It’s been six days now living in the desert, I am at the Joshua tree south BLM land (Bureau of land management).
I have made a routine of going to the nearby city Indio and use the gym there. The Anytime fitness gym here is 4 times bigger and has much more equipments than in the Bay Area. Feels good to use different equipments. The gym is super spacious and has loads of kettlebells unlike the small gym in Santa Clara which had only one kettlebell for a particular weight.
The also had many sandbags, I had watched a couple of sand bags exercises last night. I had fun working out with sand bags, doing bent over rows with those, squats placing heel over the bag and then picking the bag onto the shoulder and throwing it down like you’d beat up a person. It was a good sweat. The older I grow or the more time I spend as a van life nomad the more I feel like being around people and importance of the saying “Human is a social animal”. Doesn’t matter if you’re not talking to people, just being around them helps.
After the gym today, I thought of going to a coffee shop and working from there. Apart from the need to be around people, I needed a good coffee. I have not yet acquired the taste of a French press, I like lattes, cappuccinos, mochas and cortadas in that order, somewhat. So I went to the only coffee shop in the Coachella valley, the 6th street cafe, it was in the downtown of Coachella city, which part from the coffee shop, housed the city hall and a few other shops, not spanning over 2 blocks. I found the coffee shop was small and didn’t have enough seating, it had a table empty but I felt too cramped sitting and working beside a queue of people eagerly waiting to get their order served by a staff of 2 baristas. I went to the library nearby, it was big, bright, had free wifi but had no people. So I went out and was walking along the street. I like to have some kind of pastry with my coffee especially the flaky kind of pastries like butter and chocolate croissants. But the shop just had some muffins. I found a Mexican patisserie nearby and went there and got 3 pastries all of which were sweet, I wanted to have 2 sweet and 1 savory item but all they had was sweet. I got these pastries in a bag for $3.50 to drink with half left latte which costed $5, super cheap. I had one chocolate danish looking thing, one mango empanada and some other rectangular shaped pastry. I sat on the bench, there were 2 old men sitting on the bench nearby. I took a few bites of the chocolate croissant (chocolate can never go wrong, besides I was not trusting a cold mango empanada). There came a guy next to me asking if I know where the “recuse center of the desert was”. He was showing a black and white pamphlet with an Indian girl’s photo on it. Seemed like the photo had been taking in an Indian desert somewhere in Rajasthan. The guy wanted help to find where this center was and if I could call. I read the pamphlet and looked for the address, it said Thousand palms, it was a bit far from here. The guy seemed like a homeless and seeking shelter over there. I asked if he’d like a pastry, of the 2 left (the rectangular and mango empanada) I asked him to take whichever he’d like, he said the rectangular one looks bigger so he had that, that’s how I never got to know what was inside it and referring it as the “rectangular pastry”. He ate it standing next to me, saying something, maybe taking to himself, he was not looking at me, just talking about periodic tables and that everyone studies and many other things which I didn’t understand. I realized, I just had the social interaction I had come looking for in the coffee shop. The guy asked if he’d want to split up the 3rd pastry, the mango empanada, I thought I’d give the whole, but I was curious how would it taste, so I took the smaller half of the empanada. It was ok, something like aampapad (dried sticky mango sheets) that we get in India. We had the pastry and I sat there for a while observing the surroundings and a group of girls who like me first went to the coffee shop and then to the Mexican pastry shop. Soon I thought the guy would ask me for a lift, being a nomad and a solo traveller I stay careful out there making sure I don’t get looted while helping someone, so we did a fist bump and I explored the rest of the downtown.
For six days I have been staying at the campground outside the park and wanted to go inside the park which I had visited last year and also fill some water in the tank. But it was getting late and I had to set up base and get grounded to start preparing for the interview I have next week. The campground (just a piece of land) has one lane of spots with gravel roads passing on both sides of it, I was in these spots for so many days. I wanted to find a spot on the other side with only one road facing the spot and other side in the wilderness, which’d make me able to take bath facing where there’s no passerby. I found a spot and got down. I saw a hole with big red ants nearby. A reddit user said, ants will find a way in your van if they want to, so either you have something enticing for them or you are near or over their nest and they are trying to re-establish their nest. My situation ticked on both the boxes, I had lender chocolates and bunch of other food and sweet stuff. And, I was also parked right next to their nest. So I turned around and went back to the old parking spot thinking of taking bath in the dark when no one can watch. I parked and sat on the bed, I observed my van shaking, I saw the news forecast and there was a heavy wind warning. I googled if my van could topple, some one said practically yes but it’d need very strong winds, another advisory said not to travel if the winds are over 50mph. The max for today was forecasted at 60mph, so I cannot travel to find a new spot, besides me not wanting to spend more time driving, finding a spot and getting comfortable to the new environment. So I changed the direction of the van as the warning mentioned it would be southbound. For the very first time, hoping my van to be heavy enough to stay standing.