November82012
I’ve been in this McDonald’s everyone (click link above). It doesn’t have any electrical outlets to plug in your laptop charger. It also normally flies its flag correctly. Follansbee is a town with like 4,000 cafes for its 3,000 inhabitants. The pride of Brooke County maybe. Everyone who’s ever put a flag up on a flag pole knows you have like a 50/50 chance of getting it right. Which is why you often see flags flying upside down, right? Either that or West Virginia’s northern panhandle is a BIG coal area, and no one there likes the president because of his perceived War on Coal. Not even the McDonald’s franchisee who, let’s be honest, probably thinks America died two days ago.
March122012
I’m at a McDonald’s in Wasco, CA. They have free Wi-Fi.
I’ve been sleeping in my car, which is easier than you might think (despite the fact that it’s illegal almost anywhere). Even though my car is packed, I can still find enough room to sleep comfortably in the back seat. All you really need is a sleeping bag, maybe a pillow, and a complete lack of fear. The first night I did it, I was paranoid and I didn’t sleep that well, but last night was nice. In general, I don’t think you have to find a perfect spot to park. You don’t really need to find a remote place where no one can see you. Cops, I think, have better things to do than messing with illegal sleepers. And unless you’re really obvious and you’re setting up camp outside your car, no one’s going to notice you. You’re just going to blend in with all the other empty parked cars in the world. This a money-saving issue, because I’m incredibly cheap. You could waste a lot of money staying in a hotel or a motel every night. For the road trip to last longer, you need to make some sacrifices.
I went to a roller derby in Tulare, which was actually pretty fun. It was sort of a spur of the moment decision. I was driving around and I realized Tulare seemed almost completely empty, and then I found a bunch of people lining up to get into the auditorium at the Tulare County Fairgrounds. And I didn’t have anything better to do.
I’m sort of winding my way slowly through California, because I’m stopping a lot, taking a few moments to wander through almost every little town. I have a bicycle in the car and I’ve taken that out a couple of times already. This has the effect of reducing driver-boredom, increasing exercise, and saving gas. A lot of people think these places are irrelevant because they often don’t have any major attractions. They’re just quaint little visions of an American past that necessitated smaller settlements. But, I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of interesting things to see, especially considering in a hundred years many of these places will no longer exist. Either they’ll have been whittled down to nothing or they’ll have expanded so much as to become indistinguishable from the next town.
I’m probably headed to Bakersfield today, where I might actually stay in a hotel. I’ll have more to say there.
