Road Trip: Days 1 and 2

I am not sure which day to count as Day 1 because traveling from SLO to Yuba City just doesn’t feel like the beginning of a road trip to me -- it feels like going home.  I suppose I’ll count Yuba City, though, since that was the venture out of SLO!  

Kiyoko and I got to Yuba City around 6:15pm, and it happened to be Father’s Day, so we “took my dad out” to Sopa Thai, which was closed.  We ended up at New Earth Market, Yuba City’s fresh and surprisingly-impressive new-ish health food market, and ate tamales and salads and soups from their prepared food area.  Pretty yummy.  Then we watched hours of TV (having no internet and cable means things like On Demand are so VERY exciting to me).  We watched fun things, like “True Life: I’m a Sugar Baby,” and “Dance Moms.”  Hurray TV!  Hurray warm, Yuba City summer nights, which make me feel simultaneously like an anxious and wistful small child, and a horny, wistful teenager.  Always wistful.  Always smells like rotting peaches.  Great stars, warm breezes -- if only Yuba City always had this charm!  

This morning we left Yuba City after picking up my car from the Toyota Dealership, that my nice daddy took in at 7:30, paid for, and gassed up for me!  Yay, Daddy!  Then, we dropped the car off, stopped at the bank, got a Cookie Tree VEGAN cookie, picked up some snick-snacks at New Earth (twice in 24 hours, bitches), and went on our merry way.  Isn’t this a truly exciting post so far, full of fun things like oil changes and banks and cookies?  No.  Sorry.

We got up in the truly hella up-there Northern California (there is state above San Francisco, SoCal narcissists!).  Everything up until Redding is dry and farmy and full of little towns called “Dairyville” and things like that.  Then, BAM!  Mountains and forests and majestic Mount Shasta!  Things got real pretty, real fast.  Then we were in Oregon, and spent the afternoon and evening in Ashland, which was just as cute as I remembered it from three years and ten years ago.  We walked around and checked out some little boutiques.  Kiyoko bought a fedora that fit her giant head, and we just spent the day going in little shops and reading menus from outside of cafes.  We went into Lithia Park, which is big and full of fairies (the literal kind, not gay men -- come on, guys, I’m more PC than that!).  But really, for a town that centers around Shakespeare, they really have the perfect place to make you feel like Puck is hiding behind a pretty tree or in a swampy pond.  This place was way cute, with benches and young dads pushing adorable little girls on swings, and college-age kids playing frisbee.  We even met a couple that met in person eight days ago who met on Instagram.  Yeah, that made even ME feel old.  How does that even...?  Anyway, she sounded like Jennifer Tilly, so we’ll see how long THAT lasts.  

We had dinner at Grilla Bites, a vegan-friendly small chain that I have been to in Chico.  I had a fake BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger, a totally Amy-customized meal (I like to pretend that I’m an obese southern man as much as possible, even though I’m vegan).  It was yummy.  And we had Beegan truffly-caramel things there.  We then saw the movie “Bully,” a documentary about kids who have been bullied, and the measures schools are taking to protect kids from bullies (spoiler alert -- they ain’t doing SHIT about it).  It was super sad and empowering as a future/current teacher and future/(current?!) parent.  Kids are fucking cruel.  Thanks for homeschooling me, Mommy and Daddy!  You saved me from getting STRANGLED and threatened and SAT ON on the school bus!  Jesus.  

Anyway, then we went to Darek Riley’s house in Talent, Oregon.  Haven’t seen the kid in years, and he is all skinny and grown up and owns a really cute house and has a pretty girlfriend named Linnea, so that’s all pretty cool.  Go, Darek!  We talked theatre and movies and TV shows and went to bed.  Well, not really.  I went to finish Mindy Kaling’s book while Kiyoko does Yin Yoga with headphones in and now I’m blogging.  

So far, so good!

P.S. I’ve already seen two LIVE deer, so this trip is already a success.