Home?

I am currently sitting in the living room of the house I was raised in Los Molinos, California. It no longer feels like home, after the separation of my parents, and all the time I have been away doing my own thing.

The first week of October 2013 I quit my job, yet again to go on a journey and hopefully make a bit of coin before trekking out on a big trip again. But that didn’t quite all happen. My fortune never came, but the travels did. Once again my bank account was nearly drained while I traveled at a fast past never looking back. I had a blast. Did a little bit of work which makes me feel a bit better about everything. I was able to go and see friends I hadn’t seen in quite some time which is incredibly awesome. And my mind and body was refreshed after spending a bit of time on the road again. I feel great.

I rode my Motorcycle all the way to Los Molinos, CA from Las Vegas Nevada. After kicking around the 530 for a few weeks I decided to take a trip up to Seattle via trains and give my friends Brad and Brien a visit, which turned out to be very successful. And then after a few days in Seattle I took off south again towards Oakland to make it to an awesome Show where I got to see F.I.D. and Magrudergrind, Slight Slappers, Transient, Despise You, and many other awesome bands. It was well worth the money to go and check out these bands.

 

And now here I am sitting in my “home”.  I wanted to make a small post though, update on some things in my life.  Here is what is new.

 

Currently I am in the middle of figuring things out. The plan is to head off back to Vegas next week, work for a about two months, and head to Germany in Mid January for a minute to get tattooed, as well as revisit old friends I don’t get the chance to see very much.

 

That’s really as far as I have things planned. Who know how much of that will work out. Things always work out for me though.

Hopefully I will be able to write a bit more when I get back to vegas, and share some pictures as well.

Back In Vegas

It seems it’s been since September that I posted last. I was hoping I was staying in Boston but I was just unable to get another job. So when the end of October and I still had nothing reliable I took off again. Pat’s father was kind enough to purchase me a plane ticket out to Chicago and arranged a ride for me out to Oregon, Il so that I could take care of my legal issue. So currently my name is all clear! After court I headed back into Chicago to meet up with some friends in Wicker Park to start our journey across the states out to Seattle.

What a journey it was. Day one started out just walking from Chicago up to Bensonville. After a day and a half sitting around, eating, and flyin a sign we hopped a train and ended up in Milwaukee. The city wasn’t really so bad, seems like it would be pretty cool to visit, but it was pretty much impossible to get out of. We spent Halloween there sitting at the hop out waiting for some train going any direction to stop, but none did. We ended up walking out and making our way up to Portage to catch a train. The farther north we went the colder it was getting, but we hadn’t seen anything yet.

From Portage we caught a train going west, which took us to St. Paul. Just outside of LaCrosse though our train stopped for some unknown reason and we saw someone walking towards us so we hid. The man walked by, and then walked back again and jumped on the car we were on. Of course. Turns out he didn’t even see us, he was just out fixing an issue and wanted to catch a ride back to the front of the train. He told us where we were going, and gave us a few other tips. Nice fellow, and didn’t kick us off! Twin Cities was pretty laid back as well, but we didn’t really want to mess around in the yards the. My friends told me a horror story of being humped in the Minnie yard, not really our idea of fun, so we walked out and headed to Wilmar.

What a town. People seemed fairly friendly. We camped out the first night, and then the second night we tried to jump a train but ended up getting pulled off by police before the train even left because a worker had seen us. The cops were really cool though, once our names came back they offered to drive us to a save place to sleep which was located near the split by the track for south and west, told us which was which, and then gave us ten bucks!  The next day after an awesome lunch at a China Buffet we headed back to the yard to a new spot, squatted a shed for the night and ended up getting out in the morning. We ended up on a train for quite a while, I’m not sure how many hours. Maybe 15? We were trying to get to Fargo, North Dakota.  Around 10pm we took a turn South though on some lake, we didn’t really give it much notice though, not like we could do anything anyways.  It started raining shortly after, and the temperature dropped, and then the rain turned into a light snow, and the temperature dropped again. I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in my life.

The train finally stopped. We could see a small town about 2 miles away. We made it to Fargo…or so we thought. We decided to hop off to find shelter instead of waiting for the train to roll all the way into town. We were next to a grainery. The dogs were loving the snow, but we hated it. So cold. It wasn’t until the next day we found out the temperature was around -4 degrees F. At first we took refuge in an unlocked semi truck, but there wasn’t really room to sleep with three people and three dogs. So myself and one of the others hopped out to find a better place, with more room. The electrical room was unlocked and was a million times warmer than it was outside, so we all piled in there and played some motha fuckin dice and cooked some mothafuckin food. haha.

When we were looking around at some of the loose paperwork though, we discovered we were in Aberdeen, South Dakota , not Fargo. After charger my phone up, I was able to confirm we were in fact, in SD. Awesome.

We managed to get a hotel for a couple nights to avoid the cold front, and when we left the hotel the temperature was at a whopping 34 degrees! Thankfully we were able to get on another train that night. It didn’t go far though, and ended up siding out for about 24 hours. While it was stopped we cracked a boxcar to get in and avoid the weather. Late that night the train aired up! We were going again, but nothing happened, and then a crew member walked by and poked his head in and shined a light at us. Told us to get out of the boxcar.

Fantastic, here we are, in the middle of nowhere South Dakota, the nearest town was 30 miles away. It’s freezing outside, and our only way out was about to leave us behind. But then the crew member walked back to us and told us where the train was going and that after he turned his back from us he didn’t car what we did as long as he didn’t see us. So we jumped back on. Another few hours later we were in a new town called Thunderhawk I think. Up in North Dakota. Small town it was. But friendly. Thankfully we were able to catch another train out of this town after a full day of nothing.

This train took us all the way into Laurel, Montana. Shortly before we rolled into Laurel, I jumped onto the pusher unit, because there was no room to hide.  Durring an inspection a worker came on. I was hiding in the bathroom. Of course he decided to check it. I was kicked off. Shortly after my friends were kicked off. I hadn’t told them I was kicked off the unit though, and they got the idea to jump on it, and shortly after got kicked off as well, and nearly arrested! Thankfully they didn’t.

To skip over some lame events, we split ways the following day after disagreements. I went back into Billings, and while there someone purchased me a bus ticket all the way to Seattle. Sure thing!

I spent about a week and a half in Seattle, Including my 21st birthday, which happened to be on Thanksgiving day. My friends room mates cooked up a good vegan dinner which was tasty and just gave me something to do and people to chill with. Couldn’t be happier with that.  I tried to hitch hike out the first day, but had no luck. I ended up meeting up with my friend Kearston who I had met earlier in the year out in Boston.  She invited me over to where she was staying to have some coffee or something. I ended up crashing for the night. She was staying at the FBK house, where I just found out she is now living at permantly.  All the people there were pretty cool, very friendly, and helpful. Danny gave me some good info on hopping a train out of Seattle. It took me three days, but I finally got on a train going south. It took me to Portland before it turned east to go to Chicago.

My friend from German class had said whenever I made it to town I could crash on her couch for a night. So I called her up and she was ready for me. She made me dinner and we talked for a bit. In the morning she had work, and I took off to try and get another train out of town. After a hearty breakfast I walked to where I had jumped off my train hoping to catch another southbound there. Sure enough, after about an hour I was able to catch one. I was on this next train for a full 24 hours before it stopped just outside of my hometown. It’s very odd riding a train through the area I grew up in . But very awesome. I called up my brother to pick up and he did so.

After a bit of visiting with friends and family for a day or two, I headed up to Grass Valley to see some more friends and hang out with my friend Karl, who’s house I ended up crashing at. In the morning I caught a ride to Auburn, and then another ride to Sacramento to visit with my Grandma. And after a few hours with my Grandma, I met up with some high school friends who lived in Sac. Crashed with them for two nights and had a blast! It’s always good to see old friends. I ended up hitch hiking as far south as The Bay Area, before I got tired of waiting for people to stop, and I just took public transportation into Santa Cruz. After a few hours on the bus, bart and more busses I was in SC. Met up with my homies and had a good ol’ time as usual.  After two days I met up with some other punk and travelers, one of which joined up with me to head south to LA. We took HWY 1 south through Big Sur. It was a beautiful drive.

Hitching the one is an interesting experience to. I’ve never seen so many other people trying to catch rides, when someone does stop it’s usually a short distance. So it’s constantly passing familiar faces again and again. Almost like a race. After a few rides we met up with some people we had met in Santa Cruz and hung out with them for a bit. Some construction workers that were building a new bridge along the coast called us over to share some beers and have a good time. They were crazy, but really awesome folk. We ended up staying a few hours, cooked some food, and parted ways late to find a camp ground we could sneak onto instead of searching for a safe place off the road to sleep.

In the morning we separated in to two groups of two to better our chances of getting rides. After about two hours of nothing we joined together again and somehow managed a ride all the way to Hollywood! The guy who picked us up was incredibly awesome to.

Derek and I had a blast once we found our way onto Hollywood Blvd. Saw some crazy things, met some crazy people, hung out with a guy chillin in a trashcan, sold some weed, met up with a friend of his on total accident. And were housed up by a sex freak that wanted his nuts. Thankfully she got to drunk and passed out, we were able to leave in the morning with out waking her.

We were supposed to be on Jay Leno, but we woke up to late, so that didn’t happen. Oh well. We headed off to Venice beach where we met up with one of his old Road dogs, ate some shitty food, and enjoyed the night. We ended up House Of Ink as extras. Derek was supposed to get a tattoo but had no ID so they just used us to joke and laugh about on air. It was exciting though. When it started raining and we had to find a dry place to sleep. Thankfully we did, and we slept good.  The next day we met up with some other travelers who had just finished there trim season up in Mendocino and had bought a bad ass van. They gave us a ride up to the Boardwalk. I stayed a couple hours and then took off to try and find my way to Vegas. Only after being apart of  the Venice Beach Freakshow parade.

I ended up taking a bus all the way to Union Station where I was hoping to take a bus all the way to Vegas, but they wouldn’t accept cash. My sister was awesome enough to find another bus, and paid for the ticket for me with the promise that I would pay her back once I got a job.

And now I’m in Vegas. Enjoying life on the inside. Showering every day, I have new clothes instead of the same pair I wore all year long. And On the Job Hunt.  Enjoy some photos.

More Travel

It’s been quite a while since I have had a chance to update this thing. I have gone many thousands of miles, through hundreds of dollars, and met countless amazing/helpful, and I am sad to say rude/mean people along the way! But everything that has happened has brought me to where I am currently, and everything that will happen will bring to where I hope to be in the next month. Currently I am sitting in the basement of a nice house in Ft. Collins, Colorado. I met a girl online a while back and she offered to put me up for a few nights which I am extremely grateful of. There is so much to say, and really not enough time, nor patience on my part to type all of it up, so I am just going to summarize.

I finally made it back to California. Some memorable locations that I stopped at were Memphis, Tennessee, Las Vegas, Nevada, Santa Cruz, California, Portland Oregon, Salt Lake CIty, Utah (for bad reasons), The Dalles Oregon, Denver, Colorado, Ft. Collins, Colorado, Raleigh, North Carolina, and probably some others that I am currently forgetting. I met some great people in all of those places, with the exception of Salt Lake City, which I hated with a passion. I’m not going to complain to much about that. I have found places to stay along the way, most people who have been picking me up lately offer me a place to stay, or at least feed me or give a little bit of cash to help me out along the way, and I couldn’t be more grateful for all the hospitality that has come my way in the last 4 months.

Hitch hiking is beginning to bore me a bit, especially with all my issues with the law and just standing around time. And I guess the being along part is kind of starting to annoy me quite a bit as well. But I met a girl in The Dalles, Oregon who was a train hopper, he was super cool, and gave me some reading on train hopping, and said she wanted to meet up along the way, and it looks like that time is in the next few days! Hopefully just another day or two of hitch hiking and then I am gonna be on my first freight train to satan only knows where.

As far as finances goes, I have roughly 400 dollars left, give or take a few. I have resorted to flying signs to help supplement my lifestyle, mostly just be able to get food, but I am finding out that is rather difficult to make decent money at, the police keep telling me I can’t do it where ever I decide to fly my signs. But I have made a little bit of money doing so. Thank you to everyone who has helped me out, and anyone who may help me out as well.  My plans are to open a new bank account as soon as I make enough money on the streets. My current account I can not deposit money into, because it’s only located in central California and no where else in the USA. I’m considering an account at Chase, they are everywhere, and all the money I make on the streets I can just deposit into my account. I don’t like carrying cash to much, because there is always that risk that I am going to get robbed, at least if my money is on a plastic debit card, I can have it deactivated and usually refunded by the bank if it’s not to much.

 

That’s all I have to say for now. I will update again whenever I have a chance and some more time, and with pictures, you better know I have a lot of awesome pictures. And my beard is looking fierce!!!

East Coast Life

As I said last time, I am enjoying myself quite a bit. The east coast is quite a bit different, especially the police. I’ll get to that later though. I finished up my time in Boston. My friend Pat and I went to New York City for the weekend, we took the Fung Wah bus from Boston to NYC. It was 30 bucks round trip for each of us, not to bad. We arrived in NYC Friday morning about 2am, it was a bit cold, and we had no where to go. So we started walking around the city trying to figure out exactly where we were. Around 5:45am we found a Starbucks in Times Square that was open, got our coffee on, and some how ended up at the Good Morning America set, so we waited around for about 2 hours and got on TV together, that was pretty cool. I called my mom at 6:30am, or 3:30am California time to tell her she should watch. She was pretty excited about that.

After we got our fifteen seconds of fame we headed off to Central Park and took a really nice nap together. It’s amazing how much warmer it was in the park than it as in the city, and not windy at all!! those high rise buildings create a nasty draft, lol.  I’m not sure how long we slept, but when we woke up, things got a little steamy between, us, haha, dangerously steamy. What evers though. We walked around the city a bit more, checked out some shops, got some cool pictures and enjoyed some good food. Then I called up a friend who invited us to hang out with him at a shop he worked at. It was so strange, because it turned out to be one of the shops Brian Decker worked out of, which is who we were going to see the following day. Strange, but we enjoyed it and got some good relaxation time in. A few hours later we took off, and got some Chipotle for dinner. We ended up taking a train and a bus out to the Airport. We had no where to go, so we just crashed in the baggage claim area, no one bothered us. It was a bit cold, but way more comfortable than sleeping out in the streets.

The next day was a big day for me, we woke up, grabbed some breakfast at a place in the airport and took a train into Brooklyn. That’s a funny place, a lot dirtier looking than NYC, and full of hipsters, especially in Williamsburg. They were everywhere, i couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Fast forward a bit though, and it’s 4pm!! We walked over to Pure Body Arts to meet Brian for my appointment.

When we got there he was still finishing up with another client. Around 5pm he was done, washed up and called me in. He prepared all of his tools, and luckily had a spare piece of jewelry laying around, because the piece I had ordered was entirely to short.  I laid down, he marked me up, cleaned my face, and we started. I’m not going to bother explain the procedure, but it was not to most pleasant experience pain wise, and I did scream and moan a bit, which is normal for me. It wasn’t as bad as i made it sound, that’s just how I deal with pain. After about two or three minutes though, the jewelry was inserted, and I had a 7/1ths inch oval labret!!! Very exciting, and life changing.Pictures below.

We headed straight for the bus station after that, because again, we did not have a place to stay, so we figured we’d head back to Boston and stay at his house for the night. We got back to boston around 11pm, and thankfully his dad could pick us up, because we missed the train. No biggy. We slept so good, and stayed in bed all day te following day, lol. we were pooped from all that walking the days before. I left his house for Boston sunday night, slept in the Airport again, and took off for Baltimore Monday morning. To make things short and simple, because I’m getting sleepy and tired of typing at this point, it took me 24 hours to hitch hike from Boston to Baltimore. it wouldn’t have taken me that much time to go 400ish miles on the west coast. I nearly got arrested three times just for hitch hiking, once in Twice in Rhode island, and once in Conneticut. I finished up my time hitch hiking at truck stops and was able to make it to a town about 20 miles away from Baltimore. The trucker was nice, but an idiot, he dropped me off along the interstate so i had to walk back off of it. I was just going to take a bus or train from that town, but the next ones left hours and hours later!!! So i raised my thumb and in a few minutes I had a ride straight to Baltimore where I met up with my friend from Iam.bmezine.com, Dale. And we’ve been kicking it since. I’ll be taking off for North Carolina on Sunday, because I was talking into waiting to see a show here in Maryland on Saturday night.

Enjoy the pictures so far!!

 

Screw Promises To People Who Don’t Care

Am I right? I promised my current employer that I would stay with the company for a year if they took me on again (mind you, I have been with them for 2.5 years, they just wanted me to stay at their store). I said sure, no problem. Since I have made that choice, I have become depressed at times, angry, and just longing to travel more than ever. I feel like a caged animal unable to explore the world around me. I hitch hike to keep the travel bug at bay when I have the time, mainly on my weekends. But it’s to much now, my position is being changed, someone I don’t like a work, with much less experience than me is being put in my current position, and I am being put as the main guy behind the counter. Same pay rate, so it’s not all bad. But the numbers they will be expecting is outrageous, and my assistant manager is even worried about these expected changes, saying, and I quote “I am going to be updating my resume and cover letters real soon”. He is just as nervous about all this as I am. He knows it won’t happen the way the big wigs see it happening. He knows two thousand dollar sale increases a week do not just happen over night, or with a position change. He even told me if a better opportunity came along, he would probably take it at this point, which to me says he cares about as much as I do about this job. It’s just a pay until we can do what we actually want to do.

That kind of leads me into this next bit.  On Tuesday I am flying out to Boston, MA to check out the East Coast and just hang out. The last two weeks I have been contemplating just not getting back on my flight to California to just stay over there. What’s better is a guy on Couchsurfing.org was talking about hitch hiking from NY to CA around the same time. The way the gears in my head are turning, is that I should just stay, kick it for a while, and then do a cross country hitch hiking trip, which is what I have been dreaming of since I got back from Europe. The only thing holding me back in my lame job that doesn’t seem to care about me or anything I do. To drop a few quotes from one of my favourite songs and bands :

“ So today I’m gonna rise up with sun, complete the goals I’ve set and move on to the next. I’m so young there’s no reason to run. But everyday, this nine to five destroys all my thoughts. This lake I’ve been swimming in is stagnant. I’m fishing for disaster, and I’m the fucking bait. My hard work means nothing to them, my efforts gone to waste. And I’m so sick, you should be too; Our blood and our sweat means more than this paycheck” -Set It Straight, Hourglass

I’m not going to bother giving my interpretation of this, I think it speaks for itself, and it is exactly how I feel.

That’s basically what’s up with me lately, aside from moving into a new place finally, it’s much better, I’m not on the lease, so leaving is not an issue either here, but I would pay up a couple month’s rent before I left. I’m not an asshole like that, especially to my friends.

This last weekend a friend of mine, Matt, hitch hiked with me. It was his first time, and my first time hitch hiking with a friend, a very new and exciting experience. He met up with me in a chico and together we tramped on up to Grass Valley. After being stuck in Oroville and singing our favorite songs to the dark sky of the night together for quite a while, we finally got picked up and taken to Grass Valley. In the morning we hit the skatepark and eventually decided to go to Reno, NV. What a blast, my first time hitching outside of California (aside from Europe). The trip was pretty smooth and easy. My sister picked us up. I met up with my older brother for the first time in like 6 or 7 years in addition to that, I met his daughters, my nieces for the first time!! They are really cute. It was a good reunion. Now that I know how easy it is to get there, I’ll probably visit a few times a year. If I’m around that is.  That’s pretty much. Good times. Here’s a few pictures.