So I got into town successfully. The last leg of the journey was fairly uneventful, filled mostly with uninteresting Indian outposts, some random dinosaurs on the freeway, and a surprising amount of geodesic domes. I thought I was starting to tire out near the end of it, but once I got into LA, I perked right back up. Was I glad to be home? Yeah, a bit. But mostly I was afraid for my life. For those of you who have never been to LA, let me spell this out for you:
– All traffic laws are completely ignored on LA freeways. The left-fast, right-slow lanes mean nothing. Regularly you will come upon people going 100-120 mph, switching lanes with wild abandon, sometimes riding on the shoulder.
– Everyone goes fast. REALLY fast. There were periods where I was going 90 in a 65 zone, and I was the slowest one on the freeway.
– I have lived here for 5-6 years now, and I have never once seen a cop pull anyone over for speeding. I theorize because it is both difficult to catch speeders, and pulling them over would only clog up an already super-clogged transit system.
Truly, LA was a worthy final boss of my driving journey.
As if the twelve near-death experiences in the final hour were not enough, god further informed me to stop driving by turning on my Service Engine Soon light about 200 miles out from LA. I soon found out this translated into my car being basically dead — I need to have the transmission rebuilt, which would cost me the same amount of money it took me to buy the car. So, I am staying put.
On the plus side, shortly after getting back and scrambling to get my JET application re-submitted, they granted me an interview for the 17th. Should I get in (I’ll know around April), I’d be leaving on July 30th. So, here’s hoping.
In the meantime, I’ve been contemplating what to do about work. I don’t think I want to go back, but 5-6 months of unemployment is a dicey proposition at best. I doubt I could get any other sort of job with that sort of timeline (cause even if JET does not accept me, I’m going to Japan, swimming if I have to), so I may end up going back to CIS. I don’t know.
I have been working on a webcomic idea I had on my walkabout, called Break. I’m still working out the mechanics of it (I think that the inking/scanning makes the drawings lose a lot in translation), but I have the first three pages kind of done-ish. The second one is a bit non-worksafe, but here’s links to them:
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