sneaky bus

The theater by the farmers' market.

right. now to head for the park. the closest park is Memorial, so i headed thataway via a circuitous route. i became lost in the wilderness, and ate a bug! i also saw the longest beans.

the street leading to the park was incredibly wide and unfriendly.

but that was ok, because Lincoln was obviously talking about the Stanford, which is NNE of here. it was time to turn right!

I couldn't resist.

and just in time, because halfway through my third pass they turned off. Mmmm, refreshing. I continued on in a vaguely uphill direction until i got to a corner that was strip malls on three sides. as touristy as it gets in this part of SC. I knew i was close, because i started to see clusters of things that looked like the Sutro tower. But where were the stars? i started combing the strip malls.

stars.

these stars led to a sign that said "Sunshine acupuncture", and that sign led across the street to a Blockbuster. the sequence was a little tricky; the parasutro was so obvious that i went straight to it at first, but the right from that direction was not a useful right. finding the blockbuster was key.

Parasutroman

This guy is gnarly. Taiwanese tennis boys were undressing underneath him. Turn right!

bear?

the Moscow Bear was the next clue!

I searched and searched for the bears.

i saw the uphill leading to the park first. about halfway up, i noticed that there was a football game happening to the left. presumably the Homestead Hornets vs. the Moscow Bears. there was also a sign that said "please keep off the new landscaping," which is how i learned about the chic new trend in landscaping towards dry yellow scrub. this path leads to a newly build bike bridge over 280, which i haven't taken before! yay bike bridge!

bridge

very modern.

The stars were still guiding me.

I headed towards the original Coffee Society, because 1. it was the closest cafe i knew about, 2. it was the last cafe before you run out of town and 3. it was the first cafe in the river of stars, and if the universe isn't a river of stars, i don't know what it is. space, i guess. mostly.

Once past the cafe, i noticed a clue.

But i wanted to look for the dome Lincoln mentioned, for accuracy, so i climbed the parking garage. Nothing helps you see domes like being high in the air!

These were really loud when you stepped on them!

That reminded me to take off my bikin' shoes, and that in turn taught me that being Lincoln is pokey and hot. Up to the parking garage!

No dome.

well, press on, follow the signs maybe, investigate.

Success!

My god, it's full of stars! Sadly they were closed until September so i didn't see that many, but i did see a lot of other cool stuff. it was a really nice place to sit, for one thing.

What?

The plaque on the planetarium. You guys, it's going to be awfully hard to see anything in space with meteors stuck to your telescope.

Vampire rabbit

get 'em!

Little baby lizards

they made a little chirping sound, and they moved faster than anything.

Rocks

good times.

strange fruit

hard and nubbly.

Represent

Somebody had written "L A" on the wall. I finished it off with a piece of bark. i biked about 15 miles, which is about 10 miles more than i'm used to these days. i feel pleased and tired. oh almost forgot! i've been making friendship bracelets for a few of my friends. on the way home i saw a friendship bracelet in the street. it was black with little red hearts. Thanks universe! i love you too!

I walked out my door

Across the street was what you see there.

The wall

There was a wall off to the left. I followed it.

The wall

Not many wood walls in the world, but I found one on my first try.

Wood wall runs out

But is replaced by cinderblock wall, I continue following that wall instead. It did make a nice transition after all.

The wall ends

Now to find the main drag... which way?

Not towards the main drag

Behind me was clearly not going to get me anywhere close to the main drag.

Towards the main drag

It's kinda hard to see down there, but the main drag is down there somewhere (I know from experience, and also because behind me was nothing but hills and the Hollywood sign, so by process of elimination I chose this way).

The garden?

While walking toward the main drag, I kept my eye out for the garden. I passed several gardens, but all of those could best be described as "a" garden, and not really "the" garden. The was clearly a garden. But I don't think it was the garden.

Main drag

Well, I got to the main drag, and hadn't spotted anything that I would consider to be the garden yet. So I guess I had to just keep traveling. I decided to turn, because my parasutro beckoned me.

My parasutro on the main drag

Still no sign of the garden though.

I decide to turn away from the main drag

I felt that the instructions about going to the main drag were just to get me to walk in a certain direction, and not a goal in and of itself. So I turned to walk to a place where I thought there might be more chance of finding the garden.

Fountain

Usually where there's a fountain, there's a garden, not in this case.

This is clearly a garden

But not the garden. It was nice to walk on the grass though.

Another garden

But not "the" garden. Guh. But we're getting in to a much nicer and fancier neighborhood here.

Another garden

I began to wonder what makes "a" garden into "the" garden, and began to question myself at this point. Yet I passed it and continued on.

Oh man

The Wilshire Country Club. If any place was going to have the garden, it was going to be this place. But it's a private club with high walls that wouldn't let me in, so to be sure the garden was in fact in there, I had to jump over the wall.

The garden

Sure enough. I would consider this to be the garden. Found it. Now to turn toward my old haunts. I was guessing my old haunts referred to where I grew up, and that was in Venice, which is West, so I head West.

The bear!

First thing I find once I decide to head West is a plaster bear lying by the side of the road. I assumed that the list of things to pass was in order, but after seeing this bear I realized that it was just a list. And the items could be in any order. So I checked bear off of the list.

Prime hang out spot

I passed by my friend and cousin's place while going West and realized that I love to hang out there! I wondered how Kate knew that. I didn't argue with the gods of Dérive and went in and hung out. It was cool and he had video games. What a prime hang out spot.

Dinosaur?

I saw Godzilla there at the prime hang out spot, but didn't think he was really a dinosaur. But he was close. So I still needed a dinosaur and a center of community.

Center of community

That was easy and came rather quickly.

Center of community

I went in to make sure the community was there. They were. Some were playing basketball.

Center of community

Some people in the community were playing softball.

Not a dinosaur

As I continued West looking for the one last thing I needed to pass, I kept getting teased by things that were almost dinosaurs, but weren't. Frustrating.

Not a dinosaur

What are they chickens? I thought they might be dinosaurs from a distance. This dinosaur was very elusive.

Not a dinosaur

This was a stature in a park where the road I was taking west ended. Still no sign of a dinosaur. I wandered around in this neighborhood for a pretty long time looking for a dinosaur. Longest part of the dérive. And I was in Beverly Hills, a horrible place.

Wait a minute...

As I passed this candy shop, I noticed these lover frogs. And then I realized. Godzilla isn't a dinosaur, but the one thing I learned from Jurassic Park (besides that velociraptors are frightening) is that is you mix in some frog DNA into something that's close to a dinosaur, that you can build a dinosaur! So with Godzilla and these frogs, I made my own dinosaur! score! Now to head uphill because I was in Beverly Hills already and that is a very unknown territory for me.

Uphill

The whole road was really really wide with wide shoulders. So it never really got any wider than this, so I kept going.

Widest intersection in the world

It's kinda hard to see, but this is the widest intersection in the history of wide intersections. It's a six way intersection, and you can see how far away all of the cars waiting their turn are away from each other. This must be what Kate meant by a wide shoulder.

Wide intersection

Different angle

Not very sinister

There was a fountain near that wide intersection. It didn't look very sinister.

Not at all sinister

But it had fishies.

Fishy!

I have seen that fountain many times, but had never gotten close, so I had no idea that there were fish in that fountain. Cool. But not sinister.

Sinister

Then I remembered something from school. Sinister meant something about carrying a shield with a coat of arms on your left side. Sinister meant left. It later came to mean forboding. I found that the road heading to the left was sinister in both regards. The road was all ripped up and under construction. And left.

Sinister

I was going in the correct direction.

Vineyard

I was expecting a trellis of grapes, but instead I found a yard covered in vines.

A gate

Across the street from the yard covered in vines was a gate. Guh. When I first read this dérive I had assumed that I would be well out of town before I got to this part, and that the gate I would have to jump would be to a park or something. I did not expect it was going to be somebody's back yard. On private property. In Beverly Hills. Guh.

Sketchy

This was a bad place to trespass. Rich people lived here, rich people who had no problem with things like pressing charges. Tourists took tours of this neighborhood because of all of the rich and famous people who lived here. I heard the tour guy in that van there say that that house in the background belonged to Lana Turner. I did not want to break into one of these homes. But my instructions were clear.

Other side of the gate

Once I jumped the gate, I discovered a yard under construction. Up there around the corner was kinda uphill, although most of this whole yard was pretty flat.

That covered cabaña was kinda uphill

But I didn't see a river of stars.

Not a river of stars.

This pile of sheared palm fronds was certainly not a river of stars.

Trouble

As I walked around the bend I noticed somebody in the house. I think it was a maid, but I also heard a young boy talking excitedly. I decided it was time to go.

River of stars?

As I was making my hasty yet stealthy retreat, I noticed the backsplash of the under construction pool was all shimmering and sparkly tile. Was this the river of stars to which Kate referred?

Bear Sinister

I took the bear home with me. I have named him Bear Sinister, Lefty for short.

Pocket directions

These were the directions that I carried in my pocket all day.