From early June 2004 to April 1, 2005, I lived in San Diego where I had a nice job as an intern at Hewlett Packard and took a few easy classes at UCSD. When my internship was coming to an end I knew I'd have to save up some money to live for a while without a job. Then I realized that I could either continue to pay rent and live in San Diego, or I could take that money and use it to buy gas and travel around, with no deadlines to meet or schedule to keep, and go where ever the hell I want. I figured I could last until sometime in the Fall on the money I had saved up.

So the day after my internship ended, I packed up and hit the road. My first driving segment was a familiar one, driving 3-4 hours north to my hometown of Bakersfield to drop off my stuff and spend a few days getting ready for a very long trip. I packed my mountain bike, camping gear, guitar, laptop computer, and a big old pile of maps into my little Ford Escort and hit the road.

I promise to make this website suck less when I'm less lazy.

UPDATE September 20, 2005
The trip's over. I'm back in Bakersfield and I have the huge job of typing up about 100 written pages from my notebooks and going through thousands of photos. I visited 32 states, 5 Canadian provinces, and 10 countries in Europe in 143 days. Here's my final journal entry. I'll get to work on typing up the rest.

So here it is:

Bakersfield to Pittsburgh
I wanted to get to Pittsburgh by April 13th, so I couldn't see everything, but I still saw a lot of stuff between California and Pennsylvania. I found interstate freeways to be exceptionally boring, so I ended up taking a lot of side roads.
April 6 - Needles, California
April 7 - Moab, Utah
April 7 - Moab, Utah
April 7 - Moab, Utah
April 8 - Boulder, Colorado
April 9 - Broomfield, Colorado
April 12 - Shenandoah, Iowa
April 12 - Clarinda, Iowa
April 13 - Richmond, Indiana
April 17 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
April 23 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh to DC/Maryland
A 3800-mile drive to get between two cities that are only 200 miles apart. I took the scenic route down the Appalachians, through the swamps of Georgia and Florida, and up the Atlantic Coast.
April 25 - New River Gorge, West Virginia
April 27 - Lexington, Virginia
APril 27 - Bristol, Tenneva
April 28 - Rest area on I-81 near Kingsport, Tennessee
April 28 - Augusta, Georgia
April 29 - Lyons, Georgia
April 29 - Waycross, Georgia
May 1 - Ocala, Florida
May 1 - Brunswick, Georgia
May 3 - Shallotte, North Carolina and May 28th in Burlington, Vermont
May 3 - Cedar Island, North Carolina
May 4 - Hatteras Inlet Ferry, North Carolina
May 4 - Cape Charles, Virginia
May 6 - Norwood, Pennsylvania
May 8 - Columbia, Maryland

The Northeast
A few thousand more miles of traveling through New England, New France, and New Scotland. In this segment of my trip I get ripped off by toll roads, meet Russians, invent a new way to surf, spend two nights in a haunted mansion, stay at my first hostel, learn about Canadian history, ride my bike way too far, watch Star Wars, learn French, and get dumped on by so much rain that my route is declared a disaster area.
May 14 - Orient Point, New York
May 17 - Bar Harbor, Maine
May 18 - Hillsborough, New Brunswick
May 19 - Alma, New Brunswick
May 19 - Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick
May 19 - Windsor, Nova Scotia
May 20 - Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
May 21 - Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
May 21 - Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
May 22 - Halifax, Nova Scotia
May 23 - Cape Breton Highlands near North Cape, Nova Scotia
May 24 - Cap-Pelé, New Brunswick
May 24 - Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick
May 25 - St.-Antoine, New Brunswick
May 26 - Quebéc City, Quebéc
May 28 - Burlington, Vermont
May 29 - Burlington, Vermont
May 29 - Burlington, Vermont
May 31 - Norwich or New London, Connecticut

Europe
Whoa! How'd I end up in Europe? With two friends I try out a whole new continent. I spend about five weeks over there, most of it behind the Iron Curtain. Czech it out. It's a land of tiny cars, $5 gallons of gas, awesome beers you are never drank before, frightening accents, Australians around every corner, poor people who are so po' they named a country Po-Land for them to live in, unabridged copies of Moby Dick, continental breakfasts, rock stars named Hedwig, $1 airfare, really fast trains, alcoholics, castles, and skeletons.
June 6 - London, England

Actually I haven't even started typing this up. It's really long. Almost as long as the entire rest of the stuff I've put up here so far.
But dig this: I become a noticeably better writer as the trip progresses, so there's another thing you can look forward to. Don't worry, it's coming. Slowly.