in between travel

Life has afforded me very little spare time lately. I returned Tuesday evening from a long weekend up north and I leave tomorrow for Ohio. My roommate and I found a new place to live. It's near Caltech in a nice quiet part of Pasadena. Once my brother settles in we will probably have a housewarming party. On Monday I will leave the small town of Hartville, Ohio to venture across the country with my brother. Our plans for the journey include, but are not limited to:

• get into a bar fight in Texas
  
• fund our journey by selling parts the car probably doesn't need
  
• join a band of travelling circus freaks
  
• avoid being captured by mid-western drug lords and forced to deliver packages to shady parts of Lincoln
  
• start rumors of the elusive but dangerous Tumbleweed of Death that weights 500 lbs and has a taste for chevy trucks.

This past weekend I drove up with Dianna to visit her dad. He lives with her aunt in a small California town about 45 minutes outside of Reno. For anyone else making this drive I highly recommend taking the 395. It was a beautiful drive and takes about the same time as the 5. We gambled in Reno, swam in a small lake, fed squirrels, ate biscuits and gravy, and got to see two seisures and one severe allergic reaction. While driving back we stopped at Bodie, the infamous ghost town in Mono county. It's far more in tact than any other ghost town I've seen and well worth visiting.

Sadly the town, normally for pedestrians only, was overrun by classic cars. Reno has some kind of classic car convention in progress which spilled over to nearby California tourist spots. I have nothing against classic cars, in fact I really like them. It does, however, bother me when their drivers presumtuously invade a public state park and act as if their car gives them precedence over all other visitors. A few rather obnoxious English tourists (indeed, American tourists have no monopoly on inappropriate behaviour) decided to park their car in front of interesting historical buildings and take photos. They stood around mumbling and looking annoyed at the lowly visitors entering or leaving an old church. Finally a couple of them shooed people away while another took ages to frame a picture with his point-and-click digital camera. They and others would bump down the old dirt roads in their Bentleys and Rolls Royces honking and smiling smugly. I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how it is appropriate to cruise a dusty 19th century California mining town in a 1950s British luxury car.