Ukiah

    After my last post I spent a few hours walking the streets of Santa Barbra. Very cool place, and I would defiantly want to go there again. I went into book stores and music stores, learned about a cool new band called the Front Bottoms (check them out please), and mostly just had a pleasant time doing some meandering.

beautiful Santa Barbara

    After a few hours I decided I had better be on my way, and grabbed a near bus, that took me to another bus, that took me to a highway that my first ride that morning had recommended would be a nice and faster drive than taking 101. I started thumbing in a place that seemed kind of iffy legally, so I was glad when I got picked up pretty quick. The gent who picked me up had a truck with a lot of wood flakes in the back, the kind you get if you had just emptied a bunch of logs out of it. He told me that this was because he was part of a Hot Shot crew, one of many that clears brush around a forest fire to lessen the fuel for the fire. Very cool guy, we talked about his job and he gave me a geography lesson about the mountains and the forest we were driving through. Unfortunatly he was only able to drive me a short way into the mountains where he dropped me off at a small intersection with a great view.

    I found myself in an odd situation for my location was terribly bad for hitch hiking but I was not really within walking distance of anywhere. The location I was at was a turn off to a small town, but was smack dab in the middle of a long stretch of road that also happened to be a hill. The sight distance was good for the drivers to see me, but they were going pretty fast, and had almost nowhere to pull over to pick me up. But I tried it anyways, having a bit of fun by standing on the guard rail and hitch hiking like a sentinel statue, my spirits high due to the amazing surroundings. A man in a jeep gave me a big thumbs up but didn't stop, only to return the other way a few minutes later to pick me up. Like my ride before, I can't quite remember his name, but he was a nice guy, and was going to a casino on the other side of the mountains for a bit of harmless gambling, and said he would take me a little ways after that. I told him to hell with it and lets both go to the casino which he gladly agreed to, it being a common belief that hitch hikers are good luck.
    Turns out I wasn't, and he didn't make very much money, I on the other hand made 30 on black jack (seems to be my game). But I was having fun at the tables, so when he said that he was ready to go, I told him I was going to stay a bit longer. I thanked him for the ride and he was off.
    After my short reuniting with my new vice, I flagged the hotel shuttle to the small town just NW of the casino called Solvang. I was dropped off at another hotel in the city and just started wandering. To my surprise, Solvang is a small dutch community that has a beautiful shopping area. I walked to a bakery and a nice woman bought me a loaf of onion cheese bread for dinner, I found a small bookstore where I bought a English to Spanish phrase book, hoping to work on my paltry excuse for Spanish, and visited various other shops.

    But it was getting dark so I was off to the bus stop to get out of town. The buses got me to the next town over, Beulton, where I was able to reconnect with the 101 free way. Well I had my dinner already so I didn't need to hurry of to make camp, so I figured I would see if I could catch a late nite ride. Within 20 minutes a van had pulled over, and a young woman with a thick accent said hop in. Samuel, Tony, and Susana were also hitch hikers who had rented a van for a day to make a long haul, they were going to Ukiah, and were happy to take me to San Fransisco. Samuel and Tony were both 24 and from Barcelona Spain, and Susana was 34 and from Mexico.  We had a great time talking and joking as the miles peeled away, although the language barrier left me out of many a conversation.

My view from the road

    We arrived in San Fransisco right around midnight, the city was SO much larger than I had remembered. It was really frightening to me, how was I going to find a place to sleep in this huge city, I needed a base of operations but it didn't look like it was going to happen. Samuel, seeing my uneasiness at getting dropped off, casually stated " you can always come with us to Ukiah" to which I said "sure". The car was by the day, so we ended up driving straight through the night, arriving in Ukiah at about 4:30, I was pretty tired but the guys found a place to sleep by a nearby lake. I set up my tent and crashed pretty quick. I would now like to remind my readers that all of what you just read took place in 1 day, or slightly over if you want to call it at midnight, but still, that is a lot of stuff to do in 1 day. When I say my days are dense, this is what I mean.
    I was woken up at about 6 to Samuel telling me that another person had warned him about the cops coming in the morning to oust campers and that we had to be on our way. So on about an hour of sleep we drove to a Coffee shop in the middle of Ukiah. We stayed there all morning, the guys catching up on some sleep, me preferring to use my computer while the internet getting was good. I posted some couchsurfing requests, checked out some maps, meandered on reddit and so on and so forth. Right around noon the guys were getting ready to take the car to the Hertz place across town, when I grabbed my backpack and said my goodbyes. Ukiah also had a very nice shopping district, full of colorful restaurants and stores, but more importantly it had a card shop just blocks away from the coffee shop. I walked into Swords and Boards to find it full of people, all playing magic. I introduced myself and soon we were playing and having a grand ol time. I won just about every game but the guys there were good guys and just looking to have fun, so not much begrudging. After a nice day of playing, I made my leave as the store closed, and walked a few miles down the road to a McDonalds that I knew was right by the highway, even though I wasn't planning on hitch hiking, being that it was so late.
    Right as I was about to pack up my computer, I noticed I had a new email. It was a reply from one of the couch surfing requests I had sent out. Jim said that I could stay at his place, and he gave me his number in the email. I called him up and told him where I was, and he said he would come by and pick me up in 5 minutes. Jim is an older guy, but as nice as they come, he took me to a local bar and I had an organic soda, we talked about my travels and politics, he told me about being a lawyer. We got back, I took a MUCH needed shower, and hit the sack like a ton of bricks.
    The next day I had pretty much to myself, I caught up on sleep, did some reading, surfed the web, and what not. Jim came home from lunch and invited me to a guys meeting he was going to that night, which I gladly accepted. When Jim got back that night, we headed out, and met Jims' friend Doug, who drove us to Willits. It was a meeting of guys who have all been to something called Sterling weekend, where men learn to become true men, and whatnot. Although I have to say after I heard some of it, it sounded less cultish than at first. The plan for the night was to help one of the members clear a tree that had fallen down on his property, and then have a small fire to sit around and have the meeting.
   

Caution: Men at work

Sharpening the chainsaw

    The clearing of the wood was hard work, and involved going up and down a pretty steep hill. I worked up a sweat pretty quick, but we didn't work to long, and soon it was dark and we were sitting around the fire. The meeting was pretty fun, me and the guys talked about stuff that was bothering us, we also just got a chance to go over stuff that was on our minds, I taught everybody how to play shut the box, and then we were done. I left with some good experiences and a box of delicious Asian pears that on of the members had brought.
    And now I am back at Jims house for another night. I don't know how long I will stay, or even where I am going after this, but I can figure all of that out tomorrow.




 Bonus Pictures

A global representation of how far I have traveled. VISIBLE FROM SPACE

Them dudes I met in Ventura, quack quack