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.

Flagstaff, AZ through San Diego, CA

Brian: We sort of made plans to couch surf with a girl in San Diego tonight, but as you may remember, we are in Flagstaff, Arizona. That's exactly 500 miles away. We'd better get driving. Megan gave us a library of sci-fi books to take with us and we grabbed some breakfast at Subway before hitting the road for the long haul. Within about an hour, the snow drifts had converted seamlessly into sand dunes. Arizona is a crazy state.

Nick: You know what Pinto, I think I'm gonna have you drive for a while. I'm going to take a nap... Mm, that was a nice thirty minute break from driving, I'm glad we swapped places for a while. What? The gas indicator is literally on zero? And the maintenance light is on? OK, OK, no problem, there's an exit with a gas station, just pull over there. Oh, hey gas station, you're out of gas? No, that's cool, really. I started limbering up in expectation of a long, cold hike while for the next twenty miles, Brian pulled some of the most fuel efficient motoring techniques I'd ever seen. The universe continues to guide our path, and we eventually coasted our way into the next gas station. Which had gas, hallelujiah. Next stop, couch surfing host Julie's place. I think.

Brian: Julie was cool and super DIY (Do-It-Yourself) which would explain why her entire house was a construction project. Remember Chet, the out of work contractor from Flu, I mean Sioux Falls, SD? She put him to shame. Julie recommended a dinner establishment that served wonderful chicken chimichangas. I'm going to be trying to kick this burrito addiction for months. Hey, I got a text message! Enter the greatest birthday gift I've ever received. Nick had secretly contacted Jade from Philadelphia. Oh you remember Jade, the girl we couldn't shake and ended up having to run from. You know, the girl that left her cell phone and ID with a cab driver she never paid? And in typical Jade style, the text message came a full day late. Thank you, Nick.

Nick: Anytime. It's important to maintain contact with people that mean something special to you. Soon, Brian and I slowly sank into a burrito-induced coma and passed out around 9. Never gonna be over Mexican food and out.

Williams, AZ through Flagstaff, AZ

Nick: Happy Birthday Brian. I'd never have guessed that we'd still be on the road on February 1st, so I didn't really, like, get you anything. But hey, let's go to the Grand Canyon. That'd be pretty cool, right? Yeah. Drive, drive, drive. Is it me, or is it a little chilly in these parts... Wow Grand Canyon, I didn't realize you'd have mountains of snow all over the place. Oh well, I guess you were kind of pretty or whatever. We have photos, readers can decide for themselves.

Brian: The Grand Canyon is one of those places you have to see because a picture will never do it justice. That wont stop us from posting our pictures, but we recommend checking it out for yourself. And yes, there were several feet of snow on the ground. Apparently if you live in Flagstaff, or anywhere further north, you actually do experience winter weather. Who knew? Another hilarious thing I should mention: remember a couple posts ago we were talking about that podcast we listen to called Uhh Yeah Dude? Well, one of the guys who makes the podcast gives his cell phone number out on the show. So I sent him a text asking him to text my other friend James (a huge fan of the show) and tell him not to forget my birthday. And he actually did it. Everyone involved was pretty stoked.

Nick: Little did Brian know I was secretly hoping he'd get another text from a very special person sometime that day... more on that later. After we'd had our fill of the majesty and splendor of a twenty-five dollar national park, we hit a coffee shop for a little blog sesh. During our time there, the music was calm and sensible. As they were closing however, the speakers dotting the establishment unleashed some of the craziest euro-industrial tunes we'd ever heard. Rock on girls that work at Late for the Train coffee shop. We headed out from there to our host for the night Megan's house. Did you remember that we've got a trunk full of Pacifico and Glenlevit? We did.

Brian: That was basically the last thing I remembered that night. Megan was a cute/cool girl with a good head on her shoulders and a not so secret love of sci-fi novels. We chatted and drank for a while and then went to bed... right?

Nick: In the morning, Brian asked me if we'd gone out. Yeah, dude, we went out. Yikes. We weren't out long, though. When we'd arrived, our host had forgotten her ID so she and I took a FIVE MINUTE trip back to her house to retrieve it. When we returned to the bar, Brian had lost his ability to walk in and out freely. In other words, the bouncer wouldn't let him back in. Brian, stand on one leg! Show him how sober you... OK, never mind. Let's head back.

Brian: It will forever remain a mystery how I got kicked out of that bar in under five minutes. Brian and Nick kicked out.

Newport Beach, CA through Williams, AZ

Brian: It was a pretty short morning at my aunt and uncle’s place. They graciously offered to have us stay as long as we needed to but Nick and I have sort of an unwritten rule about staying in a place more than three days. Didn’t Ben Franklin have a quote about that too? So we grabbed a bagel, shmeared it with hummus, thanked Mike and Cindy for their hospitality (and the golf) and rode off into the sunrise. And by sunrise I mean Borders.

Nick: They’re still sponsoring us, right? The Borders was in a mall with ample parking, which was nice, but had an obnoxious alarm that kept going off, which was not. After we had blogged to our heart’s content, we decided to blow the entirety of a fifty dollar Applebee’s gift card. One appetizer, a couple entrees, four beers and a dessert almost did it.

Brian: Don’t forget the margaritas.

Nick: The waitress was pretty nice, so she got a nice tip to kill the remainder on the card.

Brian: Hm. What to do now… well we wanted to see the Grand Canyon, and isn’t Arizona hot year round? Let’s just drive as far east as possible and then find a campsite to bunker down in for the night. Wait, what is that white stuff all over the place? Oh, it’s just a little snow. And by a little I mean at least 12 inches. We’d better get a cheap hotel room instead. And so we did, and our night ended with a little bit of Adult Swim on Comedy Central and an actual bed to sleep in.

Nick: The room had framed photos of Ronald McDonald creeping out hard, and that's not OK.



Brian: Considering that we’ve only slept in a hotel for 3 nights out of around 100, I think we are being pretty cost effective. Nick and Brian, counting sheep and out.

Newport Beach, CA

Nick: This one’s for my little sister who once, and perhaps still does, have a strong affinity for MTV shows centered around the glamorous life of various Hollywood citizens. Brittany, we spent the day at Laguna beach. Yes, it was super fab, but no, we didn’t see Lauren Conrad. I know, we were disappointed too. Once we’d parked the car, who I suspected felt a little insecure surrounded by dozens of Porsches, Beemers, Mercs and Ferraris, we set out to find a burrito place (surprised?) that had probably been recommended to us by someone. Hey, iPhone application Yelp, thanks for screwing us for the millionth time on this trip. Though the address that it provided was accurate, the map it provided took us nearly two miles up this crazy hill. When we finally figured out the problem, we realized that we had literally walked past the place almost an hour earlier. Alas, despite our best efforts, we’re still occasionally tricked into doing some exercise.

Brian: Also note that it took us an hour to walk a mile uphill. Clearly the exercise was well needed. We planned on having a chill beach day just building sandcastles and reading sci-fi novels on the sand but it was windy and cold, so we retreated to the comfort of the pool/hot tub in Mike and Cindy’s housing complex. It’s not indoors but it is enclosed so the wind was not a factor. I guess we are the only people in California that don’t take sunny weather in January for granted because we were the only people at the pool. When we got back to the house, Mike invited us to tag along with him to the driving range, and we regrettably accepted his offer.

Nick: I think we did alright. I mean, Brian and I are not golfers. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But after an initial handful of whiffs we were getting the balls into the air. I was impressed. Back at the house, it was time for a hearty home-cooked meal of rice and stew. Oh yeah. Clean, well-rested and well fed for the first time in weeks, we donned our danc’n shoes and hit the town. The first place was called Sharkeez I believe, and the place was bump’n. There was a large number of young men and women rocking Snuggies, which is just fine by us. After procuring a couple of the most expensive beers ever in life, we found a table and began drinking them very, very slowly. Oh hey, Brian, there are some pretty cute girls at the table behind us. What? You’re goin’ in? Alright man, I hope you know wh- Oh hi, my name’s Nick, nice to meet you girls.

Brian: What can I say? I make Mystery look like Steve Urkel.

Nick: We chatted the ladies up for a while, then, playing it cool, headed out to a more dance-oriented location with their promise to meet us there in a bit. We got there, the line was forever, and so we bounced. Brian says the hunt is half the fun. I’m not so sure, but I didn’t want to wait ten years in a line. Brian and Nick, over and out of luck.