So here I am in San Francisco.  Why Iâm sitting here inside when itâs the most beautiful day Iâve ever seen is beyond me.  Anyway, Iâm in Danâs apartment.  Lovely little place.  Nice lighting.  I woke up this morning around 8:30 and saw the bluest sky Iâve ever seen.

     Recapping the trip so far, I got into Las Vegas around 9pm west coast time on Saturday.  And the spending began. After a 25 dollar cab ride to the hotel, I got a call from Jed telling me to meet the party at the Crazy Horse Too, a gentlemanâs club were Dan was getting lap dance after lap dance, courtesy of the wedding party.  The evening was most definitely interesting.  I was glad to see our friend Trevor, who I hadnât seen in about two years. And the gaggle of topless women and various obscene acts weren't too unpleasant either.  It was honestly much more interesting and fascinating than it was stimulating. Big fake boobs are more of an intellectual curiousity than a real turn-on.

        So after that, we took a cab back to the Four Queens hotel, regrouped, then started gamblin. I'd already lost three dollars in quarters in the slots.  Luckily, we were staying at a relatively cheap hotel downtown, so there were a lot of tables with 50 cent chips and two dollar minimum bets.  I was just excited to be there.  Besides two days I spent in Los Angeles when I was 11, I'd never been farther west than Ohio.  The problem with my gambling over the next two days was that I did a little here, a little there. So I lost about a hundred and thirty bucks. Which i wouldn't have minded if I'd just committed to one thing and just sat down with my entire gambling allotment and went for it all at once. Spreading it out over two days was just unsatisfying, and I felt like I never really gave it a good try.
      But there were plenty of other things to do besides gamble.  On Sunday, Jed, Dan, Aaron, and I went over to the Las Vegas Hilton to see the Star Trek Experience.  Sure, it cost 25 bucks, but it was money well spent.  At least I got something interesting out of it, and it took longer than 3 minutes, which I can't say about 90% of the money I spent over the two
days in Las Vegas.  Anyway, I kept pretty close to what I allotted myself for gambling, but spent twice as much on non-gambling activities, which I hadn't anticipated.  And at certain times, I started feeling pretty poopy.  At dinner on Sunday night, i got all overheated and really thought I was going to faint.

      So on monday morning, Dan, Aaron, Jed, and I took a cab out to the airport and rented a car. We planned on an Impala, but Dan thought it'd be more fun and more comfortable in an SUV, since it was at least 10 hours to San Francisco. For months now I've been looking forward to this trip, largely due to the road trip.  And i have to say, it was the easiet ten-hour
car ride I've ever done.  First of all, the scenery was just amazing.  Completely different from the east.  Don't you just love this expansive country of ours?  Thank god we wrestled it away from the french and spanish and native americans.  Cos it's just awe-inspiringly beautiful.  Around Nevada, it was mountains off in the distance, and from there the scenery changed gradually as we went along, so it kept us constantly interested.  Jed really wanted to see a
bleached steer skull next to a broken wagan wheel somehwere, but we never came across one. Though we did come across a little ship that was selling them. What we did encounter, however, was the World's Largest Thermometer.  Every good road trip needs to encounter a "World's Largest..." or "World's Smallest..." or something like that. And this trip did not disappoint in that regard. Or any other.  The thermometer itself wasn't that impressive really.  We decided that someday we should start our own town, and find all the "World's Largest" stuff, and make the whole point of the town to make things just slightly bigger than all the "World's Largest" stuff, so that these little shit towns where these things always are would no longer be able to claim that they have the world's biggest ball of yarn or whatever.  And we'd just fill the town with dozens of these ugly, weird monuments, and send cease and desist letters to the other towns, telling them they could no longer say they had the biggest this or
the smallest that.  We are dastardly.
     Along the way, Jed thought it'd kill some time if we played a car game, involving the four of us telling a story line by line, with each of us contributing a line at a time.  that amused us for at least four hours.  I was impressed with a lot of the detail and texture to some of the stories.  Other times, it was just weird, particularly when Jed introduced a pet duck named Kevin, then gave him the ability to speak, then had him hiding a make-shift knife- or "shiv"-
under his wing and suggesting a little boy stab his grandmother with it.  I was skeptical of the whole activity at first, but found it wildly and often obscenely amusing.  The final story involved a 36 inch by 10 inch joint, a hovercraft, an autographed picture of handsome actor George Peppard (Hannibal from the A-Team), and the band Bad Company suriving a seemingly fatal plane crash.
     The most disorienting part of the road trip came while I was driving. I'd never really driven an SUV before, and wasn't used to being that high up.  Plus, I was really worried it was going to tip over on turns.  That didn't turn out to be a problem though, because I've never before been on roads that don't have so much as a curve in them for 10 miles at a
time. Around Bakersfield, we went through the whole town and ten more miles, and I could've steered with my knees.  I don't know why, but that kind of driving really freaked me out.  But I'm really glad we decided to drive it to San Francisco.  That was a grand idea.
It really was some of the most beautiful land i've ever seen.  more later
 
 

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