Day something. I don't know. You figure it out

Arroyo Seco. That was the name of the river from Tuesday; Arroyo Seco, which apparently means dry river, and is located about an hour out from Marina. Anyway,

Wednesday, 7/27

Spent the day in Monterey, a fact that is also a rhyme, after successfully braving the public transit system down here. Turns out the actually have two different fares, one for locals and one for everyone else. Apparently the way they tell which fare you pay is whether or not you have to ask what the fare is.

Monterey is a pleasant little town, about 27,000 people and a concise downtown area centered around the bus station, which I thought was especially cool. Spent a little time reading on the Wharf, which projects out into Monterey bay, and provides some nice wallpaper:

no, there is no new fisherman's wharf 

Worked my way through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, because I left A Portrait of Dorian Grey in the car that went back to Oregon, and was staying with elementary school teachers, and got a start on the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, a book which, in addition to the fact that I didn't even know it existed, is startling full of cold-war political metaphors and just a soupcon of old timey racism.

Seriously, check that sentence out. Didn’t even get flagged by MS Word. I'm pretty proud of that.

Anyway, killed some time doing that, then mooched off the wi-fi at a joint called East Village Cafe that Meredith suggested. I took a bunch of pictures 'cause I thought it looked pretty cool.

Coffee was quite good, if priced at the usual indie cafe premium. After a quick Denny's stop (because, since Monterey is  kind of a tourist town, all the local taco shops were still ~twice the price of  Denny's for a meal) I stopped in at a place called Alfredo's Cantina for a beer, chosen only mostly because it's called a cantina.

the blinds are drawn to keep the scum and villainy in

Great liquor selection and atmosphere (assuming you like dim, quiet bars as much as the next misanthrope), but literally no on tap options, and not as cheap as the word cantina implies. Got into a conversation with the owner about body disposal (Cremation: $2500. Illegal body dumping: $250 misdemeanor) and what weed was like when he was a kid (weaker). Found out later that this was actually the mystery bar I was taken to on my first night in town.

I got a ride back from Meredith after she was done fighting crime or seal clubbing or whatever teachers do after the school day ends, then helped move furniture; the Teach for America program ends with this month, and they're all fleeing California.

Drink: $3.50 bottle of MGD

Bed: Living room floor (Couch now in garage: earbud situation resolved)

City: somehow, still Marina

Thursday 7/28

Last full day in Marina, so I decided to actually see this town a bit. As mentioned previously, Meredith's couch is located a few miles out into the desert, surrounded by vicious wildlife

bloodthirsty little bugger

and abandoned explosives

no, seriously

so I decided to walk to the nearest business, a local gas station-cum-market called the Ord Store. No, I'm not sure why. Yes, I also wanted it to be the Ood store. What, seriously? Just go google it. Anyway, thanks to the fact that Google Maps and I are apparently in a fight, what should have been about a 2.5 round mile trip ended up being nearly ten, and took me through every section of Marina, starting with the lovely campus.

I ask Google for a market, they give me the world's most sinister hobbit-hole

USC Monterey Bay, in addition to not being in Monterey, is a forlorn ghost town, lacking as it turns out a single food outlet of any sort. Eventually, I abandoned my aimless wandering of campus and, as I so often do in times of duress, googled "tacos" on my smart phone. Turns out there's a couple places that do those in Marina. It also turns out that Marina is actually ~two miles north of the campus, a distance that is mostly occupied by an eerie, beige ghost town.

and this is one of the nice ones

I spent about twenty minutes walking through this before I realized it was completely abandoned. Not a single inhabited house, or any evidence of living beings, for miles.

Finally, I found Marina proper, got my tacos, and started walking back to the couch, using major roads this time so I could at least avoid walking through the middle of Silent Hill again.

Then I found this.

I cannot stress enough how enormous this fenced off area is. it's like an entire second town, except empty and creepy

admittedly, some of the barriers are a more effective than others

what is the terrible secret of Marina Heights? zombies? 

werewolves? 

zombie werewolves? 

lethal levels of freestanding beige?

Note, that this is a completely different area, east of town instead of south, and just incredibly vast. A huge swathe of decrepit desolation, with no explanation. This town is pretty weird.

Drink: creeping dread. Also, more kahlua, because they don't want to take it with them and Devan kind of drinks like a sorority girl (sorry dude, but it's true).

Bed: freshly vacuumed living room floor

City: Marina. Although "city" may be a strong word for this place, in retrospect. Maybe "string of eerie post-apocalyptic wastelands with a taco shop" would be closer.

Sitting in a Vegas hostel right now. Spent night before last in San Francisco, which was pretty cool. I'll update about the last couple days in a bit, but for now let me tell you that in Vegas hostels, they give you a drink before they give you a room key, and leave you with this: 

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.238107686223991.63542.156229684411792&type=1

Day 7

Sooooo, spent yesterday on Meredith and Devan's couch, minus a short, uneventful but pleasant walk around their particular burb in Marina. This joint used to be a military place, they tell me, which accounts both for the drab uniformity of the housing around here, and the scattering of monkey bars and other '50's exercise equipment. On the bright side, I spent no money and actually did some transcription work for me pops, making yesterday the first financially productive day I've had in months.

Bed: Still the couch
Drink: the heady ambrosia of the internet
City: Marina

Today, much more entertaining. Went to...a river who's name I did not catch, about an hour from Marina, I'll get back to you on that proper noun tomorrow. Anyway, went out with nine other teachers, seven of them of the lady variety, once again proving that no matter the gender or profession, modern twenty-somethings are foul-mouthed ne'erdowells, the whole lot of them. For any of my rivermates who stumble across this, believe me when I say that I mean that with nothing but love. This trip is, however, making me seriously re-assess my impression of my middle and elementary school teachers. Anyway, the river:

that's a panorama, roughly 180 left-right from top down

Due to being severely misinformed about the nature of this trip, Meredith, a trip which involved multiple fordings of the river before we even got to the super-special spot the educators of our nation's future has picked out to drink beer and harass wildlife, I arrived in Levi's with no swimwear and a pair of Doc Martens on. The only resort was my trusty boxer-briefs, for which I do apologize to my companions and the universe as a whole, but did allow me to have fun in the river. Resultingly, I spent the afternoon lounging in my underwear on warm rocks, drinking river-cooled tecate and watching friends body-surf the worlds least threatening rapids. I have had worse afternoons. Just to rub it in, here's two more shot of how fucking pretty it really is down here:

if it makes you feel any better, as soon as we got back into Marina (which is Bay Area Adjacent, and all that that implies) we were immediately engulfed in an impenetrable bank of damp, shriveling chill fog.

Bed: Same couch, although I think it ate my earbuds, so that's new

Drink: Cold Tecate, warm Evan Williams (because Meredith filled her flask when I got here, and she'll be damned if we don't finish it)

City: Marina

Day 6: Californi Way

Alright, doing a little catching up, which I don't feel bad at all about since I haven't told anyone about this blog yet. Left Portland Wednesday, caught a ride with some Campbell Clubbers straight down to Santa Cruz. We ended up driving all night and, thanks to some dubious directions and the fact that Marisa and I somehow missed the off ramp for the 505 three times, ended up spending all night on the road, hitting Santa Cruz at ~6:30 am. At the end we just parked the car near the beach and slept there, which wasn't even illegal at that point since it was late enough in the day to hit the free parking hours.

Bed: front seat of a compact
City: Santa Cruz
Drink: sleep deprivation

We woke up Thrusday afternoon and broke our fast with a bunch of Middle Eastern food from Trader Joes, courtesy of the EBT system. We spent most of the day killing time, waiting on Lauren's friend Tim, the originator of our faulty directions, to get done doing whatever the fuck he was doing (in the spirit of most co-opers, Tim doesn't seem to have any discernible job or obligations, but is still always very difficult to catch up to), which was actually pretty alright, since we ended up cruising around the absolutely gorgeous UCSC campus, which more closely resembles a summer camp or wildlife preserve than any university campus I'm familiar with. Seriously, it's mostly open wilderness; redwood groves, grassland, that kind of jazz. After that we drove past the now defunct Chavez co-op, and ended up at the Zami co-op, a cool set up with two moderately sized, ~5 bedroom houses share a courtyard, where Tim lives and Lauren is well known. Parts of it look like this:

Also in true co-oper fashion, the kids living there immediately made us feel completely welcome, even going so far as to throwing some food together for us while we waited around. Tim eventually showed up, and we rolled out to the Max house, an enormous communal living space that, while not a registered co-op, did contain the refugees of the Chavez. This house is friggin' gigantic, with three or four huge rooms on the bottom floor. Of course, they're mostly just filled with random crap, but it's still pretty neat. The place reminded me of nothing so much as that island in Pinocchio where all the bad kids play pool and smoke cigars. We ended up sleeping at the Max in a school bus parked out front retrofitted with bunk beds.

Bed: hippie bus, actual mattress
City: Santa Cruz
Drink: Pabst containing bourbon

Friday

Woke up in the Hippie Bus, dragged our carcasses to the Santa Cruz Diner for the traditional two-eggs-over-hard-with-potatoes-and-coffee. Decent food and prices, but the service was iffy once our original waiter took his break. Also, stupid fucking sales tax keeps throwing me off. The first four or five times I bought something down here, I thought I was just terrible at math. Anyway, Lauren, Tim and some of the Zami kids went busking downtown, Kelly Maris and I took Asi (our token co-oper dog, and a close friend of mine) to the one dog park, which was gorgeous. We spent a few hours on the beach reading, while Asi made a bunch of friends and had the butt sniffing of a lifetime. Packed up, met back up with the rest of the crew, went to a party at a house over on Storey st., big place with a really beautiful courtyard in the bag, koi pond and everything.

There's a little castle-looking building back there too, which I found out was somebody's house by walking into it, and now I really want to live in a castle. Got a ride back to Zami after the party shut down due to noise complaints, spent some time back at Zami making delicious tempeh stir-fry with Kelly and Zami local Kayla then blissful sleep.

Bed: Couch in the Zami back house
City: Santa Cruz
Drink: Trader Joe's brand stout, bourbon

Saturday

My last day in SC, spent a little time wandering around downtown while Lauren busked again, got some tasty Indian food at a place called Sitar. The downtown is...strange. It's very small and very pretty, kinda like the more successful Oregon coast tourist towns, but it is very regulated. No dogs allowed, no sitting outside of marked areas, no stopping on the sidewalk, noise policies strictly enforced, etc. Lauren's busking was pretty illegal too, but luckily they didn't get hassled for it.

too cool for the Man to touch

Anyway, abandoned that for some wandering by the river that bisects SC until the buskers finished up, picked them up, spent a couple more hours at Zami then bribed my erstwhile companions to drive me the forty miles south to Marina, where I met up with the excellent Meredith and her roommate/partner Devon, who's couch I am currently typing this from. Went out to a bar in Monterey, which is apparently where Marina people go to get cra-zy, to celebrate the end of their teach for America stint (these two badasses have spent the last two years working on underprivileged elementary and middle schoolers' literacy in Selinas, which is about the size of Eugene but has one of the highest murder rates in the states), staying out 'til one, which they and the two other teachers we went with assure me is pretty epic for this group.

Bed: Meredith's couch
City: Marina, CA
Drink: Gin and Tonic


Sunday

Determined to show me some of the natural beauty of the area, we took a drive to Santa Cruz for a short hike at Pfeiffer point, and it was really gorgeous.

No, really

 The beaches here are certainly not like the Oregon Coast; they look more like beaches in movies, where the parking lot just turns right into sand, and there's no giant Mordor cliffs ringing the place.

Dear Oregon: what everybody else thinks the beach should look like

Went back to the casa after a quick stop at Whole Foods, made a delicious vegan taco plate, by which I mean Meredith and Devon made a delicious taco plate while I watched and then mooched their food. Ended the night with Devon' drink of choice, chocolate hazelnut soymilk and kahlua, and some Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Bed: Meredith's couch
City: Marina
Drink: whatever the fuck you call soymilk and kahlua

Right now, I'm hanging out at their place while they go and teach or something stupid like that, trying to figure out how to get to vegas. I'll keep you updated.

T- ~10 hours

Night before the big dip. Spent the last three weeks rolling around the valley, seeing those folks whom I still give a crap for. Tomorrow, outta Ptown, quick slowdown in Eugene then onto Santa Cruz.