Hi People!
Jane here. As I write this I'm sitting in a
coffee shop just across the street from
UND (University of North Dakota, for those of you unfamiliar with institutions of higher ed in North Dakota, or who never have needed to know that the state abbreviation of North Dakota is ND). Tomorrow we start out on our road trip across and around the Upper Great Plains. & although Casey hasn't packed yet, my trip really started last week/weekend when I had to start packing up in LA and prepping to be out of town for these two weeks. This preparation & travel has led to a number of realizations about my life in LA, and travel in general.
Realization #1: You cannot buy a raincoat at any regular department store in Los Angeles. Since it rains like 8 days out of the year, it just hasn't seemed practical to get a rain coat. This is in part due to the fact that I don't have to go far to go to work, so an umbrella is just fine. This is also in part due to the fact that what counts as "rain" in Los Angeles would make everyone else everywhere else laugh. Most of the time it's just mist. Or sprinkles. But it's like a natural disaster is heading for us every time some precipitation drops out of the sky. So...I did not want to buy any kind of expensive raincoat for this trip, as I figured I'd pretty much use it just for this trip. Well. Short of buying outdoor performance raingear at REI, I could not find a single raincoat. Poncho yes. But really, who wants a poncho. They don't breathe at all.
And they ARE NOT cute. Lucky for me, I found a raincoat here in Grand Forks. It is actually outdoor performance raingear, but it was half the price of what they were charging at REI for their super fancy outdoor performance raingear.
Realization #2: Excess is the name of the game in a lot of LA, or at least that's how LA is billed. Turns out in other parts of the country, some basics in hotel accommodations are a little different. When I called one place to book a room in advance, the extraordinarily friendly woman cheerily asked me, "Do you want, running water, electricity, or a bathroom?" Um. All three please? Fortunately that was possible. To the tune of $169/night. Sure, it's not the most I've spent on a hotel room, and in some places I'd consider that quite reasonable. But it sure took me & my privileged self by surprise.
Realization #3: Maybe it's harder to get a raincoat in LA than Grand Forks, ND, but it's the reverse when we're talking about getting climbing gloves. They don't sell them here. And while I was a little surprised about this, especially since we went to an outdoor store here today, I suppose when you look outside and see just how flat it is here (the one hill is a little incline up to a bridge/overpass), it all makes sense.
Realization #4: It's hard to buy food for other people. You see, since the Movin' On Up Tour, I've acquired a dog, Mooshu. He's a crazy looking, sort of dumb, but very sweet little dog - half lhasa apso, half peke, or so I'm told. Mostly he looks like an ewok, and actually that makes me love him more. He's had a lot of change lately since we moved from one res hall apartment to another on June 4th. Fortunately for him (and my peace of mind), he's being cared for by some of his favorite dog sitters, Sherry, Andy, & Tom. Yay for them. But crap for me when I started thinking about what to buy them to eat while I was gone. I actually have eaten at least once/week with my dog sitters for the last two years. BUT. It's always in a dining hall. And so you just sort of eat what's there. As I stood in the Ralph's I realized I had no idea what they actually liked to eat or drink, other than that Andy is a diet pepsi addict. I got 40 cans of diet pepsi. But I didn't know about anything else. So I ended up buying the most random stuff. I drew the line at poptarts, even though I knew that one of them liked those, because if they weren't consumed I'd have to throw them away, because they are just a sugar headache in a box. Still...check out this food situation. Hot. Mess. And actually probably not enough food for 2 weeks. But it should get them fed for at least a portion of the time.
Realization #5: I'm much more OK with screaming children who kick me in the back of the seat most of the 3.5 hour trip from LAX to MSP than I am with grown people who try to read your book over your shoulder. Yes. I had both on my LAX-MSP flight. And honestly I could get used to the rhythm of the kicking and I could block out the screaming with my ipod. But I could not get used to the fact that the woman next to me spent the majority of the time trying to read along with me as I read Zeitoun (the common book for UCLA this year). Yes. The book is quite good. But seriously lady? Get your own copy. Or at least be less obvious. She spent a good portion of the trip with her whole body turned toward me and clearly, and visibly trying to read my book. Super weird & socially awkward.
Realization #6: I like living in LA because I like the food, the diversity, and the close proximity to really good hiking. But I miss things like parking lots you don't have to pay to park in/get your ticket validated, summers that are actually hot and sort of humid, thunderstorms, and the community feel of smaller towns. Now. I do have to say that I don't think I'm going to be leaving LA anytime soon to settle down in a small town. But there's something like a homecoming feeling every time I get out of LA and land in a smaller Midwestern town. Usually that's because it's been East Lansing, Michigan, where I felt like I grew up so much while in grad school, and had some really good (& hot mess) times. But I felt like that again when I got into Grand Forks last night. Nice. Still, I'm definitely not ready to give up the food or diversity of LA for small town land again...not yet anyway. But it's good to know that I've not become completely urbanized by Los Angeles. One of my more secret fears is that I will become one of those Californians who thinks that their state is the most superior one, and so it's just baffling that anyone would want to live anywhere else, including parts of California that aren't steretypically California, which basically seems to be anywhere that isn't The Bay Area, San Diego, The OC, and The Greater LA Area.
Well. I'm out of realizations. So here I am. I miss Moosh. But it's fun to be with Casey again. We're good travel buddies. And we both get a silly amount of joy out of the most random stuff. Stay tuned as we share our adventures with you. I'll probably post some more this evening...with pics while Casey packs tonight, since I'm all packed and her room likes a tornado hit it, and there's not yet a suitcase in sight.
But I opted for an egg sandwich on a buttery croissant. The croissant was pretty decent. The egg sandwich part? That was special. It was actually a quiche. So very Midwestern. And there were hash browns baked into the quiche. Interesting. The actual taste? Not bad...esp just as quiche. As the insert to a sandwich, yeah, it could have used some hot sauce. Or at least some Tapatio. Still. Overall pretty decent food, and A+ on local charm.
