Cure From Cars

hey Velds,

Been reading your website every few days. Keep up the good work! I thouroughly enjoy reading your adventures.

Sounds like you've been drawing many of the same conclusions that I had when I visited the area. I found the state to be a place of extremes. Actually I suppose it could be true for the country as a whole. I found you were either rich with material items, or poor with material items, very into fitness or very into giant portions, supporting the war, nor supporting the war, very religous or not religous at all....etc, etc.... It makes you thankful to be Canadian as we are a little more moderate (for the most part), a little more grey area. Not so black and white, I guess you could say.

LA is nuts eh? Biggest urban sprawl for a city in North America. When I was in the area I camped at San Clemente state park. You probably walked right by it. Had those really nice cliffs that you took pics of. I went to the Laguna beach and Newport beach for a day too. Didn't like Newport at all....way to rich. I saw all that same shit. I stayed for an hour and was back on my way. Since I went north to south down the PCH I saw it continually get richer along the way. Sounds like you've been seeing the opposite, very rich to very poor, as you start going through long beach, inglewood, etc. You'll love getting out of LA, once you get past Santa Monica you'll have a tonne of places to stay. It starts to get way less populated, just the houses of the ultra rich along the coast, but even then those are few and far.

Just thinking....Is it really cars that you're against? It sounds more like gasoline is what you're against. It is what creates the air and noise pollution. If cars were fueled on something more earth friendly...say hydrogen, corn (not electricity....electricity could be generated by burning coal, so we wouldn't be any further ahead), maybe things wouldn't be so bad. The thing that fuels North America's addiction to gasoline is the cost of it. If it weren't so cheap, people wouldn't drive so much or in such big vehicles. Unfortunately most people can't see far enough ahead to see that the earth is getting fucked. A human flaw I suppose. Same reason I suppose someone would eat french fries everyday until they're fat. You're next walking trip should be to Holland. I kidd you not that there are more bikes there than cars. You will get run over by a bike if you aren't careful (in Amsterdam). In most of the cities by the train stations are multi level bike garages. In Amsterdam there is a 4 storey bike garage. It's really quite nuts. Their government has curbed their addiction to gas by taxing the shit out of it. $5 a litre. So although people have cars, they have small cars...really small cars. And of course bikes.

Anyways...just some half asleep ramblings. keep up the good work! It only gets better outside of LA.

-Ryan