Driving Home

In my last post I told you I got to meet some cool girls in my Santa Monica hostel. 

I met two blonde English girls who were almost done with a self-planned five month world tour. They were friends when they started and they still are!  They went to Australia, Fiji, Thailand, and I can't remember where all else. They were super friendly.

There was also a girl from Indiana who had come for a personal training conference and was keeping up with college work and visiting nearby friends all at the same time! 

Then there were a couple of ladies who with whom I got to chat: one is an art-supporting astrologist and engineer and the other studies biological geography.

It felt like a big sleepover with a bunch of not-so-strangers, and I loved it.

That evening there had been lots of people on the sand by the pier, and even one boy in the ocean.  Tons of people were taking photos. There was one older man taking photos of his wife who was posing happily by the waves for him. Heather and I had come to "touch the pacific" (i.e. poke at the water while running away from it because we still had our shoes on). I didn't think I'd like being on the crowded beach like that, sharing the sunset and the water with all of these other tourists, but instead I felt happy to be exactly there because there were so many happy faces.

The next day was PCH day: the day to drive highway 1, or the pacific coast highway, the road that runs right along the edge of the cliffs facing the pacific, so we were told.

Day one we spent rolling on busy highways and through unimpressive farmland. And even so I insisted on skipping the 101 bypass just so we could say we did route 1 (sound familiar?) As I guided Heather with the help of Google, mostly successfully, through towns and on-ramps and overpasses and cloverleaves and the like. Watching our little blur dot move slowly along the lines representing route one. "Here! Here! Turn here! - Wait, the dot's not there yet, never mind."

When it was my turn we started getting into some of the greenest America I had ever seen. It was surprising to me, then, to hear later from our ranger friend that California had been in a state of drought for the past few years, because I felt we had been transported to the high rolling hills of Ireland. Mom asked if there were stone walls; alas, there were not, and neither were there sheep herders, but man.  I was a happy camper.

And at last - at LAST - we reached The Cliffs.

"Stop looking in your rearview mirror. The car behind you doesn't matter, us staying out of the ocean matters" was the gist of Heather's pep talk as the winding turns began. I took her advice to heart and enjoyed the real-life driving challenge. Not all of the world is designed to accommodate idiots.

I turned Burt on our dashboard so he could look at the scenery for me. Some people believe crystal skulls store memories that can be unlocked later under the right conditions, so maybe sometime Burt can show me some of the views I missed while focusing on the sharp PCH turns.

We spent two days on route 1. Our hotel had a fireplace which I guess made up for the outrageous rate, sort of.

When we arrived in San Francisco the people we met were trying to direct us to places to eat: "if you want to take the scenic route..."

Our joint response: "NO MORE SCENIC ROUTES!!!"

We are so done with finding our way places off the main roads. Give us the direct way, the multi-lane, the angry drivers, the trucks, the merging, please. Someone told us we might be hooked on scenic routes from now on.

I don't know about that. We'll see.

Did I tell you about returning to sea level? Nice. I stopped yawning all the time.

I accomplished three things after arriving in San Francisco:

The first day I slept all day.

Yeah, you heard that right. Heather did her ranger thing and when she got back after 5 PM she found me in bed. "You didn't get up all day?" And I slept all the next night too.

Heather and I went on a hike up some mountain or hill to get a view of the golden gate bridge and I found the conditions to be rather hellish. The only reason I finished was to make up for the day before.  I had to accomplish SOMETHING in the area, after all.

We drove a few of those those steep, steep roads. If someone happened to peer into our windows upon our ascent, they would see our horrified faces or maybe even hear our shrieks as we reachednstop signs. They would see me hugging my backpack. We marveled at the parallel parkers. 

The next day our hotel provided boysenberry syrup for our waffles. It sounded super awesome, although I have never seen a boysenberry. Have you?

California has tons of bike lanes. One of our friends shared his opinion that bikers (as in, people on bicycles) are the third most arrogant people in the world besides the French and the Texans. Most of the bicyclers I saw were quite personable, though. They even stopped at stop lights.

Returning our dodge journey at the airport was kind of a sad experience. I was kind of proud though. Among all the shiny vehicles, ours was covered in mud "battle scars." We drove that car to the max.

I swear enterprise only hires attractive men.

Just saying.

And now we're driving home from Michigan. The trip's almost over, thank God.