Journal Update: 3 days until departure
15 February
I am three days away from beginning a new chapter in my life. I feel like I am somewhere in between, not really here in Minneapolis and not in Los Angeles.
I am excited but I am also slowly beginning to realize what I am about to leave behind as I move. There will be people I will miss be it people I know through the Norwegian Church, Augsburg College, or else where.
Saying good bye is never easy. I have gone through it so many times in my life, but that does not make it easier, rather it reminds me of other good byes I have made and the sadness it brings with it, but also feelings of affection and connection with the person I am saying good bye to. I do not know when I will be back in the Twin Cities again, but I believe it will be a few months before I again return “home” to Minneapolis.
Why wait? The Greyhound buss trip.
I stalled a few weeks with buying a plane ticket not knowing why until thoughts about a week ago went to taking the Greyhound bus. Suddenly I knew why I had not bought the plane ticket. Taking the bus just seemed right and it will likely be an adventurous trip, and a good beginning for me in a career in acting. I drove downtown yesterday and picked up the $89 ticket to LA, and also asked if I could get a printout of the stops it would make along the way. I was handed five individual ticket paper printouts containing only the stops (I counted 43). The bus heads south on 35W to Iowa, and in Des Moines (Iowa) it begins it long way west beginning on Highway 80 stopping in major cities as:
Omaha (Nebraska)
Highway 76 to Denver (Colorado)
Highway 70->15 to Las Vegas (Nevada)
On toward Los Angeles with the arrival time of 4.45pm two days later.
It seems the bus will be stopping every hour, but most places it only stops for about five minutes before it continues. I will probably need to change buses along the way, and noticed that I have over an hour in the big cities for an ultra-express tour of the city…. and to get some food. An hour in Omaha at 4 in the morning will not be the greatest, and I will probably not be very hungry, but heck I am so alive at night anyway so I can probably sit and write poetry or a journal entry. It is nice to have some extra time in the big cities and hopefully the main stops are in interesting areas where I can wander a bit around. Soon I will be traveling across the US having an adventure along the way. An even bigger adventure will be waiting me in Los Angeles.
I am also full filling another dream in taking the Greyhound bus across much of the US this way, a dream I had forgotten I had carried in me. Knowing that I carry dreams inside that are slowly coming to the surface in ways I can hardly recognize.
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What follows are various entries of my experiences of my first few weeks in Los Angeles.