San Francisco... and beyond

San Francisco was great, with beautiful weather and even better friends. Much playing was done, including a backpacking trip to Point Reyes National Seashore where we cooked over a driftwood fire and slept on the beach under the stars. Awesome. Not so awesome: the Pats shitting a brick in the Superbowl. No more about that. Many thanks to the great people who let me stay with them and hung out with me all week.

I left on Monday and set out down the coast, driving through Big Sur before camping in the woods up away from the sea. The next day I camped out in Death Valley, where I spotted a little kit fox watching me cook dinner. Then on through the park to the salt flats at the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere - 282 feet below sea level and set under 11,000+ foot peaks. Literally, a dried up ocean. Saw a coyote cross the road. Down into the Mojave Desert, where I camped in a copse of juniper trees and watched the sunset, closely monitored by a herd of deer. Went for a little hike/walk in the morning and Gem managed to chase out some quail and a couple of jackrabbits. Down through Joshua Tree NP, where we took another walk and ate in the shade with crazy rock formations and the creepy looking Joshua trees all around. Then out into Arizona, where I stopped for the night at a motel to shower and recoup. I write now from Sedona, a viciously touristy town set among beautiful red cliffs. Tonight I'll camp somewhere in the forest nearby.

I've been struck by how lonely the road is, even with Gem along, and it's made me really appreciate my friends and family. I'd been staying with people for close to three months and I'm not used to being alone anymore. I've met only a few people, and all were older, lonely seeming men who had lost their wives to divorce or death. Though I'm hoping to get married someday myself, I don't want to be like that. I want to be surrounded by community, and if something were to happen to my partner I'm hoping to have love around me anyways. To all my people out there who have felt slighted by my difficulties with staying in touch, I'm really sorry and I hope you know that the love is there - even when it may not seem so.

Next steps are the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, and the Petrified Forest. Beyond that I'm not sure. I'll put up a map of my route sometime. I've tried to avoid interstates, but the ones I've been on have been frightening - border patrol and highway patrol cars almost always in sight. Helicopters overhead to catch all the outlaws. Even on some back roads, there are photo-enforced speed limits.

Maybe it's just my paranoia, but is it really worth it to spend that much time and energy on catching people going too fast? I think not. I think that these things are being put in place to control the population, which is so fraught with fear that they allow themselves to be constantly watched - soon by unmanned drones. Let's hope they don't see this post and come after me with one. Check it out - Democracynow.org. After the brutality of the police response to Occupy, and the litany of police brutality cases nationwide, who doubts that we live in a police state? We have the most incarcerated people IN THE WORLD. Land of the free, my ass. End rant.

Hope everybody out there is getting through winter comfortably. I'm sunburned and getting way too used to being a rolling stone. Here's to stability, community, and comfort. Love you all.