Wakey wakey, now assume the position.

This morning I was awoken at 5 am by six LA county Sheriff's deputies. The reason for this is that I was sleeping in my parents' rental house, which is (with the exception of some of my stuff) currently vacent so that some remodeling can be done before my parents move in. My next door neighbor saw my van, assumed that I was a squatter and called the cops. The real irony is that even when I was a squatter in an otherwise abandoned house, nobody called the cops.
I calmly explained to the officers that I was visiting from out of town an actually belonged there. When they examined my drivers lisence, one officer asked "visiting all the way from fullerton?" It was fortunate that still had my U of A student ID in my wallet and that my parents gave me keys rather than make me use the unlocked back door like everybody else (including all six deputies). They officers checked my record and left after concluding that I didn't have any outstanding warrents that they could arrest me for.
A few of things pissed me off while they were there though. First of all, one female officer unholstered her gun and used her free time to check out the laser sight on it. They didn't seem very amused by my reference to Pen and Teller's comedy rutine about hand guns with laser sights. The important thing however is that the gun should not have been unholstered while I was on the floor with my hands behind my back. She wasn't even pointing it at me, she was just sort of aiming down the hall. Another thing that pissed me off was that it took six officers to do this. That means that they called in backup before they even got to the house. Sure, they're covering their asses, but a few could have left once I was subdued (and by subdued, I mean woken up and placed on the floor). The last thing that piqued my annoyance was that one of first things that one officer said was "we're just checking out a complaint, we're not stepping on any of your rights." My little internal monologue responded "like hell you are" but I didn't think that it'd really help my situation to say it outloud. What has our society come to when officers say "we're not stepping on your rights" rather than actually telling me what my rights are.
It didn't occur to me until right after they left to ask what legal code allowed them to enter a home without permission from the owner or a warrent. Right before writing this entry, I called up the LA County sheriff's office, got the run around for 5 minutes and then was told that forced entry is at the discression of the dispatcher depending on the situation. I wonder what they would have done if I wasn't sleeping there, if I had just parked the van overnight. Would they have towed my vehicle from a private driveway without permission of the property owner? Ah yes, it's good to be back in the land of the free secure.

When did I become uncle Rico?

Similarities noticed between myself and the antagonist to Napoleon Dynomite:
1. When I'm not crashing with my relatives, I live in a van that's more than a decade old.
2. I currently have a rediculous looking, thin mustache.
3. I fixate on the past; not my past, but the past none the less. I also wish I had a time machine.
4. I sell things door to door; I sell fossils to people I know are dealers rather than crockery to neighbors, but it's still sales.
5. I have already heard one sibling say "Gaaa, quit eating all our food!"
In short, I'm one football and one camcorder away from being uncle Rico.

Also, for future reference, I'm going to be milking the fact that I now live out of my van for every pun, joke and reference I can get. You've been warned.

Fullerton, CA

It'll be interesting to see what a map of my path looks like when I'm done with my travels. I'm now at my parents' place in Fullerton, California. I really wasn't anticipating coming back here for a long time, but then I really wasn't anticipating buying a whale skeleton when I set out either. I made the purchase and there wasn't any more room in the van for me to sleep, so I went back north to Vegas, loaded up the van with as much of my stuff as I could and drove down to Orange county last night. Now my stuff is stored in my parents' atic and they've offered to feed and shelter me for a few days.
I e-mailed a photo to Dr. Barnes at the LA coutny Museum of Natural History to see if the skeleton might be significant, he told me that it was likely herpetocetine cetotheriid, which would make it special and rare and therefor worth aquaring for a museum. Unfortunatley the LA county museum has a policy agains purchasing fossils and so he recommended that I talk the dealer into donating it or buying it myself then donating it. There was no way the dealer was going to donate it for the tax write off since it and many other of his fossils were likely illegally collected. In the end I got the guy to knock $100 off his asking price and drove away with the whale for $400. I however do not make enough money to donate this fossil for tax purposes. Therefore, this whale, from the San Diego area is now the first large specimen in the Genlaw Museum of Natural History, a not yet accredited institution.
I'll be here in southern California for a few days; at least until I can sell some of the trilobites and ammonites I bought and take care of a snafu with my grad school applications. After that, it's on to Tucson, the Petrified forest and points east from there.

Waiting for answers about bad fossils

So I'm still in Quartzite. I'm waiting to hear back from Dr. Hans Larsson at McGill University about wether I'm correct in thinking that a couple of fossils being pushed by some Moroccan dealers are fakes. Actually, I think that they're composits; chimeras if you will. I think that the front end is of a mosasaur and that the back is of a crocodile. The dealers are selling them as crocodiles. Moroccans are sneaky when it comes to fossils. Alot of ammonites are really just carved bits of sandstone. A rediculous number of trilobites are either composits or total fakes. I'm waiting to hear back because I'd hate to be wrong about these fossils and miss out on a deal. The dealers are asking about $600 each, which for a mosasaur skull or a crocodile skull is cheap like borsht. Composits however have no place in museums and I'm only going after museum quality if I'm paying $600 a head.

Quartzite, AZ

George Lucas must have seen Quartzite, Arizona right before he envisioned Mos Isly space port. There are maybe fifteen or twenty permanent buildings and the rest are trailors, RV's and tents. I've spent a fair amount of money here ($345 USD so far) and I'm likely to spend alot more before the end of the day. As far as rocks, minerals and fossils go, there are about 6 countries represented here: the USA, Morocco, Madagascar, Argentina, Brazil and China. two things that I'm likely to buy are an incomplete whale skeleton and a crocodile skull. Both are Moroccan.
I've been sleeping in the van and the nights aren't too cold. Over the weekend I had the fortune of meeting a group called"sisters on the fly" which is a group of women who meet and travel the country. Mostly they just asked me about paleontology, but one fellow made sure to ask if I was a christian. Since I was sharing these people's food and camp fire, I decided not to alienate them, so I played appologetics. I said I was a christian and believed in God and evolution simultaneously. I gave Dr. Lamoureaux's class synopsis as my justification: A book of god's words (the bible) and a book of his works (nature) which are both true and that the bible is not a book of science. For my three minute schpeel I received acolades for having the best argument for believing in the two that they'd ever heard. Of course, I put on a slight southern twang and said things like "y'all" and "aint." I stayed warm and got fed, so I don't feel so bad about compromising my ardent atheistic beliefs.
I'll be leaving Quartzite soon. I haven't quite decided where I'll be going, but I've seen everything here and haven't been nearly as impressed as I was when I was a kid. If I buy the skulls, I'll go back to California to drop them off, if not, I'll just go up to northern Arizona, perhaps I'll see the grand canyon again.

Trip Update

I still haven't left Canada. I've been hanging out with some friends, first in Calgary and now in Drumheller. I did manage to get some prospecting in, but I didn't find anything particularly noteworthy; A few hadrosaur ribs, and a large number of unidentifieable fragments, so I haven't kept anything. The fact that we found some of the material in a park and the prevailing ethics of my two companions also detered me from collecting anything. I'll be leaving some time tomarrow to head back to Calgary briefly and then head south.