John's first day out, leaving our beautiful City and heading to the southland...

Add to the Journal!

This is a collaborative effort. Mail your comments and thoughts to share on John's trip to me (click for email), and I'll collate them into the Voyeurs' page.

Mea Culpa

Editor's note to any artistically sensitive viewers out there: Please remember that if you had to write some software for a project like this, it might look pretty scary too!

Seriously, I know this is a little rough. Lots of this stuff is just placeholders as I try to get time to thrash this together. Anybody who wants to make snide and useless comments, please do so behind my back. If you actually have ideas about colors and layout and other things like that, let me know!

John's Journal

Day One

Welcome to John's Great Adventure! I hope that my ramblings will hold your interest. I am trying not to edit these too much, but this is the first one, so much could change.

Great day to start out, a chance of sprinkles, overcast. I leisurely got ready to go, last minute packing (what happened to all that room I thought I had?). I make my last cup of good coffee for a long time; hey, wait a minute, I am not going to London or somewhere where they have bad coffee, I am going to be in many, or at least several, places with great coffee shops. And besides, I have stowed away my own personal, camp-sized espresso maker and some premium, french-roast beans. Now, how am I going to grind them. Oh yeah, somewhere I packed a hand grinder, too.

I know that this is the first day of my Big Adventure and I should be waxing philosophically about the meaning of life. But, you know, driving from San Francisco to LA, especiallly the direct, Highway 5 route, just is not all that inspiring. Not that I don't have some revelations along the way, but most of them are like this:

• "Gee, i always forget how far east the suburbs go."
• "Uh, oh, did I remember to turn off the coffee pot?"
• "I hope I remembered to pack the flashlight."
• "Exactly what do the hundreds of windmill-like devices on that hill do?"
• "My butt is already sort of tired, HOW many miles am I GOING TO GO?"

So, as you can tell, I am still getting settled in to the trip. I think that it will take a few days to really get into the groove.

Update... I decided to turn off the main Interstate and follow a smaller road that runs paralllel, Hwy 33. What a difference! It has very few cars, not many small towns to go through, and affords some better views. Ahhh, this is the way I should travel the whole trip. I will try whenever I can.

Stopping for gas I look over at the other people and wonder where they are all going and coming. Several families, a beer-bellied guy with no shirt hauling a fishing boat, 3 young women in a pickup truck, a church youth group, and many more all at this same non-descript Chevron station in the middle of nowhere. Well, time to move on.

I have made it to my friend Jordy's house in La Canada, great to not have to go into LA and to have a place to stay. I like starting the trip out with a friend. And, somehow it seems fitting that I end my first day walking around the rather trendy Old Town Pasedena. The great numbers of teenagers brought back many memories of my own. They all look so much older now, though (or is it that I FEEL so much older than them now?).

I find it hard to believe that I am actually going to be on the road for 6 weeks or so. So many things to come, I can't wait!

Now. off to the hot tub.

Day Two