The Silicon Valley Twins of our Hawaiian friends Ilya and Ira, Alex and Mila, are awaiting the tour of Stanford University.
A “Hawaiian” and two “Californians” are strolling through the university campus.
Designer Sofia is studying all the positive qualities of sculpture, carved by the papuans of New Guinea.
Ruslan is congratulating Ira on her birthday by performing the unknown to the world version of Alfred Fossen’s Flik-Flak composition.
Beginner pirates of Silicon Valley, director of engineering Il’ya and system engineer Eugene, trying to explain to Ruslan in layman’s terms how a computer transistor works.
Ruslan, watching the employees of Apple by the main entrance of their Cupertino campus.
Alla is learning how to operate a logarithmic ruler at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
And so, we have a few months of travel in front of us.
It’s our first time going on such a big trip, so we’re not sure what exactly we will need, and what will only be getting in the way. So, like in anything of this sort, it’s good to give yourself at least a week or two to figure things out, look around, get familiar with the routines, and gain some ‘traveling’ smarts. But at the moment, one thing is for sure: everything needs to be at a minimum, because our car is just not very big.
Starbucks is gradually becoming our second home.
We are having a day off. This means that we are not driving anywhere, but instead are taking care of our personal things. I, for example, took a shower in the Starbucks sink this morning, had breakfast there, then signed and mailed some postcards, and afterwards worked with photos that accumulated over the week. And since I’m still in the process of mastering the editing-sorting-organizing routine, finishing the first weekly post has been rescheduled for tomorrow.
Alla’s day, however, began a little more interestingly. By the front doors of Office Depot she came across some cheerful medics inviting the passerby’s to take a quick training course in CPR. But, it turns out not everyone wants to spend 30 seconds gaining such a useful skill.
One young lady defended her rejection by telling them that she is leaving to Texas right this minute. Another married couple was a bit dubious at first, but then the husband quickly thought to himself “well, what if?” and kneeled down. The wife didn’t think it would ever be necessary to save her husband’s life and went into the store. At this, her spouse exchanged a quick glance with Alla and chuckled awkwardly. But the medics laughed quite openly, remembering all the other silly excuses that they have heard over the course of their careers as human life rescue instructors.
Now I have nothing to fear.
The day began with a beautiful drive through the second part of Redwood National Park. The road is called the Avenue of The Giants.
Arriving at the no less beautiful northern California coast cost us a million turns on a serpentine road and the naturally following nausea. But, oh, the views! With them constantly outside our windows, we got to the historical city of Napa.
The roots of a fallen redwood tree.
Alas, the opportunity for submitting a fresh post daily is not presenting itself for the simple reason that where there is a lot of wild nature, there is often not a lot of internet. More often there is none. But forget wi-fi – there isn’t even a phone data connection, which we could use to get our computers online.
On the forth day we arrived at Redwood National and State Park. Redwood trees in this park are all that is left after the merciless logging of California forests, made up of giant sequoias, at the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries.
Some specimens are absurdly giant.
In the evening, a little lost, we found ourselves on the territory of an indian reservation, in a truly classic rural indian bar.
Stop at a fairy-tale.
Perhaps someday this will become our routine, but now it’s still a novelty: we wake up, and the first thing we see is this:
Slowly we are starting to get into the routine, or the ‘behind the scenes’ of road-tripping. For example, every evening we have to find a place where we’ll park and spend the night. It’s one thing to do so at a specially designated spot in a park, but completely another to sleep within the town boundaries. We have to park in such a place where during the evening, morning, and even (if we need to – and we always need to) at night, we have bathroom close by. So far, the best place is a parking lot by some supermarket, especially because we can run over there to buy little things that are still needed for our glamping gear.
Pretty late in the evening some local parking lot gangsters appeared, but they weren’t too loud. Unlike the dude with the leaf blower (in case someone doesn’t know what a leaf blower is, it’s a motor in a backpack used for blowing leaves and trash – basically a motorized broom). Apparently, to be out of early customers’ way, he started cleaning his territory around 5am, including neatly blowing around our car. The feeling is as if someone, while you are peacefully enjoying your morning dreams, brought a moped into your bedroom and decided to make sure it’s working properly at the highest revs.
And then, around 8am, spry customers started to come over and clank the carts. In the photo, I’m racking my brain, wondering why anyone would need to come to Walmart so early.
The answer in fact is simple and straightforward, we only need to come inside for our morning procedures to find out (who would’ve thought – going to the store with only one purpose: to use the restroom and brush your teeth!): the customers at this time are exclusively retirees. For them it’s almost mid-day, as they woke up so early that it’s scary to even think about when it was. I’d bet they probably came a little before the opening time and restlessly waited at the doors.
On the other hand, this is much better than camping next to a family with 10 kids.
On may 15th, after welcoming 37th spring into my life, Alla and I set off on our big journey across the United States of America. From now and untill December of this year we are planning to visit 48 states and see some parts of Canada.
The trip began right by the doors of Downtown Seattle’s REI, where we shopped for a few missing road-camp items. In spite of horrible traffic, we drove through the heart of the city, where some time ago I lived for two amazing years.
Because our departure was delayed from the originally intended date, we will somewhat fast forward through Washington and Oregon, making the first notable stop at Redwood National Forest on the California border. That is where we will begin posting our complete daily and weekly trip updates (between the two of us we call this trip with the big word “expedition”, because besides pleasure and entertainment, we set some work goals).
Alrighty then (in Ace Ventura’s pronunciation), stock up on popcorn!
Tour US 