Last weekend, I left Long Beach and drove up to San Francisco to hang out with Joe Clifford and read at Lip Service West.  On the way up, I drove on the 5, and I was blown away by the shifting almost fickle landscapes of California.  It didn’t take me too long to drive to the bay area, but once I was in San Francisco, the traffic was terrible. Overall, this was an amazing trip, and I’m not going to share too much about it, because I’m going to write a piece about the trip for another publication.  But I had the chance to hang out with a great writer and fellow FIU alumni, Joe Clifford, and meet another great bay-area writer, Tom Pitts. …