Driving the California Coast with Laura: Day 2

Point Montara-Santa Cruz-Big Sur-San Luis Obispo - Santa Barbara - LA - San Diego



The Jeep was surprisingly warm last night. We drifted in and out of sleep from about 6:30 AM until a San Mateo County Sheriff abruptly and without invitation opened the passenger side door around 9:30. The Sheriff ran our IDs and then took off; we put our shoes and jackets on to head down to the shore.



We spent the night on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and scrambled down the ledge at dawn the next day to where the waves were breaking violently on the shore. We frolicked like Nevada kids are prone to do upon arriving at the Pacific, eventually tiring ourselves out and making our way to Santa Cruz for breakfast.

After eating donuts at Ferrel’s Donuts and remarking our own feral visages, we headed into town for Christmas shopping. This was largely successful, but the day's crowning event was the decision to purchase the hats that will no doubt come to mark the trip for me. Mine is a fedora, Laura's is a flapper hat. From there we made our way through Monterrey, Carmel, and down through the first portion of my favorite place: Big Sur.

Camping in Big Sur was peaceful. We placed perishable items outside of the car to keep cool during the night, and in the morning when we opened the door of "Club Jeep" the bag holding those items was torn to shreds. Strangely, none of the food had been so much as touched. We looked halfheartedly for tracks before getting confused and continuing down the road for coffee.


Throughout the day, as we continued along the Pacific Coast Highway, we walked around and Laura took pictures. I am anxious to see how they all come out, and I have a feeling I will be pleasantly surprised. I’ll be sure to load some of them onto my Chronicle as soon as possible. Our new hats added greatly to the quality of the photographs.

We spent a good deal of time in San Luis Obispo, watching people walk by our coffee shop and doing some window shopping ourselves. I managed to finish my Dad's Christmas present while sitting next to a loud insane woman talking to herself at the coffee shop; I think the quality of the gift may reflect this distraction.

The last stop for the night was just south of Santa Barbara, nothing noteworthy. A standard McDonald’s breakfast followed in the morning, and then we drove straight through to San Diego, taking the 101 through LA to avoid the misery of navigating that city.


We’re staying with my friend and fraternity brother in Del Mar for the evening. DJ has a beautiful house and has been more than gracious since we arrived. It is hard for me to believe that we got here around noon; the day and ensuing evening went so fast! I hope to see Grandma Ringler again tomorrow.

"Bear Meat" By Primo Levi

"I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head."



Read the Entire Article Here.

Whitman, America.

Levi's new ad campaign utilizes some really cool Whitman poems and original imagery.

Hat Day.

(More To Come)

The Lights and Buzz

Driving the California Coast with Laura: Day 1, Reno-San Francisco-Pacifica-ish

We have been talking about this trip for at least a semester, if not longer. Something to get away after school gets out, and our first extended trip together. Laura arrived at my house at 8:15 AM as I hurried to finish the packing that I hadn’t done for this trip. In fact, my preparations had really only begun about thirty minutes before her arrival. We loaded my two bags into the back seat and took off for San Francisco on I-80, a clear drive on a nearly cloudless day.

When we arrived in the city we decided to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, also known as the SFMOMA. I particularly enjoyed the installations displayed outdoors on the roof, built to withstand the weather and to be changed by the elements. The pieces that evolved unabashedly with time, and no one would ever “touch them up” to avoid the natural effects that fell upon them. I like that.

We went to the grocery store to get a picnic dinner for the beach, and hit the sand just as the sun set. We enjoyed a simple sandwich-and-soup dinner, watching the waves break and talking until the sky was completely dark. It wasn't until midway through dinner that we realized that less than a quarter mile away was where we had finished the Bay to Breakers race in May, our first time spent together after I got back from my bicycle trip.

After dinner we continued down the coast for about twenty minutes before pulling off at an overlook where we set up our "fort" in the back of the Jeep. On top of a climbing pad and goose-down cover, warmly surrounded by sleeping bags, we slept.

Thank You Mr. Armstrong (or the advice I heeded, and that which I should have),

Breathe in. Breathe out. Read to the next page. Read to the end of the Chapter. Outline until 7:00, then to Chipotle for dinner. You can listen to one song if you finish this case. Be in bed by 3:00, wake up by 10:00.

Before I left for Boyd Law in early August, I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish by the end of the semester: run a half marathon, play a new sport, join a ping pong club, get a 3.8 GPA, etc.

Now that list is thumb-tacked on the wall above my desk like a demented joke. By the first week in December my goals had become more fundamental: Remember to eat dinner. Brief those cases you haven’t looked at for a while. Remember to sleep. Memorize the elements to those obscure causes of action. Don’t lose it. Try to run today. Maybe run tomorrow. Ok, definitely try to run by the end of the week.

As I packed the last of my things early this morning I glanced up at the list for the last time, and noticed that I had fulfilled only one of the 15+ goals:

10. Make one new good friend.

It wasn’t high on the list. It wasn’t the first thing on my mind when I sat down to write down what I wanted back in August. My GPA was a higher priority. I can’t remember now, but it may have been the highest. In retrospect, it should have been last on the list. The tenth should have been the first.

I received a much-appreciated letter from Ross Armstrong in August, right as I arrived in Las Vegas. Ross is a third year law student at Willamette. When I was a freshman undergraduate, Ross agreed to be my campaign manager when I ran for Student Senate. Ross’ knowledge, guidance, and credibility pushed me into a position I could never have achieved alone; needless to say, I take his advice very seriously.

I re-read his letter this morning, and realized that I had only followed half of it. There are two sections: “Class Success” and “Self Success.” I followed the class advice, but neglected the “self.” Looking at it now, he was entirely correct about how to stay happy and to enjoy life while taking in a large amount of new information. The key is people. Friends will pick you up when you fall behind, and if they can’t help then friends will at least suffer with you.

When the time comes for me to write someone a letter I’ll repeat a lot of the advice that Ross gave me, but I will put “Self Success” first on the list. Then I’ll put “Class Success.” Then I’ll put “Self Success” again, just so that it is the first and last thing the reader remembers. (I learned that in my Lawyering Process course.)

Legal systems are human creations, constructed to maintain order within human social structures. There is nothing natural about a legal system, and therefore studying law without human contact is without merit as well as exceedingly boring. Law is a discipline that is best realized when it is debated, reformulated, and settled, over coffee or in a group study room. The more voices, the merrier.

There are numerous rules and laws, but all are subservient to the Golden Rule. This rule, the basis of Law second only to the human beings themselves, is simple and ancient. It is found in nearly every religion and culture. The Book of the Dead used it as the test of worthiness in crossing over to the afterlife; "He sought for others the good he desired for himself. Let him pass.”

My first semester was as much about learning what to do as much as it was about learning what not to do. It was about trying to see where a behavior or repercussion was treated in the past, is currently being treated, and will be treated in the future, and deciding why it is beneficial for society or else destructive to society. In essence, it’s about trying to do the right thing even under tremendous pressure, and using mental tools other than animalistic emotion to reconcile the “big picture” with the “little picture” and realizing that you will almost always be coming up short in one way or another. At least that’s how it seems to me.

I am so grateful for my fellow students, my professors, Laura, family, Ross, friends, Chipotle, and the workers at the Balance Café.

(Before)




(After)

Snapshot Entry

I stumbled upon, while looking at my files from this past semester, this entry dated Novemer 19, 2009. I concluded it today (December 14, 2009) in the way I would have back then:


My little chronicle, so long it has been since I've visited you! Not surprisingly you are just the way I left you, though I have changed a great deal since our Spring love affair.

I don't have time right now to write an entry. I don't have time for much of anything at all it seems, but I am going to write this all the same in case I ever reminisce and wonder how my first semester at Boyd Law really felt. I want to have something to go off of if some bright-eyed young 1L-to-be asks me what he or she can expect.


In truth, my first semester is most like a marathon dance competition. I showed up with my shoes shined and my clothes ironed. Just like my classmates, I felt suave and smart because I had been accepted, I was on my way!

The first dance is a slow waltz through late August and early September. Compared to the break-dance competition I had fretted over and feared, there was nothing to it. There was a string quartet playing; my classmates and I laughed and joked as we made our way slowly around the dance floor, sipping cocktails and feeling ultra-cool because now we were doing something (even if it was learning which hunter should keep a dead fox back in 1888).

Somewhere in October, the string quartet drifted and out was replaced by a disc jockey. I didn’t really notice at the time. I was getting a little tired, maybe missing a step here and there, but nothing to worry about. The class danced on.

The DJ slowly picked up the volume. One song moved seamlessly into the next; the tempo picks up slowly throughout the song, and increases from one song to the next.

Now you're dancing to a heavy house beat in mid-November, trying to keep up with the beat, but when you look around everyone else is double-stepping to the beat! This makes you think that you should be four-stepping to get ahead and keep your scholarship, and this in turn makes someone else eight-step to a beat that, under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t even want to dance to! And everyone is doing it. And everyone is tired.

This was before Finals Preparation had even begun.