Going coastal.

We didn't get nearly as early a start as we would have liked; but on the other appendage, we didn't get as late a start as I was afraid we would, either. We packed all our gear and consumables into retcon's cute li'l Prius and hit the road just in time for it to start raining.

We'd planned a scenic route, down through the Oregon Coast. The trip down to Portland was familiar enough to me, from conventions and visits to Powell's, but after a certain point, I realized I was now farther south than I had been my entire adult life. I was really outside of my box now.

Wending our way west took us through dark, rainy, heavily wooded winding roads. My horror-writer imagination got the best of me here, with the thought that I was in completely unfamiliar territory, and there could be anything behind those thick stands of trees. I never should have watched the goddamm Blair Witch Project.

Dinner was sandwiches treebyleaf made us as we stopped at a closed gas station in a small town just to get shelter from the rain, which was not the most elegant dining venue I've ever experienced, but I have to admit it was kind of fun.

Eventually, while I was half-asleep, we stopped for the night at a hotel that I barely remember. We got an earlier start and made better progress the next day.

The rain continued. I began to worry it would still be raining even when we hit California, and the wardrobe I'd packed would be completely inadequate.

The most exciting moment of the second day for me was when we passed Sixes River and I realized that we were in a little town called Sixes, Oregon. Mind you, I no sooner had time to make that realization and exclaim about it than we were completely through the town. "That -- that was it, wasn't it?" I said sadly, looking around at the unincorporated landscape.

Speaking of which -- there's a lot of it. Most of the areas we drove through were rural ones, and I realized that more of the country is like this than not. It's hard for me to remember in a city of high-speed Internet access and lattes that most of people in the United States spend their days principally concerned with livestock and propane.

The constant rain let up to a light drizzle long enough for us to stop at a lovely stretch of beach -- real beach, with, you know, sand, not like the typical rocky Seattle beach. Sand and ocean stretching huge as the horizon. We stop the car and treebyleaf is out the door and gone. Riff and I, noticing the Caution - Dangerous Undertow sign she's surely missed, bolt after her, calling out, "Don't go in the water!"

She didn't. She didn't need to -- the water came to her. She realized that she might want to get her feet wet so stopped to take off her shoes and socks -- turned away from the ocean and got one shoe and sock off just in time for a wave to come in and splash her. She took off the remaining footwear and put all of it further up on the beach, out of the way of the water -- theoretically -- and went back to play in the surf, since she was already wet. Then a bigger wave came along, washed over her shoes and socks, and nearly carried them out to sea, but we managed to catch them.

Watching her dancing and laughing and playing at the water's edge, I said to Riff, "If she gets pulled in and drowns, I'm never going to talk to her again." "Would we still go to Disneyland?" "Sure, but it'd be kind of a downer of a trip -- go on Space Mountain, drag tree, go on Pirates of the Carribean, drag tree .... "

I came away from this feeling like I understood her better, now. She'd been born here in Oregon, and then taken away to the California desert that nearly killed her. This was where she finally looked right and wild to me, where I finally felt like I could see the deep of her ocean heart.

We ate a little lunch and got back on the road -- tree's shoes and socks were a sandy wet loss. I had to pour water out of them before I could put them in the car. Her pants were soaked as well, and she sat in the backseat and took them off and sat under a blanket. I spread her pants out on my lap, the only place I could think of where they'd be laid out flat near the heater.

Before long, we started seeing roadside readerboards advising us that the highway ahead was closed due to rock slides. Neither the signs nor the highway information radio station mentioned anything about any possible detour, so we stopped to look at a map. There really didn't seem to be a detour; there was one small road, unnamed and unnumbered, that might work, if we could find it, but ....

In the end, Riff reluctantly figured that our only real option was to backtrack a bit, head east across mountainous terrain, and meet up with I-5.

It took up the rest of the day. It was a nightmare. The rain became torrential and fog rolled in. The mountain roads were slippery and winding and all treacherous switchbacks, and sometimes we literally couldn't see the road at all. There were frightening, looming semi-trucks everywhere, and our little car was struggling to make it up the steep grades. It all seemed to go on forever.

Riff was pretty much a nervous wreck when we finally came down out of it. We stopped in the first little town we came to and found a Mexican restaurant that looked appealing. treebyleaf tried to prepare us for the fact that, since we were close to California, Mexican food could be quite different from what we were used to, but it didn't seem terribly strange to me -- just good and fresh and most welcome.

We stopped for the night soon after, far short of our goal, hoping that the next day would be better.

Next: Shangri-L.A.

Shangri-L.A.

Started the day with retcon and I finally getting the fast-food breakfast we'd been hoping for the day before. (Apparently, it's harder to find a Jack in the Box in rural Oregon than we'd expected. Who knew?)

The weather cleared up as we headed south, just as I'd hoped it would. We saw all kinds of raptors and ravens along the way, and rolling foothills formed by some very different geological processes than those that ruled my home state.

We started seeing signs for fast-food that treebyleaf was familiar with; Carl's Jr. and Del Taco. She told us she definitely wanted to stop at a Del Taco if we found one when she was hungry; and that as much as she'd enjoyed Carl's Jr. as a child, she disagreed with their politics enough to avoid them now.

We stopped for lunch -- nothing exotic, just a JitB -- and then headed up over one last set of hills, a pastel-soft landscape that looked like a matte painting or a model railway even when we were close to it.

Then we descended down into the huge, sprawling, incomprehensible mess that is the Los Angeles freeway system. It wasn't as bad as I remembered it from childhood; that is to say, the other drivers actually signalled occasionally, and even let us change lanes a time or two.

We tried to figure out where to head next. Our basic game plan, at this point, was to stop somewhere roughly near Universal Studios, and then go there first thing in the morning. But right this moment, we were looking for "Los Angeles" -- which we were perfectly aware doesn't really exist. Los Angeles is several smaller burroughs in search of a city, and there wasn't really a downtown to head to.

We drove down roads that were familiar to me only from songs and movies. "All the vampires walking through the valley / Move west down Ventura Boulevard .... " Even though I'd known in my mind that these were all real places, my heart couldn't have been any more surprised if I'd suddenly found myself in Narnia.

I turned on the radio for once, wanting to immerse myself in the local mediascape. Lots of radio stations; more than half of them seemed to be in Spanish.

treebyleaf directed us to Santa Monica, and we parked by the water and headed out to the beach and the pier. I set foot on the soft, still-balmy beach and watched what little there was of a sunset, turned to treebyleaf, smiled and told her, "Please write my folks and throw away my keys." Why, I wondered in that moment, did I live in gray Seattle? Why had I spent so long there?

The pier was gaudy and delightful -- we thought from a distance it had a rollercoaster, but when we got closer, we found it was only a miniature track meant to suggest a rollercoaster. It wasn't a disappointment, only something to laugh about; part of the magic and trickery I expected from L.A.

From there we headed to Hollywood, and found a TraveLodge. The room was fairly small and modestly appointed, and Riff and treebyleaf were both pretty unimpressed by it. I wasn't bothered; I don't expect as much from a hotel as they seem to, just somewhere to lay my head. Although I have to admit that the "Sleepy Bear" cartoon icon motif in their signage, their framed art, and on their bedding creeped the hell out of me.

treebyleaf made us a lovely dinner, chili and salad, and then we set out to explore a little.

We'd seen a great looking record store, Amoeba Music, and we definitely wanted to go check that out, but first, Riff wanted to go to Grauman's Chinese Theatre, which was apparently just a couple of blocks away. I whole-heartedly agreed, especially when I found out treebyleaf had never heard of it. We wandered around it, delighted and bouncy and touristy, looking at all the foot- and hand-prints of famous actors, and at the stars embedded in the sidewalk along the street.

Amoeba Music was gorgeous and huge and overwhelming; if my first steps onto the beach at Santa Monica made me want to move to L.A., my first sights of Amoeba made me want to move right into the store. We got there something like fifteen minutes before they closed, so we didn't have much chance to explore the cavernous interior, but it was still great. I bought myself a decent used copy of Placebo's Black Market Music, which I've been wanting to get for months.

We finally headed back to our hotel room and boggled over the brochure we'd found for Universal Studios. We'd been planning on going anyway, but now we were really excited about it -- they had Terminator 2 3-D and the Back to the Future ride, attractions that we thought could only be found at Universal Florida.

We went to sleep happy and excited. We were really here; we were really doing this.

Next: Universal

Universal.

I love Universal Studios. I'd only been once before, and to give you some idea how long ago that had been -- the big new attraction on the tour at the time was a Battlestar Galactica drivethrough. (Don't plan your trip around it, it's not there any more. Heh.)

I love movies, and I'm fascinated by making movies, and by special effects; in some ways, I'd been looking forward to Universal almost more than Disneyland, and it didn't disappoint.

There's a lot more there than I remember, including "Universal City," this whole sprawling complex of shops and restaurants before you even get to Universal Studios itself. We debated briefly about what to do first, but it was no contest -- we had to go on the tour.

Shortly after we'd set foot in the park, we were set upon by a young man with a clipboard who was hungry for our marketing and demographic information, and willing to give us special tour passes to get it. We cheerfully obliged, and walked away with passes that let us board the tour bus early and get the best seats. We handed them to the guard who took them with great sweeping pantomime gestures, making it clear that the passes were more valuable than gold and that he was touched and honored to be in our very presence. It was charming and highly amusing.

The tour itself was great. We got to sit right up front, and the tour guide was chatty and funny and personable. There were all the old favorites I remembered -- the robotic Jaws and the Psycho House; there was the venerable (but new to me) King Kong; there was the sprawling Back Lot with all its famous "buildings" including the Town Square from Back to the Future; and most touchingly, the guide pointed out to us the huge water tank and cyclorama that had been the Edge of the World in The Truman Show.

One part of the tour I remembered well had been revamped and updated: the rotating Ice Cave, with its illusion that the bus, not the walls, is spinning end over end, has been re-themed for The Mummy Returns and is, if anything, even more effective than I remember. (Of course, for me the most terrifying part was when the tour guide sang a couple of lines of the Boating Song from Willy Wonka.)

I don't perfectly remember the order we did things in after that, but I know we saw:

1. Terminator 2 3-D, which was funny and thrilling. The actress playing our "tour guide" for our visit to Cyberdyne was bitchy, corporate, plastic, perfect, with great comedic timing. The attraction had a neat blend of real actors and filmed 3-D scenes, and was pretty immersive, and then in the finale they pull a neat gag to make it even more immersive. Well worth seeing and a real credit to the source material.
2. The Mummy Returns walkthrough, sort of a combination of an exhibit of props from the movie and a full-on haunted house. Creepy and fun. The best part was an actor who we thought was a statue leaping out at us toward the very end -- treebyleaf screamed and jumped about a mile.
3. The Spider-Man Rocks! stage show, which was, well, just as cheesy as it sounds, really -- a stunt-filled mini-musical. retcon and I thought it was kind of fun and charming. treebyleaf thought it was crap. That said, it was more entertaining than the western-themed stunt show I remember from my last trip.
4. The Back to the Future ride: I loved this, even as dumbed-down and kid-friendly as I thought it was. Did I say the T2 attraction was "immersive?" I didn't know what the word really meant until I went on this -- with a simple combination of a hydraulically manuevered "car" and a rounded 3-D projection screen that filled our field of vision, they provided a synthetic experience I totally bought into. I was moved to tears by this -- not by any of the content of it, but by the fact that finally, at long last, here was a movie that I wasn't just watching, but that I was transported into. This is what I'd been wanting since I was very, very small.
5. The special effects demo, which certainly didn't teach me anything new, but was hysterically funny. This is given by two presenters, who played off each other really well. (And the young man of the duo has the best schoolgirl scream I've ever heard.)
6. Backdraft, which details some of the pyrotechnic effects that went into making the movie, and then leads you into, well, a burning building. Pretty convincing. The demo that had a burst of flame spin into a little tornado shape right in front of our eyes left me jaw-dropped. If our trip to the ocean the day before has let treebyleaf get in touch with her element, this put me in touch with mine.

Universal gave us ample opportunity to get our geek on. Riff and I both found and fell in love with and bought identical Spider-Man T-shirts; kind of hard to describe, the design on the front looks at first almost like some abstract tribal pattern until you realize it's a lit silhouette of Spider-Man in a low crouch. We also found at one of the two(!) surprisingly good comics shops in Universal city a neat little set of cute, almost Lego-like figures of Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface, and I immediately realized we had to buy these for lokheed; treebyleaf pointed out that he had a birthday fall during our trip, so this was perfect.

We were actually at the park until it closed; we hadn't thought we'd be there the entire day, but that was how it worked out. treebyleaf was exhausted and needed food, so we ate at the Tony Roma's right there in Universal City. We then headed off to Anaheim and found a better hotel to stay in, close to Disneyland.

Next: Disneyland