yeah i know

How original am I, starting a blog about my travels. But this is just for my wonderful family and friends and anyone who wants to follow us on our journey.

Let me start at square one. Until about two months ago our "plan" was to move to Paris so I could finish my undergrad degree at the American University in Paris. Well, I didn't get in. I got into a school in California but it's in the valley (close to LA) and well... I'm ready for something different. I think it was the universe pointing me in a different way... in my heart of hearts I don't think I'm ready for the responsibility of paying 37,000k a year plus insane Paris living expenses for me to wade half-heartedly into the sea that is school which I should be diving right into instead.

The silver lining of not getting into AUP has been the catalyst to me finding where my heart belongs. The day that I got that rejection letter, it was the first time I just said "fuck it" to school and I cannot begin to describe the wave of relief that came over me. Our back up plan if I didn't get into school was to World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF)... most of you should know what that is but it's a organization that's in I think about 80 countries that links up travelers with organic farms, at which they work a 25-30 hour week in exchange for food and housing. We want to have our own farm one day so whether I went to school or not, we thought it'd be an awesome way to travel really inexpensively and pick up a ton of skills at the same time.

So we got rid of almost everything we own, minus our guitar, our longboards, some clothes and a few things I sent to my sister, packed up the car and left town on April 29. We had a few days before our first farm was ready for us so we slowly made our way up the 1 (the Pacific Coast Highway that follows right along the pacific almost the whole way up the California coast). During the day we'd skate (longboard) around the town to go exploring and either sleep in the car or camp.

Roots Ranch in Oroville was the first farm we went to. It was cool and we learned a ton but they honestly just seemed pretty uninterested in us. But we went that place first for a reason... after a few days of being there Javi was feeling bummed because they weren't using male pronouns when referring to him. I mean how hard is it to understand? "This is my HUSBAND Javi." We decided we should find trans peer support groups in the local town, Chico. Very few people in this world go through a painful daily life where people constantly call you the wrong gender, look at your chest to figure out they should call you or even have to think about which bathroom you use (shoutout to unisex bathrooms!). So like I said, we just wanted to be around people who "get it." So we went! An awesome group called the Stonewall Alliance in Chico had trans peer group meeting every Thursday. Well not only were we among friends but we even found an amazing gender reassignment surgeon in Frisco (Javi wants top surgery) and EVEN that the surgery is covered by Medi-Cal (the public healthcare) in San Francisco county. So we have enough time even for Javi to get sliced and recover for a few weeks since we don't have to be in Paris by August.

We left Roots Ranch after two weeks and headed to the next farm, a Catholic Worker farm called Earth Abides wayyyyyy out in middle-of-nowhere Calaveras county. The Catholic Worker movement is an interfaith movement that promotes peace, nonviolent action and voluntary poverty. Earth Abides was... beautiful. We helped them build a chicken fence, plant for the upcoming season, repair roads where rain had eroded trenches into the dirt road, and, my favorite part, took on the responsibility of doing the nighttime watering, putting the chickens in the house and collecting and cleaning eggs to sell.

A big part of the Catholic Worker movement is community service, so Earth Abides has monthly HIV retreats for low income HIV positive San Franciscans to come be with their people (the same reason we sought the trans peer support group) and, of course, be with nature. There was a retreat on the last four days of our stay at Earth Abides so we were focusing more on the retreat than the farm.

How do I do begin to describe what that retreat did to my soul? First of all, the workdays on the retreat were basically doing dishes in between sitting out on the porch with the retreaters teaching the older guys how to roll joints. They of course all had their medical marijuana prescriptions (as do we) so we basically just had our own little Woodstock going on, complete with hikes to watch the sunset and chasing the crazy rooster off the top of the fence (he only realized he couldn't walk on it AFTER he jumped up there). But they were just amazing, beautiful people. They appreciate their lives in a way a lot of perfectly healthy people in this country are completely oblivious to. They all had awesome stories but the guy who really stole my heart was a guy named Daniel. He got diagnosed in '05 and went blind in '08 due to a neurological bacterial infection that strong immune systems can suppress but weak ones, like his, can't fight. So I overheard him having a conversation while I was doing dishes with Marcus, who I guess you would call the patriarch of the farm (although he would hate that name since he's an anarchist), about things that make it a little easier for blind people to acclimate and get around. In particular he was talking about putting ropes along the path from Catherine's house, where the retreaters stayed, to the chapel. He was describing two different ways to do it, but favored one because it's more environmentally friendly. I thought to myself, this guy has had to overcome addiction, HIV and blindness. He could hate the world and the shitty hand of cards he was dealt, but no, he's still thinking about the goodness of the planet. It touched my heart, and it also reminded me of how much a unifier fighting for our planet can be. He ended with "Javi and Gwen have just been so amazing and haven't made me feel like a burden at all." Daniel, you are anything but. I mean when we'd lead him around the farm with his hands on our shoulders the kid would start a friggin congo line. We've been texting with Daniel since we left and hope to see him for San Francisco pride where he'll be volunteering at the Aids Awareness beer booth. Volunteering. What a guy.

We met another woman named Liz who, not even kidding, had painted a rock at an earlier retreat she had been to with the date "February 26" on it. I went up to her after I found that out and said, "Okay this is weird, my mom's name is Liz and her birthday is February 26." Turns out that's her mom's birthday too, and her mom also died of cancer. After she was diagnosed in '93, the year she says her life turned around for the better, she started working at a group home for homeless LGBT youth in Oakland. I'm so serious, every person we met just had the most amazing, beautiful life stories and I only wish we could have sat there for hours more to listen to them. Denis (pronounced the French way since he's from Quebec) told us stories about being a drag queen in the seventies where the women carrying bricks in their purses just to hit him over the head with were a mere sidenote to the story about how he got his favorite black leather, gold-studded bra.

So we left Earth Abides on Thursday (June 5) and made it down to LA for the weekend where we're staying with our very dear friend Sarah for LA pride. We've had a blast here but I miss waking up to birds chirping and farm fresh eggs. We're going to camp tomorrow night in our favorite spot in Malibu and then on to the next farm we go.

It's almost my 25th birthday, and in my tiny sliver of a quarter century of consciousness on this planet I feel like I've nailed a few things down. I found the kid I want and cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with. I also learned that there is nothing more gratifying than growing your own food, snacking on strawberries while digging beds in the early morning sun and "picking" your dinner twenty minutes before you eat it. We live in a system that screws us from the start. Fifty years ago, you could go to college, get a job, pay off your debt and start a life without money constantly weighing you down. Well (and this is a pretty well known fact by now), when comparing minimum wage now to the cost of living (especially college!), it should be something like 30 dollars an hour (it just got voted down by Republicans to raise it to $10.10 from 8-something). I refuse to participate in a system that enslaves its students, neglects its elders and systematically marginalizes those below a certain socioeconomic status, so we want our lives to be an active resistance to the system in place. We want to grow as much as our own food as possible and trade within our community in order to eliminate the need for money in our lives as much as we can. We're big believers in "be the change you see in the world."

Sorry this was so long but it was the first post so I had to catch you up. I'm sitting in Sarah's lovely outdoor patio in Beverly Hills as I write this, thinking how I don't think I can ever live in LA again simply for the mere fact that I can no longer flush if I only peed ("If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down"). Plus there are no goats here. And that sucks, because goats are awesome.

Some pictures:

Walking along the water on Venice Beach, one of the first days we left

Bubblegum Alley in San Luis Obispbo

Javi being really excited about seeing Bubblegum Alley in San Luis Obispbo

Some pretty wild flowers on Pismo Beach

Foggy morning view from inside our tent in Pismo Beach State Park

Silly early morning tourist-y picture of the Golden Gate Bridge

Wal-Mart parking lots are prime real estate for car sleepers... well lit and often 24-hour bathrooms

Jamocha, my favorite goat at Roots Ranch

Morning meditation overlooking Feather Lake at Roots Ranch before breakfast

Picked up a stray dog and brought her to the ASPCA where she got back to her owner... woof

Some baby chiogga beets I transplanted from 3-inch flats to beds at Earth Abides

March Against Monsanto protest in Sonora!

Final day at the HIV retreat

from left to right: Chelsea (the matriarch of the farm) with her awesome dog Dunn, Denis the self-identified crazy frenchman from Quebec, Tom (another full time volunteer at Earth Abides), Patrick (another WWOOFer), Javi, Chris, Russell, me, and Daniel...

then in the bottom row from left to right, Marcus (aforementioned patriarch) in the tye-dye, Liz, Norman and Tim

Daniel with Buddy, the volunteer dog. He says he wants to get a guide dog in the next few months but just wants to be sure he's "ready." Considering the amount he let Buddy lick his face, I think he's ready.

Hitting the Pacific on our way back down to LA... We missed our Mama Ocean

And back skating in Venice :)