Apples and Oranges

By the time you read this column, I will be on my way home from my vacation in Cali- fornia - and I'll be more than ready to glimpse gently rolling terrain, view the Big Dipper in its full (non- smog-covered) glory, and get a decent night's sleep.

From talking to my cousin and her miscellaneous friends from the San Francisco metropolitan area, I had already gathered that Washington and California were at least as different as apples and oranges. (Or, more accurately, as different as Honeycrisps from War- ren Orchards and seedless Clementines from the Impe- rial Valley.)

But I was utterly unpre- pared for the sheer urbanness that greeted me when I arrived at my cousin's condo in Sunnyvale.

Sunnyvale is a rather large city - about 100,000 people. For comparison, there are over twice as many people in my cousin's grade alone as there are in the entire Waitsburg school district, and there are two people in her high school for every occupant of Waits- burg. And it's not even the only school in town!

I quickly found out that Californian teenagers - at least my cousin and her friends - live a completely different lifestyle than us kids up here. For one, they rarely walk anywhere. This makes sense, as most of the 'streets' in Sunnyvale are actually four-lane freeways. But ironically, most of them don't get their licenses until the age of 21! Of all my cousin's friends I've met, only one (Leslie, of "I've- seen-sidewalks-wider-than- Lower-Waitsburg-Road" fame) could drive.

I don't blame the non- drivers a bit. The highways I drove on while in Califor- nia were all wide, a size- able portion of the drivers were shameless risk-takers, and motorcycles darted in and out of traffic. Bloated, shapeless flowering bushes had been planted alongside some of the more obnoxiously sized superhighways in a semi-successful attempt to add a touch of beauty to the spectacle.

In addition, the Sunny- vale lifestyle involves eating out almost every night. My cousin wanted to give my family 'cultural variety', so we went to Asian res- taurants night after night. Vietnamese. Korean. Japa- nese. Cambodian. Thai. The condo kitchen went nearly unused during the stay.

And - sleep. My cousin usually stays up until well past midnight chatting with her friends on the Internet, then compensates by sleeping in until nine or ten the next morning. My brother and I tried to turn in before that, but we hadn't managed to hit the hay before 11:00 at any point during the trip. And on an unfamiliar air mattress in a noisy condo, there's not much incentive to go back to sleep after waking up at seven or so in the morning. When I get home, I fully intend to fall into bed immediately and sleep until noon the next day.

But if anything really rubbed me weird about Sunnyvale and the sur- rounding area, it's that noth- ing separated the towns. Sunnyvale ends right where Mountain View begins, and Mountain View runs right up to San Antonio, and so on all the way to San Fran- cisco. There's no cropland or woodland or roads sepa- rating two given municipali- ties. How do you tell where the border of one is? Look for the "Welcome To" sign, and even those are few and far-between.

Man oh man, it'll be good to be home.