I started college in February & it’s pretty intense. We already have assessments & it’s impossible trying to stay on top of it all. And the lecturers say this is the easy semester! Oh my god.

A couple of weeks ago I started a new job, working for Hell. Hell Pizza that is. I’m totally loving it, such an awesome crew to work with & I get to hoon around on mopeds & one day the hearse (when I’m not too scared) with music blaring. It’s nice to have a job where they want me to be me as well. They encourage crazy hair, many piercings, tattoos etc; which is awesome since I have a new interest…

I’ve been getting tattooed!

It was only a matter of time, but since meeting our new friends Mimi & Drew we’ve had the opportunity to have ink-work done for free & by an amazing artist too.

Nik & I already have 4 each done by Mimi. Photos to come!

We’ll be moving out of our apartment in a few weeks & moving in with Drew & Mimi & our friend Liz at Balmoral, so I expect to be covered in ink by the end of the year.

Our apartment is full of beautiful furniture & really feels like a home now.  I seriously love our apartment. I’m still hoping to move out of town to enjoy some space one day, but this suits our life at the moment. We’re busy people right now so the minimal maintenance of a small pad is ideal. It’s just big enough to throw small parties though…

We’ve been enjoying a social life again! To make up for last year’s miserable xmas in a motel room we went all-out this time & had a biggy. We threw a party for our friends & it was a great night, one of those flawless nights where everything goes right. Due to its success we decided to have a new years party too. Another fab night. I think parties at our place are going to be a regular event now.

I’m already planning the next one…

I’m still in love with my new wheels. It’s been one of those life-changing purchases. The freedom I have now is awesome-fun. I love going for aimless joy-rides & exploring new parts of town. I just can’t stop smiling when I’m riding that thing.

Work is drab, but it’s a means to an end & in ten days I find out if my college application is successful for 2010-2012. I’m nervous as hell to be honest. I will be the happiest girl on earth if I get in…

I got my first tattoo a couple of months ago! No, really it’s quite tiny & not worth mentioning even, but it has me all kinds of excited about getting more done. I’m getting Nik’s help right now drawing up designs for the next batch & I think this will be the year to get my body totally ripped & decorated in every way.  On that subject I cut all my hair off last week. I now have dark, short, spiky hair. Much more me.

To top off my life-of-awesome right now, Nik got me a freaking amazing semi-acoustic cello for xmas!!!! Oh my god!!! I’m so excited to be learning a new instrument, the most gorgeous, sexy instrument you’ve seen! It makes me feel alive.

We went to see Lamb last night, a band I’ve been a fan of for a long time but never guessed we’d have the chance to see them live, especially when they broke up a few years ago. Well, we were lucky enough to see their last gig ever on a random reunion tour, last night at the Tivoli. Amazing show. Wow, wow, wow! And in a couple of weeks on my birthday weekend we have tickets for Mars Volta too!

So if you’re the type that’s into astrology or numerology etc, if you looked up my stats I’m sure you’d find this is my year. It’s hard to not sound smug, but I’m so stoked with my life right now.

But no, still no camera….

Hopefully by my next post!

So today I steal someone else’s pic, as I have a new toy to show off…

Sexy

Since I’m working two jobs at the moment, public transport is eating up a lot of my precious time, especially train-bus-bus-ing out to the western suburbs everyday. I needed a quick way to zip around town.  A car is unfortunately out of the picture since there is no parking available in our building, so I stuck with the two-wheeled variety (and anyone who knows me knows I’ve always dreamed of getting a motorbike anyway) & bought myself a Benelli moped.

I’m in love.

I’ve found myself working in a kitchen again after many years, in a deli in the western suburbs. The work keeps me interested, still learning recipes & new techniques. The other job is just supermarket work; mundane but well-paying. It’s funding this never-ending shopping spree of homewares, furniture & fun things to fill our apartment. I’m also saving for a motorcycle/moped at the moment, so it’s really a fun time in a way, shopping for all this stuff & starting again. Everything’s so new & fresh. A little retail therapy has been good after living rough on the road.  A new camera is pretty high on my shopping list, so hopefully this site will come back to life with some colour.

I’ll try to stop by more often. Sorry for the awkward pauses in the chatter. We have internet in the apartment now so I’ll be a little more net-active. Btw I tried the Wordpress app for the iPhone numerous times but it crashed on uploading every time; excuses, excuses.

Woooaahh, I really didn’t mean to ignore my site so long (& even let the domain expire briefly). It’s now been months that we’ve been camping on & off, exploring the Angeles National Forest & staying with friends we made along the way.

With an attempt to sugarcoat the last few months, sure we’ve had a few rough times, but overall had an amazing adventure & one of those “life-learning” periods where you find your strengths & weaknesses yada yada… pfft.

We’ve seen a very different side of the US now to say the least, getting to know locals that we would otherwise never have the opportunity of meeting, experiencing their way of life & I never thought I would find myself feeling so foreign in this country.

It’s hard to know where to start. I’m really quite overwhelmed attempting to recollect my thoughts into a readable-sized post, I could write a novel so much has happened in the last few months, so maybe I’ll just get onto the forest…

The Angeles Forest is surprisingly vast. There is desert, there are mountains, it is hot, cold, dry, foggy, snowy… We’ve had the luck of experiencing it all.

Let’s try this chronologically:

We started fairly low in elevation at the base of the mountains, first at a camp called Sycamore Flats then South Fork a little further up. It wasn’t the most beautiful of areas we found on our journey, but it was a good place for us to start with its fresh stream providing good drinking water & ice cold baths, firewood everywhere & tonnes of hikes & climbs.

As usual, you can hover over the images for info

Anyway we were just getting in the swing of living off-grid when Nik had a nasty accident. While chopping wood, a woodchip flew up & hit him in the eye cutting his cornea open, an extremely painful injury blinding him several weeks.

After the hospital & short motel stay we returned to South Fork to continue camping (Nik still mostly blind). It was really difficult for him dealing with the elements & such a fragile injury. As he recovered we met a couple of fellow homeless “campers” Charlie & Daizy (& dog, Chloe) who knew the area pretty well & introduced us to their friends Aaron & Chris, brothers. They took us on a few hikes & we ended up hanging out a fair bit.

This is when we first saw Devil’s Punchbowl, an awesome rock valley with the craziest boulders, caves & structures. We have been back a few times since for climbing. Love it.

Making a convoy with our new friends we went from South Fork up slightly higher to Big Rock, a pretty little site in the forest shade but too cold for some of our group. We only stayed briefly, spending most of our time by the fire drinking hot chocolate, passing blunts & playing cards.

From there we moved onto the other side of the mountain ridge to Cottonwood with Charlie & Daizy. Aptly named, Cottonwood has constant fluffy pollen/flowers like little cotton-wool balls floating through the air. Quite a cool sight. The camp was really fun. There was a little stream to play in (especially fun since Daizy just got a new puppy, Bella), a swing from a big tree & we had the honour of seeing a small deer walk right past us while Nik & I sipped our coffee silently. An amazing thing to see. We liked Cottonwood.

From here we had a few problems as a lot of the camps & roads up the mountain were still closed for the cold season. We were running out of places to explore so we stayed with Aaron & Chris’s family a while who live at the base of the Angeles Forest.

As the weather started heating up we found ourselves needing places to swim. Little Rock Dam was a cute little dam in the middle of the desert with trees growing up through the water. As usual all our dog-friends came too. They’re hilarious in the water.

(From here on I was working with a broken camera without knowing it. I took a bazillion photos but just discovered now they’re all blank. The following are pics from Nik’s cam & my iPhone.)

Once the summer arrived they opened the roads up the mountain allowing us access to sites with higher altitude like Guffy.

Guffy was very high, very cold & spent the pm in beautiful thick fog.

Our tent was right on the edge of a large cliff, looking over the deep valley & clouds below. It was an amazing place, definitely the most remote we’ve gone, but the hike to water was exhausting in the high altitude & just too cold once again.

Nik & I took Chloe for a walk one day…

& decided to take a shortcut through some bushes. Chloe didn’t like that. She rode the Em-bus

Then the worst came… being over 8000ft altitude on the mountain caused Nik’s still-weak eye to eventually split open again & so we came down off the mountain to stay at our friends’ place again while he recovered. Poor Nik.

Fast forward a few weeks…

Strangely, I actually write this from Phoenix Arizona, sitting in an air-conditioned motel room surrounded by all the usual modern conveniences. We drove here a few days ago for some errands, but typically that has proved to be another “adventure”. Driving through the treacherous desert heat our car overheated & cracked the radiator. We spent a night by the roadside in the desert overheating ourselves. Eventually we made it & set up camp at the base of Superstition Mountain (slightly east of Phoenix). While being an incredible place out there, the 45 degree heat eventually got the best of us & we found ourselves quite ill with heatstroke, exhausted, unable to eat & delirious. We had to leave. So now we’re in downtown Phoenix in a motel room trying to replenish our fluids & recover.

This is Goldfield, a real “ghost town” from the gold-rush era. We came across it quite by accident on our way to Superstition Mountain.

We are a lot thinner & tanned than we were a few months ago. The tiring lifestyle & bad diet has left us running on empty & longing to go back to a more normal/ stable life. We are scarred, bruised, malnourished, our clothes are tatters & I can honestly say I have never felt this appreciative of modern comforts like running water, beds, electricity, internet, fridges & light-switches. I feel truly feral.

To add salt to our wounds we were robbed a few weeks ago. Our car was parked at our Aaron & Chris’ place, full of belongings of course since we’ve been living out of it, when thieves got away with Nik’s camera (leaving us totally camera-less now!), laptop, jewelry (including his wedding ring & EN necklace, of great personal value), my ID (!!!) & my bathroom pack. So now I’m driving without a licence & look as feral as ever with no makeup or toiletries (I’m sure you girls know how rough that would feel).

So with all that, you can understand I am looking to go home to Australia quite soon. We’ve had a ball in the US the last year, seen so much more than we ever expected but alas our wallets are empty & I am longing to return to a steady home & job, finishing college & building up funds for the next trip. I’m thinking Asia…

Prepping my fingers for some typing-action.

See you very soon…

So, while I’m living off-grid for a while I leave you with promises of many photos & good stories to come.

Funny timing, since I just posted Desert Tribute; it’s like I was tempting fate when I wrote the words “gonna miss all this space one day when we leave.” but we are indeed leaving town. This weekend we’re leaving the desert & moving to LA, the big (& smoggy) city.

Our bedroom here has a new occupant arriving soon & we’re on to a new destination. Next time you hear from me I will posting from a new location, making a mess in a new kitchen, exploring a new backyard, sweating in a new gym & kicking back in a new lounge.

See you soon folks!

I’ve still got the baking bug & I’m happy to say- today I made my best bread yet! Yeh, I’m pretty excited about it.

I tried quite a different recipe this time, a milk bread, that even called for butter in the dough. Even though it contained wholewheat, it was smooth & fluffy, the wet-dream of all breads. Another thing I liked about this one is that it was quick. Yes, I know it requires kneading, but this one you can make on a whim unlike the “famous no knead bread” I tried last week that takes hours to proof & seriously, what’s wrong with a little kneading? It’s good exercise & fun.

I split the dough up & made a couple of long rolls & a loaf of sweet chilli bread.

I had made some sweet chilli sauce a few days ago that was brewing in the fridge & today I had an idea that it might make a nice bread flavouring, so while kneading the dough I mixed in a few spoons of my spicy sauce. Now I’ve tasted the bread I know I could have put a little more sauce in, but I thought I had better stay safe on my first try. Man, it was good.

The recipe I followed was way too liquidy; by the end I used almost double the flour they called for (I was quite unhappy as I was low on plain flour). I ended up adding the rest of the flour, as needed, coming from my wholewheat stash. Y’know what? It came out grand & I would probably do it exactly the same again next time around.

So here is my adapted recipe-

• 3 cups plain white flour
• 2-3 cups of wholewheat
• 2 tsp salt
• 1Tb butter
• 2.25 ts/ 7g fast-action dried yeast
• 1 Tb sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water

(like I always say, the qty of flour will depend on the weather a little. It’s good to have too much flour on hand than too little. You may will need to adjust the amounts for your climate. Add more flour/liquid until you have a nice soft dough that doesn’t stick to your counter. You’ll have to do it by feel.)

1. Put the flour, sugar, yeast & salt into a large bowl. Add the butter & rub it into the flour with your fingers until it’s like breadcrumbs.
2. Heat the milk & water until it’s luke warm (not hot!) & add it to the dry mix. Get your hands in there & mix the dough until it forms a soft dough that leaves the sides of the bowl clean.
3. Sprinkle flour on the counter & knead the dough for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.
4. Add any flavouring/ grains/ nuts/ fillings/  you might want to mix through.
5. Shape it into a loaf or whatever shape you’re doing. Dust it with flour & cut slits.
6. Grease a loaf tin/ flour a baking tray & lay out your loaf. Cover with a damp cloth/ plastic wrap & put it out in the sun/ warm place for half an hour. It should rise nicely.
7. Dust with more flour if you like or brush with egg-whites for the shiny, crunchy crust & bake for 35-40 minutes at 400 degrees F, until risen and golden brown. If unsure, tap the bottom & listen for the hollow drum sound. If it sounds hollow-ish, it’s good.
8. Cool it on a rack so the bottom stays crisp.

(I’ll also add that I put a small dish of hot water at the base of the oven when I put the loaves in. Steam helps rising, but there are also stories on the internet about this method shattering bread-stones & even oven doors. I don’t know if it’s an urban myth or true, so I won’t recommend the method in fear of feeling responsible for someone breaking their stone. You can always put a lid or foil-tent over your loaves to help keep in moisture.)

I sliced a chunk & immediately spread some butter on it for the taste test & realized it doesn’t even need butter on top. You can taste the butter already in the dough. This is a bread that I can quite happily eat just plain, especially the chilli loaf. Hurrah for spring!