Wednesday, October 19, 2005

A Journey in the Dark or The Craigslist Experience

San Fran was nice. Nikolai's pad is sick. Illona's tummy is round. Paulo makes a mad French Toast. Thanks Nikolai and Paulo and Illona Root-Chang for a wonderful time!

After various Craigslist postings and phone calls, one of which was shady at best, I finally arranged for a rideshare from San Francisco to Los Angeles last night. Five of us piled into an old F-150 extended cab (much like the one we drove up to Cape Breton in, Sol) helmed by a former scateboard hero of his town. One guy was a slight Japanese photographer who looked a little bit like you Arnie. The other guy was hispanic and I didn't get a chance to speak to him because he was sleeping in the back of the truck the whole time with the last of our motley crew, a guy who went to Bard College and has walked the streets of Great Barrington and made a documentary in Venezuela on the referendum there last August and also went to university in Santiago Chile, I mentioned you to him Mike, but your name didn't ring a bell.

I asked them all about 911 and one was afraid of what I was going to do with the footage of him saying whether or not he thought the gov't was responsible, our driver had some insightful things to say, like there's a passage in Orwell's 1984 that directly speaks to what the Patriot Act was set in place to do by this administration. Sean, feel free to speak to that end in a comment! We also agreed on some other specifics regarding the topic of 911 as an inside job, such as our interpretation of Bush's thoughts as he is sitting in front of a classroom of kids dumbfounded after a secret service whispered in his ear something about 911 in the Farenheit 911 video. But I digress

After everyone was picked up, we were on the road at about 7:30pm and the ride went smooth until the last leg when they decided to close off a section of the 5 (the highway to LA) for shooting a movie which set us back an hour and then our driver had to drop a package off for a friend which put us out another hour, but no complaints really as I let my new Ipod Nano transport me to Middle-earth through the LOTR soundtrack despite driving through a landscape of pallid light polution and concrete; also the photographer and I needed to be dropped off within a block of each other so we both got as close to door to door service as one could hope for. So overall a good experience and I will defiately do Craigslist again for getting back to SF from LA to see Illscabetstein's new baby which is due a week before I arrive back from New Zealand.

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