The Agrinautica

   As mentioned, the weekend before last I went on an epic expedition down to Las Vegas. This shall be that story, or at least, what I remember of it a week later.

   Kristy Sashie, C-Bunch and I left Davis on Friday morning and drove down the Five to the remote village of Fireball (167 miles, 3 hours).
   Now the town of Fireball, it has two stop-lights, a "Latino Market," a grocery store / police station, lions, and our friend Lyrakeet's house (turn right at the glowing pile of radioactive sand). There we transfered our stuffage into Lyrakeet's car, as it was bigger, & continued on our journey with her.
   From Fireball to Vegas is a distance of appx 436 miles (8.5 hours). We made a pit stop in Bakersfield, which is shockingly ghetto, watched in wonderment as the strange sights of the Mojave Spaceport passed by, and stopped at some gas station town that probably doesn't have a name, but does have a restaurant called The Mad Greek (or something) which is advertised for more than a 100 miles in either direction. There was also a Subway Sandwiches there at which we ate, which had telephones at every table.

   Arriving in Vegas we occupied our hotelrooms and commenced the merrymaking forthwith. We then went out to the strip with the people from the other car and marauded.
   At one point early on, apparently, Brittawater Segerstrom & Julie Parker went to get coffee, saying they'd be right back (as people always do in horror movies). Someone else told them we'd wait for them right there. Then the whole group moved on and left them (I was not aware of this). Later, when we got to the other end of the Strip, Olivia informed Colleen that she "didn't like [her]." The personnel from our car, + Colleen, then headed back towards the hotel.
   Back at the hotel several of us got in the hot tub, despite our lack of towels. C-Bunch & I had to resort to more innovative ways of getting warm afterwords. Eventually Brittawater & Julie returned.

   During the ensuing days we set off for adventure regularly and without such dramatic results. We visited the cultural sites, admired the art, observed the flora & fauna, picked up some souviniers, and found more lions.

   On Monday morning we embarked upon the epic drive back. We stopped to eat at the Mad Greek restaurant -- and the employees there couldn't even pronounce "gyro" correctly!! wtf. Exchanged cars in Fireball, took a detour to Pleasanton to pick up Bailey, & returned to Davis. (Worked the next day, & the day after that school resumed & I flew to Los Angeles for my next adventures)

Picture of the Day

In the spirit of Spring Break

   A lot has happened since last I had time to make an lj entry. Specifically, I spent 11 hours on a train returning to Davis, and then five days in Tahoe ("Taheezie") with Kristy and her friends.


The Truth About Rudolph
   Before I even left OC however, I was greeted upon egressing my car one day by local entrepreneur (circa 7 years of age?) Andrew, who asked me if I believed in Rudolph. "Of Course" I replied, to which he responded "I don't, no way his nose could glow like that!" (but flying ain't a problem?) "Maybe he is radioactive?" "How would he get radioactive?" "Maybe he grew up next to San Onofre (local nuclear power plant) ... or you know what else could make his nose glow red -- he could be an alcoholic!"


New Years 2004/5
   Returned to Davis 18 hours before scheduled departure for Taheezie. Next day 13 of us set out for a cabin in the snowie locality of "South Tahoe Keys" or something like that. Whereas last year our similar expedition was to an actual cabin in the mountains of south tahoe (well with neighbours every few hundred feet), this time we were in an area of tightly packed "cabins" suburb style with frozen-over boating waterways. Snow was a few feet thick but not as stormy as last time.
   For those who are interested, the cast of this adventure included Nizzle, Muffin, Sashie, Colleen, Little Colleen, Coleman, Coleman's girlfriend, a girl I can't tell apart from Colemans girlfriend, Olivia (pygmypeach81), this tall strongsauce guy David, one of the Amandas, Kwisty and myself and maybe other people I'm forgetting. Of the three bedrooms, the two upstairs had only two and four persons, respectively, in them, and the downstairs bedroom was filled with remaining girls such that it became known as "the estrogen room" and boys trembled in fear at the thought of venturing therein.
   As mentioned, the snow was quite abundant. Snowball fighting led to the backyard being divided into trenches and foxholes and tunnels in quite the astouding way. Also a giant mountain of snow was created by shleffing snow off the balcony, and into this from the balcony numerous individuals did successfully jump, usually while intoxicated. In the end the snow mountain was sculpted into a giant mushroom to great the cabin's next occupants.
   Late afternoon / early evening was spent by many playing card games. On at least one occasion this involved an astounding 6 hours of playing "cranium" straight. Often this denegrating into a "sexual tension bonanza" among the five girls and one boy usually playing. I usually hid with Slosha and Kristy watching Law and Order: SVU (Which stands for Stabler-Vision Unit or something I think). pygmypeach81 had gotten Slosha all of SUV season one on dvd for christmas you see. So we spent much time watching this thing. This one narcissistic pyromaniac in an episode is TOTALLY fr3ethinker. Also, during his psychiatric evaluation in the last episode of the season, the character Detective Munch issued the awesome quote "do you always deflect jokes with personal questions?" (in response to the more obvious arrangement of the same words), we subsequently declared that I am Detective Munch.

   My biggest peeve: the showerhead was level with my shoulder. Seriously wtf. I'm not even extraordinarily tall (I'm what, 6'1"?), and I constantly have to deal with similar showerhead arrangements in hotels. Seriously why do they always put in showerheads in such a way that a sizeable proportion of the population are going to have to grovel under in order to get a shower?
   Also, access to actual hot water both at home and in tahoe, as opposed to my lukewarm water in my apartment in davis, has led me to rediscover that shaving doesn't necessarily have to feel like having your face grasped with the clawed tenticles of a colossal squid.

   Around 2am on New Years I found myself doing exactly the same thing I'd been doing exactly six years ago in Sweden (adjusting for a nine hour time difference) -- running through the snow at 2am.

   I developed an insatiable craving for caeser salad with italian dressing while in Tahoe. Though I'll admit that the salad might just be an excuse to put italian dressing on something (and croutons!).
   Evening on the last day we were of course running out of materiels, leading Coleman to declare "well, we could make a drink with trail mix -- peanuts, everclear, and a toaster!"

   Thats everything that comes to mind at this moment. I probably forgot some notable things, and purposefully endeavored to keep this entry from becoming the mammoth production it could be. Now I'm going to Fuzios with Kristy for some firecracker pork fusilli, because I'm ravenous.


Previously on EMOSNAIL
One Year Ago: New Years 2003/4
Three Years Ago: New Years 2001/2


Related
Kristy's account of Taheezie
stay tuned for more updates from other erstwhile Taheezie participants

   The longer the amount of time elapsed between updates, the harder it is to do.

   It has now been about a week since I updated this.
   In that time I took the train back from Orange County to Davis, and then spent five days in Tahoe.


The Train:
   The train left Irvine station around 1pm and arrived about 11 hours later at Sacremento station at midnight. During the trip a former-cheerleader named Andrea discussed with another guy and I how the hardest part about becoming mormon was giving up sex... discussed at length. Always interesting times on those Amtrak trains. And they were out of cheese danishes in the dining car, I was heartbroken.


"Taheezie"
   This was the second time I've been to Tahoe, the first time in the snow. The persons present on this trip included but is not limited to: Kristy (basicallyasap), Sashie (slosha), Sashie's boyfriend/neighbor Nizzle, Colleen (colleeniebeenie), Nessa (nessabfly), Nessa's boyfriend Serge, Amanda Sh(sp?), Lyric, Muffin (another neighbor of Sashie and Colleen's), and numerous others besides, totally more than fifteen persons.

   We went up on the 29th in three cars, Kwisty and I rode with Amanda. As we tried to find the correct cabin (Nizzle had neglected to get an address apparently) one of Amanda's chains broke, causing the car to become temporarily stuck and causing us at least a solid hour of misadventures before we had the car successfully parked 200 yards away.
   The cabin itself was extremely strong sauce, but a bit weird in ways. None of the bathroom doors locked but the door to the bottem floor (of three) did. To get to the sauna one had to go through one of the bathrooms, making that bathroom unusable while people were using the sauna. The jacuzzi to my knowledge never got more than lukewarm.

   While in taheezie I became acquanted with a wonderful thing: the game Halo. It was played extensively by the males on the trip. It is a wonderful thing.
   For awhile one evening people entertained themselves by reading off questions from trivial pursuit and seeing who could answer them. Everyone thought I was totally engrossed in my game of halo at the time but then when a question about russia came up without looking up from my game I would give them the answer immediately; the questions being "which soviet leader came after Kruschev?" and "what is the most common Russian surname?" (Leonid Breshnev and Ivanov, respectively).

   All day on the first it was extremely stormy out and most roads were closed. Things cleared up well enough for us to leave as planned the next morning however.
   Hopefully digital camera pictures shall be available soon.


New Years
   My main new years resolution is to actually write some letters I've been meaning to write for literally years.

Related:
   My New Years 2001/2002
   Nessa's account of Taheezie.
   Colleen's account of Taheezie.