California

The Bay Area

We arrived in the San Francisco South of Market district Monday night and explored the area the next couple days.  Like any good Asian tourists, we visit Stanford's campus in Palo Alto.  They have good sculptures on campus and not wtf-huge-unsightly-orange-eyesores-of-modern-art-in-front-of-Angell-Hall.  

Gates of Hell.  The metal make a loud popping sound during the middle of the day as it expands.

We visited the Fisherman's Wharf.  Dan got pulled into a street performance.  We stumped the servers at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. on Forrest Gump trivia.  We got way too much entertainment laughing at the sea lions.

That's what you get for sitting front and center.

Other activities included hanging out and grabbing lunch at Facebook in Palo Alto, awkwardly loitering around Google IO, and Asian-ing it up in Chinatown and Japantown.  

Fun fact: spellcheck recognizes "Chinatown" but "Japantown" gets the red underline.

Coastal driving

It's pretty.  It's obnoxious.  Factoring in traffic, it was about nine hours of driving from Palo Alto to LA.  Driving was long stretches of winding, two-lane roads with scenic vista points scattered every other mile.  It also involved getting stuck behind and tailgating a black Honda going under 50MPH for a good two hours.  It wasn't until we got to a traffic light that we finally had two lanes.  Michael took a picture of her as we pulled up next to her.

LA

Lots of palm trees, lots of smog, lots of small mom-and-pop taquerias.  We visited Hollywood.  We were all pretty much road trip'd out at that point so we wrapped things up pretty early.

Today

San Diego in a few hours.

The Final Boss

We've been driving a lot on this trip, some of it easy, some of it hard. There's been rain and snow, plains and hills, sun and clouds and every type of mountain/river trail I thought possible. But the final boss, the last stretch, the worst driving we've seen and will see on this trip is California. Whether you're talking winding mountain roads, terrible weather, weaving traffic, or extortionist - we've encountered that in California. And not only that, but we've hit all of it at the same time.

It's like we've been leveling up the entire trip, 6% downhill grades in Idaho, mountainous climbs in Montana, rain and snow in Wyoming, hills and plain in Kansas, rushing traffic in Chicago. But now, the final boss. Wish us luck because we don't have repeats.

Addendum to Dan's post

Japadog.  If ninjas and Godzilla ate hotdogs, they'd eat them with kimchi.

"oh shi..."

Korean BBQ. Dan was the only white guy in the whole place.

Vancouver, Seattle, etc.

Cool things from the past few days:

Japadog.  I mean seriously, Japadog.  A portmanteau of Japan and hotdog.  It was a little street cart serving hot dogs and bratwursts with Japanese food (okonomi, kimchi, etc.) on top.  Served with traditional Japanese cheeriness, coupled with modern Japanese ridonkadonk.  :3

Aquarium, where Michael destroys marine life.

Setting:  Inside a dark booth in which we can view glowing fish from the depths of the ocean.


Dan:  "Your flash is off, right?"
Michael:  "Yeah."
Camera flashes.
Michael:  "Fuck!"

We were able to notice the tremendously huge pupils designed to pick up on the modicum of light available at that depth.  Those fish are probably blind if not dead by now.  Yep.

Bars/Clubs.  All the white people got excited and sang along and all the Asian people got confused when they played Journey.

And, holy shit, city life be expensive.  I think I spent $80 one night or so, and $60 on the other.

Annnnnnd we still haven't let go of the tipping/food poisoning/entering sort of before the restaurant closes incident.

I'll leave it to them for pictures.  Like of Japadog.  And the fish we killed.

So much for not imposing.

Well, we finally made it to the west coast.  Several mountain ranges, several stretches of great nothingness, several states in which there is nothing to eat besides McDonalds, and one town that Sheldon considered moving to later, we made it.

Unfortunately my passport isn't here yet, which means we couldn't go with Plan A and go to Vancouver.  Our Plan B or C would involve crashing with either a student Dan TAed for or a friend Michael TAed for.  More specifically Dan called AnnieJae and made specific arrangements to stay with her, then texted her a bit later saying "oh we're not doing that by the way."  So Plan C moreso just involved sort of hanging out with Michael's friend and roommate long enough that they couldn't really kick us out.  "Sure you guys can stay here just don't throw up everywhere" it pretty much came down to.  Randy asked for extra blankets and took one of Jordan's, so as not to impose too much.

Change scenes to a restaurant that we arrived at at 9:40 and closes at 10:30.  Michael feels completely awful about this because we arrived there just at closing time and ruined the poor waitress' evening.  Randy is irked by how visibly rude the waitress is as she tries to rush us out.  Michael tips 35%, Randy tips 15% and Dan tips 20%.  This exposes a great philosophical rift between us.  Michael, who had a part time job in food services once, experiences great empathy for the plight of the proletariat and feels it is completely out of line to arrive at a restaurant I guess within a full hour before closing time, on the off-chance that we would become the last patrons (we weren't).  He even went out of his way to ask "When Safeway closes, because I don't know when things close around here (hint hint)" in sort of the same passive manner as when I felt it was necessary for the barber to know I am going to work for Bloomberg in New York before cutting my hair.  (What do financial software developers wear, as opposed to Microsoft software developers?)  Randy meanwhile believes that as "service jobs are supposed to be shitty," we should make no effort whatsoever to treat the waitress as a human being, as after all she's the one who chose not to go get an MBA.  In fact, by treating her poorly we are encouraging her to move out of the service industry, thereby doing her a favor.  All the more reason to tip poorly.  Capitalism is a lovely system.

Scene three.  Guess who got food poisoning!

And Michael vomited all the fuck over the toilet, sink, bathtub, door, floor, ceiling, walls -- yep, no exaggeration.  The great "Howwwwwwwwwww!?" moment.  At least Grace (Michael) was nice enough to clean up half or so of it.  Unfortunately, our gracious host woke up to shower before Michael arrived to finish the mess, and noticed the vomit...  everywhere, including the stench of it permeating through the bathroom as he took his shower.

Much as school shootings infuriate both pro-gun and anti-gun groups who feel the incident can be blamed on the lack of guns for protection or the availability of guns for murders respectively, both Michael and Randy are convinced that the food poisoning indicates they were right.  Michael is convinced you should definitely not arrive at a restaurant that late without informing them you are going to tip 35% before they prepare your food, while Randy is convinced asshole waitress' shouldn't actually be tipped at all.


And, so much for not imposing.

Pacific Time

hello thar

We made it to the West Coast.  Suck it, Oregon Trail.

We spent Tuesday looking at Wyoming and driving through Montana and Idaho, which are even more in-the-way states than Indiana was.  I'm no Thoreau so I'll spare you and simply say that area is fucking beautiful.  However, regardless of how pretty those mountains are, driving through poorly lit mountain roads at night gets really boring really quickly, especially at night.

Yellowstone was cold and snowy.  We weren't prepared.  Several of the roads were closed in the area.  BUT HOLY TAP DANCING JESUS ON A STICK THERE WE SAW BEARS.  YES.

You brought back 200 pounds of food from hunting.

If I was a dragon, I'd live here.

Presently we're stuck in the US and not visiting Vancouver, BC because Dan's passport didn't make it to Seattle in time.  We were assholes and decided to crash with some Microsoft interns for the night.

-R

Onward!

Greetings from Boulder, CO

(Actually, we're in Wyoming right now)
More later.

'Murrrica.

Dan here.  Basically, the middle of our road trip has devolved into the following routine:

Step 1:  Arrive at new city (St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver)
Step 2:  Spend an hour or two debating what to do there.
Step 3:  Realize we would rather be in Vancouver (bonus point if you can guess why) or California.
Step 4:  Drive to the next city.

Of course if we saw this coming we might have planned our trip so that it didn't actually involve stops through several cities in Jesusland, but sunk costs are sunk costs!  And now we are in the lovely little yay college towns of Boulder, Colorado.

To determine whether a city is worth visiting we have devised a tool known as the Hick quotient.  To calculate the Hick quotient, look up the percent Asian a city is and multiply by 1.  Call this result H_prev.  Then drive to the city with two Asians, and recalculate the percent Asian.  Call this result H_new.  The Hick quotient, H, is H_new/H_prev.  If it ain't 1, then you will be pointed at and gossiped about by a family of beachballs in every McDonald's, Denny's or Trader Joe's (ha!  just kidding.  There are no Trader Joe's out here.) you stop at.

Of course another popular method is the Murrica quotient:  go to the local Barnes and Noble, count the number of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and general Tea Party propaganda books, and divide by the number of liberal books.  If this was not legal (outside of projective space for the math geeks i.e. Andrew (yes i.e.))  then you are in 'Murrrica and should probably leave.

Driving from eastern Kansas to western Kansas involves the billboards changing from "Lion's Den Adult Superstore" to hotel advertisements.  Because why the heck would anyone ever drive through here if they weren't planning on using hotels.  The driving doesn't really get more monotonous at this point, which leads to Randy complaining about how when he's doing monotonous drives he goes crazy and sees things that aren't there, by which he means things that actually are there.  Like tumbleweeds and bunny rabbits.  But seriously, tumbleweeds.  The solution was for Dan to drink coffee so Randy can stay awake.  Figure that one out.

Anyway we need to pack and leave so Randy stop blogging I'm posting this right now go pack bye.

We've hit tumbleweeds.  It's weird.

rules and early lessons

Hallo

"Oh em gee this is so freaking cool.  We're going on a roadtrip!"

I haven't had that much sleep the last two days and it's finally really catching up so I'll try to get through this as quickly as possible.

After some delayed packing, drawn out goodbye(s), and some expected dillydallying, we finally departed today at 1:45PM only to have me first double check for my glasses, second time grab gum and camera, and third notepad.

I'm happy(?) to say that this blog will live up to expectations of the title after all. We departed from Ann Arbor this morning.

Unfortunately we forget stuff.  Presently I'm not sure if I brought my shoes along (probably should've did take four).  Michael doesn't know if he brought along this bag with toothbrush and assorted toiletries, and Dan left his passport at home.  The passport might make getting into VanCouver somewhat tricky.  Current plan is now to have someone mail the passport to Seattle so Dan can pick it up in Seattle before we cross the border.

Upon arriving in the car, Dan immediately details a set of rules:

1.  Driving -- take it seriously, we've got thousands of miles to go.  Moments later Dan manages to spill BTB all over the seat and his shorts.  He changes his pants in a parking lot.  We are still in Ann Arbor
   
2.  He who drives controls the radio.  This means Dan flips through the radio until he finds a country station then listens for a few minutes commenting that he's listening to be ironic.  I find the top 40 stations, Spanish talk station just outside of Chicago, and the classic rock station until Dan starts singing.  Michael didn't really drive today.
3. Under 85MPH.  Out of state license plates attract more speeding tickets and we sure as hell aren't going to have time to contest them so we'll be stuck paying.
4. Michael must shower daily.  To quote Dan "it's like jacking off in the shower, sure you can clean it up and no one knows, but it's still wrong"

I am easily frustrated by bad drivers on the freeway when I have not had a lot of sleep.  This means that I am constantly cursing for the full forty five minutes that we have to cut through the state of Indiana.  The state of Indiana sucks.

We arrived at Lincoln Park in Chicago around 6:30 Central Time.  We met up with Jordan Bradley, Matt Morlock and several of their friends at b dubs for dinner.  Within a few minutes, Dan had his water privileges revoked.  Another spill.

Lessons learned today:

1. Look before you s(h)it.  Dan sends Michael a text "Need favor.  Ask for toilet paper and bring it to me in bathroom.  There's just one stall and I'm kind of fucked."
2. Hold your BTB box the right way.  Upside down = spill.

I think we've figured out our trip.  It'll be about 4000 miles and about three straight days of driving split three ways.  Good thing I bought pokemon along.

Time to get going and go out.  Hopefully we can actually get into bars with Dan being under 21...

R

ps In case you haven't noticed, the blog post times are going to be posted in Pacific time.

pps We've also been updating http://twitter.com/drm_roadtrip with the things that happen along the trip.  

An Introduction

Greetings, 你好, 안녕, printf("hello"), etc.

I'm a sarcastic, obnoxious, and somewhat lost 22-year-old that just completed his undergraduate degree in computer science after four years at the University of Michigan. I have an unhealthy obsession of dinosaurs, kimchi, and lamps. I love music, frisbee, food, and any pretentious bullshit that makes me better than you.

I am taking a road trip out to San Diego with two of my University friends, Michael and Dan. Michael and I are going to be working in San Diego this summer. Dan is just bored. We began actually planning this trip about a week ago, and quickly realized that by the end of the trip it's quite likely we'll all just end up killing each other. A betting pool is going around that Dan will be the first to go, thus inspiring the name of this blog.

We rewind about six months or so. The three of us are overwhelmed with exams and projects and my life is an absolute mess. Dan proposes a trip to Asia in May. It's a fun and happy thought that we entertain for a while. March and April roll around, and we suddenly find ourselves too lazy to follow through with the trip. Lame. I am determined that I definitely needed a trip before I started working for the summer. After convincing some crazy Asian parents, we settle on the idea of a Journey to the West. Sun Wukun style, but not really.

The current plan is to swing through Chicago to St. Louis to Boulder to Vancouver, and all the way down to San Diego; making several stops as desired along the way. It's hardly the fastest way to get there, but it should be a good time. The criterion used to decide our stops is a holistic scale considering how "hickish" the area is, how the weather is, how much out of the way it is, is it Seattle, and the statistic wikipedia gives us about regarding percentage of Asians in the area. For Dan's sake I should clarify that the last category is so Michael and I don't die in the Amurrrica part of this country that we'll be driving through. Yes, that sounds good.

I'm presently in the process of packing stuff and getting my shit together for the summer. To be quite honest, I really wish I had a few extra weeks for the trip. With graduation and people leaving and everything else that's going on, things are coming down way too fast; I'm not ready at all. Thursday is the absolute latest Dan is willing to leave, Michael and I are perfectly content leaving slightly later. So we're leaving Thursday.

Assuming our cameras and laptop don't get eaten by bears along the way, we'll hopefully be posting photos and entries along the entire journey.

I'm in Livonia for the evening and should get back to hanging out with the brother. So I'm off for now.

Cheers,

Randy