This will be another, even more lengthy, documentary of the week I spent in California.

Day 1: Saturday, September 17

I'm always neurotic about traveling because I know I'm going to forget some horrible detail or I'll be late for a flight (see How Not To Travel Tip #6), and this trip was no exception. I made a huge list of things not to forget. One of them was to make extra keys for my house so DeLaine could come over to take care of the cats (she and Heather split the dog-sitting duties at their respective residences). I got the keys made and delivered one to DeLaine, no problem, but on the day of my departure as I was waiting around the house, stewing in my neuroses, I decided I should test my newly minted key.

It didn't work. Which meant that there was a strong possibility that D's wouldn't work either, which meant that she would have had to break into the house to prevent the kitties from dying of starvation. So I had Heather deliver my only backdoor key to D, and I was off to the airport.

When I got there, Southwest Airlines was having some sort of festivities. This picture is actually a reversal so it's easier to read. I only found out later that this has something to do with Dallas's Love Field and the Wright Amendment:

Anyway, I flew on Delta, which recently filed Chapter 11, so I was a little worried. The flight was fine of course - not only did I get peanuts, I also got cheese and crackers AND a WHOLE can of Coke. More of my air carriers should go bankrupt if that's how it's laid out. Check it, peep Delta.

The weather was clear, making for some excellent scenery. Descending into Salt Lake City is an impressive event. Mountains part and the previously rugged trerrain gives way to a vast expanse of flatland. It must have been an awesome spectacle for the first settlers in the region. It almost made me want to start my own eccentric cult. Flying into a major city continually fascinates me, as I'm presented with an immediate impression of just how much larger the world is than I ever really thought, and then I realize that the enormous view I've just absorbed is itself only a small portion of this Earth.

I got off my plane and arrived at my connecting gate just as they called my row for boarding, so I didn't have a chance to call ex-roomie Matt who now lives in Salt Lake City. As I took off, I was delivered over that titular body of water and its attendant salt flats. This has to be the most alien of American landscapes; tell me this doesn't look like the moon:

The salt flats are cris-crossed with a number of apparently random geometric shapes - straight lines that run for miles and turn or stop for no apparent reason. It's as though God were playing with a broken Etch-a-Sketch.

I'm going to digress here even more for a moment. On the plane I was reading Steve Martin's The Pleasure of My Company. Like Shopgirl before it (now a major motion picture), it consists almost entirely of first-person narration. Given that I am the type of person who absorbs language (taking on accents of particular regions or the diction of particular authors I'm reading), this caused me to narrate my own thoughts:

"My benevolent captors granted me an entire can of Coke, and I drank it from its plastic cup with crushed ice temporarily numbing my upper lip with frozen sweetness. My crackers were shaped like happy little airplanes."

As we descended into Oakland International Airport, the very large moon was rising behind us. We sank below the Bay Area clouds and escaped its evil eye.

I was picked up by my friend Erika and her friend Amy. We zoomed off to Le Cheval, a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant. I had the chicken curry, the first of many amazing meals on my trip. Afterward they whisked me to not one but two small parties in the area.

Good times.

Day 2