jesseg

Friday was my 24th birthday (thanks to those who noticed) and it started out pretty well. I invited some friends over to my parents house and my mom made us delicious tacos. Apre`s tacos, I headed to Santa Barbara with my friend Isabel to see friends and engage in stimulating social activities. About halfway there near the city of Coalinga (I never heard of it either), my car blew a head gasket. We walked a couple of miles back up the freeway to the last service station where we ran in to Maxwell the burnout raver. We had met maxwell about an hour ago when my truck overheated and we pulled over next to him and shared a joint. Max was going to LA which is kind of on the way but not really. It was a little after midnight and considering that Coalinga pop. 23 had no hotel we hitched a ride with him. Max is a weird guy. He drives a Toyota Prius and has a terrible taste for music. We started with rock flute stylings of Jethro Tull. Max was especially enamoured with one particular Tull track which he claimed was the most beautiful song in the world even though it was only 30 seconds long. The track was in fact about 3 minutes long, I know because we listend to it 5 consecutive times. Max's next choice was really weird electronic music to which he danced as if he had glow sticks in his hands and a head full of E. Max is weird, very weird, trust me.
We arraged for Max to drop us off at the intersection of I-5 and highway 126 in the middle of the grapevine where we would be picked up by Steve, Isabel's boyfriend and Chazz, his roommate. We found a good rendezvoux point next to a 50 foot high american flag and waited. A little after two in the morning they showed up and by 4:30 in the AM we were there. What a great Birthday! I spent the rest of the weekend getting drunk, getting the runs and getting into fights with sealions before taking the Amtrak home, first class of course.