Degobah

They did a controlled burn around the University to reduce the risk of wildfire. As I came out from work the air smelled like campfire and big black ribbons of soot were raining down from the sky.

When I got to the edge of the burn it was still smoldering.

The landscape it was left waso alien.

I almost expected to see two moons.

I live at the Mall.

There is a mall near the hotel where I'm staying. It's not so much a mall as a collection of CostCo sized stores arranged in a group. In total it's 1.33 million square feet. You drive, not walk, between the stores.

My fascination with dollar stores continues:

I was rewarded with my first ever glimpse of a consumer cyanoacralate specifically designed for closing wounds. Superglue was accidentlly discovered by army medical scientists looking for a fast way to heal battle wounds. That why it's so good at sticking your fingers together although the cyano- (meaning containing cianide) was the reason I assumed it was never released as a wound sealant. I was apparently wrong.

At least they finally have packages Spam (or is it SPAM) in a handy single serving size I can now not consume it in a more convenient way.

I only see 3L bottles in the states. That's a lot of cola for a buck. I almost wanted to buy some just to try it. I think I still might but I will bring a straw so I only have to carry this monstrocity to the parking lot.

After I left the dollar store I walked by a suppliment store. The guy in this poster does look pretty healthy.

But I think the woman in the next poster should probably stop trying to get any more "totally lean" because she's starting to look like a PSA.

Next on the list of car crashes was a personal favourite of mine, the Lifeway Christian Store.

This doesn't seem like a very good idea...

Now I'm sure this isn't a good idea.

Also this exists.

It appears to have been quite a while since my last vacation.

Although the two months I'm spending in Florida is not a vacation, it's the closest I've come to one in a while so I will post my adventure here.

Some things are a bit of an adjustment like the public art..
.

the politics....

and the truck stop snack food offerings...

The University of North Florida is located in a nature preserve in Jacksonville. I'm told that they routinely have to remove 'gaders (never referred to as alligators) from campus. I've started carrying raw chicken in my backpack but so far all I've seen are lots of giant white birds flying low and slow

which makes sense since they are apparently storks. Way to go UNF students!

The Flying Dutchman

In-N-Out is a favorite burger joint of many Angelenos. It holds a cult status partially because it has remained a mostly Californian institution choosing not to spread across the states and partially because of the quality of the ingredients and the Morse code ordering style that lets you specify how many patties, cheese slices, etc will make up your burger.

Carb conscious SoCal residents replace the buns with lettuce. This variant is called Protein Style.


I've always wanted to try a "Flying Dutchman", two meat patties, two slices of melted cheese and nothing else - not even a bun.

Your plane is waiting for you

When you book your ticket at the last minute you end up on a tiny propeller plan that makes two stops between Vancouver and LA.

Although I've made this trip many times, this time I didn't remember that YVR does not believe that a trip to the US classifies as international travel. I couldn't find the gate

The "gate" was a set of stars that led right down to the runway. I felt a bit like a movie star or businessman boarding my private jet.



That is until the engines turned on and I realized that the reason they are called private jets and not private props should have been more apparent. The 10 foot metal fans spinning fast enough to keep 60 people and an aluminum tube in the air makes a huge amount of noise. A huge amount of noise.

After three take offs and three landings and almost five hours I landed at LAX.

LAX was built in 1958 and you can see it in the groovy lines of the “Encounters” restaurant and in lots of the murals in the terminal. There is a very long tunnel before baggage claim. Three sides of it are bright white while the remaining side is a blocky rainbow of pastels and earth tones.



Every time I walk down it I think about death.

The Alley

Downtown Vancouver is alive with people, shops and nightlife.

Downtown LA is the same except without the people, the shops and the nightlife. It's pretty dirty and pretty barren. Not the kind of place that you would want to live in but a great place to visit.

One of my favorite places in this area is called the Alley, an open air market where you can buy everything from Prado purses to iPood Nandos. You don't usually get receipts, mostly because the business won't be around tomorrow.


At the start of the Alley was a Mariachi band. I knew that if anything went bad they would drop their instruments and dole out their own brand of street justice.


There are food vendors on every corner. Some sell freshly cut fruits topped with a spicy chilly syrup. I've always wanted to try it but I've never got around to it. Maybe it's because they handle the fruit and the money with the same gloved hand. Yea, I think that's it.

Others vendors don't pretend to be selling anything healthy. They set up portable grills and fry up onions, peppers and hot dogs wrapped in bacon. The smell is fantastic.

So I walked over to Phillipe's for lunch. The story is that in 1918, Philippe Mathieu, a French immigrant, was preparing a sandwich for a policeman and accidentally dropped the sliced french roll into the drippings of a roasting pan. The "French Dip" was born.


The restaurant has wood shavings on the floor and is staffed by ladies in 50s diner outfits. It's always busy.


The plates are paper and get soaked through with the jus quickly. I recommend the home made lemonade, a side of beets and the tapioca pudding.


I think I would choose it as my last meal.

Economy of Scale

Took the bus to Santa Monica pier today.

The bus seats here have strange patterns on them. I think it's to keep drug users away. It would just be too much.


Santa Monica pier is really the only pier in Los Angeles and as a result has stared in numerous Hollywood movies including Beverly Hills Cop III , The Net and Species. Wow, those are some great movies.


Along with the bikers ad roller-bladers, there were people playing some sort of magical hybrid of tennis and ping-pong. It's almost like you were shrunk down and placed right on the table.

I think I've actually dreamed this before.

Vegas on Acid

Drove out to Vegas for a few days and decided to stop in the tiny town of Baker for gas. It's at the confluence of Death Valley, the Mojave desert and Joshua tree national park. Everywhere you glance looks like an album cover.

With a permanent population of 65 and home to the world's largest thermometer I wasn't sure what to expect.

The thermometer was more of a tall billboard.


What it lacked in nightlife it more than made up for in creepy abandoned gas stations...




And jerky stores that sold either:


Jerky made from aliens
Jerky marketed to aliens
or Jerky marketed to people who like a little conspiracy with their dried beef.

By the time we got to Vegas I was just happy to see other people.


The Paris hotel has a replica of the Eiffel tower. It's just like the real Paris but smaller and cheaper. ..Awesome...

We saw this sign and thought it would be a good place the start.



Then we saw a midget dressed as a leprechaun pouring shots at the bar and decided this would be a good place to stay for a while.


So we did.

Soft Places

My annual pilgrimage to Los Angeles continues:

Yesterday we had breakfast at the house of one of my Dad's friends. On the way up we passed homes owned by Jim Carey, Cindy Crawford and Bill Cosby. Further up the road was Arnold Schwarzenegger's house. It's an Ok neighborhood.

One entire side of the house is glass. It looks out over Beverly Hills and the ocean. It's amazing.

The first place I wanted to go was the recently re-opened Getty Villa. Built by the estate of oil tycoon John Paul Getty, the Villa is an exact replica of a large Roman country house located on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius.

When Vesuvius erupted in 79AD the entire city, its contents and inhabitants were freeze dried in ash and rock. 1700 years later the site was excavated and a perfect time capsule of the lives of the Romans was opened. Getty recreated the Villa in Malibu to house all the Roman antiquities that he had collected because he felt that they should be displayed in an environment of their time rather than in a museum. He was obsessive about every detail of the building.

The steep road up to the villa is paved in the same wide paving stones that wheels of Roman carts would have rolled on. It shook the car like an earthquake and made us slow to a crawl.

As we walked up the stairs to the Villa, a pair of WW2 fighter planes buzzed way too low over our heads. Logically, I know they must have been on their way to an air show but they still added to the strangeness of the place. It felt like we had come loose in time and were falling backwards.

The building an its contents were astounding. Frescoes, murals, statues, pottery, silver, gold and glass.















Leaving the Villa the car accelerated down the hill and over the cobblestones again. It shook louder and louder as we hopelessly tried to out run a wave of molten rock. The lava melted the tires and flowed over the car. I relaxed in my seat and looked up just as it melted through the roof.