Nick's Tardy Recap: J Tree through LA

Nick: My phone number is 317-694-5766 and my email address is nickison1@me.com. You may consider this the complaint hotline for any readers that might like to express their displeasure at the very delayed post as it was, in fact, my turn for quite some time. Now down to business:
When it was finally time to say goodbye to Joshua Tree (which was sad, because Joshua Tree was probably one of my favorite segments/locations of the whole trip) we realized that it was Friday which meant that we would be able to attend the horse races that had been rained out the previous week. With free admission, two bets and one dollar beers, this was truly cause for excitement.
We parked Lucy in a large largely deserted lot then headed in to figure out the ins and outs of a sport neither of us had participated in to any degree. Horse racing, it seems, is more complicated than it might initially appear. In addition to voting on the horse you think will win a given race, you can bet on a whole myriad of combinations including choosing the top three positions which can in turn be spread over the span of several consecutive races. All the combinations had bizarre names, the horses had bizarre names, and the machines used for betting and printing tickets seemed a bit confusing. Perhaps Coors Lite would be illuminating... Indeed it was. (thanks beer, you've done it again.)
After a few rounds of that great pilsner taste, we made all our bets then headed out to the tracks. The first of several interesting encounters that afternoon came in the form of an aging hipster guy that claimed to know quite a bit about the horses. He was friendly, talkative, and was more than happy to show us around the park. We consented. The next was a young Hispanic gentleman named Gabriel who offered us a fantastic combo deal on a haircut and medical marijuana. Weird. While we made friends, our horses sucked wind. We both came close to winning a couple times, but our steads just didn't have the juice to finish as strong as they'd started. No matter, Brian spotted a horse shoe in the bushes, and seeing as we were headed to Vegas in a few days, we decided it would serve as the perfect lucky companion. Not wanting to get thrown out before the final race was run, we continued conversing and imbibing.
At some point, and old lady walked up and, having spotted the horseshoe herself, mentioned something about us possibly retreaving it for her. Guess what old lady, you're out of luck, Brian and I believe in equality. You can hop the fence and dive through the shrubs with me, and I'll race your old bones for it fair and square, but this is America, and we're not down with treating the elderly different just because they're elderly. Well, the final race was finally upon us. Despite all odds, (literally, the odds were like 40-1) my horse pulled it out and won us 60 bucks, which made that Friday the first day in a long long time when either of us made more money than we spent in one 24 hour period. As soon as that gallant mare crossed the line, I made an equally desperate rush over the fence and into the bush to retrieve our prize. To our disappointment, the old lady opted out of vying for the coveted charm.
Shoe in hand, we headed out to meet Marie, an aquaintance of Brian's from back in Bainbridge. We hung at her place for a while, then headed out to a local bar to shoot some pool and chat. It's been some time now, and my memory isn't so sharp, but I seem to remember the walls being covered in photos? Perhaps Brian will have a better recollection of the establishment. In the morning, we got up early, purchased one too many ice cream sandwiches, then headed off to Palm Desert where we would relax with Max and his family before heading into Vegas. If only we could have known what horrors awaited us there...

5 days in Joshua Tree

Brian: Thanks for writing that Superbowl post Nick, I know that must have been difficult for you to relive the humiliating game ending pick that your golden boy threw in the fourth quarter. Anyway, I'll be covering the 5 days we spent in Joshua Tree. We started by checking a weather report for the next week, and the only thing we had to worry about was a light rain on Wednesday night, so we went into town, stocked up on wood, and headed into the wild red yonder. We found our campsite by absolute chance, and as we later learned, it was the most desirable campsite in the entire park. It was at the end of this dirt road, with our very own tree (hey, they are rare in the desert) next to a massive outcropping of rocks that we spent the first evening climbing on. Yeah so I ended a sentence with a preposition, sue me. As night fell, we notice that a few of the small boulders had little burned out alcoves, where previous visitors (Native Americans?) had built fires. We used one such alcove, and much like a pizza stone, the rock absorbed heat and radiated it back out towards us, easily tripling the intensity of the fire. We made it an early night. I love camp time. As a morning person it suits me.

The next day we decided to fast, as our adventures up to this point had caused us statistically significant weight gain, and a good cleansing of the works was in order. Don't be gross. We hiked through the Hidden Valley loop and extended that into a dam hike, which was awesome because there was actually water in the reservoir. The ranger told us that this is a rare occasion, and the dam can be empty for up to 10 years. Yay! Finally all this rain has paid off. If anybody ever asks you whether Joshua Tree is as cool as everyone says it is, tell them yes. Our hike back to camp consisted of pointing in the general direction of our site and simply walking. One could truly get lost out there, and that knowledge is exciting and terrifying. The day ended with some hardcore reading. And a rearrangement of our tarp to be above our tent in anticipation of the rain. We broke our fast after dark for a box of Girl Scout Cookies. Did you know that Samoas are called Caramel Delights on the east coast? Thin Mints are always Thin Mints, and Nick and I curled up with smug chocolate covered smiles and waited for morning.

I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of a huge branch sliding down the tarp we had strung up with our shoelaces. Actually like 50 huge branches. Wait, what is going on here? I have to pee anyway, so I'll step outside and check it out. I opened the flap to out tent and was absolutely stunned. There were at least 2 inches of snow on the ground. Our sleeping bags were put to the test that night. Clearly, since I am alive to blog about it, they passed.

When we woke up, Joshua Tree National Park was a snowy wonderland. The fact that desert fauna are not intended by nature to be covered in white crystal made the scenery that much more beautiful. We built a snow fire in our favorite alcove and stared at it for two hours. And I think on this day we spent a couple hours in town resupplying and attending to administrative duties at a nearby Starbucks. Before we went back into JTree, we grabbed some Chinese food at a place called Fast Chinese. The cute Asian girl at the register asked us if we were twins, and when we said no, she wisely said, "Ah so, you must have been through a lot together." Creepy but awesome. By the time we got back to the park, all the snow had melted, and more reading, cooking, fire, and sleep ensued. It was on this night we met Justin and Brianna, a couple on a climbing vacation. They begged us for our campsite, and we allowed them to move in tomorrow night so that they could have it for sure.

Thursday morning was a very chill day. We took a hike to a ranch in the morning, rocked out till about 3, and then watched Justin give Brianna a climbing lesson, as well as climb a pretty huge rock himself. Nick has a video of his moments of success. They were cool people, and they were refreshed to be hanging out with a couple of non-climbers. This was reinforced later when we met a couple of guys (they were French, not gay Nick) who tried unsuccessfully to boulder a, well, boulder. For you climbing enthusiasts it was a -5,5, but it looked harder than that.

And that basically wraps it up. I'll let Nick pick up with our Day at the Races, and our fun final night in LA. Feel free to cover as much of Palm Desert, including the 1.5 hour hike where you almost died, as well. Brian out.

Rancho Santa Fe

Nick: So it's March. Brian is back in Seattle, I'm in Indiana. The road trip that's captured the heart of the nation has, as all good things in this world are so tragically doomed to do, come to an end. (Did that sentence make sense? Yes) But before we leave our loyal fans and readers with our closing thoughts, meditations, and revelations concerning this oh-so-epic a journey, allow me to bring you up to speed. It is very likely that Brian, after reading this post in Washington, will have a number of important additions. After all, he's usually the only one of us able to remember back more than a day or two, so forgive me for what will surely be an incomplete account.
To the best of my memory, we left Steve and Leah's and made for Rod's place for a little pre-super bowl party action. Is it just me, or are the ladies we met last time we were here not super excited to see us... What's that? They read our blog? That's cool, that's cool. How did you girls li- Excuse me? You're upset that we had suggested in a previous post that you might not have looked your most sophisticated that morning when you breakfasted in the previous evening's clothes with us? Ladies, ladies, please, this is something of a comedy blog, best not to take it too seriously. And besides, as Brian so accurately pointed out, it had been you yourselves that had first made the observation concerning your general appearance to the world that morning. Here, let's have a margarita. Or five. There, see? All wrongs forgotten. Now keep your ill-informed opinions about football and my Indianapolis Colts to yourself, I want to enjoy watching my team win the biggest game of the year without interruptions.
(This is a point where I suspect Brian would write something clever and then continue retelling the events of the evening. I'm afraid you'll just have to use your imaginations though, and try not to let this huge chunk of unbroken text deter you from reading on.)
After the game, which all you haters will be delighted to know we lost, we hung out with Rod for a while then hit the sack in expectation of a more successful camping venture back in Joshua tree.

Joshua Tree National Park through San Diego

Nick: Yesterday was... not the best. This day, well... it didn't really take any huge turns for the better, but it had a handful of little things that helped it cross over into the "fair" category from the "I want my mommy, and I want to go home" category. The first one came early: just as we were skipping out on the park admission (as we are prone to do when we've actually just slept in the car,) we pulled over so Brian could tinkle and before us, rising up in triumphant natural splendor, was the biggest, boldest rainbow either of us had ever seen. The sun was coming up from behind the mountains, and the rain clouds were retreating from the valley which created the colorful arch right in front of us. it seemed a sign, and as it faded as quickly and mysteriously as it had appeared, we couldn't help feeling a bit better. Though that might just have been the car's climate control kicking in.

Brian: It was truly majestic. So since we needed to head back towards San Diego for Rod's Superbowl party anyway, and also because we were sans sleeping bags, we cut our planned camping a day short and cruised back toward the coast. It was a Saturday, and seemingly every Borders in the city was the new coolest place to be. We were tired and began to get frustrated by our inability to find a place to just chill out and blog. Then I made a suggestion: Let's just hit the reset button on this day. We are on a road trip gosh darn it, and we are supposed to be having fun no matter what. So we headed to the nearest Hooters and ordered a couple beers.

Nick: Have I mentioned how much I love America? Steve, of Steve and Leah (who we'd end up spending the night with) informed us that the particular Hooters we had found was arguably the "best" in the country. I don't think Brian or I would have argued with that. After one beer turned into a couple, and hunger gave way to a few rounds of wings, we eventually departed feeling fresh and recharged. Since we hadn't quite worked out housing yet at this point, we headed over to our favorite park in the country, made a few phone calls, and tossed the disk around in anticipation of a place to lay our heads for the night. After finding and returning a strange looking man's wallet, the universe must have looked on us with mercy, as we soon thereafter received a positive reply from Steve and Leah (see, I told you we were going to stay with them.)

Brian: The night ended early for us, as the lack of sleep from the previous night caught up with us. I curled up in my sleeping bag (oh sleeping bag, I'll never leave you ever again as long as I live) around 9 and was asleep in about 5 minutes. Although that's nothing new. Nick and Brian warm and out.

San Diego, CA through Joshua Tree National Park, CA

Brian: Today was a rough one, and not just because we planned on camping and then it rained this night. You'll see. We left Steve and Leah's well rested but apparently not completely "with it" because we left some pretty vital items there (don't worry parents, we had our computers). More on that as we set up camp. Basically every person we've run into on the west coast has sworn that Joshua Tree is one of the coolest national parks in the country, and we had a day before the Superbowl, so we decided to just book it out there and see what happens. But right as we were pulling into the park, we realized we only had a couple bars of gas left in Lucy. In order to avoid the fume-driving incident from a couple days ago, we turned around to hit the nearest gas station. It was 20 miles away.

Nick: Ever heard of Mecca? I mean, OK, you've heard of Mecca, but do you know the one in Southern California? You do? Are you Hispanic? Knew it. As Brian commented as we pulled into town, we've never felt so much like outsiders in our own country. No one spoke English, and nothing was written in anything but Spanish. No problem, there's a gas station. Those work bilingually right? Mm, you know, we need firewood too though. That shouldn't be too bad, I know the word for "wood" (unfortunately that knowledge came from the iPhone, and not my four semesters of college Spanish) so "Necesito madura para un fuego" should be close enough to land us some of what we need. Three different stores and a lot of confused Hispanic people later, we were only able to come up with a couple bags of charcoal. Guess it'll do.

Brian: Our theory was that since there are no trees in the desert, the expense of shipping firewood to their local Hispanic food markets would outweigh the benefits for shop owners. On the other hand, Joshua Tree National Park website states explicitly that they do not provide firewood, so maybe that's something to think about, ese. So after a couple hours we headed back to Joshua Tree, with the feeling that our affairs were somewhat in order. In fact so confident were we, that we decided to go on a little hike that brought us back to our campground around dusk. Nick, you are on fire duty. I'll pitch the tent. Where's the tent? Oh, here it is (tricked you). After that we attempted to roast some hotdogs over the coals, but instead of providing heat, the coals decided to release noxious black fumes which instantly dyed our dogs black.

Nick: Screw it, we've got some chips and jerky. I say we call it quits: get into our super warm sleeping bags and go to sleep; just because it's a desert doesn't mean it's hot after the sun goes down. Oh. Oh, oh oh. Crap. No bags. We must have forgotten them at Steve and Leah's place. Well, tent, as much as we've come to enjoy your non-waterproof company, we've got to shack up in Lucy tonight. Only way to keep warm. If you were to have stumbled upon our car in the middle of the cold, lonely desert that night, you'd have found two men wearing damn near every article of clothing they own, curled up in balls shivering and praying for day light. Did we mention it was raining? That we both have monster beards at this point wouldn't have helped to dispel the hobo-chic look.

Brian: If you were wondering, slightly damp towels are a poor alternative for sleeping bags. I swear the next time it rains we will be prepared. Mark my words... Brian and Nick, coldly out.

San Diego, CA Day 6?

Nick: When you plan a day at the zoo, you may be tempted to stay but a few hours. Maybe see all the exhibits, maybe not, then head to a nice dinner somewhere else after walking around for a couple hours. In the case of the San Diego zoo, this is a mistake. The place is huge, the admission expensive, and so if you're gonna do it, do it right. We did. Arriving at 9am and leaving at 5pm, you might say Brian and I put in a good day's work of appreciating all God's creatures, even the smelly, weird looking ones.

Brian: But I can speak for both of us when I say that the San Diego Zoo is worth every penny. We took our time in the exhibits with the intention of spending a full day, but there was so much to see I'm still not sure we covered it all. There were a bunch of monkeys that were obsessed with this stick, and a baby panda, and about a million birds, no less than eleven elephants, big cats of all stripes, spots, and solids, and horrifying snakes. The trained animal show was amazing; dancing sea lions, and Top Gun birds that do flybys on request. I think our pictures will speak a thousand words for this post (if we can ever figure out how to transfer them from the camera).

Nick: We also rode the Skyfari, which is a cool little lift that goes over the entire park. And a double-deckered bus. Best animals: meerkats, which were very active: rambunctious even. Bugs in general. The little monkeys, because they remind us of ourselves. Also, tigers are cool. As the sun went down on the man-made jungle, we headed off to our hosts for the night, Steve and Leah's. They had a dog. We liked that dog. We also like Steve and Leah. Upon their recommendation, we hit up a local tapas restaurant with a killer happy-hour menu with eatables ranging from octopus (good) lamb skewers (good) steak tips (good) clams (good) stuffed peppers (good)...

Brian: ...and double shots of Patron (great). The greatest thing was that Steve and Leah bought the whole meal, and also bought a positive review from their first CouchSurfers ever. Just kidding guys, you would've gotten a positive review even if we went dutch. So we picked up some Pacifico on the way home (our treat this time) and passed them around while sharing a night of hilarious story telling and camaraderie and catching up on old Office episodes. By the way their dog's name was Minger (like the British term for a hideous person). Brian and Nick, out baby yeah.

San Diego

Brian: Early to bed, early to rise. Considering I went to bed at 9 last night I wasn't surprised to see the sun at 7:15 the next morning. Nick needs a little bit more sleep than I do so I watched the season opener of Lost on my lappy and let him and Julie rise naturally. Julie had requested the night before that we help her out with some household projects in return for our stay with her. Now let me begin by saying that neither Nick nor I minded helping her out one bit. In fact we could both use a little bit of manual labor, and considering how many people have selflessly helped us out on this trip we figured it would be good karma to return the favor even a little bit. That being said, and especially for those of you interested in CouchSurfing in the future, there are typically to be no expectations of exchange by either party involved. Although, the type of people that use CouchSurfing are likely the type of people (like us) who enjoy doing something random like ripping up floor tiles for a couple hours. So that's what we did.

Nick: The irony of a couple white guys doing a little day labor in an entirely Hispanic neighborhood did not escape us. The house was built in 1913, and everyone knows that was the golden age of the tile-glue industry. As such, it was a initially quite difficult to pull up the flooring that had, after so much time in its position, become reluctant to move. With a Nick Ison patented technique of pounding a paint scraper with a hammer, the work was finished and it was time to explore a bit more of San Diego. First stop, oil change for Lucy. Check. Next stop, In and Out. Check. The zoo: too expensive, no check. Somehow it had gotten to be a bit late by around this time so, for lack of any better plans, we called Francis up and went out for round two of Trivia at Pacific Bar and Grill.

Brian: Not to mentioned the amazing Wednesday happy hour special of two dollar beers. This time we wanted to really take advantage of the special so we decided to ride our bikes down to the bar instead. Francis took a skateboard, and as we approached our destination he hit a little bump in the road which fired his skateboard backwards and his body forwards with equal momentum (note: Francis is heavier than his board so the velocity of his board would have to be higher in order to have the same momentum as his body). I was following too closely and so had to ditch my bike in the opposite direction, jump, and hope for the best. Luckily there were no injuries but we kept wider distances for the rest of the ride and arrived intact.

Nick: To our horror, the scourge of the previous outing, the tyrant of trivia BobMac was back, and he was putting up some serious numbers. Eventually, the legend himself came to our table to introduce himself. Francis told him how he felt about being beaten all the time. BobMac was mildly amused with out feeble attempts to other-throw his reign of bar trivia terror. We headed back, and after a harrowing bike/skate ride, settled in to lay some head shots down on the rest of the Halo world. I think we did alright. Over and.. crap, out of grenades.