Bree Travels: Journey To LA

So... it's been quite a while since I last posted. Instead of keeping up with this blog I spent this past year moving in with my boyfriend-- I know...a more than worthy blog post, working multiple jobs, and soul-searching. So why am I deciding to get back to posting now??

Californication

Well, my next adventure is taking me on a cross country journey, that's why! My boyfriend and I have decided to take a leap of faith and drive to Los Angeles for a new "life" on a different coast. Nothing about our voyage is new and uncharted. It's not like Los Angeles is some distant uninhabited land yet to be discovered. People have been driving from one side of this country to the other, well, as far back as buggy and carts. But It's still worth writing about. It is, you know, my journey. And everyone doesn't take the same route or make the same memories. I'm sure our journey will be full of post worthy surprises. especially since we're driving with cats. Very unhappy cats. More like a very unhappy orange one.

Start Your Engines

So where to start? How about the very moment my lovely and I finished packing the car with our things, our cats, and our hopes and dreams. We sat in front of our Woodside apartment as it drizzled and continued to rain as it did all morning. My lovely looked at me and I looked at him. We smiled and laughed amazed at the crazy big journey we were about to undertake. "We did it!" "We're all packed and ready to go!" "Alright, let's get started!" We were brimming with so much excitement!

And then we hit rush hour traffic. Funny how quickly you can lose that glassy-eyed wonder when you're sitting in heavy traffic in the dark. As bad as that may already seem, we also have a large orange tabby named Hobbes who is NOT happy to be in a moving vehicle.

I would say our first mistake was thinking we would be done packing and sweeping up no later than 1pm. We got a late start to our drive because we had so much extra to do (and also because of a wild night before with a friend who may have showed up to help a little too drunk, but that's a story for another post). We ended up leaving closer to 5pm.

Making matters worst, it had rained the entire day growing heavier into the night with each passing hour. It took us four--yes four HOURS to leave the city of New York. It's was grueling. Aggressive cabbies, tired daily commuters, and roadway after roadway of flooded streets and bumper to bumper traffic. Did I mention I was driving? My lovely (have I mentioned how oh so very much I love him) has too much anxiety about NYC traffic to get us out of the city. When he first got to New York, he crashed not one, but two box trucks while trying to navigate through the traffic. That was all the driving he attempted in the city and begged me not to put him behind the wheel until we were out on the open road. With the night the way it was, I wouldn't have asked him to drive even if I had a broken right foot. We would have definitely ended up in the Hudson if I had made him drive. Again, we were in traffic four hours. My lovely would have been howling with frustration as much as Hobbes was.

Speaking of The Cats

Our newest cat Cannon is a small, barely one-year-old rescue from Brooklyn. In her young life she has already spent much of it in cages. She actually finds comfort in it. Hobbes is also a rescue, going on 11 years-old. We don't know what happened to him before my boyfriend found him in Oklahoma, but the one thing he knows how to do is survive. If things are changing around him and he feels like his home is no longer, he goes a little nuts. Originally we had both cats in the cage together. If he feels trapped he starts destroying things for attention. Having them both in the cage lasted all of 10 minutes into our drive. We hadn't even left Queens before Hobbes went into survival mode, panicking and smacking Cannon out of frustration. We were trying to drive a bit before letting him out to explore, something he had done previously during car rides. Once we realized Hobbes wasn't going to play nice, we let him out and Cannon was content to sleep the entire ride in the comfort of her cage. Hobbes howled, panted and paced the car stress shedding all over anything he touched.

This Is Going To Be A Long Drive

My lovely and I finally broke free from that New York City traffic somewhere on the other side of the Holland Tunnel. Knowing we were no longer in the city gave us a little relief, though it was still raining heavily and Hobbes was still very unhappy and pacing the car. Cannon stretched out in her cage and was fast asleep. Maybe our nightmare of a commute was finally going to settle down.

Then the tolls began. And of course we had only six dollars cash on us as we approached our first eight dollar toll. It was like we couldn't get a break! On top of that I was becoming dehydrated. We had been working since 8 am in the morning and it was now approaching 8pm. My driving leg began to cramp. We stopped momentarily to get cash and fill our stomachs, which had been empty the entire day, with McDonalds. I haven't eaten McDonalds in years, but I scarfed down that double cheese burger and fries like it was the last meal I'd ever have. My lovely and I sat in the car scarfing, mapping our route, and trying not to get rain water everywhere as we took off our soaking wet jackets.

Yay road trips.

We drove on through the night. The rain slowly began to peter away. We had a hotel waiting for us in Virginia Beach, but with our late start I almost wished we hadn't set it up ahead of time. As midnight approached I became exhausted.  My lovely took over driving and we made it to our hotel at 3am. We fell asleep as soon as our heads touched the pillows. "No more," My body whimpered as I faded into sleep. "No more..."

The United States of Wastfulness

I work in a place with a bakery. I learned last night that EVERY day they throw away trash bags full of bread. GOOD bread. One of the janitors has a good rapport with my coworkers. I spoke with him and he said, "Yes, everyday it's like this." He leaves it out on a counter so people can take it home. "I feed my family with this bread."

In the United States of America we throw away so much food. We throw it away because it doesn't look uniform, perfect. We throw away food because some of us have too much of it. We throw away food because it's the end of the day and it didn't sell.

There are actual people starving across the street, and we're putting full loaves of bread in the trash.

The bakers make sure to only place bread in the trash bag. That way they are following company policy of throwing away day old bread, but allowing others to salvage it. I made toast this morning with a cranberry walnut loaf the janitor showed me. "It's perfectly good bread."

It was.