literally up in front with Adam and I talking 100 words a second, laying across the front seats, pokes out both lenses of his sunglasses and wears them around in the mini van getting real close to our faces and then turns on the lights, and does a few mini van suicide sprints. Absolutely ridiculous right...30 minutes later...scknaaaa scknaaaa scknaaaa, this kid is lying on his back across all the luggage snoring. WTF???? Adam and I laugh about how crazy he is. We wake him up at the hotel and he tells us he never drank the 5 Hour Energy Drinks. Hahahahaha. What the heck, so that whole time he was just acting like a 7 year old without Ritalin for the fun of it. This ladies and gentleman is Peanut, in a peanut shell.

What we've learned:
1. Fences are meant to go around.
2. When we get a wiff of peaches Adam is dipping.
3. Peanut is deathly afraid of heights, or as he calls it "allergic". I'll vouch for this, he turns red, shakes, and just looks really uncomfortable. It was awesome to watch this.
4. Adam gets silently cranky when he's hungry.
5. I get cranky.
6. No one can tell when Peanut is lying or being serious.
7. 28 cent stamps cost 50 cents.

We lost our virginity to the following items today:
1. almost hitting a tumble weed.
2. seeing snow in a desert.
3. 3000k in a car. Go figure, I hate being in the car. Only 6000miles left to go.

We made it as far as Kingsman, AZ about 30 miles east of California. Tomorrow we head south to San Diego to meet up with Baldwin. Should be an interesting few days.

Where are we again?

I'm picking up where I left off.

We go outside to workout in Houston and its hot, I mean way too hot for New Englanders. We exercise a bit, I get close to 20 thorns in my feet for running around barefoot, Peanut gets a cutoff shirt tan, and Adam gets...winded? I dunno.

We leave Houston and drive 2 hrs to Austin, Texas because we hear 6th Street in downtown Austin makes Bourbon Street look like an appetizer, they caught our attention a wee bit. We get the hook up at a Hilton, check in, and take a cab to an eatery downtown (which I might add was a major rip-off because our cab ride home was half the cost, the cab driver asked us if we wanted to go the fast way or the slow way, we obviously replied the fast way, he must of had dyslexia), have a few drinks, and then head to a house party (I thought now that I graduated college I was done with these, I guess what's one more).

So the Koreans...they drank heavily. We watched them do countless, actually 10 shots is what we counted one kid take (champion btw) of FeeSue (Thor I'm sorry for the spelling). Which is alcoholic potion that makes you think your invisible to the effects of alcohol because it does not taste like your drinking liquor, I've seen multiple go down by this stuff, we stick to about 4 shots of this and 1 of Crown that made us all cringe. We head downtown and then whatayaknow. The kids we are with get into a fight within maybe 1 minute of us getting out of the car. We aren't involved so we stand to the side, watch them throw bows in the street, and jot down notes in my phone for the blog.

We evade arrest and enter a bar. First order of business, bathroom. Peanut and I approach the urinals and realize we are staring directly into a two-way window onto the dance floor...just imagine the commentary this provokes while peeing.

We say goodbyes to Thor in the streets of Austin and take a cab back. Adam falls asleep while Peanut and I talk to our driver about god knows what (taxi cab confessions stuff). We get back and Peanut and I aren't ready to go to bed, Adam is, he's sleeping its 2:30AM and we are supposed to be leaving at 7:00AM (HAHAHA NOT HAPPENING). We're hungry naturally and head down to the front desk. We chat up the gay man working behind the desk and end up eating our room service at the desk with him. We talk about all sorts of things. Guess what? He doesn't know where Connecticut is either. Fuck these people. Oh yea in the midst of our drunken rambling I recall that Peanut calls the gay hotel employee gorgeous. I started crying, laughing wasn't enough at this moment. Oh and apparently we had a noise complaint...woops.

He wake up @ 9:30AM after 10 snooze battles and feel all chipper and ready to drive for the next 13hrs. Just kidding.

We leave Austin and actually see elevation in the landscape for the first time in 3 days other than large termite mounds and piles of maneur. The drive over to New Mexico was interesting to say the least, speed limits of 70 and 75mph, desolate highways (I'm talking looking at grass and fields to the horizon on either side of the car), almost no turning of the steering wheel (the one turn there was Peanut almost missed), driving through a dust storm, hitting 2000 miles on the mini, Peanut and I entertain ourselves up front by balancing one penny on each finger tip while having our hands out the window and doing tricks with our hands (we're silly/delirious we know) and finally gassing up at random gas station in the middle of Texas where we bumped into a couple girls from UCONN who just graduated and were on a road trip and had almost identical route plans as us. We pull over to watch the sunset in the New Mexican desert, it was beautiful.

Things we've learned:
1. Peanut should not be allowed to use the camcorder. He films everything and nothing, usually with the zoom fully out so the video is so shaky you would think he was sitting on a block of ice bare ass. The best part of this is that he is laughing the whole time because he knows Adam has to edit all of this bullshit video he is taking. I watch Adam from the rear view mirror, he doesn't look amused, but that makes it more funny.
2. Roswell sucks. Don't go there unless you want to be disappointed. We pulled over and talked to some cows in the desert while looking for this so called "Bottomless Lake". It looked like a puddle. We see airplanes not UFO's but call them UFO's to humor ourselves for driving 10hrs to get there. We just see a few aliens walking the streets. That was about it.
3. Terms used for being drunk: Smashed Potatoes, Sour Cream and Dunions, Dunzo Washington, Dunz and Roses, Endasauras. Thank Peanut for that.
4. Updating facebook/texting/or in Peanuts case giving a freaking work presentation or writing an essay or something along those lines today with his little blackberry stylette is pretty goddam dangerous.
5. Went back in time another hour.
6. It's hotter in New Mexico.
7. Peanut's muscles look big even when he sleeps.
8. There is such a thing a windmill farms.
9. Bulls have big balls.

We're at a Double Tree in downtown Alburqurque, New Mexico. Early start tomorrow. 7AM, hahahaha. Heading to the Grand Canyon, I guess it's a pretty big hole.

PS: Peanut is filming nothing in the room right now, ie: Adam sleeping, the floor, outside at the parking lot, the floor, the floor, the tv, and now back to Adam as Peanut plays with his ear, all the while snickering. Perfect example.