Nearly One Year Later
It's approaching the one year anniversary of my very unfortunate trip to LA. In quick summary: I was robbed, passport, plane ticket and PowerBook stolen. I barely made it back.
Here's a quick recap from my blog:
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Those of you wondering why the frequent journaling of my trip to the USA abruptly ceased will find an answer in these next lines.
After my bad lucked final night in SF (being physically kicked out of a club), it went on to get worse.
My drive to L.A. went great as I followed the Pacific Coast after passing through San Jose, Cupertino, spending a night in Monteray, driving through the mountains of Carmel, on to Santa Barbara and finally to L.A.
My first day there started off with a drive along Santa Monica Blvd. in search of the Hollywood sign. I easily found it and left my car at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills. I climbed up to get a good view of the sign and finally reached it after 1 hour of hiking.
When I returned to my car ... the passenger window had been shattered. My car had been broken into and all my stuff was stolen ... including my computer, my passport, birth certificate and plane tickets.
The 3 days that ensued were from hell. The cops were very unhelpful as was the Canadian consulate in L.A. I had no ID or plane tickets to return home and I spent 3 entire days driving around L.A. in search of a solution, skipping meals and missing sleep trying to get things done.
More bad luck followed: I lost my car a couple of times (stress, little sleep and not eating was affecting my memory), the car at some points refused to start and as a pedestrian, I got stopped by cops and nearly charged for jaywalking. I was desperate to get out of there as soon as I could.
On the final day, I was unable to get the necessary papers to return to Canada but decided to go to the airport nonetheless. Ironically, after so much bad luck, essential good luck came my way: I found that I had my Portuguese Passport in my back pocket all along so I attempted to enter Canada as a Portuguese tourist. It worked and I'm now typing this e-mail from my desk at home in Toronto.
In some good news, today I received notice that my insurance will cover my losses so this will all be reduced to just a really bad experience and not so much a huge financial loss as I had feared.
As much as I've lived, this will serve as a new lesson to me, and one mistake I don't think I'll soon repeat.
... well, I'm about to reverse that decision. I'm going back. The mistakes made in LA that lead to me being robbed can be avoided without writing off traveling to LA or any other crime ridden location on earth.
It's curious how my nightmare in LA continued to haunt me later in the year when I travelled to Chicago. The sense of flying back into the "snake's nest" completely put me on edge and prevented me from enjoying that vacation fully.
Repressing memories is a natural defense of the brain, but when you find yourself in a situation similar to the one repressed, you go into "fight or flight" mode. I experienced that in a bad way. I felt extremely anxious, even in situations where I should have been very relaxed like sitting in Millenium Park for example. I was feeling off, unaware of my surroundings and extremely tired, regardless of how much I ate or slept.
I plan on fixing that. The cure: Confronting your repressed memories and reliving them, this time without the bad parts. It's equivalent to showing a scared kitty that you're a nice human, unlike humans that may have made the cat afraid to begin with. You can learn human psychology simply by watching animals.
So now that nearly one year's past, I'm beginning to stand back and look at what I'm left with. I've replaced everything that's been stolen and I'm beginning to find courage and -- funny enough -- enthusiasm to return to San Francisco and travel the US Pacific coast once again.
My annual post Christmas trip, one that I like to do in January to start off each new year hitting the ground running, will be a reprise of USA 2006.
I'm doing things a little different though.
• I'm not bringing my laptop. I don't really need it as I realized on my last trip.
• I'm spending as little time in LA as possible. Most of my trip will consist of MacWorld in San Francisco, driving again down the coast and a quick one day stop (no sleep over) in LA simply to confront my repressed memories.
• Flying to Hawaii to spend a few days relaxing and celebrating my confrontation of those memories.
This will be photography travel for me. I'm planning on shooting beautiful pictures in San Francisco, Monteray, the Pacific Coast, Santa Barbara and of course the main event: Hawaii.
Let the journey (re)begin...
Here's a quick recap from my blog:
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Those of you wondering why the frequent journaling of my trip to the USA abruptly ceased will find an answer in these next lines.
After my bad lucked final night in SF (being physically kicked out of a club), it went on to get worse.
My drive to L.A. went great as I followed the Pacific Coast after passing through San Jose, Cupertino, spending a night in Monteray, driving through the mountains of Carmel, on to Santa Barbara and finally to L.A.
My first day there started off with a drive along Santa Monica Blvd. in search of the Hollywood sign. I easily found it and left my car at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills. I climbed up to get a good view of the sign and finally reached it after 1 hour of hiking.
When I returned to my car ... the passenger window had been shattered. My car had been broken into and all my stuff was stolen ... including my computer, my passport, birth certificate and plane tickets.
The 3 days that ensued were from hell. The cops were very unhelpful as was the Canadian consulate in L.A. I had no ID or plane tickets to return home and I spent 3 entire days driving around L.A. in search of a solution, skipping meals and missing sleep trying to get things done.
More bad luck followed: I lost my car a couple of times (stress, little sleep and not eating was affecting my memory), the car at some points refused to start and as a pedestrian, I got stopped by cops and nearly charged for jaywalking. I was desperate to get out of there as soon as I could.
On the final day, I was unable to get the necessary papers to return to Canada but decided to go to the airport nonetheless. Ironically, after so much bad luck, essential good luck came my way: I found that I had my Portuguese Passport in my back pocket all along so I attempted to enter Canada as a Portuguese tourist. It worked and I'm now typing this e-mail from my desk at home in Toronto.
In some good news, today I received notice that my insurance will cover my losses so this will all be reduced to just a really bad experience and not so much a huge financial loss as I had feared.
As much as I've lived, this will serve as a new lesson to me, and one mistake I don't think I'll soon repeat.
... well, I'm about to reverse that decision. I'm going back. The mistakes made in LA that lead to me being robbed can be avoided without writing off traveling to LA or any other crime ridden location on earth.
It's curious how my nightmare in LA continued to haunt me later in the year when I travelled to Chicago. The sense of flying back into the "snake's nest" completely put me on edge and prevented me from enjoying that vacation fully.
Repressing memories is a natural defense of the brain, but when you find yourself in a situation similar to the one repressed, you go into "fight or flight" mode. I experienced that in a bad way. I felt extremely anxious, even in situations where I should have been very relaxed like sitting in Millenium Park for example. I was feeling off, unaware of my surroundings and extremely tired, regardless of how much I ate or slept.
I plan on fixing that. The cure: Confronting your repressed memories and reliving them, this time without the bad parts. It's equivalent to showing a scared kitty that you're a nice human, unlike humans that may have made the cat afraid to begin with. You can learn human psychology simply by watching animals.
So now that nearly one year's past, I'm beginning to stand back and look at what I'm left with. I've replaced everything that's been stolen and I'm beginning to find courage and -- funny enough -- enthusiasm to return to San Francisco and travel the US Pacific coast once again.
My annual post Christmas trip, one that I like to do in January to start off each new year hitting the ground running, will be a reprise of USA 2006.
I'm doing things a little different though.
• I'm not bringing my laptop. I don't really need it as I realized on my last trip.
• I'm spending as little time in LA as possible. Most of my trip will consist of MacWorld in San Francisco, driving again down the coast and a quick one day stop (no sleep over) in LA simply to confront my repressed memories.
• Flying to Hawaii to spend a few days relaxing and celebrating my confrontation of those memories.
This will be photography travel for me. I'm planning on shooting beautiful pictures in San Francisco, Monteray, the Pacific Coast, Santa Barbara and of course the main event: Hawaii.
Let the journey (re)begin...
posted by iPedro at 10:23 PM
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