Summer Trip pt. 1

I have been reticent in posting while I was away because I had intended to keep a written diary of all my traveling over the summer and then compile it into something spectacular; and who knows it still might happen but at this point I am thirteen days behind the date I will be putting in the journal, which I think defeats the purpose of a journal. But fuck it. If Jose Saramago can write a book without using quotation marks, then I can run a journal a couple of weeks behind schedule.

I had the opportunity to do some traveling this summer. It was grand even when it didn’t go according to plan. I started off seeing my friend Donette from high school. We haven’t really seen each other since graduation and it was nice to be able to spend a couple of days hanging out with her and her husband Pete. They live in LA in Echo Park and I like the area, but I am not sure how I feel about LA as a whole. It is weird. Not really good or bad, just different then what I am used to. When Donette came home on Day two of my trip with Bronchitis I knew things were going to be wonky. A further recap of my trip to California involves the following items, in order:

1. A low emergency evacuation from the Los Padres National Forest, which is now in ashes.
   
2. Lunch with a good friend
   
3. A walk through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park
   
4. The words “Homeless in California” being shameless used to facilitate a plane trip at no penalty so that I wouldn’t be underfoot at my friend’s father’s house any longer.
   
5. San Francisco’s China Town and some of the best dim sum, walking and conversation I have ever done.
   
6. Green Gulch Farm in Marin County. A place that is truly blessed and some of the most beautiful landscape that the G-ds saw fit to create.
   

Then I got home early. Hated every second of it. And couldn’t wait to leave again. But two things happened in the interim before my trip to Europe that made things work out for the best.

First was that I got to and see Josh Emmons do a reading for his new novel Prescription for a Superior Existence. Josh Emmons is a friend of a good friend of mine named Josh (who only seems to leave comments when he receives a shout out). I have read his other book, titled The Loss of Leon Mead, and enjoyed it so it was nice to get to meet him. I enjoyed the reading immensely, it has a great feel to it and it is something that I can wrap my head around. Unfortunately for Josh Emmons I have a summer reading list that I am hell bent on finishing which still has two books on it: The Cave, by Jose Saramago and My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk. So to be in the queue behind two Nobel Prize Winners isn’t a bad place to be.

Secondly, I convinced Lovely Wife that the only thing made sense for Fourth of July would be to go to Staten Island to visit our good, make that great, friend Tony who is renowned across the southern most borough of New York for his hospitality and summer barbeques.

Then it was off to my Mom’s for two days where we shopped, we dropped and we repacked my bags for Europe at least twice, maybe three times.

Then a trip to Boston and we were off.