HomelessInLaJolla's Journal: 140908 (walking)

This is my description of my summer vacation. Two weeks in Encinitas to eat plenty of cheeseburgers and tighten up the threads on the vehicle. Then walk for Temecula. Temecula up and down and around through Murrieta and to Elsinore. Bus to Riverside. Leave Riverside for a long walk of mixed uban fare, mostly peanuts and mixed bags of doritos. Walk through Beverly Hills, UCLA, Hollywood. Breakfast at Von's Hollywood. Hollywood to Milton, prayer at St. Sebastian's. Sepulveda to RInaldi, Rinaldi to Hampstead and Devonshire. Santa Susanna pass to Simi Valley. Nice place. Through Simi Valley to sleep next to a Cosmetology schoolon the way outside. Nice area, Simi Valley. Only one dog yammering all night long. Somewhere along the outside of Moorpark, never really saw that town. Long walk through plantation fields to an area of Oxnard where the 1 begins. That promptly diverges or ends and I walked near exactly the same route I drove when I remember having that problem eight years ago in a vehicle, attempting to find and follow the 1. Oxnard to a place on Victoria where there was a large open warehouse commercial space empty for lease. Spent a day or two sewing there, hoping to find a new pair of shoes. My shoes were wearing to the socks, at the top of the feet. If I could deteriorate to walking like a clodhopper (that's, umm, all of you) then the shoes have a good three or four weeks walking remaining at the ankle.

Oxnard up to Ventura, missed the exit to the bicycle path by about 100 yards, turned around to try and walk some way through Ventura, ended up in Ojai. New hat!

North of Ventura is a nice place known as Capenteria. The police advised me to keep walking for Santa Barbara. The police in Santa Barbara quickly informed me that they didn't like homeless people. Keep walking. Goleta, pick up a bell ornament for the hat. Goleta to Orcutt, that's good exercise. Orcutt for a few days, nice church, St. Louis de Montefort. The deputy himself arrived to counsel me that he didn't like me sitting around sewing ("Am I doing anything wrong yet?" after watching the cruisers circling for a morning "No, you're not doing anything wrong yet."). No sense arguing with the fellow that has handcuffs. Difficult to leave that situation. On to Santa Maria. I could stay here or keep walking. I'm more accustomed to leaving tonight rather than sticking around for morning. On from there, across a few fields, next to big power lines to sleep, then coffee in Nipomo. Never managed to find the church in Nipomo, wasn;t looking real hard. Stopped for a few hours to sew a repair or two then on to Arroyo Grande via Pomorroy. That was a fun walk. Arroyo Grande, Pismo Beach, pick up the peacock feather for the hat in Shell Beach. Shell Beach trolley driiver arrives at the moment morning prayer ended to ask if I would like a ride. I didn't see much of PIsmo Beach when I walked through, my kind of area, bowling alley, billiards and pool, and plenty of local and tourist name coffee houses for the tourists, good luck finding Starbucks. Shell Beach trolley driver takes me to Pismo Premium. Oh, now, here's an area. Shell Beach trolley driver hints that the bus north goes all the way to San Luis Obispo, and there's a mission there. A day thinking about it and then up to San Luis Obispo. The bishop is having lunch next week Sunday. Nice area, stay and sew for a week, have lunch with the bishop on Sunday, and then back to St. Patrick's and St. Paul's for a week. Everything in the Arroyo Grande area is another 2 miles just to pick up and walk somewhere else. Very different from 92037 around-the-block routine. Added another hundred miles waking up in the morning, walking to mass, and then to a grocery store area. Walk north through San Luis Obispo. Another nice walk. Walk north to, what, Morro Bay? I wasn't there for ten minutes to fix a few sticks on my hat while talking to a fella showing me where this and that (grocery, laundry, post office, library, the Arroyo Rock), then the whole place turned into a festival of dead reanimated carnival beasts (that's no dog, it's four fishing poles and a couch cushin, the skull is some old dog from the bottom of hell, it's dead, jim, but how do we know it? how do we know it? he's dead jim. The eyes are dead, those are not living eyes. He's dead jim. We know it's the truth but how do we know it?). I decided to walk for the 101. The map and the guide and the fella next to me confirmed that the next three anything through there weren't much larger than the filling station. Long walk up the 41 to Atascadero. Stay for two days and become inspired by a ten dollar bill and catch the bus returning to Santa Maria through San Luis Obispo. Santa Maria to Lompoco, another dead reanimated carnival beast festival as I passed through the town. Leave Lompoc on the 1, fun walk, but the walk up to Atascadero really wore me out. Why am I still walking 12-15-20 miles between towns and never seeing more than a day or two of rest?

If you leave everything behind you may walk further and longer, but it is only worth freezing to death once over. I did that one thousands of miles ago. When carrying everything, maybe a person may go three months, but there's a point where there's just no more point in wandering between towns like this.

The 1 back to Goleta is a nice walk, and I was helped by a fella, Mark. Arrive in Goleta on Friday night with a $15 card for Little Caesar's and extra dollars for coffee at McDonald's. Saturday morning prayer with St. Rafael (see the statue out front? he has wings... why yo' ass hurt so much, from having the wings tore off out of the steam press, that's why yo' ass so fat) and then on the bus to Santa Barbara. Spend Saturday vigil and Sunday with Fr. Raf at Our Lady of Sorrows and then on the bus on Monday, oh, shoot, Labor Day, well, back to morning mass and then catch the bus to Oxnard on Tuesday. Oxnard, walk around through Huanome to Camarillo.

A day in Camarillo, a small position in a jazz cafe washing dishes for two hours, twenty-five bucks, and bus money south to Simi Valley, then the Metrolink train to downtown LA Union. "Hello, I am going to Elsinore via Riverside. How do I go there?" "Red Line, 12:40 pm" "Is this MetroLink ticket good for transfer?" "No" (transfer passes usually lose a grade level at transfer points, no more riding the premium rails, trolley and bus only) "How many dollars to Riverside?" "$13" I don't have, $13. "How do I take the bus to Riverside" "You can't", then the equivalent of the THANK YOU and the window closing. I walk to the other customer service, ask same questions. "What you need to do is call this number."

I know there's a bus to Riverside, I've seen the book, I should have saved that bus book, the bus goes there, I know it does. I need the 68, 70, or 76 out of this place. Then I began remembering the walk around the days of Von's Hollywood, and it seemed if I could just make it back there (HAHAHA!) then I could remember the road back (that much longer). The police arrive to interrogate me. "I need to go to Riverside" I squeak, they begin giving the hard muscle stares, so I begin spouting bus numbers "10, 18, 30". The police are now upset. "There is no 10 or 30 from here!" he barks, and he's right. "What you need to do is go downstairs and get on the red line trolley to north Hollywood, that's where you want to go right?" I just want the officer to quit barking at me, and I had just been thinking that if I could just make it back to Von's Hollywood (HAHAHAHAHA!) then I could remember the road back.

So I arrive in north Hollywood and promptly decide that I should not have taken this line this direction. But there had been so much trouble at LA Union, the guards had to escort me through the pass checker point, because my ticket wasn't good as that transfer, or something, I don't know. I was perfectly blind after the encounter with the police, hardly knew which direction to go to ask for directions. So I walked back to downtown by following the signs (didn't intend to make it right back downtown at that exact point again, I was following the signs and reading directions on the way). Was advised by a passerby "Your pass is fine, good for all of today, just get on the gold rail going east"

Now if only I knew what bus to find after that. It wasn't until another night, after I spent the final remaining dollars on Starbucks and cookies (SUGAR, need SUGAR to keep knockin' down these miles), that, hey! look, right there in front of you, all the time. The 68. Walk through the Korean and Vietnamese districts watching the 68 go past me every twenty minutes or so, wishing I had bus fare. I yet didn't know how the 68 would make it to Riverside, only that such a feat was possible, and I had no excuse to ask the bus driver if I didn't yet have any fare in my pocket, so I kept walking on by general direction. Turns out that neat any of the transit centers from Fontana on will have some service-or-other to Riverside. Would have been nice to know that some select stations will see a bus from places, like, oh, PROMENADE in Temecula. At Baldwin Park I take the rail again (10:57, leaving, the hell with it, money or not I am on this rail). Then I knew, somehow or other, maybe I talked with somebody, but I knew the 215 goes to Riverside.