I have a rugburn on my elbow right now. Stings like hell. Given to me last night by my fiancé. We were practicing Hapkido in the living room. I have numerous issues with our new apartment, but being on the first floor and having carpeting allows us to practice martial arts at midnight, so it's not all bad. We were practicing cause I've been out of training for a few months and wanted to be sure I remembered the basics I'd learned in case someone tried to fuck with me.

I'm not normally inclined to worry about people fucking with me, but I'm going on a roadtrip next week and it had occured to me that this will be the first solo trip I've ever taken. I've taken the Greyhound alone, but there are other people around and authority figures present. Not so in my car. So if someone wants my stereo or something more personal, I wanted to know I could at least offer them a fair fight.

I know some good shit. Joint manipulations and throws that, if the offense wasn't a low-rent ninja himself, would probably bust a wrist and put me in good shape to choke a motherfucker out, if needed. So: self defense, check.

Being robbed or attacked isn't something I'm seriously worried about. No one's ever fucked with me, despite the dangerous situations I enjoy putting myself in. I've been told that I carry myself like I know where I'm going, and I always heard that was the first rule of getting assholes to go off in search of easier victims. Also, alone, I am hostile, and that keeps the fuckers back.

Part of the reason for the roadtrip is that my hostility muscles need to stretch. Oh sure, that's selfish. Goodness yes it's selfish. But I have a mighty need to be someplace where I can stare people down with impunity. I've been nice for over a year, and the people I've been nice to are all good people who I don't really want to offend with cold stares and sunglasses indoors. Rather than stay here and take that out on people I care about, I'm going to get lost on a highway and shoot my daggers at faces I'll never have to see again.

I'm one of those people who romanticizes the Great American Roadtrip. I was never exposed to the National Lampoon's version as a kid, having to put on a happy face and stopping at theme parks. In my mind, a roadtrip is a celebration of dogged individualism. Not a vacation but an instinct.

There's something incredibly glorious about being alone away from home. Freedom is no one knowing your name. Freedom is blowing through a town of sleepy television sets and not blinking. It's more than just 55MPH wind in your hair and eating in restaurants every night. No one around you is capable of running you back home, forcing you back to your desk and piling your bills in your lap. They don't know. They touch you to swipe your debit card and then you vanish, not their responsibility and they're not yours.

If you don't sympathize with the antisocial angle, there's still the scenery. The United States is disappearing under strip malls and the weird fringes will all eventually be drug by their hair into a flourescent-lit Wal-Mart lunchroom and taught to unfold a three ring binder instead of dragging their gods from the ocean or pulling them down from the trees. But those places are there now, amid the gaudy double-wide tanning salons that will eventually be the only local flavor left. Shitty chicory coffee, the Pacific's garbage sold as souvenirs, motels with the TVs bolted to the walls on hospital mounts, greasy eggs, gas station bathrooms with burnt-out bulbs. They'll all have to toe the line sooner or later, but not before next week.

So I'm getting out there with my camera to grab what I can. Hopefully by the time I get to LA, the luxury of hostility will have grown dull and I'll be ready for a different kind of hysteria, seeing some friends I've missed for years. Then I'll take I-5 home so as not to dirty the memory by revisiting its setting too quickly.

PS: What would you put on a 48-hour roadtrip mix for the Pacific Coast Highway? I have nine days' worth of music on my computer and several more in CD form, but I've heard all that shit.