The migration routes of Tom: Fall migration-San Diego/La Jolla via Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles-October 18th to October 25th

The next step of this journey crosses the midwest, through my old stomping grounds in Denver and Boulder and is finally coupled to a long drive starting in Salt Lake City, passing through Las Vegas and ending in La Jolla, CA. In broad brushstrokes, I once again was surrounded by "unique" individuals abord the Amtrak train. The combination of personalities in the seats just in front of me (a 14 year old girl, her grandmother, and two middle aged men) resulted in a conversation so utterly bizarre and pseudo-pornographic (started by the grandmother, ironically enough) that the conductor of the train had to announce to the entire train that they were trying to maintain a "family" environment on board the train and to please keep your conversations on polite topics. Thankfully, most of the trouble was over by Denver the next morning and I had a very enjoyable ride past old mountain biking haunts (for Dave or Josh, the train passed through Rattlesnake Ridge where we used to go mountain biking...I remember watching trains enter the tunnel there and now I have ridden through it). Bald eagles could be spotted periodically along the banks of the river. I even spotted one standing in a shallow inlet of the river waiting for fish at one point (I didn't know that they did this kind of thing...I thought they liked to fly around and dive for fish). Leaving the mountains and entering the plains of Utah near Moab, a spectacular sunset lit up the train. In spite of a life-saving stash of chocolate and sandwiches from my relatives in Chicago, I reached Salt Lake City exhausted and was thankful to meet my mother at the station and get some rest before we began our journey by car together to my brother's apartment in La Jolla the next day. Having driven this stretch of road many times in my youth on the way to Pomona, the landscape was familiar. The desert is impressive and the landscapes vast and forbidding. By the time we reached the Los Angeles basin, we encountered a thunderstorm and watched lightning hit a neighboring hillside in the dark, sparks flying every direction as it destroyed a tower of some sort. With the high volume of traffic and more than 29 hours of travel behind me, my body gave in to some sort of infection as we pulled into my brothers place in La Jolla. In spite of the flu I came down with and then passed on to my brother, we were able to walk the beach, see the Scripps Aquarium, enjoy a California style brunch and another pancake breakfast. We caught a movie and ate at In-n-out burger and had some sushi and authentic mexican food. Next time some surfing will be on the menu.

Being sick, there wasn't a lot to do in the evenings except to try to keep from being destroyed by fevers and coughing. This is where I got my second lesson on what I had missed in popular culture and on the internet during my time in Germany. Don't ask me why I missed it. There is very fast internet in Germany. The most notable are a series of old spice commericals (the original http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE) (the sesame street version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkd5dJIVjgM), a short film about a long death (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDvgL58h_Y), and a sort of offensive commercial for soap (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzoARPa3XGs&feature=aso). Thank god other people have the patience to dig through mountains of internet junk looking for diamonds so that I don't have to...