"It's All the L.A. Area."

When the guys are in Wyoming and catch a ride with lonesome Bill, he describes his home region: “Have you ever heard of Santa Monica? It’s one of those neighboring towns to L.A.  You don’t know where one stops and the next one begins.  All the town run into each other.  We just call it the L.A. area.” That’s what I tried to convey when we got there—the jumble of sights piled on top of one another—as the guys finally arrive there starting on page 228. “Houses and more houses assaulted the senses, increasing proportionately with exits, billboards, cars, construction, and a coffee-lemony smell.” It sparks the guys to skip the glob altogether and park themselves at Disneyland for a few days, and then go to Huntington Beach. Roger, however, uses his feud with Otto to backtrack into the jungle.  On Day 31 he invades more of the area they missed:  The Hollywood sign, the movie lots of Burbank, Beverly Hills. “I got to Wilshire Boulevard and hailed down a guitarist in an old Rambler. But in the process he screwed me up.  He brought me to a tight, curving ramp on the Glendale Freeway, which was the wrong freeway. I fought my way onto the Long Beach Freeway, but before I knew it I was on the Santa Monica Freeway and headed in the wrong direction again.” That is the L.A. area, where one town runs into another. Definitely one of the most challenging spots I’ve ever hitchhiked.