Sanuk D

I don't know what I'm doing here, I should be someplace else.

In Nevada, they call Highway 50 “America’s Loneliest Road.”  The first time I saw that sign it made sense.  The next 40 times felt like they were rubbing it in.  There is something to be said for seeing the country, including the desert in Nevada, but once seen it is ok to move on.  The only problem is that, when you are driving a car, moving on means moving through.  Highway 50 is a long, straight, lonely road.  I pushed on to Utah, only to wind up in a campground next to the highway.  With the prospect of being up all night before me, I figured it was better to greet the sun in Colorado.

I-70 lead through Grand Junction, which was lit up like Kurtz’s village in Apocalypse Now, and on to Glenwood Springs where I ordered the “Moons Over My Hammy” in a Denny’s just off the Interstate.  Just the thought of them makes me reconsider vegetarianism.  Leaving the highway, the road dipped down to Aspen where they still have Aspens and where the cops drive SAABs.  From what I understand, the cops used to drive Beetles, which tells you what has happened to Aspen lately.

I took a nap in the parking lot of the Aspen International Airport.  I bet you $12 that you couldn’t do that today.  But this was 1998, a more innocent time.  Even more innocent was the time some poor schmucks decided to settle up in Independence Pass at over 12,000 feet.  It was way cold in August, and all the coffee I had been drinking made me need to pee.  Unfortunately, nobody left an outhouse in the ghost town.  I remember that it was hard to sneak off the peak.

Somehow the mission was accomplished and I proceeded down the pass following water that was now a part of the same great drainage as my home waters (that would be the Mississippi.)  The nap and the coffee and the Moons Over My Hammy had done an admirable job, but having driven across Nevada, Utah, and half of Colorado, I needed to sleep for real.  Winding through the pines, I sought the first camp ground available.  Pulling in amid a light rain, I paid for my spot and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

Somewhere south of Sacramento, I got off of the Interstate.  After the Fort Stockton debacle I had learned my lesson: highways are better.  Interstates get you there quickly, but highways let you see where you are.  Since I was there to see and not to get through, I took Highway 50 toward Lake Tahoe.  Everybody has heard of Lake Tahoe, but I had no idea until I got there just how unbelievably beautiful it is.  Maybe some people’s idea of the most beautiful landscape is the beach or the desert or a night time skyline.  Give me a mountain lake any day.

The nice thing about traveling with a tent is that you can stop pretty much wherever you want.  I wanted to stop at Spooner Lake, just east of Lake Tahoe.  This was all in the days before Google and Google Maps and GPS enabled Android Handsets.  I had no idea what other things were around.  There were plenty.  Yellowstone for one.  Maybe that is a trip for another time.  I did not really care at the moment, because I was in a place where there was snow on the ground in August.  I walked on snow in August.

My campsite was back down closer to the lake itself.  Yes, in fact, that water is cold.  I had a notion to go skinny dipping in the morning, but the ambient temperature and the presence of children squashed that idea.  Before I went to bed, I cooked up some noodles on the single propane burner.  All I needed was right there.  My spoon, however, was covered with crusted meals from days before.  I spit on it and rubbed it clear.  It delighted me to no end to think of my sweet, maternally inclined friend Mary Jane.  She would not judge this spoon as clean.  I was filled with the joy of being a man in the wilderness.

I did not think that this place existed

If you drove across the country in 1998, you would have looked at a road atlas a lot.  I’m not sure if the rise of in-car GPS systems is a particularly bad thing in this respect.  It’s kind of hard to negotiate the 405 with an 11 x 17 folio open on your lap.  Suffice it to say that I have a greater appreciation for the music of Guy Clark after actually driving on a freeway in LA.  The other thing about the road atlas is that it has this picture on the front of a place so idyllic that it could not possibly exist.  So you can imagine my surprise as I came around a bend on the Pacific Coast Highway to find the scene on my atlas displayed in my windshield.

Windswept California Coast

Now there is a place that makes you just want to put on a fleece and settle in with a cup of coffee, doesn’t it?  The PCH is sort of California’s answer to the Blue Ridge Parkway (guess what non-existent place is on the 2011 atlas, by the way.)  It did not take long driving along this road to feel the tension of city driving drain out of my shoulders.  They don’t call it the Pacific Ocean for nothing.  With the peaceful sea to my left, mountains climbed to my right in an illustration of the moment the seas were separated from the dry land.  North of Santa Barbara, the California coast is a testament to the presence of a divine influence on creation.

I would never move my car

Such observations might have been made by this dude in his car as he watched the gulls turning circles over the ocean.  If you can’t tell, he’s done this car right, roof rack and everything.  It seemed like it was there at the creation of this whole scene.  I understood, on a cellular level, the whole thing.  California, the Beetle, Big Sur, John Scofield.  I had that album that Scofield put out with Medeski, Martin, and Wood, “A Go Go.”  I liked it, but I didn’t really get it.  I didn’t really get it because I thought it was somehow lazy or too cool.  Driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, I got it’s subtlety.  It’s in the shine of a hub cap, or not knowing what it around the bend.  The things that make the trip interesting are the little things you see on the drive.

As Ace would say, “Bonus Post!”  Bonus, from the Latin meaning “good.”  Mingus bonus est!  So here is the picture of Mingus Mountain that I took as I was driving through Arizona on the way to California.  Ted, whom I was going to visit, introduced me to Charles Mingus.  We saw them at the Fez in New York.  That is another story for another time.  Anyway, the album “New Tijuana Moods” reminds me of driving to San Diego with Ted.  Enough jabbering out of me.  Here’s the picture:

If you are just now tuning in, let me bring you up to date.  This occasional little series has been a lively retelling of a trip across the United States in the Year of Our Lord 1998.  (Just because slides are dead is no reason for you to not be bored to tears by my stories.)  Cast your mind back to 1998, or allow Big Willie to help:

Feeling “Jiggy”?  Good.  It was hot in 1998.  There was, in fact, a heat wave from Carolina del Norte out to El Paso.  Fo realz, yo.  Here, haters, read the riveting page NOAA report on the subject.  Or not.  Anyway, after a couple of days at a cooler altitude, I was not optimistic about staying fresh and clean in Southern California.

Red Geraniums

I should not have worried, because every day looks like this in Orange County.  Yes, there are no clouds in the sky.  Yes, it is about 73 degrees.  Yes, all one wants to do is go outside and sit around.  What else would you do?  That’s what makes Californians lazy.  They might tell you it’s called “being laid back” as if they have achieved something.  That’s not true.  Really what has happened is that the weather has been so good for so long that they never want to do anything.  Except maybe walk across this viaduct which connected my boy Ted’s house to the beaches across the ravine.

The small, crappy beach

Like this one.  Now, were this beach and the Pacific Ocean beyond it within walking distance of my house, I would never go to work again.  Nor would I complain.  At least not for the first week.  The second week, I might join everyone else in bitching about the steps or the size or whatever.  It would give me something to do.  By week three, I’d be walking to the other beach.

The other beach

And that’s what I’m talking about.  Where do you go from there?  Right. Nowhere.  Why bother.  Herein lies the problem.  You can do nothing in Orange County, especially if you inherit a little bit of money.  You could cruise down to the beach, go for a little swim, wiggle your toes into the sand, have a coffee and a smoke, and head on home.  You could do that everyday and not get tired of it.  Except we do get tired of it.  There is a place in us that gets tired of not being tired.  We want to do go work.  California just sucks that right out of a person.  I had to leave while I still could.