Slippery Slope + Short Rope

After being back in NY for a bit, I'm missing the West coast. I've been wandering around Greenpoint, a predominantly Polish neighborhood, realizing that all of these things that people surround themselves with to make them feel at home, make me feel so much farther away. I honestly feel like I'm in Europe when walking down Manhattan Ave. I can't read any of the signs and all of the food looks foreign and pretty bizarre, and I miss the Bay.


















I have so many pictures of this damn bridge. It's so stunning. Even when I was living north of the city, and drove over the bridge every few days, I'd still take pictures of the fog rolling in.


















Went to see Mono and Pelican at Great American. The show was pretty cool. Definition of shoegazing, for sure. The Great American Music Hall is such an amazing room.
















Here's a picture of how it looked in the 30's. We used to have a picture like this up on our fridge in Marin.
















So there was a bit of camping going on last week..it was great.




Camper Van Beethoven?



















It really was a blast. The weather was amazing....
































It wasn't too shabby in the back of the van either.



















A place for everything.....


















...and a big pile of wood where I could be sleeping..















I was mostly a passenger because I can't drive stick to save my life (and people remind me that some day it may), but so it goes.



























It did afford me the opportunity to take some pictures along the way. The 1 is such a great highway. It comes and goes up the California coast and it's got some of the most amazing views.









































There was a really great sunset up in Mendocino County...































Then there were the redwood groves. Massive goddamn trees. There's not a whole lot to say. Here's a few pictures from around Hendy Woods state park.










































































These are roots. I'd like to have some like that someday.



















Big.




















I have never felt so far away from shitty clubs, bad music, smoke, booze, obnoxious people, cramped tour busses and the like. Just a beer next to a good fire.
































To be continued...

The misadventure of the drive-through tree

Yeah. It looks like a swell time, to be fair.















Northern California is filled with bizarre little spots like this, as is most of the US. A mystery spot here, a big hole there, a massive tree that you just need to pay five bucks to try to drive a camper van through...you can see where this is going.

I thought it best to throw caution to the wind and take the bastard at speed, that way if it was a tight fit we would have a better shot at tearing through.

I mean, it looks to me like a VW camper van could pass through that hole.



















Cars. No problem.


















The guy at the gate says that the top of the tree-hole thing is 6'9". I frantically tear through out the glove box to find that the height of the camper van is somewhere around 6'8". Golden. Mega-golden.


Not so much. Like a camel through the eye of a needle or however that biblical passage goes. Someone was full of shit on their height estimates. The fact that the van barely fit through width-wise was our own fault, we just didn't take it into account and nearly took the side mirrors clean-off the thing.

















No worries, it's a rental. So, the roof of the van makes the most terrible screeching sound as the tree takes off a fair amount of fiberglass from the roof, and a small group of tourists look on in horror. Miraculously we pop out the other side. There is a little cheer from the gift shop.

















When we returned the van no one thought to check the roof. I mean, it's not like we were going to try to drive the thing through a tree or anything. Unscathed.