Taken sometime around May, 2001, in Kings Canyon National Park.

i’ve tried my gimicky new travel towel. it’s very much like another gimicky, washcloth sized towel i used to have back home years ago for swim meets. that one also had the “be really slimy and cold and clammy … all the time” feature. oh yeah, it also never got me dry. this new one is bigger (almost 3 washcloths!) and really soft. soft like my blanky from kindergarten. and here’s the kicker. when you towel yourself off with these super-absorbent beauties it’s like getting licked by a huge rubber eraser. it’s as if these towels have these microscopic tentacles that reach into everyone of your pores searching for water which refuse to budge until they find some. i mean seriously, let’s ship these things to drought ridden regions, forget about divining rods and geology. towel technology has come a long way. baby.

but it’s time to pack up the towel as i’m about to take off from la. again. i left la a year and a half ago and i haven’t been back to visit since. when i finally left this city i was more than ready to leave. for whatever reason i got really sick of this town. but there are a few things that i really missed. the biggest one is food. the food in la is so much better and cheaper than in boston. namely, tacos. happily, chabelita’s is on the way to rory’s house from lax. after chabelita’s rory and i decided to do little hike up in the mountains just north of pasadena. this is where i started doing my solo hiking. most of the time we were reminiscing about other hikes in the san gabriels. like this one time when i was doing a solo hike after a really heavy rain. i was hiking along a really swollen stream and instead of hopping from rock to rock to cross the stream i had to ford it. a lot. at the end of the day when i finally got back to my car i was soaked from the armpits down. since i was by myself i decided to throw my drenched pants in the trunk for the drive home. i rolled down the windows and was feeling fine. until. i pulled off the 210 freeway and huge puff of smoke poofed out the dashboard. the stereo cut out and all the dash lights turned off. the engine was still running and i turned left onto hill st. i stopped at the red light and the engine stalled. now. the puff of smoke was from the battery which had blown up. which is why the stereo and dash lights cut out. and which was also the reason i couldn’t restart the car. since the car wasn’t on fire or otherwise conspicuous people started lining up behind me. unfortunately, no battery also meant no hazards. at least my soggy pants were in the trunk. so. in my boxers i had to get out of the car and push it to the side of the road in front a bunch of now irate motorists stuck at a green light.

tacos and war stories have formed the bulk of my time in la. some insight: rory and i recalled the time we were biking and i endoed over a car that pulled out in front of us. it was a bit of a hit and run. rory summed up that part of the story with, “dudeman was like, ‘uh later.’” that’s how we talk.