Day 1 – 06/02/2008

WOW! I am so excited to be out here on the road again.

I got a deliberately late start this morning. I had originally planned to leave yesterday afternoon, but there were so many extra things to take care of and people to spend time with. And I realized that this is my vacation, to be accomplished on my timetable (with respect to my hosts’ timetables, of course).

But this morning I waited to let rush hour traffic stand still while I had breakfast with my sister Rachel, which gave us a chance to catch up. I like how my relationship with each of my sisters is changing as we all mature.

I had hope to leave by 9:30, but didn’t get on the road until 10:10. My friend JoAnne had been near salivating over my trip and wanted to come along with me when I told her at church about my trip. I knew she’d be a hoot to have along, so I made a sincere offer, which her daughters declined for her, reminding us both that “it’s only nine weeks until [Amanda’s, the younger daughter] wedding.” I still fail to see why JoAnne couldn’t play hooky for at least a week on this thing. So I called her to see if she wanted to come along, but she had surrendered to reason. And she’s an accountant, too, so there’s no chance spontaneity is going to trump reason.

I then called my pseudo-grandmother Marge to ask if I could stop in for a quick visit since I hadn’t seen her since Christmas. She said she was heading out the door to line dance class, so I told her I’d just meet her there. Since I had been planning to leave yesterday, the possibility of going to a line dance class hadn’t entered my mind. I was especially excited about going because our instructor Carri is moving Albuquerque later this month and handing over her classes to other instructors. I wasn’t going to get to see her to say good-bye otherwise. We had a very nice class, and I got to see a few familiar faces.

So then I got back on the road at 11:30. I’m reminding myself that this trip is on my timetable.
I don’t really know where I was going. I had worked for almost half an hour on GoogleMaps last night outlining my route. I plugged in all my scheduled stops, and then had to manually drag the route to get the paths I wanted. The website was defaulting to the 5, and I wanted to drive up the coast to get something a little more scenic. I took a lot of zooming in & out and dragging & dropping, but I felt pretty good about what I had when I finished. It is seven pages long.

One thing I didn’t do is read it. And so I started following it, realizing that I had no specific idea of where it was taking Serena (my car, a 1994 Honda Civic) and me. I was just following the rights and lefts, with no concept of which direction I was facing or which city I was in at any given time. I realize now that I should have bought a compass. A GPS would take all the fun out of this, but a compass would be wise. Just to know that I’m still heading north or west would be a comfort.

But with a little faith in God and Google (forgive the sacrilege), I soon arrived at the physical coast. A bunch of signs told me that I was in Marina del Rey, at some wetlands harbor or something. I put a quarter in the meter and walked around for a little bit. I saw a man feeding pigeons, and he had dozens flocking around him. Just inland, across the street from the pier line, was the Ballona Lagoon, a beautiful area surrounded by bridges for some excellent picture opportunities.

A little more driving got me to an actual beach, which one I am not sure. For those of you who may not know, I am not a beach person. I am my mother’s son, long ingrained with a disdain for the sand that somehow tracks into shoes, then clothes, then car, then home, never leaving, always digging into everything (particularly my nerves). But as I age, I find that I do occasionally enjoy the beach in small doses. One of the many good ways I am becoming more and more like my dad. I had decided to do a coastal trip, so I dutifully got out, and took some pictures. I even walked out on the sand, and got some pictures of the waves. I didn’t actually go into the water, though. I wasn’t ready to stretch myself that much. There weren’t very many people there, and it made me very glad that I had waited to leave until today, when most were back in school or at work.

I am alternating between trying to find a good music radio station and listening to the Bible on CD, which I borrowed from my friend Kaye. I’m listening to the New Testament starting in Galatians. It’s very encouraging to have Scripture read aloud. And the reader is very engaging.

Around midday, I started getting drowsy, so I pulled off to the shoulder of the highway to rest. I got a light powernap in, and kept going.

So I got back in my car and continued driving. Somewhere along the way, I actually found my way onto PCH. The scenery was beautiful, and I snapped several pictures from the confines of my car along the highway. I pulled off the road again at another “beach access” sign. The road led me onto a residential street, with a couple beach access gates. Interestingly, the gates had big & obvious “No Dogs on the Beach” signs, but then the sand was littered with dogs (mostly unleashed) and their owners. I ignored them and took a few quick shots of the scenery. Thankfully I was so engrossed in my photography efforts, because happened to look down after a shot and see a huge dog dart past me. It had probably gone right up to me, and I never heard its owners call it back. If I had seen the dog come toward me, I probably wouldn’t have held it together too well.

I returned to the car and got back on the highway. I drove for awhile longer, and then pulled over at the Santa Monica Mtns Nat’l Recreation Area (I snapped a photo of the sign so I’d remember the name). It didn’t overlook a beach, but an estuary, according to the sign. I don’t know what an estuary is, but there were birds on the informational signs, too, so I assume it’s somehow similar to an aviary. I’ll look it up later.

I pulled off the 101 again when I saw the sign for Summerland. Not sure why, but I drove through that town for a little while. It was just after 5, so all the antique stores and anything for a tourist to visit were closed.

I was wondering how far I’d really get today. I had told Leroy and Karen I’d be arriving the 5th or 6th, so I have time to take it slow, but I hadn’t even gone 200 miles today. My goal was to get far enough out to make it ridiculous to consider turning around and going back to my parents’ house. Not that I would go back, but I wanted to get far enough out to feel like I’ve really started my trip. If only I could have known what would happen next that would really get my trip started.

I pulled off at the Gaviota rest stop, had a few spoonfuls of peanut butter as a snack, and took a few pictures of the tourist information stuff. But as I was getting out of my car, a girl got out of the passenger seat from the car next to mine and began approaching me. She was young, probably late teens or early twenties. She had light brown hair, and a feather and what looked like a wine cork capturing a single dreadlock in the middle of her mid-arm-length hair. She asked me if I was headed to San Francisco, and I replied that I would be passing through it. She then asked if I might like a passenger. I said I wasn’t sure, and she asked if she could have a few minutes to tell me “what she was all about.” I introduced myself, and she said her name was Carliegh, and the consonance in our names was fate according to her. Her friend had brought her this far in hopes of her finding a ride. She lives in some sort of community that is all about the protection, preservation, and enhancement of women. She was going to visit her best friend in SF so that they could “dream together” and make plans about starting another similar place in Mendocino. I am not making any of this up. I figured she was harmless enough physically, but mentally and spiritually was a little off her rocker. This all sounded like a commune or Wiccan community to me, and I really didn’t want to support that, but the drive could be a witnessing opportunity. But what really made me say no is that I didn’t want to push to get to SF tonight, and me sleeping in my car obviously was going to make this an infeasible situation. She understood, and left me with “May the peace of the goddess be with you.”

I called my friend Dean from the rest stop, just in case he might be in Monterey that I could see him and his wife Kathy on my way up, but they wouldn’t be out there until this weekend. He did give me the suggestion of going to visit Solvang, and the possibility of visiting his daughter and son-in-law Beth & Jared up in Seaside.

So I drove the few miles up to Solvang, but because it was so late, all the stores and tourist info booths were closed up. I took some pictures of the town, and then noticed a man coming toward me to ask for my help. I would later learn that his name is Josko (pron. yos-koe), and that he was here from Croatia on a job interview. He needed help translating the bus schedule to get back to Santa Barbara, because his English was somewhat broken. I helped him figure out when the next bus was due. There was only one more coming that night, and it was an hour away. He asked if I wanted to go to Subway to talk for awhile. I accepted. Josko thought this was a sit-down restaurant, and kept trying to get the attention of one of the workers to come over to our table like a waiter. Neither of us were hungry, and so I just got up to get some cups for us to have some water.

We talked for awhile about where we were each from, our families, and our jobs. Croatia is a very interesting place that I really want to visit someday. I had a few friends at FPU from there, and since learning about it back then, I have wanted to include it in my future European travels.

We went back outside to wait for the bus, and it was pretty cold outside, mainly due to the high-speed winds. I didn’t want to leave him alone, though, until he got on the bus, since his English was stilted, and he really had trouble when encountering people working in the US who weren’t fluent in English. While we waited, we took a few pictures of each other with the other’s camera. And he gave me a speedy slideshow of his from leaving Croatia to arriving in LAX, to traveling to Santa Barbara and then here.

But the bus never came. Looking at the schedule, the next bus would come at 5:15 a.m. He realized he needed to get a hotel, and so I took him over to the Best Western, which I guessed would be the cheapest option. He asked if I wanted to split the room, but I wanted to sleep in my car and save the money. But I was able to use my AAA membership to get him a discount on the room. After getting him set up with a wake-up call, and setting his alarm clock (knowing from experience how reliable those wake-up calls can be), I wished him well and got back on the road.

I thought about where to spend the night, and decided to go back to the Gaviota rest stop. I didn’t think I’d find a Walmart too easily, and there wasn’t a sign at the rest stop saying people couldn’t sleep there. I got to the southbound-side rest stop this time (having been on the northbound-side earlier), and there was a sign saying there was an eight-hour parking limit. I put up my curtains, reclined my seat, and typed out today’s journal. For dinner, I pulled out some trail mix and beef jerky that I had brought with me from my apartment. The jerky was advertised as being softer/more chewy or something to that effect, but it seemed extremely tough. That’s when I noticed the best if used by 12/19/2006 date. Oh well, I guess a year and a half will diminish freshness. I then accidentally bumped it trying to get situated with my laptop, and it fell on my floor. If Jiffy Lube hadn’t recently vacuumed my carpets when I had my oil changed last week, I might have thrown it away. Yes, I still ate it. Then I pulled out my pillows, put on my eye-goggle sleep mask, and tried to get to sleep.