I’m not exactly sure when her birthday is, but it’s roughly four weeks before she was adopted from the animal shelter. Aayla is a wonderful cat. Her hobbies include sleeping, eating, and cuddling—usually while purring and drooling. Though a large cat, she is surprisingly fast, especially when she is chasing a treat, sneaking out the door, or escaping the vet.

Her favorite time of the day is bedtime, when she will cuddle up next to me and sleep for the whole night. She is a very loud snorer, but she doesn’t begin snoring until after she completes her routine of purring and then heavy breathing.

When she was a kitten, she ate everything in sight and got a stomach blockage. She required major stomach surgery to remove the blockage and subsequently ballooned to 23 pounds. After several years on a diet, she dropped to 14 pounds and regained much of her energy.

We are very close, and she spends much of her time following me around the house or, when I am not home, napping. Aayla is an extremely friendly cat and loves meeting new people. She will let you pet her soft white tummy twice, but if you try to rub it three times she will attack.

Here are some of my favorite photos of Aayla that I’ve collected over the years. The last three were taken by my friends while I was away on the west coast.

Being back in Boston for almost a week now, I have gone to two yoga classes and learned how much flexibility I lost over the past month or so—noting, of course, that I didn’t have very much to begin with). One particular pose, called the bird of paradise, is named after a family of very colorful birds in Oceania and Southeast Asia. It’s a pose that I currently lack the flexibility and balance to enter—attempts usually end with me falling on the floor within a few seconds. During my travels in Southern California, I came across an intriguing plant, that kind of reminded me of a colorful bird. I later found out that the plant is called a bird of paradise. The Strelitzia reginae is originally from southern Africa, but somehow made it’s way into many southern California gardens.

Driving along the pacific coast highway, often with no cell service, I had a lot of time by myself, where I could only look out the window, listen to whatever I had downloaded on my phone, and think. While I have mentioned that the Star Wars soundtracks make great musical companions to scenery similar to the movies, such as Big Sur or the Redwood Parks, I spent a lot of time listening to podcasts.

One podcast in particular had an episode about personality tests and the cultural impact they have. Hidden Brain, hosted by Shankar Vedantam, is among my favorite podcasts, and I rarely miss an episode. As a side note, each episode ends by asking the listener, if they enjoyed the episode, to tell a friend about it. Since I rarely tell a friend about each episode in particular, I am hoping the reach of this post can make up for it.

At least as far as I’ve encountered, people in my world typically associate personality tests with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I haven’t taken it myself, but it has four binary metrics—extroversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving—which you are assigned based on answering a series of questions. Interestingly, the podcast opened with the four Harry Potter houses, which roughly align with some of the Myers-Briggs types, and covered Chinese zodiacs as well as some unusual and unexpected cultural impacts from personality types.

(As an aside, I don’t believe that being given a personality type of any kind can reveal anything new about a person. It is merely a description of that which already exists. It can provide some elucidation on how to better communicate with others and how certain people may react to certain situations in general. But making day-to-day to life-changing decisions based upon a personality type or a zodiac seems like an exercise in nonsense.)

Hidden Brain doesn’t paint the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator in the best of light, but it it does take a sober assessment of its promotors and detractors. One person, who had become disillusioned with the test, explained that he took the test and got one result and then a couple months later retook the test and got the exact opposite results on every metric. This story came as no surprise to me, though I was perhaps surprised that it was presenting as surprising.

When these types must choose between two dichotomous metrics, such as thinking/feeling, there’s no apparent room for middle ground. Someone who may fall in the middle, or equally encompasses both types, would get assigned to one or the other with the same probability as a coin flip. I’m quite certain that I would be like this person who gets assigned a different personality type each time he takes the test. For example, a Google search for Myers-Brigg personality test-like questions results in the following:

• “You often spend time exploring unrealistic yet intriguing ideas.” Uhhh… sometimes… sometimes not.
• “If your friend is sad about something, your first instinct is to support them emotionally, not try to solve their problem.” Uhhhhhh… it depends on the situation
• “Your travel plans are more likely to look like a rough list of ideas than a detailed itinerary.” Hmm… usually both to be honest

And of course now the last one here related back to travel and the things that I continued to ponder as I slowly drove around the winding coastal forest roads in the dark. I’m pretty content in most situations. I like being around all sorts of people. In fact, many of my friends are so different enough I have struggled to come up with a coherent guest list for a housewarming party, so I never had a housewarming. To many situations on my trip and in life in general, I say “sure, OK”.

• “Cabin in the wilderness with no running water or electricity or luxury condo in a high-rise overlooking the city?” Either’s fine.
• “Wining and dining with the 1%-ers in Napa or hiking the desert with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?” Both sound good.
• “Dinner and ice cream connecting with old friends or meeting new people while passing the day away?” Sure.
• “Communal bed and breakfast or privacy and quiet of a hotel?” I prefer a decent balance of both.
• “Solo travel alone in nature or exploring a city in a group or with family” Yes, please.

The only trend I could find in my choices while traveling was a state of pervasive indecisiveness. I created a rough timeline of where I needed to be when and who I would likely see, as well as a few must-do things, and then just played it by ear. Most of the time I would just say “yes” to whatever first suggestion I got that sounded interesting.

That mindset is pretty ubiquitous in much the rest of my life. I’m generally pretty content with whatever, so I almost always go with the flow, so to speak. If there’s any lesson to draw from these travel contemplations, it’s that I should be more selective in choosing what I do, saying “no” to things more often.

I, like everyone, have limited time to do things, and if I’m just doing whatever is in front of me, then the odds are low that I am spending my time wisely. No, I am not talking about efficiency and productivity here. Remember that productivity can be dangerous. Sometimes an afternoon is best spend doing nothing or wandering aimlessly. Or really any way to spend a day while being fully aware of it.

This behavior could help explain why I have barely left the house (except to see friends and go to yoga) since returning home three days ago. I’ve spent most of my time reading (Purple Cow by Seth Godin, Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Change by Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky, and Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live by Daniel Klein), catching up on Game of Thrones and Arrested Development, and writing, all usually with my cat by my side.

It seems that in some ways I lack a type of self-motivation. My internal motivation is stirred by external factors, and left to my own devices, without suggestions, I’ll generally opt to do very little. So, I should probably try a little harder to surround myself with an appropriate amount of mental and social stimulation, while at the same time being more selective in who and what I choose to surround myself with.

I write all these musings in a completely neutral way. I don’t think anything I have said is good or bad. It’s simply an assessment, an analysis from a certain perspective, which I can choose to act on or learn from.

To end, circling back to the idea of personality tests, I will describe one that I actually like: the RHETI Test of the Enneagram Institute. It costs $12 to take and it asks the usual type of vague questions. However, it does not assign you to a dichotomous type. Rather, it starts with nine types, with names reminiscent of dishes at Life Alive, and it assigns you ratings of 0 to 30 (I think that’s the range) of how much you align to each. Within these nine types in a circle, rather than a spectrum, subtlety and ambivalence can emerge. Also, why I like it: unlike zodiacs (which you can read any as relevant to you regardless of your sign), reading the types with low alignments markedly describe personality traits with which you don’t at all identify. It also talks about how each type can grow, as well as what behaviors might emerge when under stress. Useful for the workplace, by reading about the other types, you can learn how to best communicate ideas to brains that think differently from you.

OK. Stay tuned for posts about budgeting for a long road trip and why you should never read David Brooks unless a friend emails you a link.

My redeye flight to Boston, originally scheduled to depart at 11:51pm, is no delayed to 1:41am. So I have quite a bit of time on my hands right now.

Returning the rental car was easy. I clocked 2,288 miles from Palm Springs down to San Diego and then up to Seattle.

Seattle’s airport is poorly organized and in desperate need of a renovation. But at least there’s free wifi.

As I drove out of the city to the airport, it hit me that my trip is basically over. I have done a lot. I skied Tahoe. I walked San Francisco. I drank my way through Napa and Sonoma. I hiked Joshua Tree. I got dinner in Mexico. I drove the historic 101 through Southern California from San Diego to the Bay Area, cruising through LA, Malibu, and Santa Barbara. I took some detours in Solvang and Grants Pass. I drove the winding roads of Big Sur and paid $6.60 per gallon for gas. I spent two nights in a cabin in the forest, a 0.25 mile hike from the road with no cell service and no internet access. I biked the 17 Mile Drive in Monterey. I survived several solo hikes in Big Sur, Point Reyes, and the Redwoods despite signs warning me of bears and mountain lions. As the weather turned colder and rainier, I reflected during the long solo journey from San Francisco to Portland. I saw many great sunsets. I stayed in a Yurt with no running water for three nights and was subsequently blown away by the hugeness of Seattle. I ate ice cream (almost) every day.

For my west coast adventure, I tried to jam three types of trip into one: solo driving the pacific coast highway, spending time with friends and family, and exploring nature. With any one on its own, three weeks would have been sufficient, rather than the five and a half that I took. Though it sometimes felt choppy to transition between these types of travel, packing all three into one trip allowed me to fill these five plus weeks easily.

As I prepare to head to Boston, I have a sense of excitement. Despite the fun I have had, I am ready to go home. With this sort of travel, I often feel aimless, always going from one thing to the next with little focus. At home I can feel settled. It’s still another two weeks until I return to work, but I am looking forward to that as well. I haven’t been committed to anything here on the west coast for more than a few days. Being settled in a routine at home means I can dedicate myself to longer endeavors, work being one of them.

Through all of this, the best part of the trip has been reconnecting with friends, spending time with family, and meeting new people. In these posts, I haven’t talked too much about how I spent my time with friends and family. These things don’t translate too well into words and they wouldn’t make much sense to an outsider even if they did. So if we crossed paths during my travel, thank you for sharing your time with me. I enjoyed it more than anything else on this trip.

To end this post, I share several things that I have learned during my travels:

• AT&T doesn’t have great coverage on the pacific coast.
• Boston doesn’t have good Mexican food, but Central and Southern California have great Mexican food.
• Los Angeles is big.
• The coastal mountains and forests are beautiful.
• Sharing dessert is a good way to make friends.
• Produce is significantly better in Southern California up through the SF Bay Area. My diet got notably worse north of Marin County.
• Star Wars soundtracks are excellent musical companions while driving the coastal highway.
• Bed and Breakfasts are better than hotels, but sometimes the isolation of a hotel can be good.
• Checking the weather forecast in the Pacific Northwest in April is generally an exercise in futility. On any given day it will likely be cloudy and rain for a bit. Always have a raincoat.
• Driving for more than four hours in a day is exhausting.

It is here. The last day of my trip. Tonight I fly home at midnight.

My day in Seattle has so far been pretty low key. I slept until about 9:30. I filled up the car’s gas tank. I got a cappuccino. I ate a huge spring salad at a vegetarian restaurant. I wandered the Washington Park Arboretum and Volunteer Park. For my last ice cream, I chose Sweet Alchemy Ice Creamery in the University District. I wandered the University Bookstore and bought a book that caught my eye first at Powell’s in Portland. As has happened to me several times since I got to Seattle, there was light rain and I forgot my raincoat and umbrella.

Tonight, I am making dinner with several college friends for a student group before I head to the airport. As catching up with friends has been the best part of my trip, it’s a fitting end to my west coast travels.

Every Easter, one of my friends throws a Hats on Cats Easter party. This tradition was started after she found the book Tiny Hats on Cats at a thrift store. Basically, it’s a crafts event that terrifies her two cats, but they are rewarded for their troubles with ham.

In total about seven people showed up for the event. There was plenty of food: hot cross buns, cookies, salad, asparagus (five bundles!), vegetable quiche, colcannon (mashed potatoes with kale and leeks), deviled eggs, berries, almond cake, and ham. The first movie of Easter Parade was mostly background noise, but people became more engrossed when we put on Kingsman (the second-best Christmas movie). We ended up making six hats, two of which were my creation: a party hat and a pope hat. I will be taking home the pope hat for Aayla.

After the party, we went to Frankie and Jo’s for vegan ice cream, my penultimate ice cream for the trip. I’ve been doing quite well on my effort to eat one ice cream per day, but more on that later.

I’ve noticed that west coast drivers are significantly different from east coast drivers. I can summarize as follows:

West coast drivers are bad drivers. East coast drivers are assholes.

Upon first driving in California I noticed that cars were doing, frankly, dumb things. For instance, one car was at a light and wanted to move to the left turn lane. The car was behind to many cars to get to the lane, so it just drove up onto the sidewalk until it could get in the left turn lane.

The drivers here are also very afraid of pedestrians. They won’t even enter the intersection until all pedestrians have cleared the crosswalk and no others are nearby. Compare this to Boston, where cars edge forward until they see the first possible opening where they then floor it, weaving through the pedestrians.

In Seattle, especially, I’ve found, the drivers are very timid. While they’re not quite at the point of stopping at a green light to double check that the intersection is clear, it’s close.

Upon making it to the Pacific Northwest, drivers begun to use the center turn lanes not just to turn out of the road but also to turn and merge onto the road. I’d not seen this behavior before. Several times, I thought a car taking a left turn onto the road was going to hit me. But no, it stopped in the center turn lane and waited for an opening. Weird. This is probably safer and more expedient, but I’d never seen it before.

Overall, being a masshole means that driving on the west coast is extremely easy, though at times frustrating because everyone is too slow and cautious.

Of other note, California has tons of Tesla and Prius cars. They’re everywhere. But few have bumper stickers. Once passing into the Pacific Northwest, that trend dissipates.

I expect this post was very uninteresting for anyone to read. As my trip comes to a close, I’m trying to shed what little readership I have. Of course.

After a quick sail on Lake Union, I headed north of the University of Washington to meet up with a different college friend, who I will be staying with until my flight home on Monday night. It’s a bit nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of downtown, though I also greatly enjoyed my time in the downtown area.

This afternoon we walked all around the neighborhoods here, including Ravenna Park, Kerry Park, and Green Lake Park, where my friend ran into three of her co-workers. As makes for a good afternoon, I had a cappuccino, croissant, and gelato. After a thai food dinner, we stopped by a grocery store to pick up food for her annual “Hats on Cats” Easter party tomorrow.

I’m pretty tired. It’s bedtime now. I will post cat pictures tomorrow.

As I begin the last week of my trip, I notice that my mind is getting very saturated from seeing new places. Just before departing Portland, I walked around the Mississippi neighborhood, and I noticed that my travel curiosity had dipped. I didn’t really want to keep walking around. I didn’t want to take the scenic route to Seattle—I just wanted to drive the fastest route. After traveling for five weeks, I needed a break from seeing new sights and exploring new places. It had lost its novelty, at least for the time being.

Right after exiting a taxidermy shop Paxton Gate (where the staff were very eager to sell me anything), I returned the car to head to my final destination. I’m in Seattle for five nights, visiting some good college friends that I haven’t seen in a while. Here it is nice to relax with people that I know.

Yesterday, nonetheless, was an action-packed day. I don’t have too many photos, because I am also pretty tired of taking pictures.

We wandered Pike Place Market and the first Starbucks store, as well as the Olympic Sculpture Park.

We visited Discovery Park and walked around for a few hours.

We browsed the Seattle Public Library and saw the Red Hall on the fourth floor.

We did the Underworld Tour, where we visited the basements and underground areas of Pioneer Square. Before the fires in the early 20th century and subsequent rebuilding higher to create a functional sewage system, it was street level. The regular underground tour had sold out for the day, so we took the underworld tour. It goes the to same places, but it describes the seedier aspects of Seattle’s history. It’s a 21+ tour. In short, there was a lot of prostitution, murder, and scamming.