{"id":860,"date":"2007-07-29T01:10:19","date_gmt":"2007-07-29T06:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/860"},"modified":"2007-07-29T01:10:19","modified_gmt":"2007-07-29T06:10:19","slug":"california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/860","title":{"rendered":"California!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Having touched all the bases I had to touch this trip, I decided to weasel a little time to spend in my native land out of my last week of vacation.&nbsp; I&#8217;m going to spend a couple days here in California with my brother and the Garrett side of my family tree.&nbsp; I simply could not get this close without crossing the border, even if it&#8217;s just to spend only two days with my brother.\n<\/p>\n<p>Here I see Damiel Gonzales over at Box Turtle Bulleting fleeing California for the more affordable Denver, and here I am desperately wishing I could go back and spend the rest of my life in the land of my birth.&nbsp; But for the same reason Daniel can&#8217;t stay, I could not go, except to visit.&nbsp; I have a cute little rowhouse and the best job in the world waiting for me back in Baltimore.&nbsp; (Now if only I had a boyfriend back there waiting for me too.&nbsp; Ah&#8230;but he would be here with me, enjoying the western scenery&#8230;)\n<\/p>\n<p>This trip just worked out weird, because I had so many people I had to visit along the way, plus the Open Source Developer&#8217;s Conference in Portland.&nbsp; Unlike previous years, the direct route took me away from my beloved four corners, and California.&nbsp; It was first to Memphis, then to Topeka, and then to Portland, and then back to Boise.&nbsp; So the route took me north, away from the four corners area, and into Wyoming, which after what I saw in Laramie, I am coming to despise.&nbsp; In the southwest the desolation is beautiful.&nbsp; The arid landscape between Boise and Cheyenne just stares back at you vacantly.&nbsp; Before long, that emptiness is staring into your soul, like Nietzsche&#8217;s abyss.&nbsp; You just want to get the hell out of there.&nbsp; This trip it seemed, I would have to cross it twice.&nbsp; If it wasn&#8217;t for another Garrett in Boise that I promised to come visit (we Garretts are actually quite adorable while we&#8217;re still young), I wouldn&#8217;t have considered it.\n<\/p>\n<p>But after my stopover in Boise I decided to hell with it and zigged back across Nevada into California.&nbsp; I called my brother and told him I&#8217;d be there for a couple days.&nbsp; Then I&#8217;ll travel back across I-40, hit the trading posts at Gallup on the way back, buy a little more Turquoise, and enjoy at least a little of Arizona and New Mexico before going back home.<\/p>\n<p>But&#8230;swear&#8230;a few days in California are necessary right now.&nbsp; Something deep down inside of me felt like it was starting to suffocate until I crossed the border and something deep down inside of me sighed.&nbsp; I think it was Wyoming.&nbsp; Wyoming just&#8230;did something to me.&nbsp; Something&#8230;disturbing.&nbsp; I had to go see California, had to plant my feet on its soil, had to breath in its air, run my hand through the sand along the Pacific shore.&nbsp; It&#8217;s in my will that when I die I want my ashes scattered here, somewhere in or near Oceano, where the grassy hills watch the Pacific waves caress the shore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having touched all the bases I had to touch this trip, I decided to weasel a little time to spend in my native land out of my last week of vacation.&nbsp; I&#8217;m going to spend a couple days here in California with my brother and the Garrett side of my family tree.&nbsp; I simply could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}