live. work. dream.

Driving around Los Angeles, I can’t help but wonder what archaeologists of the distant future would make of the cryptic tags of today’s graffiti artists.

And I have always snickered inside at all the modern day scholars writing dissertations on the meaning of ancient petroglyphs which may in fact just be the scribblings of prehistoric taggers.

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I’ll be honest; other than the chance to see my family for the first time in almost a year, I wasn’t looking forward to returning to L.A. I grew up here, in Whittier, about 18 miles from downtown, and I just can’t stand this place. My family stays in L.A. because they love the diversity and opportunities that a huge city offers. I split when I was 22, opting for cleaner air, walkability and the small town vibe of San Francisco instead.

My parents grew up in East Los Angeles, in the 1940s and ’50s, as children of hard working Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. for a better life. Mom and Dad grew up poor, but they share many fond memories of their neighborhood on the edge of downtown, before they moved to the suburbs where they would ensure my four sisters and I had an easier life than they did.

My Dad still has friends out there, and last week, Jim and I got what Dad called “The Two Dollar Tour” of my parent’s old stomping grounds. Looking at it with fresh eyes, I saw that East L.A. isn’t all so bad; there’s lots of thriving small businesses, it’s colorful, and I have to say, the food there is damn good — the best Mexican food we’ve had anywhere in the U.S.

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When you’re camped out in the middle of a wild desolate landscape, without a cell signal and a silence so deafening that its roar squeezes your brain like a vise, it’s tempting to believe that you’ve fallen off the radar. You look around for miles and see nothing but desert landscape, imagining that there are no rules, laws or entities that have power over you.

But the truth is, you can’t escape. Ever. Because it doesn’t matter if you hightail it to Patagonia, or just hide out in the woods; the Man will find you.

In our case, the Man was the California Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Houston Police Department.

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I have always loved the mountains. And I’ve always thought I would love to live in the mountains. After having gone directly from boondocking at Three Rivers Campground in the shadows of Sierra Blanca overlooking New Mexico’s Tularosa Valley to the smog-filled traffic jam that is Los Angeles, I can say without a doubt that mountains are a definite requirement for the next place I live.
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Well, our Workamping savings are a thing of the past, and February gave us a current reality check of what our expenses look like when we just play tourist and go out looking for all of the cool music, food and entertainment we want to experience.

Our biggest expense last month: fuel. We went over our budgeted amount for the first time ever. This is mostly because we went 1600 miles out of our way (round trip) for a quick trip back to California to visit my family. More on our L.A. experience later.

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We just had to stop at Carlsbad Caverns when passing through Whites City on our way to Roswell, NM. And we just now got around to updating all the pictures in the gallery below.

The park was under construction while we were there. But I suppose this place has really been under construction for the past few hundred thousand years or so.

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Someone once said the third time is a charm. I say it’s an omen.

The first time we noticed a “Remove Before Flight” flag recently was on the Nomadjik Media Bus. You can see it in René’s interview with Flux Rostrum.

Just a few days later, we saw one at the Cathedral of Junk and thought nothing of it. But then we saw one in Luckenbach later that same week.

This third time made us recall the first two and wonder … what does it all mean?

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