The Little Differences

Yes, it's been a while, but a while is how long it took for all the following things to go on. I'm keeping a backlog of moments and stories to tell, but the more pertinent and local information will shine through until there is more time for typing and more time for reflection. As I type, we are winding the Volkwsagen south on America's favorite road: The Pacific Coast Highway. There is a smooth layer of smoky fog that hangs just above the sunroof most of the time and as the road dips into and out of its bushy underside we are treated to miles and miles of ocean, bright green Bob Ross trees, and craggy mountain roads that lead seemingly nowhere. Once in a while one gets a view right down the edge of the coast line and with the fog and the rocks jutting from the water like they are it feels as if outside the GoonDocks.

It also looks a lot like the north western lip of Maui, minus the fog and then trade the Bob Ross trees for the leafy-wet kind that Arnold Schwarzenegger would rustle around through in Predator, part one not part two, in two it was Danny Glover before he was too old for that shit.

In any case - it's breathtaking every three or four minutes and scary as all hell every other five as someone without a bicycle helmet is going way too fast on a road that isn't wide enough for everyone to begin with. The other odd quality are the mailboxes. We've been outside of REAL human contact for about an hour on this road - no gas stations or lodgings or roadside stands for hand-picked cherries or lamps made of antlers - and there are mailboxes on the side of the road. You can't see the "driveways" because the cliff face is straight down, but somehow people (a lot of people) live down there. They can't get groceries or toss a baseball around their yard, but the JCrew catalogue is never late.

I think Krissy has had enough.

"I'm over this road," she says. "Steep foggy cliffs, I get it."

Our good friend and geography afficionado Brian True has estimated our trip down the PCH at ten hours from the Bay Area to Orange County. After consulting the map and the clock a few moments ago, I think I will up his estimate to a scant thirty-eight days. But it will be a gorgeous thirty-eight days. A steep foggy cliffy thirty eight days.

Anyone familiar with this stretch of things, we're looking for LimeKiln State Park because after LimeKiln is a road called G18 that will (maybe) intersect us back with the 101 so that we can make Orange Country before August. While we look, I'll tell you a few stories. But before I do I'll offer this one trivia quiz: What makes a foggy, sometime sprinkly cliff-side mountain road even more fun and exciting? Road Construction!

Krissy's flu subsided on the road out of Colorado and left behind a ball of phlegm she named Fred. Fred lives just below her Krissy's Apple and slides uncomfortably up under her chin and down almost into her diaphragm as if Fred were a phlegm yo-yo. Fred is getting smaller, from the size of a golf ball to maybe the size of a fava bean, but Fred won't leave and Krissy can't evict him. This is the source of several pleasing noises at all hours of the day, followed by angered disgust and head shaking. "Fred just won't leave." Recently Fred grabbed onto an ibuprofen Krissy took and held it there in her throat until finally letting go under a deluge of hot tea and Fiji Bottled water ( www.fijiwater.com).

(The mileage signs on the PCH go like this every ten minutes: Los Angeles 286. Los Angeles 283. Los Angeles 283. Los Angeles 283. Los Angeles 282. Los Angeles 283. You could fund three inner city Compton music classes with hopeful white female teachers for the money you'd save by not manufacturing these signs and instead every once in a while having someone just spray paint a sign in the gravel on the side of the road: Los Angeles 38DaysAway.)

So Fred, Krissy and I started what would be twenty straight hours in the car together north out of Denver and into Wyoming and then west through Utah, Nevada and into California (states 15-19 since May 1^st). Due to limited and continually dwindling resources, as well as the desire to not stop in Utah, we decided to make the trip straight through, caffeinating irresponsibly with only thoughts of staying up, and not thoughts of being able to come back down. For this reason, after nine hours of me driving and Krissy trying to sleep but not being able to - we switched, nearly brawled on a highway on-ramp, and then experienced eight hours of Krissy driving and me trying to sleep but not being able to. But oh the money we saved! Fifty dollars probably! We rolled into San Francisco a fidgety and grumbling trio (Fred likely was the only one to sleep being that he's inanimate and also mostly comprised of mucus) and checked into the Hotel Monaco ( www.kimptonhotels.com). Thursday ended quickly with a nap, some sushi, and another nap.

Our plans in San Francisco were research based. In Chicago for example (yes, I know the stories from Chicago haven't been all the way filled in) where the apartments were plentiful, it was finding a location we liked with access to transportation and schooling and several restaurants etc. Luckily, Chicago is flush with apartments of all shapes, sizes and price ranges.

"It's cold in the winter, like really cold," an apartment broker would say. "But that's why we've included all these amenities into your building. A wine bar in the basement, a pool table and big screen tv in the loft area, on sight laundromat and fitness center and on the first floor is a 7-11. Your key works to the back door of the 7-11 so you don't have to go outside when you want a microwave burrito at two in the morning. Thank you for choosing Chicago!"

San Francisco was different.

Utilizing Craig's list as a resource and several walking maps (I lose them so quickly) of the city, we saw four apartments over two days. Friday we saw one that was in Russian Hill - a lovely area - that was about 440 square feet and $1900. It also smelled of burnt straw and new paint, a thrilling combination for the senses.

Neither of us wanted to be the bullet that broke the balloon, so we made small talk as we wandered down the hills of San Francisco to where we thought the Marina would be. (The map was way gone at this point)

"So, what did you think of that one?"

"Well," I said. "The neighborhood is a little, I don't know."

"Quiet."

"Yes, quiet. Even the storefronts written all in Chinese were closed. I'm not sure I can live in an area where not a single thing but a dry cleaner is open in a solid two block radius. What did you think of the apartment?"

"Well," Krissy says in this very kid-glove way we've developed to sugar coat the worst and most expensive shit hole I've seen in a long time. "I think the bathroom was, what should I call it?"

"Quaint."

"No," she says and throws her hands up a little, a sign of surrender. "It was small. It was SO small. You'd have to turn sideways to brush your teeth in there."

"And did you smell that lobby? What was that? And the view from the living room into that dilapidated pain factory? Who pays $1900 for that? And for what? To be close to the run-down and empty Chinese butcher shop?"

Discouraged, we began drinking. I must have been very discouraged because I drank everything I could get my hands on. We enjoyed dinner (I think) at a restaurant with the word BEAR in the name (I think) and then went for more drinks (I'm pretty sure) at a bar (a lounge maybe?) at the top of a hotel (I think) and then went back to the hotel where I (maybe) threw up and passed out (definitely.)

You can imagine how much fun this made Saturday morning. With a handful of listings for open houses and neighborhoods of interest, nothing but half a glass of water and four ibuprofen in my stomach, we took a cab to the first one and walked to the door. I kid you not, this is what happened.

"Are you Jason? With the open house? It looked like you have five or six of them today on Craig's List?"

"Yea." This guy has that fat-face, perfect teeth, trust-fund gaze on real thick. He's chewing a power bar and holding the front door open with his ankle. This is, at its very lowest amount of energy, how to hold a house open - - not how to run an open house. "It's number 6, go on up."

"Um okay."

Earlier in the morning, under the guise of professionalism, Kris and I have updated our resumes, written a cover letter and created a little information packet to give to prospective renters that says: Hey, we're good people who use computers, give us a chance..

The apartment is ripped to shreds. The bathroom is gutted. The windows are being painted and or replaced. It is a nice space - maybe 700 square feet - and this time only for $1500. Curious to know more, we go all the way back downstairs to where the doorstop, ahem APARTMENT BROKER, is still chewing on some massive oat cud, his designer sweat pants bunched at his stupid knee.

"When will the unit be ready?" Krissy asks. It is important that you see that Krissy, a female of the age of 26, not by any means androgynous and to be perfectly honest quite lovely and enjoying the curvaceous figure of a woman in society - - Krissy is the one asking.

"I don't know. . .man," he says.

This is not acceptable. I can see this being a good response when pulled over and the police office finds a duffle bag of uncut heroin in the back seat of your car beneath severed body parts - - and you're high - - try that. What are you doing son, the officer says and you reply: I don't know. . . man.

Or maybe you're untangling Christmas lights and somehow your shoe has fallen off and there you stand in the snow covered front yard of your house in the dead of winter, hopping around and wrapping green wires and broken bulbs about your body as if it were a mink coat. Your neighbor walks by: Hey Ted! What exactly are you doing there? And it would make sense for you to grin stupidly and say out loud: I don't know. . . . . . Man.