So because my first bus was two hours late, I missed the transfer points at every station, and wound up spending two hours waiting in Nashville, two hours waiting in Dallas, and two more hours waiting in El Paso. When I finally got to California, we were driving along Interstate-10, which passes along the southern fringe of L.A. I looked out the northern window, and saw the majesty of L.A. at night, stretched out before me like a blanket of electric lights. I'm told by Californians that L.A. is ugly as hell in the daytime, but at night it is truly an impressive sight. I didn't take a picture. Sorry. I was on the far side of the bus, and don't like taking pictures out of bus windows anyway. Fortunately, I'll be staying in L.A. for several days, and will no doubt be able to get some good shots at that time. I'll tell you all about it.

In L.A., I discovered that I was now far enough off schedule that I would have to wait four hours for a bus. It was 3am on Saturday night, Pacific time. I decided to call Pablo, just in case I got chopped up by a random mugger. If I get chopped up by a random mugger and/or contributor, I want Pablo to know what city it was in. That way, if the chopper-upper takes my corpse somewhere else, he'll be able to give the police a valuable clue.

So I called Atlanta. Pablo's girlfriend answered the phone, and said,

"Jonathan, what are you doing??"

"I'm calling to let you know where I am," I said. "I'm in L.A."

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Sure. Midnight."

"It's seven in the morning."

"Oh. Sorry. You're ahead of me, duh. Well, Pablo was expecting my call. I have to call, for security."

"OK. Do you want to talk to him?"

"Please."

She gave the phone to him, and he said, "Huh?"

"I'm in L.A., man. I'm going to have to spend the night here in the station because the buses are running late. So I wanted you to know where I was."

"Oh, dig it. How's the trip so far, man?"

"Pretty good. I discovered three things."

"What?"

"Memphis is ugly, Little Rock is pretty, and Tucson is the armpit of the universe."

"Yeah, I can believe that. Dig it. Anything else?"

"Not really." I told him the quick story about the man who got kicked off the bus in Texas, then we hung up. I broke out my Discman, clutched my luggage close to my body, and tried to nap. No good, but at least I had good music while I wasn't sleeping. When Pablo woke up, he wrote me a letter telling me how I should send him an e-mail that mapped out my itinerary. He didn't say I wasn't allowed to call him in the middle of the night, and screw him if he tried. If I'm going to risk getting chopped up for Kung Fu, then he and his girlfriend are going to have to put up with calls in the middle of the night. They've been talking about a kid, anyway. Don't they realize what that entails?