Trying to blog on a hot summer July night in West Viriginia. The mosquitos are eating me alive and moths are flying everywhere.

I'll try to review my trip from Day 1.

The airport shuttle arrives at my friend's house in Oakland at 4:30 am. Our flight did not leave till 7 am from San Francisco, but we didn't know what to expect with all the post 9/11 security.

The ride to SFO at that time of the morning only took at half an hour so we got there at around 5 am. To my surprise, we saw people doing curbside check in, which I thought was not allowed anymore. There were very few people in line. We looked inside and the line at the American Airlines counter was 100 people deep. There was an airline person there and we asked him where we needed to go to check in. He told us we should do curbside check in. Why more people weren't doing that is a mystery to me. You have to tip the guy about a couple of dollars per bag, but it was such a small price to pay to not have to wait in that very long line.

San Francisco is one of the few airports where there are no federal screeners. After all the mishaps with the private screeners, I wasn't sure if I felt very comfortable being checked in by non-federal screeners but what can you do.

The airport security at SFO is now set up like JFK and LaGuardia. If you don't have a ticket, you can't get to the gates. The screening process wasn't too bad, except that if you have a laptop, you have to take it out of your bag. A few people were getting extra screening with the security wand but it was hard to tell why they were getting picked out of line.

After awhile, I wanted to get wanded, just to see what the full security screening was like. But when my friend got wanded in Chicago, I quickly walked away, not wanting security to know that we were together.

The flight itself was uneventful. We had a 1.5 hour layover in Chicago and had fun trying to figure out how to get from the American Airlines terminal to the United Airlines terminal.

One thing I did notice was the presence of the oh so trendy turquoise jewerly that was worn by the majority of the women at SFO. At Chicago, I saw one teenager wearing something turquoise. Don't women in Chicago and the rest of the country read fashion mags? I mean, I even had my oh so trendy turquoise bracelet on and I'm not trendy at all.

The United Airlines plane we took to West Virginia was one of those small hopper airlines, that seated less than 30 people maybe, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the flight to Charleston WVA was only an hour.

The airport at Charleston is very small and the car rental places are right where you pick up your luggage. We were going to rent a compact car but somehow the lure of a mini SUV seemed a more appropriate vehicle for driving around in the country. The car rental guy told it was only going to be $3 more a day and so we rented a Chevy Tracker, which is kind of like a low rent Toyota Rav4. The engine is good but not that powerful. My Golf would leave the Tracker in the dust in a race, but for a rental car it's great. Plus we have 4 wheel drive should we ever need it.

We arrived at around 5 pm and my friend decided that we needed to go to one of those tourist traps to eat. We stopped at this eating place with shops called Tamarack. There were signs for it everywhere on the freeway.
The menu feature a more upscale version of WVA food and even had fried green tomotoes and bacon on the menu. I settled for a barbeque pork sandwich, which my native WVA friend said wasn't very authentic since the meat wasn't shredded enough.

The restaurant is surrounded by these shops which are supposed to represent the best of WVA arts and crafts. We decided to go back there on the way back to the airport when we fly home if we needed last minute gifts. I'm kind of bummed I didn't have the fried green tomatoes but we'll end up going back I think.

The 'skeeters are eating me alive now. More tomorrow.

Blogging from south eastern West Virginia, on a 100 acre farm belonging to my friend's sister. I can hear the sounds of bull frogs croaking in the stagnant pond nearby built by the beavers who tried to flood her out. Alas, the beavers are gone; it's kill or be killed here in the Appalachian mountains.

The farm, called the Rockdale Farm, lies at the end of a road. If I lived here, I would have a big barking dog and a shotgun so I could shoot any strangers who come on my property. If you love the silence of the country, this the place to be, but for me the isolation is hard to bear.

To get to town takes about 45 minutes on windy country road where deer, bunny rabbits, racoons and other animals dart in your path. Sometimes the road is paved and sometimes it's not. If you don't know where you're going, it would be easy to get freaked out and think you were lost.

This is beautiful country, unspoiled by industry, only because the windy roads make it impossible or any industry to sprout. Not that the state isn't trying. Everywhere you go, you see four colour brochures that sell West Virginia as the last great wilderness left in America. Perhaps they are right. You'd have to really want to live here to bear the isolation and the monotony of the trees and forests.

The people here are very friendly, which I don't find that surprising. I grew up in the country and most country folk are friendly on a one on one basis. My friend tells me it's the second to last poorest state in the nation; Mississippi being the poorest. Tourism is the only industry that West Virginia has and the country people know that.

In a general store near Droop Mountain, I had a fun flirtation with a guy whose car had Alberta license plates. He had a mountain bike attached to his car. There's a 76 mile river trail here that you can bike called the Greenbriar Trail. The trail runs along a river that you can swim in. We biked six miles of it on July 4th and swam in its muddy waters and watched lightning spikes on the ridge right in front of us.

Droop Mountain is the site of some civil war battle. We still haven't visited the site but we pass it on the way to my friend's parents' 150 acre farm which lies on the other side of Droop mountain.

Her mom says the weather is better on the top of mountain, especially in the winter time because the cold winter snow air settles down to the bottom of the valley. But when there are lightning storms, they're the first ones to get a bolt since there is nothing else on the mountain to hit.

We went to a luncheon today with authentic west virginia food. Corn pone, sugar cured ham, sweetened ice tea, baked beans, macaroni salad with mayo but no eggs, and cut tomoatoes from the garden. The ham was salty and fried to death but so delicious. Corn pone is nothing but a moister corn bread but it's what they eat here so it's native cuisine.

I had grits for the first time a couple of days ago. It tasted like a grainer version of my mother's lumpy cream of wheat. But again like the corn pone, it's authentic native cuisine.

There's so much more to write but technology seems so strange here in the Appalachian mountains. It almost feels sinful to be typing away on little baby laptop with pocket explorer that can't read javascript. Somewhere a West Virginian is having a laugh at my predicament. It's so typical of the state.

I've been trying to modify my blog so I don't use javascript to show my archives, because my baby laptop which I totally love, has pocket explorer and pocket explorer can't read javascrit. Damn! Much as I love my baby laptop which is great for writing stories on Bart, Muni, etc, it's got way too many drawbacks when travelling.

You can log onto the Net but the connection is so slow. And there's no way to tell what your connection speed is either. I also can't load programs like Final Draft, the screenwriting software that everyone uses, so I can't write screenplays while I'm on the road. I can't even use the template I found for Word because pocket word doesn't accept template.

I'm going to have buy a laptop and I think I might just buy an old laptop. I mean, I don't travel that much and it's usually for vacation. I just need to be able to get on the Net at a reasonable speed and maybe work on a screenplay.

As you can tell, I'm getting ready for my vacation to West Virginia. My flight is at 7 am tomorrow, which means the shuttle freaks will pick me and my friend up at 4 am. I'm leaving my car at her house in Oakland so I can avoid those damned SF street cleaning tickets. Actually, it's probably cheaper to get the street cleaning tickets than to park, since street cleaning tickets are only $25 each.

My apartment is totally clean and everything is in its proper place. I just hate coming bck to a messy apartment. I'm looking forward to drinking moonshine and seeing the hillbillies in their natural environment. I just like that it will be different than San Francisco, which I am getting very tired of lately.

I loved that Rob Morse column in Sunday's Chron about what it takes to live in SF. Things are easier when you have more money that everyone else. Not that money really matters, but you need alot of it to make your life very comfortable here.

Some people mistakenly think that money is not spiritual. My guru used to always say, you can't meditate well if you're wondering about debts, starving and where your next paycheck is coming from. Besides if you're working like a dog all the time, you won't have time to meditate, go on meditation retreats and all the other things you're supposed to do if you're spiritual. Not to mention you need money to buy the books you have to buy, the equipment, the outfits, etc.

My guru liked when his students were financially independent only because then you're not a burden on him, other students or society. He hated bums and freeloaders. He said being a bum and freeloader was bad karma. I think he was right. He said everyone had a god given talent, and being a bum, a freeloader and living off welfare and others is not a god given talent. If you're a bum and a freeloader, you're not using your gifts and that's definitely bad karma.

I hate that stupid 9th circuit court of appeals decision which says the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional. Some guy on the news said the 9th circuit court of appeals gets overnturned more than any other circuit court. It's so embarrassing too, because it's some nut case from California, Sacramento to be exact who brought the suit. I'm sure this lawsuit has just solidified in people's mind outside of California, that our state is full of nuts and flakes.

Now, I don't mind care if people are aetheists, but in my experience, aetheists hate people who believe in god and try to attack them at every opportunity. Aetheists just aren't comfortable with the fact that anyone believes in god. Most people who believe in god are comfortable with aetheists, but not those oh so politically correct, smug, aetheists who think they're intellectually and morally superior to everyone else because they don't believe in god. Have you ever noticed that the people who advocate political correctness the most, are aetheists?

Anyway, you've got this aetheist nut case trying to impose his religious beliefs on the rest of the country. It's so typical it's not even funny. And you just know that the supreme court will take up the case and overturn the ruling. And that idiot from Sacramento who brought the suit, you just know that he'll come back a toad in his next life.