The mini-drive

[painting by Mary Helmreich]

It's been exactly one month since I've arrived here. I think I've earned the right to be homesick for a few entries.

It's rainy here tonight, and the first thing I always want to do in the rain is take a death-defying drive north on Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu. (Even if I had a driver's license here, you couldn't pay me to drive these streets in the rain - even in a bright yellow armored Hummer. Topic to address at a later date: Japanese drivers.)

DD and I cultivated the fine art of the mini-drive early in our freshman year of college. There is something soul-stirring about wet roads, a diet coke, a cigarette, and a mixed tape and no particular destination. Oh how angsty we were back then. Nikki and I then perfected the art of the "drive-by" - another topic for another audience. The mini-drive was created for Los Angeles, and vice versa. It is not considered odd to drive destination-free around the city, clocking absurd mileage on the odometer and consider it an evening out. It's all about the journey, man.

Some great things I miss about SoCal:

the warm smell of gasoline when you fly into LAX
Del's Cash-Only Saloon
great neighbors only an alleyway away
WHOLE FOODS
Bagelworks coffee
English speakers
Spanish speakers
Santa Monica Farmer's market
the drive to Del Mar

Now that I read this list, I'm thinking to myself, this is not enough to be homesick for a place. Yet, I think that's what the Sumeba Miyako is about. You love it BECAUSE you live there. That's what makes it home.

Mini-walks do no have quite the same horse-power as mini-drives. However, that's what's open to me right now, so I'm going to mini-walk my self down to the seawall. It's not torrey pines beach, but it will do for now.