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The most memorable meal of my life was my 26th birthday dinner at Jean-Georges. This would be a memorable meal for just about anyone: it was my birthday, it is a Big Deal restaurant, and I had flown across the country to Manhattan for the occasion. The food was wonderful: it was a multi-course prix fixe menu, served by multiple staff members in white coats, a different person to place the plate in front of me and another to delicately pour sauce over the dish. The dining room is deceptively large. If this were any other type of restaurant, they could have easily crammed twice as many tables in. And, at the end of the meal, they wheeled out a cart of petit fours and hand-cut fresh marshmallows onto our plates.

So, yeah, it was pretty fantastic.

But the thing that made this meal beyond standout for me was that I ate it with my brother, who had taken me to New York for my birthday, and no one else. We sat through the multi-course, multi-hour affair and talked the entire time.

Less than a year prior to that meal, my brother took me to a 49ers game the day after Christmas, and we had sat in frozen, awkward silence the entire game. So, we had come pretty far.

My brother is three years older than I am, which is the perfect age difference, in my opinion. We’re not so close in age that there was competition between us, but we’re still close enough in age to relate to one another. Despite that, we were never friends until our late twenties. And I really believe that it was that trip to New York, and, in particular, that birthday dinner, that made that happen.

Since then, my brother and I have had many meals together, just the two of us. My favorite of the recent meals was one evening in San Francisco when we walked around the Mission, stopping in three or four restaurants for food, gin, and whisky, talking forever about life. Real life. But even that is a distant second to the meal at Jean-Georges.

I think that I needed that trip, where my brother reached out and invited me to hang out on my own to realize that he wasn’t my brother out of obligation anymore. No longer were we spending time together because our parents expected him to drive me to school. We were spending time together because we had chosen to, and invested hundred of dollars to go to another coast to do so at this three-star Michelin restaurant.

Food brings people together. I really believe that. We all have to eat, and when we share that with other people, we can quickly realize that loving food is rarely the only thing we have in common. We have so much in common. Everyone is actually kind of the same – I mean, yes. You are a unique snowflake. But, deep down, you’re simultaneously just like everyone else. Regardless of it’s a special meal with 7 courses or a quick walk to dinner at the restaurant down the street, when you dine with a companion, it’s an opportunity to make a memory, and to make a friend.

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I have a lot of friends who are or, at one point, have been vegan. It’s completely fine. But, when we talk about it, we never called it “vegan.” We always say that they “adhere to a plant-based diet.” Mostly because, when you say you’re on a plant-based diet, what people hear is “Oh, man, I EAT SO MANY BRUSSELS SPROUTS and they are delicious, amirite?”  and The People are like, “You know… Yeah! They really are!” But when you say you’re vegan, what they hear is “MEAT IS MURDER and I JUDGE you and your juicy cheeseburger” and The People back away slowly and, when you’re out of earshot, say, “Um, dry, gross vegan food makes people pissy. Let’s not hang out with her anymore, okay?”

Isn’t that sad? It’s sad.

Especially because vegan food – plant-based food – is actually really, really awesome and delicious, not to mention healthy.

For the record, I am not vegan, but I stick to a plant-based diet about 60% of the time. (The other 40% is 100% cheeseburgers.) And the main reason for that is not because it’s delicious and healthy, but because it’s the easiest stuff to make at home. So, when I received a copy of Pure Vegan, I was stoked to find that it walked the line between plenty of of simple, yummy recipes (drinks, too!) using common ingredients that I could whip up on a weeknight after a long day at work (while still rocking my sweaty Bar Method outfit), and some full-out decadent vegan masterpiece dishes, like Pistachio Olive Oil Cake.

This cake is so yummy, and so pretty! The olive oil/yogurt/tofu combo keeps it super moist (I even used gluten-free flour because I’m cray) and who doesn’t love pistachios? There’s no way to describe this cake as dry or gross – it’s decadent and flavorful. I want to take it to one of the many upcoming Summer BBQs and then let people try it and, after they decide that it’s fantastic, yell, “IT’S VEGAN, B*TCHES” and dance around triumphantly because I am obnoxious that way. I mean – vegan baking? Who knew it was so easy?

Check out the recipe after the jump, and keep reading to find out how to win a copy of Pure Vegan for yourself!

Want to win a copy of Pure Vegan for yourself? To enter to win, simply leave a comment on this post! Tell me what your favorite Plant Food is, tell me what you’re bringing to a 4th of July BBQ, tell me what you ate this weekend (I had 7 meals on Saturday, for what it’s worth). You can Tweet about this giveaway for an additional entry! Just make sure to link back, mention me (@andreaki) and leave a comment letting me know you tweeted. I’ll pick a winner on the evening of Sunday, July 8!

Chronicle Books generously provided me with a copy of Pure Vegan (and another cookbook), but the opinions in this post are 100% my own, especially the parts where I get all political and say “bitch.” Sorry, Mom.

Make the cake!! Enjoy! Feel totally not at all guilty!

 Pistachio Olive Oil Cake
(makes one nine inch round cake, serves 8 to 10)

For the CAKE:
½ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more to grease the pan
⅔ cup shelled pistachios, toasted
½ cup plain unsweetened soy yogurt (mine was vanilla because that’s what they had at Trader Joe’s that day.)
6 ounces soft silken tofu
¾ cup sugar (I cut this down to ½ because the yogurst was sweetened. Baking is easy!)
t tsp vanilla extract
1 cup AP flour (I used gluten-free flour — I recommend cup4cup.)
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt

For the COMPOTE TOPPING:
1 orange
1 lemon
1 cup water
½ cup sugar
¼ sup Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur (I used Cointreau because that’s what I have at home for gin and tonics.)

For the GARNISH:
¼ cup shelled pistachios, toasted and coarsely chopped
¼ cup fresh pomegranate seeds

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F and cut a piece of parchment paper to line the bottom of your 9 inch round cake pan (just put the pan on top of the parchment, trace around it, and cut inside the lines – no need to be too precise here). Oil the bottom and sides of your pan with olive oil, lay down the parchment, and oil that, too. This seems like a pan in the ass, but, trust me, it’s important so your cake will invert smoothly and you won’t be all sad at the end of this process. You’re welcome for your happiness.

In your little food processor (mine is a total mini) pulse your toasted pistachios until they are finely ground. Watch out, though — process them too much and they’ll turn into nut butter! This is my favorite part, see?!

Combine the yogurt, tofu, sugar, olive oil, and vanilla. Beat this at medium speed until well combined. Really beat the hell out of the tofu – you want it smooth. (I did this in my stand mixer with the paddle attachment but you can do it by hand, if you’re old school. But if you have a Kitchenaid, you use it because it’s damn expensive.)

Sift the flour (pft I just whisk it), baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a separate bowl. Add this to the tofu/yogurt mixture in your stand mixer and beat until combined. Add the ground pistachios and beat to incorporate.

Pour the batter into your prepared cake pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick/skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let the cake cool briefly, invert it onto a wire rack, and then let it cool completely. (To invert, put the rack upside-down on top of the cake in the pan, and flip them both together. Now that the rack is right-side-up, just remove the pan. Voila! Easy. Aren’t you glad you used the parchment? When it’s cool, put your serving plate or stand upside-down on the cake on the wire rack and flip them both together again. HEYO your cake is right-side-up now!)

While your cake is cooling, prepare your topping: slice the orange and lemon into thin slices. Remove the seeds. In a saucepan, combine the orange, lemon, water, sugar, and Cointreau. Bring to a boil over high heat, and then reduce the heat and simmer for an hour. The fruit should be soft and broken down. Transfer the mixture into your food processor or blender and pulse until it’s thick and chunky.

Spoon the topping in a thick layer over the top of your cooled cake. Sprinkle chopped pistachios and pomegranate seeds on top. I skipped the pomegranates because they’re not my fave and it was just me, but if I were serving this to guests, I’d use them because of their lovely color. Pro-tip: Eat this for breakfast because it’s like a super moist  scone.

When we arrived in Sonoma, we didn’t so much “get out of the car” as we “opened the doors and rolled onto the ground.”

When we got to San Francisco on Friday night, I sat in a bathtub of scalding hot water for 45 minutes and massaged out my legs. I had (stupidly) forgotten to pack my foam roller. I finally stopped being sore after that.

So, when I got back to normal life last Monday, I was really excited to start working out again.

Part of me was pretty stoked just to get back into normal schedule and the other, really honest and really vain part was excited to lose the few pounds I’d gained while training. Yeah, that can happen, sadly. Before I started training, I would work out most days and burn a steady amount of calories daily (and be pretty choosy about my intake, too), but taking a big hike on the weekend meant that I had to do more errands on weeknights, so I ended up only working out a couple times a week, and then having a huge, calorie-buster of a hike on the weekend. Which I, of course, would follow up with Epic Mealtime. While I’m in great shape and can definitely race you up a mountain, I did gain a bit of weight from this change.

I figured getting back into a steady diet of eating clean, doing Bar Method, and lightly running with only an occasional hike would put me back on track.

What I didn’t count on was that climbing Half Dome would apparently age you ten years. APPARENTLY. Apparently I’m about 40% less flexible than I was before and an “easy run” is probably the hardest thing ever and I’m, again, stricken with shin splits. Apparently.

When you study things like endurance running or triathalons or other crazy sports like that on the internet, they always tell you about recovery plans. Not so when you climb Half Dome. Oh, they’ll tell you what kind of gloves to bring and the best technique for climbing the cables and when, precisely, you should change socks, but they don’t say jack shit about what to do the next day or for the next weeks. I talked about this with Nicole, my resident endurance athlete scholar, and she hypothesized that recovery could take up to two weeks.

Two mother-fuckin weeks!?! THAT’S LIKE FOREVER!

Of course, she told me that as we were hiking out to the Hollywood Sign, so recovery time be damned, I guess!

The thing that everyone’s been asking me since I got back is “What’s next?” I mean, I know, right? What’s next? This was a major life event, but now what? I basked in the extreme accomplishment of climbing Half Dome (and also hiking for 12 straight hours and driving 1,161 miles to four cities over five nights with my significant other and neither of us poking the others eyes out) for several days, so what’s next?

When I was coming down off the mountain, I was fairly certain I didn’t want to hike every weekend anymore. It took up so much time, I complained. And, yeah, a 12-mile hike does. But, on Saturday, I went ahead and hiked to the Hollywood Sign. It was only 4 miles, not too steep, and felt pretty much like a walk in the park to me. When I got back to work today, I saw pictures on Facebook of my friends who had hiked Mt. Baldy over the weekend and, for the first time in YEARS, had Facebook-Induced Jealousy. As it turns out, I really like hiking, and I also really like crossing things off of my many lists. I like doing things outdoors and pushing for new goals.

These are the things I have seriously researched over the past week: Warrior Dash. Cloud’s Rest in Yosemite. Ragnar. Mt. Baldy. Angel’s Landing and Zion Narrows in Zion, UT. Machu Picchu. Backpacking in Little Santa Anita Canyon. Thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (then and only then was I like, “No, that’s too crazy! …Maybe just the California part.” WHAT.)

So, while I’m over here having a major identity crisis and struggling with “Too Many Options,” here are some of the things that I am actually doing right now: building back up to 4+ Bar Method classes a week and getting my mile time down to sub-11-minute miles-for-over-3+-mile-durations. And I’m also working on being able to palm the ground when I bend to touch my toes again and, thereby, lengthening my currently-stocky quads. Vanity says: That would be good.

(Thanks for this mid-hike picture, Katelin!)

A couple days before we left for Yosemite, we sat down over an order of cruller donuts to hash out the remaining logistics. We’d been hiking together for 50 days at that point, so the hiking part needed no clarification. But we had to figure out what to do in case there was no open restaurant near our hotel – real talk. After we decided upon an appropriate backup dinner (Cheetos and beer, in case you were wondering),  he looked at me earnestly and said, “Do you think there’s any chance you might not summit?”

He had just finished talking with some of his friends who had recently hiked Half Dome. They had gotten to the base of the cables and had to take a pause before they could attempt to haul themselves to the top. One of them quit right there.

I was taken aback by this question. I looked at him as if he had grown a third eyeball in his right cheek. “No,” I said, simply. I mean, barring any weather or other unforeseen complications. All things being equal (and safe), I was going to make it to the top.

So, a few days later, last Wednesday, I did.

I’m not saying it was as easy, by any means. Just that there was just no way in hell I was going out without a fight.

When I was a wee child, my family spent a couple years living in the high sierras. It is beautiful there. It’s otherworldly. Pine trees and granite and critters. Sun and snow. People make theme parks to look like what’s just naturally there. Many times, we drove into Yosemite on Highway 120, taking hours to get to the valley floor, stopping to play at Cascade Creek on the way down, eating sandwiches packed by my favorite aunt on the edge of Mirror Lake. I was probably four the first time I went to Yosemite. I spent my childhood in the shadows of Half Dome.

At some point in my late teens, I learned that people could hike to the top. I knew nothing of what that entailed, but, ever since then, I wanted to do it. I wanted to see all the places I had played in my childhood from the huge granite curve that watched over them. I had no idea what exactly that meant.

Here are the details of hiking Half Dome — the things I didn’t know know until about 3 months ago. The hike is approximately 16 miles, give or take a few, depending on where you park/camp and which combination of trails you choose to take. When you approach Half Dome, you go above the tree line until you’re on a large, white granite rock, completely exposed. You need a permit to get this far, and they are issued via lottery system once a year. The last 500 feet are so steep that they were once deemed impossible. The top of Half Dome, according to Josiah Whitney in 1869, “never will be trodden by human foot.” Of course, this was seen as a challenge and, in 1875, George Anderson spent weeks installing a primitive version of what is now known as the cables. Without the cables, this would be rock climbing, not hiking. With them, it’s just your standard issue insane thing to do. It’s not common, but people have fallen off of the cables and died. When you get to the top of Half dome, you’re almost 9000 feet high. You will have gained 5000 feet in elevation over the course of your hike out. The, you have to turn around and go all the way back down. This can take a total of 10 to forever hours, depending on your hiking speed, level of fitness, and many other circumstances that are out of your control.

It took us 12 hours to make the roundtrip. We arrived at the trailhead at 7:30, and stepped off the cables at the top of the mountain shortly after 2pm.

That was when I cried.

It occurred to me shortly after the donut/Cheeto conversation that I might. Which is odd, because I basically can be counted on to cry over remembering to breathe, so I don’t know why it took so long to see this one coming. I didn’t cry because I was exhausted or because I was afraid or relieved or because my arms hurt and my hands were cramping from my fucking death grip. I didn’t cry because it took me seven hours to get there.

I cried because it took me 25 years.

It’s hard, really, to remember the emotions of being at the top of Half Dome. Particularly because, only a few short hours after that, I hit the proverbial wall for the first time ever in my life and, if you’ve ever gotten there, you know how it feels. With the end less than 20 minutes away, there’s one last incline. It’s steep but short; nothing compared to what you just did. But, at that point, it doesn’t matter, because nothing has ever sucked as much as everything sucks in that moment. Oh, also my entire body hurt and I was fairly certain my kneecaps were going to explode violently and cause quite a scene. And I accidentally swallowed a bug. So.

Most of the people that we chatted with on the trail were so sweet. Things are different hiking. People smile at each other and say hello as they pass. We share food, water, bandages with strangers. There’s some sort of wacky bond between people in their $200, ugly-as-sin boots and “special socks” who get up at the crack of dawn to walk really far for no particular reason. Most of us, I learned, were climbing Half Dome because it had made it on some sort of bucket list. A “before I die,” a “before I leave California,” a “before I’m just too old and/or smart” bucket list. Something we had to prove to ourselves. Something we had to do for ourselves.

I decided to do Half Dome because I honored and cherished it. I had no idea what doing Half Dome would mean. I got to the trail that morning and expected a long day, but I couldn’t have known what “a long day” was – I had never hiked that far or for that duration of time before. Hell, I probably haven’t done ANYTHING for 12 straight hours before. I knew I’d be a little scared**, but I didn’t expect that I’d slide several feet coming down the cables and experience a fear that I’ve never known before. Did you know that you actually do hyperventilate when you’re stricken with terror? Yeah! You do. But I knew I was going to make it. That decision was made years ago.

If I hadn’t decided that so long ago, I wouldn’t have been able to confidently tell The Gent that I’d get to the top. And I wouldn’t have made it through the hike altogether. But I didn’t do it because I’d come so far already, and I didn’t do it because I’d spent months training and hundreds of dollars on equipment, and I didn’t do it because I told him I would do it. I did it because I told myself.

So, yeah, climbing Half Dome was hard. Training for Half Dome commandeered two entire months. And it was scary for about 5-7 seconds… The 5-7 scariest seconds of my life. But, in a way, it was easy.

In a way, I was never not climbing Half Dome.

**I’m not afraid of heights, but I do live in constant fear of falling down – the plague of the uncoordinated. That coupled with the memory of my high school classmate who died in a hiking accident could have given a smarter human an out on this one. I’m not as smart as I seem.

Author’s Note: For all the amazing photos with my EVEN MORE amazing commentary, click here. Warning – it’s a lot of photos. If you just want the highlight reel, try this.

“Build a life so uniquely yours that no one can imagine anyone but you living it. Make your choices so intentionally and specifically tailored to your personality and your goals that it is impossible to conceive of anyone but you living the one specific life that you live. Your life should not be interchangeable with anyone else’s–and that’s a good thing because it means you are listening to your own specific heart, mind and values.”

(via: Smart, Pretty, and Awkward)

Sometimes I go outside of myself and look at my Flickr stream and think, “Hm. That life looks quite nice.”

It really is.

So good for me that I’ve been doing Bar Method for a year now, and good for me that I trained to sprint 1,311 steps on March and good for me that I just completed by first not-self-imposed, you-have-to-have-a-number-to-run-this-course 5k. And good for me that I thought that preparing for these things and finally doing the things has been fun.

This weekend, on Saturday I went hiking with The Gentleman Caller, my Half Dome companion. On Sunday, I did The Color Run SoCal. If The Color Run is coming to your city, I encourage you to sign up because it’s so fun to play outside with colors. It makes running feel fun, like it did when you were a kid. It’s playtime! Plus, I’m pretty sure that the run in other cities will be way less clusterfucky (sorry, Mom*) than the one in SoCal. Because, due to a little bit of not ideal planning and a lot of traffic, Amber and I ended up illegally parking at a Starbucks in the nearest shopping center, run/walking to the start line, run/walking the race, and speed walking back to the car because I (and this should shock you not at all) overscheduled myself again.

And our 5k swiftly turned into eight and a half miles.

Left: Before. Right: After

Luckily, for the majority of those miles, we looked like rainbow sherbet. It’s biologically impossible for rainbow sherbet to be unhappy.

However, it is very possible for rainbow sherbet to be incredibly hungry and over an hour and a half late to the birthday lunch she was supposed to be at after her clusterfucky race. While in transit, I asked The Gentleman Caller to order food for me: “Some sort of scramble thing + a cup of fruit. You can have my bread.” (Still off the gluten.) I was trusting him to order something good without my supervision. That was my first mistake. What I should have said in that message was “Some sort of scramble thing with pig in it topped with cheese and also get extra hash browns and something sweet because my blood sugar is so low I could stab someone. And coffee. And champagne.” But that was too long to type.

So what he ordered and I ate (without complaining) (in a record time of 6 minutes) (because there’s no time to complain when you’re putting any available food into your mouth hole for 6 minutes) was a mushroom and asparagus scramble (approve!) that had no cheese on it (aw, man) and egg whites (WHAT THE FUCK GO FUCK YOURSELF EGG WHITES) and a fruit cup and the leftover hashbrowns that The Gentleman Caller’s friend across the table gave me because my boyfriend thinks I’m fat and I should call him when I get tired of it.

This is a portrait of a girl who hates egg whites because they fucking suck.

*My mom read my blog recently and told me she doesn’t like it when I use profanity. SORRY, MOM
**Disclaimer: My boyfriend does not actually think that I am fat. Because I am actually not fat. But please remember this story if you ever meet my boyfriend because he’s really embarrassed about it.

Here’s the good news: I am no longer in The Hole. Which is great because holes are my second biggest fear after bridges, except that I’m pretty sure I could get over my fear of bridges but I will never move past my fear of holes. Especially if you can’t see the bottom of the hole. Like, what lives in there? What does it look like? What does it eat? It probably just eats things that fall into holes. HAS IT EVER SEEN SUNLIGHT AND WILL IT EAT ME AND WILL THAT HURT??!?! Anyway.

Ten years ago, I experienced crushing sadness. I was the saddest person who had ever existed, and I would never, ever, EVER again feel happiness. No one, EVER, was sadder than I was. No one could understand what I was going through. Just leave me and my sadness alone, World. You can’t make me feel better and neither can I. I sound like a giant asshat right now, but I hope you get what I mean. I was young, my feelings were my feelings, and I knew nothing else in the world but my own feelings. I had been no where, spent 90% of my life with the same people… basically, I had no life experience. All I knew is that I felt fucking terrible and I didn’t know how to feel better and that was OBVIOUSLY the end of the world. This Hole was fucking bottomless and I had clearly fallen off of a rickety suspension bridge into it.

Nowadays, I’m generally not-so-sad. Or, actually, not-at-all sad. Most people would characterize me as a pretty happy person. Or at least an unsad person. And I certainly am!

There’s this Upright Citizens Brigade video about people who live alone. It outlines the symptoms of living alone that people experience after they move to their own place. After about a year, according to the video, you start to experience the symptom of: Emotions That Pass Like a Summer Storm. One minute you’re sobbing heavily, the next minute you’re eating a sweet potato with your bare hands so you don’t have to wash dishes and feeling rather smug about that fact. (Not that that example happened to me. Approximately 8 days ago.) This is funny as shit in the video and probably would be funny as shit if there were a hidden camera in my apartment at that time, or basically all the time, because this is how I am.

I have an emotion.
I feel it.
Suddenly, I find a baked sweet potato and, hey! Life’s okay again.

I think this is associated with People Who Live Alone because, in living alone, you learn to take care of yourself, by yourself. The ability to manage your feelings and actions comes along with paying your own bills and being solely responsible for the cleanliness of your home and the inventory of your refrigerator. Feel a feeling, and then put it away. Realize you won’t be sad forever. You might not even be sad for five minutes. The most recent experience for me, lasted a couple days, and that was weird. It was a long time for me. But I got over it. Life’s not so bad, you know? In fact, mostly, life is pretty awesome.

This is the thing that I think that you learn after you’ve been depressed: Feelings are fine. They’re also universal. It’s normal to have them. It’s good to have them. Vulnerability is a beautiful, endearing thing. Bad things will occasionally happen, but it’s how you deal with them that really matters. Will you toughen up and force yourself to feel nothing? Or will you feel it, then let your good attitude guide you back to the light? I know that, for me, I would much prefer to be vulnerable than to be hard. But, the thing is, there’s so much more to be happy about outside The Hole than in it. I mean, I’ll admit, Doritos are delicious and no pants will always beat pants in a fight. But they have Doritos and no pants outside The Hole, too. They also have all the good things, like air, flowers, #popcorndinner, bulldog puppies, clean sheets, cuddles, season one of Grey’s Anatomy, and the whole, wide, glorious world.

You don’t have to be okay all the time. You just have to know that you will be okay.

Below, you will find me reading an old blog post. I feel as though I should apologize, because I don’t think that my voice is my best quality. However… there are worse voices to have, so I shall not complain about that business, but I will ask you to just not listen to any one bit of that over and over and over again, because, sometimes, in my job (I edit things), I have to do that and it makes ACTUAL NO ONE SOUND GOOD. I’m sorry, but that is just the sad truth.

I wrote this post a little over a year ago. March 25, 2011. I chose to read this post for this project because EVERY WORD OF IT IS STILL TRUE. At the time of recording, I had six loads of dirty laundry to wash. That is not an exaggeration. I also visited my mom shortly after recording this, and she’s still the best. She gave me a banana and a bag of nacho cheese Doritos when I left her house. Thanks, Mom.

The best roadtrips are the ones where your roadtrip companion likes the same roadtrip soundtrack as you. I had one of those last weekend when Amber and I spent our Sunday exploring the desert to visit Pioneertown and Joshua Tree (effectively crossing off number 16 on the 30 by 30 – Visit a national park). Also awesome on a roadtrip are milkshakes, giant elephants, saber tooth tigers, and pondering what would happen at an all-you-can-eat Kentucky Fried Chicken buffet.

The Internet is very vague about Pioneertown. There’s a reason for that. It’s because there’s not much to say. Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace is the anchor of the city. There, you can see live music, enjoy eccentric decor, and eat amazing BBQ and delicious cheese fries. Please always think of me when you eat cheese fries. The rest of Pioneertown are tiny buildings that were once used at sets in old spaghetti western movies. Some of these now house little storefronts that keep very odd hours There used to be a Pioneertown Bowl, which had about five lanes and the most amazing time-capsule decor of all time. Anyone want to go halfsies on a bowling alley?

Pioneertown is only a few miles down the road from Joshua Tree, which I’ve always wanted to go to. So, at the recommendation of a weird semi-German man from La Jolla on a motorcycle, we drove into the park to take a look around. It’s stunning. There’s a waterhole that was built by cowboys.

People. Life doesn’t get any better than this. Take a little roadtrip this weekend. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll find.