13:26 - Sept. 24, 2003
my holiday
i love the way i feel at the moment - all satisfied, spent, chubby and content. i have eaten too many cheeseburgers, i have seen shooting stars over death valley, i have swum in a pool of warm mineral water, i have stood on the rim of the grand canyon, i saw racoons, i lost about $200 gambling, i have taken over 500 photos in 16 days, i have driven a convertible up and down the Strip in las vegas, i have been offered weed by my aunt, i have spent a small fortune, shopped for my country and not thought about work or cancer or death in any upsetting way at all.
here is where we went: los angeles (lost on the freeways), santa monica (palm tree lined streets), simi valley (two never seen before second cousins), temecula (two more never seen before second cousins), pismo beach (we took photos of the sunset on the beach), morro bay (i found a stone with a star pattern on it. it broke and crumbled in my pocket), hearst castle (one guest stayed for over two years), san francisco (we drove the wrong way up a one way street - people drove by leaning out the window shouting "you're going the wrong way, man!"), alcatraz (dark, tiny solitary confinement), yosemite national park (turning a corner and seeing el capitan... we had to stop the car and get out), Bishop (staying at the same vagabond inn i was at 13 years ago, getting sunburnt playing golf), Death Valley National Park (driving over "Dips" at 100mph to feel our stomachs lurch), Williams (rushing around Safeway as it was closing to buy salad to eat in our room), Grand Canyon National Park (cold, feeling kind of flat after seeing something so incredibly BIG, that there was nothing else to do with it), Las Vegas (me and C getting ready in different rooms then presenting ourselves to each other like it was a date, dancing in Studio 54, the jaunty tune of the Monopoly slot machine, the noise of the slot machines paying out, throwing the dice at the craps table, people cheering, a casino the size of 4 football pitches).
Above all we laughed! We laughed at Happy Bunny ("you smell like butt"), at farts and burps and stupid faces, at the time i was feeding c bits of fruit in the car and missed his mouth smearing strawberry around his face, at squirting each other with water jets, at daft things we said, showing each other chewed up food, the stinky old packets of dope in my aunt's apartment...just so much laughing. The best medicine.
And so I have 500 or so pictures awaiting a home online. I'm setting up a new photobox account for them and, if you have any interest in someone else's holiday photos, some vain self-shots and a few taken by a 3 year old, then just ask and I'll send you the password.
