On the Road Again

Today (Tuesday) we left the chilled zone of San Diego and headed back towards LA, aiming beyond, to Santa Barbara. I’m not sure if any of you remember our ‘in da ghetto’ nocturnal navigation nightmare in LA, but when we’re driving, it’s never far from my mind, believe me. This time it was worse because not only was I chief in charge of navigation (Amy promised faithfully to help me and we were both armed with the same directions and maps, but she felt asleep within the first ten minutes and woke up about 40 miles outside Santa Barbara – bloody yoots), but I had planned the route we were going to take. Needless to say, I got hardly any sleep last night. I had had a really odd and vivid dream about my boss, the creative genius Stephen Baily (don’t worry boss, nothing kinky) that involved me driving him around and around in an attempt to get him home (all interpretations gratefully received), and woke up more than a little befuddled and somewhat disorientated (I had no sense of direction in the dream either).

My route took us on Interstate 5 north, onto the Interstate 405 and then Highway 101 all the way to Santa Barbara and on paper it looked fabulous. However, I don’t drive and I’m not that good with maps (the two may be linked, but I can’t work out a street map either, although I rarely have any trouble walking, and when I do it’s usually alcohol related) so I had no real idea if it would work. And worst of all, we had to go through LA. I was dreading it. You’ll hopefully be as relieved as I was to know that it not only went well, but it was the first journey of the entire trip that we did not make one wrong turn on AND there wasn’t one argument either! Are you impressed? I bloody was, it’s been a long time since I’ve been that self-congratulatory. I was fabulous, and I don’t mind telling you that. Admittedly, I followed the whole route on the map, junction for junction, nervously tracing our progress with my finger, but whatever works, right?

As we came out of San Diego, I started to notice all the homeless people – actually I say people, but all the homeless people I’ve seen so far have been men – and once you notice one, it’s like they suddenly all become apparent. How is it that we still cannot conquer this problem in the most ‘developed’ (I have to put it in inverted commas, after all, this is a country where George Bush is president) nations of the world? I saw one small colony of homeless people who made themselves a camp in the intersection underneath two freeways, they’d pooled all their belongings and were sat altogether staring blankly at the passing cars, but apart from this group, all the homeless men I have seen have been on their own. We saw one guy in LA, on Sunset Boulevard, poetically enough, who had a trolley piled with clothes that he had tied on in a huge stack at a really jaunty angle, so that the clothes formed a shelter that he was sleeping under. You can spot the homeless men really quickly during the day because they are always wearing far too many layers of clothes. One man we passed at an intersection was in his sixties and was begging for money, holding a sign that said ‘Old and Poor.’ Another guy was stretched out in the blazing sun at about midday in a park beside the freeway, fast asleep. That’s another thing that you notice about the homeless men here, they don’t just have tans, they have leather skin.

A brief bit of research via Google yielded the interesting fact that there is "no agreement about how many homeless there are in California" but it is uniformly recognised that this is a growing problem, with ever-increasing numbers joining the streets each year. Reasons given for this expansion in homelessness include the mass de-institutionalisation of the mentally-ill, increasing drug dependency and increasing standards and prices in the low-income housing market (literally forcing those on the lowest income onto the streets). However, I am inclined to agree with Quigley et al (2001) that it is most likely due to the increasing income inequality across the United States. UK citizens should watch this closely as our social development closely mirrors the US more than it does our friends in Europe. Most assistance here seems led by the voluntary sector, whilst, as in the UK, tight guidelines on who is eligible limits those who receive support. If anyone is interested, there's a long article on the web called Homelessness in California, but it's a long read so I stuck to the summary and the introduction! You can get it on: http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/ppic_homeless.pdf

It took us just over 4 hours, including rest stops, to drive the RV the 225 miles from Chula Vista to Santa Barbara. We arrived at the Sunrise RV camp, which, compared to the KOA camps we’ve been staying at, is teeny tiny, but the residents are very friendly (Amy and I met quite a few, as I’ll tell you in a mo). And not all of them are human, we met a happy little lizard (I call him, creatively, Mr Lizard) by the office who ran away up a tree the first time he saw Amy and I coming along the path, but was curious enough to come back down again by the time we came back. I found him quite enchanting on the way back because he just sat very still and stared and stared at us. I was fascinated for a good 5 minutes, and then I remembered the scene from Jurassic Park, with the two cute little dinosaurs who lulled one of the characters into a false sense of security so that he would approach, then they spat poison into his eyes and blinded him and feasted on his helpless self. After that, I lost my nerve and backed off quite quickly, he may have been cute and no more than five inches long, but that doesn’t mean he can’t kill you soon as look at you. And that’s a fact.

When we arrived at the park, we were a little surprised that the office was closed, as Judy, the seemingly helpful woman we spoke to on the phone hadn’t mentioned it. They’d left our pitch details on the door for us, but not the info we needed to access the WiFi connection, which turned me into quite a surly sulky little missy until I took myself outside for a bit and had a word (checked myself before I wrecked myself there). It’s strange how you can become used to these luxuries on the road, and it made me realise how the blog has become a really important part of the holiday for me. The chance to log onto MSN messenger and talk to all my fans, I mean, friends and family, has become very important too, and has helped me out in the few sticky ‘family moments’ that we have all shared. Mum, you know what I’m talking ‘bout.

Frustratingly, when we walked round the side of the office, we could see the piece of paper with the access code written on it next to the desk, but it was just out of view. We stole a chair from the RV park site and came back to climb on it, only to find that now we could see the piece of paper in its entirety, but it was too far away to read it. So we went back and got the digital cameras and attempted to take a photo using the zoom lens, but we couldn’t focus it clearly enough. You think I’m kidding. Then, we went round every RV with a person anywhere near it asking them if they had the access codes, but it seems we’re the only people on the camp who have a laptop with us. They looked at us as if we were missing the point of the camping experience a little, but I refuse to take that sort of implicit criticism from anyone who has a satellite dish rigged to their trailer. One of them had a television the size of a pool table top. I mean, really. Then we tried ringing the camp staff at home on numbers they had provided for emergencies (of course not being able to access the internet is an emergency) but they didn’t know it ‘off by heart.’ Call this service? After that, we just dealt with it. Well, after about fifteen minutes making ourselves feel better by insulting the camp, that is, and then another ten minutes taking it back and admonishing ourselves for being so addicted to technology. Gorgeous Lisa C (I’m weaning myself off saying your full name gradually), I think you’ll understand our desperate need best of all.

The downtime with la famille for the rest of the night was cool though, without us all separating to do our usual evening routine of checking our stuff on the web. I taught Dad and Amy to do the Tree yoga pose outside the trailer (though I’m sure you’re not meant to do it whilst smoking a fag – Hilda, I mean I was smoking, not Amy!) and later Amy and I fell into fits of hysterical laughter when she decided to try to create a montage of herself as, in her words, ‘just a head’. The photo is attached, I thought it was marvellous and very convincing.



In terms of the family experience, today was one of the best days we’ve had so far, which is weird, because, in terms of the whole holiday/tourist thing, we didn’t actually do anything as so much time was spent travelling. I’m starting to accept that the moments when we drive each other insane and threaten violence to each other’s person is part of living with your family, it’s just that I haven’t done this for so long, I’d convinced myself that family life should be like the Waltons. It’s hard to learn to accommodate people and to share space as intimate as the tiny space allowed in the RV anyway, but when this is combined with the fact that the people you’re sharing with are your family, and you have years of relationships with them and that odd sense of family ownership (which often means you act as if everything the others do is designed to ruin your life), it can feel like being a caged tiger.

We’ve all had bad bouts of cabin fever and there have been some tears (admittedly, all mine, I’m a double water sign, ok, I’m exceptionally sensitive - practically an empath, actually) but I took myself off yesterday to do some serious thinking about it, and I my Steve Hender training kicked in (Steve is an NLP consultant, among other things, and an interpersonal life genius of the highest order, as well as being the most positive person I know). Steve once told me that often when we think we’re having a bad day, we think it’s because that day was exceptional in terms of a larger amount of bad things happening. Actually, what most often makes the difference is not what’s happening to us, but us, and this was what I gave serious thought to yesterday. When I stepped back and looked at the way I was feeling, I saw that I was assuming the problems were all outside myself, for example, I’m angry because they behaved like that, or because they made me feel like this. I realised that although I could see a lot of my bad vibes started when X did Y or Y said X, the cause of them was how I reacted. I noticed that I had a particular difficulty letting go of things that had started me feeling upset, and once I thought that, I started to think about how I could make it easier to let go, and eventually I did. Ok, the massive bitching session I had with my mum on MSN really helped, too, but I’m still learning, right?

Today, we’re going to have a nice easy day in Santa Barbara. Not sure what we’re going to see yet, but you’ll be the first people to know. After us, obviously, or you’d be psychic.