Please leave your bacon and your nuclear energy at the border.

While I am not technically living in San Francisco at the moment, I do have my face up against the windowpane, admiring it from across the Bay. Various reasons led me to settling into a house nestled in the Berkeley valley instead: cheaper rent, ability to have a garden, and the all-powerful job. Although not as exciting as San Francisco, and with not nearly enough flower carrying nudists, Berkeley is still not a bad place to live. The temperature at any given moment is always about ten degrees warmer than in San Francisco and the fog usually dissipates by the time it reaches the East Bay, meaning that I get to be greeted by sunshine each and every day. Berkeley is not quite like any place I have ever been before: it is not condensed or tall enough to be a city, but with its strict liberal policies which ensure that strip malls and chain-stores are not allowed to sprout within city limits, Berkeley retains its hipness and maintains streets lined with artist studios, cafes, organic grocers, and co-ops. To the north of me is an area known as the 'gourmet ghetto', although I am not sure how the word, 'ghetto' plays into the prices of these elite organic vegan dining experiences. To the south and east lie the University and Berkeley Hills, the former being a den of cheap Indian eats, yoga studios, and thrifts stores, while the latter is a great place for hiking and drooling over gorgeous homes, the perennials lining the front yard being equal in price to my yearly rent.
To the far south borders Oakland, which looks a lot more like sweet home Chicago than anything else I've seen out here. Oakland actually does have a downtown area, which is where I have to make a trek out to anytime I need to do something requiring a social service.
Despite the hilly reputation of our neighbor to the west, Berkeley and Oakland and pretty much flat, and I am still able to commute to work on my single speed, leaving my road bike available for trips across the bridge.
Unlike SoCal, in the bay area, cyclists are very welcomed and conscientiously yielded to on the road. The Berkeley folks pride themselves on being outdoorsy/environmentalist/studious (I'm told even some of the bums here hold PHDs), and so this seems to explain the driver's revere for the cyclist (just to note, though, this doesn't seem to apply to Oakland, as once I cross the town line, cars are trying to kill me again) There are at least 3 bike co-ops I've discovered so far, my favorite being bike kitchen in the mission, where I'll be volunteering later this month, waterside workshop in Berkeley which reclaims old bikes/parts and makes em' work again, and Missing Link Co-op, which lets you use stands/tools for free, any time, (but being by the University, the staff is a little grumpy).
And now about Casa de Lisita, my little castle in the valley. I'm sharing a four bedroom with an interesting group of gals and a little lion named Jasper. The previous owner was a little old lady who let the one acre yard fall into a landmine of barbed wire weeds and drought ridden soil cracked open wide to reveal the center of the earth. We've got big plans for this place, which has kept me busy since setting foot. So far, the compost bin is up and running, I've got some basil and beets sprouting, and have been reclaiming old bricks and wood as planter boxes. Crops can grow year round here, and we are reveling in our plan to convert the huge backyard into ten raised beds, of which we will lease out as a community garden. As there are no alleys, craigslist is your best friend out here, a means to find EVERYTHING for free... dirt, mulch, half consumed bottles of vitamins...
The roomies are an interesting bunch: There's Karen, a cello musician from Oberlin who makes some damn good granola. Jon, who teaches special needs kids in Oakland and plays the mandolin. Tonya, the brain of the group, holding PHDs from Berkeley and Arizona, a human evolutionist turned ocean conservation researcher. And her 16 year old daughter Savannah, who's going to play Alice in this fall's school play.
There always seems to be something going down in the Berk, whether its spontaneous African drum circles at the Sunday flea markets, or Swing bands playing in the town square.
San Francisco, however takes things to a new level. Every time I go into the city, I am introduced to some new kind of quirkyness. I've spent weekends perched atop Redwood trees while samba beats drift up toward me encased in bubbles, Nudists streaking across the fifty foot screen playing Annie Hall in Dolores Park, vacationing with a gang of IT nerds at Stinson Beach, the Hamptons of N Cali, a gated community of posh summer homes lining the coast, getting swept up in the current of immigrants bargaining for lechees and ginseng in Chinatown, Bombfire nights at the ocean, four dozen fires ablaze on the beach and a brad pitt look-alike with a feather in his cap serenading me while I lay in the sand.
Things never get boring here. And the locals seem to keep finding ways to outdo themselves.

The California Zephyr continued, Denver to San Francisco

When I last left off, I was re-boarding the train in Denver to continue my journey across the country to California.
Unlike the ride out from Chicago, where my train passengers included Amish families and a handful of weirdos, the train this time was loaded with bright and dreaded Phish fans coming home from a concert the night before in Red Rocks, Colorado. (You can imagine the smell of patcholi and festive atmosphere of the train)
The fellow to the right of me, wearing an American flag bandanna tightly around his long blonde hair, started up a conversation as we pulled out of the station. A landscaper from Lincoln, Nebraska, 'Frosty', as he preferred to be called, was one of the many following the Phish parade. In front of me was a feisty girl headed from Miami, who works in one of the many posh clubs frequented by celebs such as Puff Daddy and Dennis Rodman. Among the characters to join out roster were Shawn, an ex-con from Las Vegas, who now brews beer up in Eugene, Oregon, and Jenni, who ironically enough is also a Montessori teacher who had just moved from St. Charles, IL out to San Francisco with her husband (we've stayed in touch and so far she's my new best friend out here in the bay).
After forming our little group, we decided to re-locate to the back of the train, where there was an empty car for us to plug in our i-tunes and enjoy some of the craft beer Shawn had brought with him.
Shortly after boarding, the conductor announced that instead of going through snow-capped Rocky Mountain peaks and breathtaking canyons, our train was going to be re-routed through Wyoming. B-o-ring. Wyoming is a void in the middle of the US, a land devoid of people and pretty much anything to look at. But because of this routing mishap, we were told we would now get a three hour break in one of the most exciting cities in America: Salt Lake City, Mormon Capitol of the world.
Despite this ill-turn of fate, we worked ourselves up to a pick of excitement, anticipating the opportunity to attempt to inact a few hours of harmless debartury upon the Mormons. As it turned out, our conductor, Roger, was a Mormon himself, but was not at all amused by our behavior or jokes about looking for a few new wives during our layover. Just as we entered Utah and the beer ran out,the train screeched to a hault.
Roger's voice could be heard over the intercom:
"There appears to be a train with a broken engine in front of us. Not sure how long we'll be stopped for. But, Dorthy, We're not in Kansas anymore, and the penalties for controlled substances out in Utah are swift and severe". We were stuck looking out into the dusty void of Utah for three hours before the train started to slowly move again, and because of our delay, the Mormon Gods saw to it that we would only have a ten minute break in Salt Lake City. We were starving. One guy in our group jumped to the rescue and started calling around to all the pizza joints to see if anyone would deliver to the train station. Just as it seemed that every pizza place in town shut down by 9pm, Pizza Hut saved the day by agreeing to meet us on the train platform. And so, just as we pulled into the station, Chris gathered our cash, ran off the train to the waiting pizza van, made the exchange and we were on our way! Too bad those Mormons couldn't have thrown in a six-pack.
We all got some sleep and the next morning, while the scenery hadn't changed much, the laws of the land certainly had. We were now in Nevada, the state of legalized sin. We pulled into Reno around 11am, and despite the fact that we again only had a ten minute break, it was enough time for one dude armed with a skateboard to hit up the liquor store and come back with a gallon of vodka. The lunch hour cocktails were a bit too early for me, but I still had fun chatting with these people from such varied backgrounds, and getting tons of advice and recommendations on living in San Francisco. Our conductor, Roger, had gotten off in Utah, and his replacement was a much more laid back gentleman from the east bay. This new conductor allowed us to get off the train at all the stops for a quick game of volleyball before re-boarding.
You could see the smiles break over everyone's face as we finally entered California and curved around Lake Tahoe. At our first stop in California, the condutor got on the intercom:
"Welcome to Sacramento, for all you smokers out there, you may now step off the train and 'burn one', if you know what I mean".
After months of planning and worrying if I had made the right decision, I had arrived in California, and all was well. The sun was shining, I had already made some new friends, and life's possibilities seemed endless...

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been: Tales from the California Zephyr

What kind of way is it to start an adventure if you don’t almost miss your train. Keeping to my lust for excitement, I managed to arrive at Union Station 15 minutes before my train was set to depart, well after the cut-off for checking in baggage. Luckily, I found a take-no-shit southsider in an Amtrak jumpsuit with a soft spot for dames in distress who, after emptying the cash contents on my wallet into his open palm, took my bike boxes down to the loading dock and agreed to send them off on the next day’s train. That freed me up with enough time to run around like a mad woman clumsily swinging my knapsack into harmless Amish families as I sought out track number five. I made it onto the train just as they were preparing to pull out, I was on my way…

It only took an hour upon leaving Chicago to become surrounded by corn, chipped paint silos, pickup trucks, and boarded up town squares draped in American flags. What a little capsule of a world I’ve been living in, how unlike what America really is.
But while a city like Chicago represents the finest of its country, a city is never a true representation of that country. I was in the real America now, and all it's corn glory.

For the first few hours, I hung out in the observation lounge listening to Sufjan Stevens Illinoise and thinking about corn. The uniformity of the corn makes this flatness even more dramatic: If viewed either straight on or directly above, it resembles a lake, the rows wiz by like ripples emanating from a pebble.
I think the Japanese mind would be in rapture if it were to gaze upon an American cornfield; the orderly flatness, abnormally perfect rows of ingeniously cloned superfood. It reminds me of the Japanese phrase, ‘the nail that sticks up must be hammered down’, each stalk of corn like a student from one of the school assemblies standing at full attention; so young, but already growing along a plan of someone else's design.

I was hoping the train accommodations would be similar to the long distance trains I took in China, where we were all filed into our own horizontal cubbyhole, six beds to a door-less room. However, this was not the case, the train instead being set up as two opposing worlds of upper and lower class with a dining car in between to insure our segregation. The coach seat I was in turned out to be quite cozy, despite being slightly bigger than an airline seat. The 'first class', or sleeper car option is an extra $400, and while it ensures that your time can be passed lying on your back, I doubt those up front had quite as much fun as we did.

And so what kind of person buys a coach ticket on Amtrak? "Normal" is not a characteristic you find in the people who ride the rails. Perhaps it takes a certain kind of crazy to decide to put yourself through over fifty hours of train travel when you can fly to your destination for almost the same price these days.
To be fair, there probably are some normal people who have very good reasons to be on the train, but they tend to be the ones who keep to themselves in their assigned seat, gazing at nothing with headphones on. As I don’t have the patience to sit in one place without anything stimulating happening for hours, I decided to make my way into the lounge car armed with a chess set and a smile.
I first fell into conversation with a 'bloke' from Essex who was determined to drink his way across America. I watched in awe as my new friend Simon, who wound up being terrible at chess but an expert at drinking himself into a stupor, went on about how much he loved America, despite our refusal to insert the letter ‘u’ into words such as ‘color’. I’ve noticed time and time again that the things I tend to find the most revolting about this country are the very things foreigners just love: massive trucks, strip malls, billboards, gregarious servings of food… While we love to go to foreign countries and marvel at how old everything is. You know what they say, the grass is always greener. Anyway, my British friend wound up getting belligerent on the poor lunch car server, after repeatedly being told he couldn't smoke inside the car. He excused himself to go pass out on the elderly shoulder of his unfortunate Nebraskan seatmate.
The next friend to drop in was a retired vet from Las Vegas in a Vietnam war trucker hat and camouflage jacket who insisted on calling me ‘toots’ and ‘honey’ for the duration of the trip. He plopped himself down next to me and demanded that we have a game of chess next. But contrary to his affectionate demeanor, he proceeded to insult me for the duration of the game by saying that girls can’t be good chess players (apparently this is a well-established fact) and when I won the game, accused me of moving the pieces when he was in the john.
After that, I pretty much gave up on making friends, and slept the rest of the way until Denver.

I arrived in the mile high city at dawn, met with my sister and cruised over to her house in the outskirts of town. Starving because I refused to eat the hideous train food, I scarfed down some homemade banana bread, changed, and jumped in the car to go hiking at Rocky Mountain national park.
About halfway into the car ride, as we were driving through Lyons, where the hotel that The Shining was filmed in still stands, I started to really feel the altitude. Or, at least I thought it was the altitude. One of the girls said something and I just couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Wait, that wasn’t funny, why am I laughing?’ I thought.
I turned to my sister, “??You didn’t put pot in the banana bread, did you?”
“Oh, sorry. I forgot to tell you.”
“I ate THREE slices!”
Sigh.
Well, I was in Colorado now, one of the states where medicinal is legal.
The afternoon was a pretty heavy haze, lots of frolicking was had. After playing in icy mountain streams, we met up with my brother in Boulder and had a few beers at the Lazy Dog Brewery. Boulder has more brew pubs than I can count on me hands and toes, and is in general a very cute little town. It reminds me of a mix between Santa Fe and Madison.
We worked off our beers on another hike through the foothills, taking in the scent of the Pondorosa Pines, and as the altitude, pot, and general exhaustion caught up with me, passed out on the ride home.
The next day, we headed out again early to meet up with my brother in the mountains. My brother secured a job as a lift operator up at A-Basen for the snow season, one of the best ski resorts in the US. The houses he's looking to rent up in Silverthorne, log cabins with wood burning stoves and hot tubs, go for about the same price as a one bedroom apartment in Chicago if you snatch it up during the off season. I'm glad that all my siblings are following their dreams at the moment, (and I'm eager for a winter of free snowboarding!)
We met up with him at the summit of Loveland Pass, the place where my sister tied the knot last fall. At almost 12,000 feet, just a few steps leaves you feeling out of breath, yet exhilarated.
There was still snow left on the tips of the peaks, and mountain flowers were in bloom on the slopes. Everything was sharp: the air, the light. But eventually you have to come back down from that mountain. We stopped at some old gold mining- turned tourist towns on the ride back down, snapping some photos of the burnt out old west. We were greeted with a traditional New Mexican dinner when we returned, compliments of my sister's husband: Enchiladas, tacos, and of course, fresh roasted green chiles. It was hard to let go and get back on that train, knowing I could just very well stay on longer with the family, play with the baby and watch him grow. For a long time before, I felt very disconnected from any notion of family, but this trip was one of the first times that I knew I'd really miss them when I left. Is that just growing older or maybe wiser?
Back on the train, Monday morning, I waved goodbye knowing that I had found another place I could very well see myself living. I fell into a slumber, and when I opened my eyes, was greeted by my neighboring train passenger bearing down on me with a jovial smile: "Hi."
Thus began 34 hours of train mischief and mayhem.
TO BE CONTINUED...