Life Update (Road Trip Recap Pt. III)

Wow, so I got distracted by Scrubs and by real life. Well, back to the trip. We got to Matt's in Santa Fe around 7:30 P.M. MDT time after leaving Claremont around 6:15 A.M. PDT. Instead of feeling drained from a long day of driving we were all energized by the prospect of crazy parties and new people. When we got to Matt's we were greeted with some delicious bbq steak (first meal since Del Taco in Flagstaff) and some new faces. We met Matt's housemates, Rainer and Emily, along with some of his New Mexico homies, Amber and Katie. After eating it came to our attention that the party we were going to had some cover, $5 if you had a costume and $10 otherwise. As such, we went scouring through Matt's house for what to wear. Robin wound up with a gold shinny sweater and a pink boa, Miles got a female African ensemble going on, and I found a pick, a tie dye shirt, and two headbands. Everyone threw their costumes on and we all headed off to the party (after buying another disposable camera, thankfully).

The party was pretty sweet, the garage was set up for root (like almost every other college-house garage), the living room was clear for a dance floor, and there were three kegs in the back yard. What I didn't expect was how much the altitude would affect my tolerance (Robin also didn't see this coming, usually he's a tank, but he actually puked, although it was after two consecutive beer bongs). At the party I learned that one of Matt's friends had 5 visitors from Colorado, so Matt had a reel full house that night.

The next morning (around noon) we all went to a place called Fatso's for some ridiculously large portions of food and general hangover recovery. It wasn't until we drove around Santa Fe a little bit on Saturday that I really got a feel for the place. I realized on Friday that most of the people seemed strait out of the 90s, but Saturday I found that the place reminds me a lot of Beck, The Pixies, and Techno, so I guess, by association, lots of drugs. Santa Fe has this crazy combination of altitude, desert, and standardized architecture that all adds up to a drugged out feeling, like it couldn't make sense unless you were from there or were on drugs (or a crazy road trip, it was kind of the ideal place to find as a destination). I can't say my conclusions about the kind of place Santa Fe is were hurt by Matt's particular group of friends, but I still think it's a crazy environment.

Anyway, my conception of the craziness of New Mexico would only increase from this point. Later that afternoon we went up into the mountains to have a wilderness experience. We went up into the Aspens. It was sweet because I'd never been in a deciduous forest before. The idea that all of those Aspens share a root system was kind of too much for me to handle. We were only able to spend about an hour up there before we had to go back into town to set up for a house party at Matt's.

Man, Matt's house party was huge, we went through 2 handles of vodka, three 30 racks, and a 24 pack. Not to mention it was byob. There was a root room, an outdoor area, a smoking/lounging room, and a dance floor. A good time was had by all, and I think Matt had a great birthday party.

So, all the out-of-towners crashed at Matt's that night, but the Colorado kids left around 6:45 am so the morning had an exceptionally empty feeling. That next day flew by, we got some breakfast at a sweet local spot, we then cleaned some, watched the brains doc (shy gave it to me in Claremont and I was too stoked on it to wait), then went onto campus to see a crazy 25 piece alt-rocky band (think Weezer + Phil Spector, I guess). Matt then gave us a quick tour of his crazy campus (old military combined with art school combined with Santa Fe architecture), then we were out.

The ride back was went by surprisingly quickly, well, considering we drove pretty much strait through to Berkeley. We left Santa Fe around 5 pm MDT with me taking the first and Robin manning the tunes. I don't think I fully understood the magnitude of the drive we were leaving on. We were to have about 19 hours of drive time with only Robin and I able to take shifts driving (Miles was clearly not an option and I wanted to give David the chance to get some sleep before he had to drive from Claremont to San Diego at 4 am). This sort of deal may be common place to some of you cross country travelers, but I don't think anyone in their right mind does it leaving at 5 at night. So, I drove the first 6 hours from Santa Fe to Flagstaff, we had one stop for gas that somehow took over a half hour because Miles was looking for a cigarette to ac adapter so David could write a paper. Well, we eventually got out of there and made it to Flagstaff and back to the Del Taco.

The Del Taco wasn't exactly what we were looking forward to in Arizona. The real prize of making it back to the same gas station was the nick-nacks. Robin and David both got gifts for the girl friends, and miles bought like 4 shot glasses, but all that paled in comparison to the big purchase, a bull skull. That's right, a Georgia O'keefe status (but without a vagina like rose), bull skull. Well, David, Miles, and Robin went in three ways on the skull than guessed who was closer to a number from 1 to 100 that the gas station attendant chose to see who would get the prize. David won, and I hope it's chillin' on his wall in SD. With the skull ordeal out of the way Robin took over driving and I rode shotgun. Robin got us all the way to Barstow, before we had to stop for gas again (we didn't stop in NEEDLES!, and instead chose to drive on in hopes for more reasonable [$3.60 a gallon?] prices). Well, it was Miles's turn to rock the gas, so he put down the $18 he had left to his name (true story, maybe he shouldn't have spent like $40 in Flagstaff on a bull skull he didn't win and 4 shot glasses, but I guess that's Miles for ya). Anyway, I took over driving again due to familiarity with the LA area and such. We continued into Claremont and got there at 4 am.

We had a couple of missions to accomplish while in Claremont. First of, we had to get the original party cam (disposable camera 1) from 'Shwa's room in north quad CMC, and we wanted to score some adderall so Miles and Robin could stay awake for the drive. So, I parked by ducey so Miles and Robin would have a strait shot back from Josh's. Well, somehow, they didn't make the connection of where the room was in relation to the car and they took like a half hour to get the camera. I had no luck finding any adderall for them, and decided I wanted some Carl's, unfortunately I also decided that I would wait for them to get back first. As such, we had no time to get food and instead had to just refuel and leave (luckily Miles still had a couple of energy drinks to compliment the 2 1L Mountain Dues I had from Barstow, and the Fritos I was getting). Well, Miles put down both the energy drinks before we got on the highway, and we were off.

This last stretch of driving I did was the most taxing I've ever done. I went from about 4:45 to 7:00 (2 to 7 if you count from Barstow) and I hadn't slept since 11:30 the previous morning. Luckily for all of us, I stayed awake the whole time, although the last 20 min were getting dicy seeing as Robin was asleep in the back and Miles managed to dose off while ridding shotgun. Anyway, I pulled over on some random road north of Harris Ranch and let Robin take over the driving on his massive 2 hrs of sleep. He got us back to Berkeley at 10:30 am in one piece and got that great relief of being home. Miles and I took quick 1 hr naps and got back on the road to drive down to SC. Feeling rejuvenated, but knowing I couldn't eat on pain of falling fast asleep, we made it back to Miles's in about 90 min, he gathered his things and I made the final 20 min trek back home.

Somehow, we all made it back without harm, and I made it home safely. I was also able to stay up until like 7 pm allowing me to not completely fuck up my sleep cycle (I slept until 9 the next day, which is like really early for me). Well, I guess that's the tale of my grand road trip. I should probably have some final thoughts and such, but I'll save those for the next road trip post, a kind of wrap up // picture guide post (thank god for disposable cameras).

So, that's it for now kids. Maybe the next post will be more road tripin' maybe it'll be recapping Sean Ryan, maybe I will get caught up in TV and life and not post for far to long. However it turns out, writing this has been fun; I hope you liked it.