Day 6-what...10? Arcata to portland

Dear readers,

It seems I'm not going to be able to post as often as I had initially hoped due to lack of internet, and when there is internet, lack of free time.  HOWEVER I have some sweet pictures from the ride up to Portland that I would love to share with you.  some of the stretches were just so beautiful that I had to pull over, put my hazzards on and snap some photos.

first of all, shout out to pono, holly and her mom for putting me up for the night in Arcata.  I was cold and tired and got there about hours later than I thought.  Their answer was to make me soup and give me a delicious chili pepper beer.  this cat is holly's cat, ninja. aptly named.

The road up to Oregon from Arcata was one of the most beautiful ones I've ever traveled.  there were spots where I just had to pull over and take pictures.  Thanks to Hannah for lending me her sweet 12mp camera.

This is Mishka parked in front of a sweet black sand beach i found up the US-101

from the other direction. grey, but still really pretty

I actually thought the beach was so cool that I parked and walked around to snap some photos

Here's a picture of the Northern California Coast taken from a little jetty in Crescent City

Almost reminiscent of the Windward Coast of Oahu, but bigger and greyer

Mishka and I arrive at the state line

the sky on a nice day here is unbelievable

this picture doesnt even begin to capture the majesty of the scene.  i wanted a picture from the bridge, but there was nowhere to stop on it.  sigh...

what?  Yeah right...it's almost summer.

oh, ok so there is some snow

yup that's snow alright

dammit...had to backtrack 20 miles to where there was no snow in order to set up camp.  this is a 12 ft wall of snow.  it was a bit chilly at crater lake.  the park was closed.

and camp is set up.  my first night of camping goes off without a hitch.  i dine on beef jerkey and the leftover sushi that holly's mom made.  it was a good night.  although there was no cell reception, so I scared hannah and my mom to death when i wasn't able to check in.

At the moment I am chilling in Portland, OR with Joe Provencher, will be until monday.  no pictures of portland yet, but it's a pretty cool town.  lots and lots of goatees and people with no chins.  the intersection of the two groups is positively strange.

anyway, I'm here til monday, then off to Mt. St. Hellens, then Vancouver WA.  should have new pics for y'all then.

peace

Day 3, 4 and 5, San Jose, Stanford and San Francisco

Haven't had time/internet to blog for the past few days, so in short, here's where I've been.

On Friday Hannah and I explored the Berkeley campus and found all of her classrooms for this upcoming summer term.  I noticed that even the construction workers up here have Cal Pride.  Check out this crane:

note the "go bears" banner at the top.

My friend and Berkeley Grad, Lani told us about how Berkeley does genetic engineering on the trees on campus.  I think there's no other way to account for this tree:

or the little green and blue growth on that limb.

Also, there's a spot on campus right next to the famous bell tower where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge.  I was very impressed with the campus.

you may think the color of my camera is a bit drab, no, that's just NorCal.

That night I rode down to San Jose to hang out with Guillaume, a buddy of mine from my RA days.  I didn't really take any pictures while I was there, but he kind of looks like this:

his mom makes bomb hamburgers.  they were tasty, I won't bore you with the details.

The next morning, the gods decided to water northern california.  I waited out the storm until about noon, at which point I headed east to palo alto, to hang out with rachel, timtim, and tuong (I'm probably butchering the spelling).  they're pretty cute, see below:

We had some of the best (and only) Taiwanese food of my life.  after dinner and milk tea, we went back to the dorm and took pictures.  

It was a lovely visit, really the epitome of why I decided to go on this trip in the first place.

After a good hang out, I headed back to Berkeley for the night.  I got super lost a couple times on the way because NOTHING is marked well up here in NorCal!  I actually pulled over and looked at my compass to figure out where to go.  Ended up getting back safe after all.

So today after a lovely sleep-in followed by a chill hang out with Hannah and Lani, I took off with Mishka into the City (San Francisco is usually implied by "The City" in NorCal) to stay with Pat and Larry Morin, and their dog, Teo (again, probably butchering the spelling)

Old friends of the family. 

Here are the views from their apartment in San Fran:

Beautiful, right?

Anyway, that's what's been up so far.  I've had a long day, so I'm about to head off to bed.  More to come soon!

Day 1 and 2, LA to Santa Barbara to Berkeley

So after a tumultuous day of frantic preparation and errands, Hannah and I hit the road around 5pm, almost 3 hours after we were supposed to.  as a result of the delay, there is much traffic on the I-10, and PCH is cold and windy.  Despite these minor setbacks, the ride to Santa Barbara was beautiful.  Sadly we were too cold to pull over and take pictures, so google it or something.

Here we stand between a fully packed Mishka and a Gerry-rigged Madeye

on the long ride up to Berkeley, we stopped about 4 times for gas, one of the stations was interesting in that it was in a little town called San Ardo.  Heard of it?  neither had we.  population 531.

the only gas station in San Ardo.  old school pay the cashier then pump.

More to come...

T-minus 2 days

As you all know (probably if you are reading this), instead of doing the normal find a job and apartment thing, I'm going to ride around the country, sometimes camping, sometimes crashing friends couches.

A few people have asked me to make a blog for my experience, so here is my reply:  Blog.

Meet Mishka, the 2000 Kawasaki ZX6R I've spent this semester restoring.  She will be my parter on this 10,000 mile journey through the country I call myself a citizen of, yet know so little about.

Mishka and I posing for a photo.  Hannah and I (mostly Hannah) just painted her Flat Black.

more photos and updates to come