Route 69

Or was it a right after the Starbucks? I ask myself as I turn down another unfamiliar street on my quest to track long lost relatives and visit Roe. It was so good to enjoy a home cooked meal that I didn't cook, and see the signature family nose and hear the family tree recited when I visited my great aunt and uncle this weekend.

Best story from the weekend: I tour Benicia with Roe's mom and we run into one of her friends at booth in the Fourth of July festival. Remember, Roe's mom and I have both different skin colors and age brackets, and then imagine this conversation:

Roe's mom, Karen!

Karen, Linda!

Roe's mom, This is my friend, Bryce. He's visiting.

Karen, Oh, that's nice... Does he live around here?

Roe's mom, No.

But, after driving about 800 miles over a three day weekend, I'm tired.

I think I often find that more I travel, the more I crave the familiar: a place to unfold in a community of people who love and confront me and a place to learn the lay of the land and shape it more than a small fraction of the amount it shapes me.

As I type this, I'm minding my priest's house and her two children. I've never done anything like this before. Right now, my adventures in Inglewood are more accurately adventures in Leimert Park (where my priest lives).

Since I'm picking up the girls after work and cooking supper, I need to use my program car all the time which is a major compromise. I enjoy the freedom to really explore South Los Angeles (typically thought of as ghetto), but I miss the feeling of being alive when I walk or bike. It's nice not to pay for a bus pass, but I hate polluting the air and being complicit in God-only-knows-what-happens-to-get-this-gas.

There's so much more to write about my first babysitting adventure already (1 day down, 10 to go!), but I need to get some rest now.