Las Vegas to Santa Barbara

10/12/99

The drive from Las Vegas to the California coast is, quite honestly, very long and very boring. Half of the trip is on US 15 which has stretches that for miles and miles are totally straight. The views of the desert on either side of the road seem to never change.

Tallest Thermometer on Earth - Baker, Ca.
Photo by John Fischer

The small town of Baker, on the edge of the Mojave Desert boasts the biggest thermometer on earth. When we passed through town the thermometer registered 91 degrees. My guess is that the temperature was significantly higher than that.

From Baker we passed through Barstow where we stopped at an outlet mall seemingly situated in the middle of nowhere. We decided to stop by the Samsonite Outlet and purchase a new suitcase. After carrying our large suitcase to the car this morning, I decided that we really needed one of the newer models with handle and wheels.

The ride from Barstow to Santa Barbara takes you through the town of Palmdale, California. Coincidentally, we were listening to talk radio KFI - 940 a.m. in Los Angeles and their afternoon show "Karel and Andrew" hosted by two homosexual gentlemen who are very entertaining and informative. They are to be commended for their show today on a very important topic.

Today's topic of conversation was the recent arrest of a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, age 41, for improper sexual advances online with a male agent posing as a young girl named Laura, age 13. The officer arrested worked in the Palmdale station of the sheriff's department. (complete story)

In their efforts to explore the story, one of the hosts logged into a Yahoo Chat room and established his own profile as a 14 year old girl from Southern California. The first chat room they entered at Yahoo was a chat for girls ages 16-19. The hosts were amazed that within seconds a 28 year old male from Florida approached Karel, who he believed to be a female of 14 and soon proposed that the young girl make up some excuse to travel to Florida over her Thanksgiving vacation to have some fun with him.  

The experiment went on for the length of the show with many other child abusers identified. Older men were sending on-line nude photos, allegedly of themselves, to the host whom they thought was a young girl.

The large number of totally unmoderated Yahoo chats that allow this type of behavior to go on was very shocking to me. I am proud to belong to an organization where About.com kids and teens chats are moderated by adults and where most other chats are also closely monitored by the host Guides. Any service that allow users to establish their own chat rooms under whatever, often sick name, the user chooses are extremely prone to many forms of abuse, particularly sexual abuse.

The Internet is an amazing medium and one which will continue to grow and prosper. To allow this new and exciting medium to be used by child abusers and perverted individuals is a blot on the companies involved. Children must at all costs be protected, particularly from sexual abuse.  

This extremely interesting show made the long 320 mile ride a bit shorter. It certainly made me think about aspects of the medium that I work in.

Tomorrow, we'll explore the area around Santa Barbara including the waterfront and one of the oldest and most beautiful of the Spanish missions in California.

If you missed one of our prior columns on our extended trip through the American west, check out our Western Diary Index.