April 3, 2014
So I’m sitting here stuck on an airplane.
I’m flying back to Baltimore from Vancouver. It’s a 3 and a half hour flight. I told myself that I would upgrade to a economy class on any flight over 4 hours, but it may need to lower that to 3.
Coach class seats just don’t have enough room. We’re packed in like sardines, and 6’3″ me is folded up, crouched in this seat. I want to get work done so badly. There’s a bunch of things I need to do, but I can’t because 1) my laptop is in the overhead and 2) there’s not enough room on the traytable for it.
I tried to do as much as I could on my iPad, but unfortunately I can only do I so much. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m sick of browsing the internet and playing games…
This trip was pretty epic in a lot of ways.
My best friend Ayinde and his wife Erica are moving out to Los Angeles soon. Unfortunately he tore his ACL playing basketball, which means he can’t walk, drive, or even fly in a plane for 3 months. Their plans were already in place, so they were going to pay something like $1300 to ship their car out to the west coast.
I already had plans to fly to LA anyway, so I offered to take their car. I now have artwork showing in a number of cities (more on that here: http://art.zerflin.com) and was scheduled to take a show down from The Novel Cafe on Lincoln and put it up at Grind House Cafe in West Hollywood.
I typically fly on Tuesdays and Thursdays because it’s cheaper, so I was going to be spending a couple days hanging out in LA anyway, so instead of doing that I drove.
I started mid morning last Tuesday, and drove to St. Louis.
Stayed at our friend’s Aisha and Lamont’s house, and then started off the next morning. Met up my old friend and bandmate Jared Saxton Evans at Pop’s on Route 66, then kept going. Tamika found me a place right on the edge of Oklahoma.
Thursday I drove to Arizona, stayed at another hotel, and then finally made it to Los Angeles on Friday.
It was fun, but I don’t think I’ll do it again that fast. It was 12-14 hour days driving and from the edge of Texas until about 10 miles outside of LA, there is very little phone reception. That meant no podcasts, no Pandora. Just me, whatever podunk radio stations were out there, and the highway.
On top of that, it turned out to be a very busy week for Zerflin. Tamika was a champ, filling in for me during the day, but she was easily doing the work of 2-3 people, and with additional pressures of house, kids, homeschooling, and finding any free time for herself, it was nearly unbearable. So, as soon as I would reach my destination, I would unload, thrown open the laptop, and work until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.
And then get up the next day and do it all over again.
I was so relieved when I finally made it to Los Angeles. Our friends Nick Troy and Monica Obaga also just moved to LA, and offered me a place to stay. Normally is stay at a place called The Giving Garden, which is this beautiful bohemian place I found through AirBNB. They have this little space-ship shaped structure they call The Pod. Tamika and I had become quite close to them, so one of the women who run the place, Guzel, invited me over for a big dinner they were having. I made it to the house, just as they had begun.
While I was there, Walker, one of the guys who regularly stay there, invited me to try “flying”. He and his wife are trained yoga and acrobatic experts. When I was a kid, my dad would often lay on the floor, stick his feet out, I would place my stomach on his feet, and grabbing my hands, he would hoist me into the air above him. Flying, like superman. This was like that, but much more involved. Walker spun me around above him (I was grabbing my ankles, sitting crosslegged) like a circus acrobat would balance a ball. Not fast, very slowly. And it felt incredible. They do massage therapy while they do it, hitting pressure points and relaxing muscles. It feels amazing. I felt weightless, just floating.
It’s one of the reasons I love swimming so much, that feeling of weightlessness, drifting.
I headed to Nick and Monica’s after that. They got a temporary space in Hollywood just off of Thai Town. They rented this old rustic apartment from a Frenchman who went home to heal a broken leg for a few months. I crashed on their floor after talking and reconnecting and reminiscing.
I woke up promptly at 8am. One of the things I had done while is been traveling is attempt to fix my sleeping habits. I rarely had been getting 8 hours of sleep every night, an do since I was making my own schedule, I made sure that no matter what, I got 8 hours. The consequence was that my biological clock was reset, and I would wake up whenever I told myself I wanted to.
I headed out to the Novel Cafe. The owner of the cafe had been going through some things, and so I’d had trouble getting ahold of him, so I wasn’t quite sure if he remembered that I was to uninstall the art that day. He didn’t remember, but was very apologetic, and gifted me free iced chai drinks throughout the day. I spent most of the day there, catching up on work, and then uninstalling right before they closed. The owners both were very happy with the artwork, and so they invited me back next year, this time for 3 months.
I loaded all the artwork into Ayinde’s car, and drove it to The Grind House. Though we had talked about it repeatedly, it seems the owner of THAT cafe had forgotten to, and was completely MIA. The barista wasn’t sure quite what to do (there was artwork up on the walls), so he offered me a free iced chai and frantically tried to call the owner. I settled in and got more work done.
About an hour and a half later, the owner called back and said to just take the artwork down, and to put up mine. So I got mine up, thanked them, and headed out. It’s supposed to be up for 3 months, so I hope it’s ok!
On Sunday, I reserved the entire day to go to the beach. I try to work in at least 1 day to do that every time I go. It’s just so peaceful. And after the long trip, it was the perfect place to unwind. However, in my haste to get there, I forgot both my wallet and my phone charger. Fortunately, I managed to find an empty unmetered parking spot in the rich people’s section of the beach, and spent a good 8 hours out there.
Because I didn’t have money for parking, I ended up way down the beach from where I normally go, and discovered this long spit of rocks that had been bult to keep the sand from washing away. A small stream ran along the edge of the rocks, so I spend my time building castles and dams and aqueducts. It was wonderful.
Monday morning, I got a flight to Vancouver.