Travelling down the West Coast
Saturday, 6th September 2003
After Canada I travelled down the West Coast, stopping in Portland,
San Francisco, and Yosemite National Park. I’m now in a small, very humid
Mexican town called Guerro Negro. Very hot.
Portland
Is it possible to love a city at first sight? Even before the
Greyhound bus had reached the Portland depo, I had a growing
suspicion that this was a city I would like. I think it was rose
coloured pavements of downtown: they suggested a city that had the
presence of mind to spend time and money making the city more
liveable.
On my first morning in Portland, my hostel ran a tour of four of
Portland’s coffee houses, and by the end of the two hours, my heart
was dancing (and not just from the caffeine). I then spent an hour
wandering in Powells City of Books, a fantastic shop, and I had
developed a smile on my face I couldn’t get rid of. I knew that would
explore Portland further, but in a way I felt like I had already
understood the spirit of the city, and further exploration seemed
almost unnecessary to understanding it.
Portland is a very nice city. I use nice in all its positive senses:
generous, friendly, thoughtful, easy going. The people there are some
of friendiest I’ve ever come across, and not just in the “hey, how
are you doing buddy, cool, goodbye” way that I’ve seen in some parts
of the US. The first coffee house we visited, once they heard we were
visiting the city, without any fanfare gave us the drinks free. In
their newspaper stand were the usual newspapers and magazines, but
also one of Stephen King’s longer novels. I just loved the idea that
people would come here often enough to work their way through this
800 pager…
On a separate day, on the more trendy 23rd street, I
chatted with the waitress for ten minutes debating what flavours
worked best in a milkshake. After a series of proposals, I suggested
Peach, Strawberry and Coconut. She smiled, “Perhaps I’ll make a
little up and then we’ll see if we like it.” I eventually settled on
the above favours but with a touch of caramel. By the time I actually
had to pay, the price of the milkshake seemed somewhat irrelevant.
Certainly money would change hands, to allow for future milkshake
materials to be purchased, the rent on the shop to be paid and so on,
but this felt like a sideline to the more important things.
The greatest shop in the world
Reading is one of my greatest pleasures. Powells City of Books is a
bookshop that covers three floors and a whole city block. It mixes
second hand books in with new, so you find the right book then see if
it is available for $5. It is now my favourite shop in the world. I
bought two second hand sci-fi books for 2 and 5 dollars, plus a funky
yellow nalgene waterbottle, with famous sci-fi writers’ names on the
measurement scale (Asimov 32 oz, Herbert 28 oz, Le Guin 24 oz). It is
an extremely geeky thing to be carrying around, but then I guess part
of growing up is about accepting what you are.
Were my three days in Portland all a lovefest like the first one?
Unfortunately, no. Having discovered the formula for perfect
happiness (coffee, books, chatting to strangers), like an idiot I
then proceeded to not do any of those things in the latter days. I
spent time visiting Portland’s rose garden, went shopping for a day
pack rucksack and visited some of the other neighbourhoods. One
highlight, however, was that I went to stay with Sean Keener, one of
the founders of BootsnAll.com. He, Kacey Stertz (who is the author of
the website sunbucket.com) and myself drank wine, ate BBQ chicken,
and discussed travel issues and what the nature of true love might be.
Yosemite
 |
|
Yosemite Valley and El Capitan |
Yosemite National Park, and the Yosemite valley in particular, were
staggeringly awesome. Immense glacier-sculpted vertical mountains
rise out of the forested valley floor – the largest peak is El
Capitan, a sheer rock face three times the height of the Empire State
Building. It was a place to feel quite humbled and insignificant
among the scale and age of the place. Yosemite feels like a place
forged in harsher times, before the world calmed down enough for
human civilisation to emerge. Isn’t there a point in the Old
Testament where the angels are dispatched to fly around the world and
kill off the giants and other monsters so that humans can survive
here, or was that just in a book somewhere else? Either way, Yosemite
seemed like one of the places where the giants had lived, and had
never been smoothed over like the rest of the world.
At one point I sat and looked out across a valley to the mountain
called Cloud’s Rest, with the famous Yosemite peak Half Dome in the
background. One of my tour group yelled out at the wonder of it – it
was that kind of a view. I preferred to sit silently, I tend to get
all pseudo-spiritual at this kind of thing. From behind me I heard a
woman’s voice, “Dusty! Dusty! Dusty! Dusty! Come on Dusty! Dusty!
Dusty! Du-sty! Come on Dusty! Dusty!”. A family were taking a family
photo and trying to get their dog to jump up, or face the camera, or
take the bloody photo himself for all I could tell. Eventually Dusty
worked out how to switch on the camera’s red eye adjuster and the family dispersed.
 |
|
Cloud’s Rest |
I travelled to Yosemite with a tour group. I suspected it would be
cheaper and fancied a break from hostelling. We spent two full days
in the Park and camped a short drive from the entrance. It was
refreshing to be part of a ready-made group again – no need to worry
about how I was getting on with people, because we were all stuck
together for the duration. I’m finding that I meet people quite
regularly at hostels, but it is always a bit of a confused “where
should I sit? Close enough to some people to be able to start a
conversation/but not too close to a premade group”, “will people want
to talk to me?”, “it is obvious I’m basically looking for
drinking/eating/conversation companions for the evening?”, and the
crucial “Am I coming across as a relaxed and confident guy or a scary
weirdo?”.
It was a group of six guys plus our lanky, laconic California dude
tour guide. This made the evenings around the campfire kind of slow:
the familiar quiet, slightly morose, stare-into-my-beer-can
atmosphere that men tend to generate when all by themselves. Martyn
(also English) and myself went over to a nearby predominantely female
tour group and introduced ourselves, in an effort to liven the
evening up. But their tour guide had never forgiven ours for some
seemingly innocuous practical joke played on him years before, and
by and large had poisoned the atmosphere against us. In the morning I
was returning from the shower as they launched a dawn raid on us.
They threw washing powder over the van and sprayed anyone they could
find with water pistols. I watched as they piled into their van and
drove off in a cloud of dust. O, how easily we are manipulated by
those in power for their own ends.
Our tour dude was unperturbed, “Hmm, uncreative at best”. Like a carnivorous plant closing
over an oblivious fly, his nonchalent riposte introduced a jinx into
their plans which they would discover in a few days time. Their saga
clearly would continue.
On the second day in Yosemite I hiked the Yosemite Falls trail: three
hours and a lot of effort later myself and another member of the tour
group were 3000 ft over the valley sitting beside the stream as it
bumbled towards the mouth of the waterfall. I got out my sandwiches,
sat in the shade of a large rock, and spent two idyllic hours reading
one of the books I bought in Portland. This high up, there were no
sounds of cars, planes, mobiles or gabbing hyperactive infants. The
only things we could hear were the shimmering stream and the quiet
laughter of the few others that had made it to the top that day.
We visited a groove of the giant sequoia trees: thousands of years
old and two to three hundred feet tall. I put my hand on the warm
furry bark of one of them. All through modern western civilisation,
this tree had been alive. It had probably already been ancient in
human terms when Jesus was alive, when the Romans were invading
Britain, and could still be here in another thousand years. There
used to be a lot more of these incredible giant trees on the West
Coast, but when they were discovered loggers cut most of them down,
seeing the profits in making houses from them. This seems kind of a
shame now.
San Francisco
I spent four really blissful days in San Francisco. I tried to learn
from my mistakes in Portland, and tried to blend exploration with
doing things that I liked in the city. I quickly decided I really
liked the Russian Hill area, specifically Polk Street, and spent an
hour or so every day drinking in one of the many coffee houses. Aside
from Russian Hill, I really liked the North Beach/Chinatown area
where I was staying, the Mission/Castro/Haight-Ashbury area, and
Clement Street. Mission and Castro were really beautiful parts of
town (San Francisco is all over a really good looking city, what with
the hills, bridges, and endless pretty houses), Clement Street had
great restaurants, Haight Ashbury was interesting but I suspect I
didn’t spend enough time there to get a real sense of it. Although SF
has its problems (apparently high rents, traffic, a lot of
homelessness), it seemed to be the greatest example of what modern
city living should be like. As a quite irritating French traveller
had said to me before I arrived, you cannot really explain what makes
San Francisco so special, you just have to go and see what the city
is about.
Personally, I feel the thing that sets SF apart is elegance. In a lot of
America, there does seem to be a prevailing notion that “bigger is
better!” or, “if you’ve got it, flaunt it”. In other words, if you
can afford to drive an armour plated jeep the size of a bungalow,
then by God you ride it. SF is elegant because not everything is on
show at once, people seem to be a bit more reserved, a bit more self-assured that they look good without needing to bare a lot of toned
skin, or that they look important without needing to carry on
dramatic sounding conversations on a mobile phone. Apparently San Francisco
has changed a lot in the last ten years – some locals I spoke to felt
like making money and getting rich were taking over the city’s soul,
but compared to London, it seemed very laid back.
Aside from the more intangible aspects, the city also has great
public transport, some great parks and really great yet cheap eating.
I spent one day eating only dim sum, tried some fantastic Thai and
Indian food, and got scared and didn’t go to a “cook your own food”
type Korean restaurant which had things like pork intestine on the
menu.
I stayed for a couple of nights at the Adelaide hotel, which turned
out have very little atmosphere and quite basic bathroom facilities. It
offered free internet, but above the computers sat an always on tv,
which made it difficult for me to write anything. During some
particularly absurd US melodrama, I asked if maybe the TV could be
turned off for a little while. I suspect if I had asked if I could
pour the fat of an unchristened boy over the keyboard I wouldn’t have
generated such looks of disgust. “Have you got Attention Deficit
Disorder or something, buddy?”
 |
|
Blair and I |
I quickly moved to the Green Tortoise, which was a pretty cool hostel
on Broadway, and provided a free party night with food, beer and a
live band. I sat with two recent graduates from Kingston-on-Thames
and a school teacher from Bristol, and we watched the four person
blues style band, whose combined age must have been well clear of
200. The wild travelling lifestyle indeed!
Leaving SF, I took a train overnight to San Diego, which got delayed
for hours in the well known town of Walnut. I stayed with my friend
Blair for a couple of days, then headed across the border to Tijuana.
