Click here to read about life back at home.
Tomorrow the Bolt Across America crew leaves San Diego and drives back to Los Angeles. I can’t help but think that this blog has lost some of its steam in the last few weeks, although that probably mirrors the arc of most long trips. You start out wild-eyed and rearin’ to go, hit a plateau, and then at some point find yourself just wanting to get home. The very nature of blogging does not encourage editing and rewriting, which is a bit of a disappointment for me because that is the very aspect of writing that I need to work on the most. Anyone can bleed a few paragraphs onto their keyboard and then be off on their merry way, but I think the true skill of writing lies in the craft of returning to your initial product; turning the words over in your mind; meditating on the ideas you’re wrestling with until you feel as though you’ve expressed what you’re trying to say in the most artistic and economical way possible. But the road allows little of this luxury. The road is about getting from Point A to Point B. Or at least modern highways are obsessed with this idea. Roads like Route 66 used to encourage travelers to stop, get out, and stretch their legs–and then fork over ten bucks so the family can see the six-legged steer at Prairie Dog Town.
I suppose I will keep poking the embers of this fire for a little longer, allowing for some last clouds of smoke to billow up before disappearing into the dusky sky. I’m sure I’ll wake up in the middle of the night remembering an anecdote that went unnoticed in these humble pages and feel the need to run to the computer and share the moment with you faithful readers. However, I know my thoughts will now also be shifting to new things. Standing on the precipice, looking for employment in a sagging economy, I’m sure I will have different things to say, reflections on what it means to keep my career moving in a more creative direction when most of my resume seems to want to pin me down under a stack of technical documents. But fight on I must…and maybe start a new blog?
Last night while unloading luggage from the trailer, my finger got caught on an errant piece of metal on one of the girl’s suitcases. I didn’t realize I was cut at first until I saw blood pouring out of my left index finger. Apparently I had a minor case of shock because a few minutes later (even after stopping the bleeding with a paper towel) I felt like I was going to faint. I don’t think I’ve ever been so close to fainting before; I felt all the blood rush out of my head and thought I was going to fall over for a moment. Chances are good that I’m going to make it, but damn, who knew luggage could be so dangerous?
Life exists outside the Strip. I finally escaped from the den of vice yesterday and made it out to a television station in Henderson. It’s easy to forget that Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert. (Whenever I type the word desert, I am reminded of my fourth grade teacher Mr. Martin. He taught the difference between desert and dessert by saying: You spell desert with one s because you would only want to cross one desert, and you spell dessert with two esses because you always want two desserts.) I must make my way to the Boltmobile now, but I will finish this thought later. I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.
I am in the cold womb of Las Vegas, Nevada. That phrase came to me as I was walking through the Miracle Mile Shops on the Strip, an endless catacomb of consumerism. I was passing by either a Sunglass Hut or an Origins. Or maybe it was a Teavana. The mall has everything you could seemingly want and promises to fulfill your needs at every turn, and yet it is more austere than the glare of fluorescent lights. Las Vegas in general is an exaggerated symbol of the excess of American culture at present. Earlier today I was walking through the lobby at Planet Hollywood and noticed that they have the underground drive in front of the hotel lit as though it’s midnight outside, even in the middle of the day. Just as disorienting, the ceiling of a section of the Miracle Mile Shops is painted to look like a beautiful blue sky full of fluffy white clouds. Nothing is as it seems.
One thing I can’t get my head around is the fact that I’ve seen a number of Europeans wandering around the malls. Why would you want to come halfway across the world to visit Las Vegas? Hopefully this is just one stop on a regional or cross-country tour. It would really be sad to me if this was a final destination for someone visiting America for the first time. We have so many amazing things in this country, both natural wonders and man-made masterpieces, that outshine what Sin City has to offer.
I saw a man in a rabbit suit walking down the street in the Financial District this morning. I realize now that his companion was Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction.
I took the Muni to get downtown from Golden Gate Heights. The ill-designed glass enclosure which separates driver from passenger makes it impossible to have a conversation with the driver unless you bend your knees, effectively lowering your height by two feet. We had a conversation which lasted 30 seconds in which neither side heard what the other was saying. I finally bent my knees so I could hear the gentleman tell me how silly I was for not just taking the ticket sitting right in front of me.
If you think about the seemingly cryptic subject line for a second, you’ll realize it means that I’m finally on the West Coast and in the Pacific time zone.
I am, in fact, in Portland. Portland has the greatest number of hipsters per capita. It not coincidentally is also a very liberal town. I’ve decided that you can tell how liberal a place is by doing a simple calculation. Find a neighborhood in said city with a decent sample size, and then count the number of Volkswagen Vanagons. Divide the number of blocks in the neighborhood by the number of Vanagons spotted. If the average comes out to one Vagagon per block or higher, chances are that the neighborhood is predominantly hippie, anarchist, and/or hippie-anarchist.
Right now, I’m between cappuccinos at a coffee place downtown called Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Below is a horribly backlit picture.
How many ironic mullets can you spot?
Click here to see new Bolt videos that have been posted on the Disney site.
Here’s a video I made when I was at the Walker Art Center’s sculpture garden in Minneapolis.
There’s nothing more pathetic than looking back in hindsight at the optimism of a Cubs fan. (This video was recorded on August 29, 2008.)
