Out of the hamster ball...

The City Left Behind
Austin, TX has been an exciting, cruel mistress. Mecca for the creative, the self-made, the self-loathing, the self-gratifying. The place where hipsters and yuppies vacation from the real world. Somehow, without the aid of an underground drug-running monarchy, the mining of some deposit of some mineral crucial to the manufacture of widgets and whathaveyous, or the mother of all trust funds, this beast keeps on churning out tacos at the excruciatingly slow pace of one every 15-minutes. I'm ready to get out. My brain does not deal in the currently that is valued here. I'm too proud, or maybe just too lazy, to start making mustache wind-up toys, eco-friendly flower pots made from PBR cans, or knit iphone covers. Plus, this town is too. damn. small.

"When you have have mountains in the distance or even hills, you have space" - Pirsig (I know, it's pretentious to quote Pirsig in the first post. I'll tone it down a bit.)

The decision was made many months ago; I needed to get away. Needed some time in my own head. Needed space. Needed to get away from my recent past. Needed distance from the expectations I had for my life. I've fucked up so badly in my life as of late...that things can only get better from here on out. I have found that motorcycles are cheaper than therapy anyway.
It's easy to leave a place when you know that there isn't going to be anyone waiting on the front step when you get home, when there are only a handful that will truly miss you, when most will not notice your absence, and when a few would rather you take a long ride on a short pier. It's not quite so sad and pathetic. There are some good folks in Austin and a select few that I genuinely believe to care about me--some that I consider to be my chosen family (as opposed to the one I was born with). But this is a big ol' world with some amazing people and places, just waiting to be explored.
Ok, enough of this flowery bullshit. This is a travel log, not a vision quest journal.

The Trip
The trip was hatched and the direction was decidedly west, but where?. I'd explored the cities along the west coast, but never the infamous scenic highways, parks, and vast stretches of public land. After buying and studying a few DeLorme maps and starting to comprehend the vast amount of public land traversed by forest service roads, it was solidified. Being a botanist and a newly christened urban forester for the City of Austin, my internal nagging to see the big ass trees in California was increasing to fever pitch. And ask previous boyfriends...my nagging could topple an empire if directed squarely. During the cold Austin winter, which lasted about two weeks, I ran my finger along the gazetteers from page to page along Highway 1 and followed it through Big Sur, across the Golden Gate Bridge, along the San Andreas rift zone, an unnecessary number of "drive-thru trees," some intriguing roadside attractions (Samoa Cookhouse Museum, Fairyland Begonia Garden, the Skunk Railroad) that seem like prime bumper sticker dispensaries. By the time I got to the little tree symbol that represented Humbolt Redwoods State Park, I looked at the clock and realized that it was 4 AM. No more trip planning on weeknights before 6:30AM workdays! Speaking of....
More about the bike next.