I got tired of my gang fighting within the ranks, and apparently other Grove Street members did, too, because they set up a meeting for us to reunite. Of course, the cops showed up in force, with helicopters, the SWAT team, motorcycles… you name it, it was there. Lucky for me, I had my trusty AK-47 with me.

My pal, Sweet, was trapped inside the hotel where the meeting was being held, so it was up to me to go in and save him. I’m amazed that I’m always strapped to the gills with guns and this guy never has any. Maybe I’ll loan him one of mine sometime.

Anyway, I single-handedly battled our way out of the hotel onto the roof where a helicopter full of sharpshooters was waiting. All of them shot at Sweet (probably because he was unarmed) so while he drew fire it was my job to take the helicopter out. After that, we climbed off the roof and, after a pretty hairy car chase, escaped the cops.

Something I noticed in my travels in San Andreas is that the food here has restorative, healing powers. I can get shot several times, head into the local pizza joint, eat a couple of pizzas, and I’m good as new. What’s better, I can buy a drink in a vending machine and get the same result. I’ll have to remember to ask them what they’re putting in it because I think that’d be a hit back home.

I got a call from a friend of mine, Cesar, who wanted to take me to see something but wouldn’t tell me what it was. When we got there, I couldn’t believe my eyes: my friends, Big Smoke and Ryder, were not only working with the corrupt police officer, Tenpenny, but they had the green car that my mom was gunned down by! I still have a tough time believing they’d turn on me like this, but I can’t say I didn’t suspect them all along.

Of course, because they were working with the cops, that meant the meeting some other friends of mine went to was an ambush because Big Smoke sold them out. (If you feel like this is happening a little fast for you, don’t worry - you’d be amazed how fast things happen in San Andreas.)

I went to rescue my friends, who all had guns but couldn’t seem to hit any of their attackers, and the cops showed up. Of course, it was Officer Tenpenny (who sounds a lot like Samuel L. Jackson, might I add), who knocked me out, put a bag over my head, and drove me out to the country.

Turns out he threw all of my surviving friends into jail, but somehow he saw something special in me and decided to let me go if I’d do a favor for him. There was a guy holed up in a safe house on a mountain and I had to go kill him and take a photo of the body. All in a day’s work, right?

I hopped on a bike, headed up the mountain, flushed the guy out, and chased him down. I ended up running his car off the mountain road and - because Officer Tenpenny took all of my guns - punched the guy to death. Then I snapped a photo, dropped off the camera, and that was that.

A few things occurred to me at this point:

First, it’s amazing how many people seem to leave their keys in their cars with the doors unlocked. With a one-man crime spree like me on the loose, you’d think they’d at least lock their doors. As it stands, I can hop into any parked car out there and it starts right up - I don’t even have to close my door. Some folks never learn.

Second, I’m going to have to contact the highway safety office and have them investigate some of the roads around here. There are some seriously precarious mountain roads up there that don’t have guard rails around them. Let me tell you, it’s easier than you think to drive right off the mountain. You’ll probably survive, but it does some good damage to your car. I may have a class action lawsuit brewing here.

Third, looking at my map I don’t see the different gang turf anymore, so I’m thinking that, even though the meeting got ambushed by police, the gangs must have reunited. That’s sort of unfortunate, because there was a lot of money to be made when the war was on. Kinda like real life, huh, Mr. Bush?

Back to my day: I dropped off the camera, then went to visit Officer Tenpenny at this local yokel’s hotel room. The guy was some sort of drugged-out flower child who called himself “The Truth.” Anyway, he wanted me to go steal a combine harvester from a group of survivalists on a farm out in the country. Whatever, man.

Shot down a bunch of the survivalists on the way to the combine, then once I was in the combine, I could run them down. Of course, they’d shoot out the back of the combine in chopped up pieces when I did, which I figured was a warning to those standing in my way of what would happen to them… but no one heeded that warning and just stood in the way. I took the combine back to The Truth’s farm, the combine possessed, like something from a Stephen King film.

Oh! I also met a new girlfriend, Catalina. She’s into the sado-masochistic thing, and on our first date she brought out a real live rack to put me on. I begged for mercy and she relented, but I admit I was a little freaked out.

Catalina is also into robberies, so we robbed a bank and an off-track horse race betting place. Reasonably uneventful, beyond the usual police chases and such.

Catalina’s a fiery woman. No sooner do I drop her off at her house but she calls me and tells me she’s going to “cut my balls off and make me eat them” or something like that. I’m not sure why I always fall in with this hostile crowd, but I guess I’ll take what I can get.