(no subject)
Today's drive (which totals approximately 556 miles twixt home in California and Bro's home in AZ) took almost exactly nine hours, not subtracting the 20 minutes or so that I spent putting gas in the car thrice (the last time to return Súl's car as fully gassed as she gave it to me) and hitting the girl's room once (in Calimesa, approximately at the half-way mark.) I left at about 8:15AM Pacific time and pulled into my own driveway at 5:15. For the most part, with the exception of the slow-downs, I averaged probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 70mph.
The "Armpit of Creation" had been recently bathed and annointed with deodorant today, for instead of taking nearly 20 minutes to go ten miles at between "Park" and "I Can Walk Faster Than This" I was able to be-bop through there in about five minutes at between 20mph and 50. Mind you, I peeked over at the South-bound lane during one slow point and noted how clogged it was; and it made me think that maybe traffic just tends to be worse going south rather than north. I still hate LA - traffic may have been flowing relatively smoothly at between 65 and 75, but it was bumper to bumper and required complete concentration to avoid the idiots who got their drivers' licenses out of a box of Cracker Jacks.
My iTouch - another Súl hand-me-down - ran out of battery power at Blythe, the state line between CA and AZ; and so I drove the rest of the seven or so hours with no music whatsoever. Now, normally, I would grouse because I dearly love going across the desert and seeing what kind of music my player sees fit to bestow on me. This time, however, I re-discovered just what kind of good company my own thoughts can be when not distracted by following a melody line. (And no, I do NOT listen to vocal music while traveling - instrumental music only, thank you!)
One thing that occurred to me was that this was a day when I was "between". I wasn't in CA, I wasn't in AZ, I was somewhere... else. Where I was changed by the moment, as did the scenery around me and the other bits of humanity careening down the highway in their metal containers at breakneck speed like me. I started out in a BIG city - the metro Phoenix/Scottsdale/Mesa/Tempe/Glendale area hosts some three million people, especially when it's cold up north and the "Snow Birds" are in residence.
The city finally petered out, leaving me racing past a vast, empty Arizona desert. For as far as the eye could see, all was either saguaro, cholla or ocatillo cacti (only the cholla in bloom;) sage brush, some barely green in the middle; palo verde trees; and rocks that had been scorched black from the merciless sun littering washes, plains and mountainsides alike.
Then, I was greeted with an unusual sight: as I rattled down the final 20 miles or so of Chiraco Summit (pronounced "Shee-ROCK-oh", btw - and means "desert wind") just southeast of Indio, I was treated to looking across the end of the California desert and over the valley to the snow-dusted San Jacinto Mountains. What was neat was that the clouds from the other side of the mountain range were peeking over the tops of the lower ridges in a manner that reminded me nothing more than of the old "Luke the Spook" cartoons - where the headtop & fingertops are above the line, and the nose protrudes below the line (dunno if I'm explaining it well - hope so.)
Less than ten minutes later, I was in the valley with the San Jacintos on the left of me, and the San Bernardino Mountains straight ahead of me - equally snow-dusted. From then on - from roughly Cabazon all the way into Los Angeles and then north on the 101 to just north of Ventura - it's all more Big City™. I figured it out; fully one quarter of my 556mi trek takes place on freeways of six or more lanes going through the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area.
Have I mentioned lately how much I hate Los Angeles and the LA freeway system? Didn't think so...
Finally, however, I was surrounded by hills that are emerald green from all the rain, with live oak and manzanita and mesquite bushes as well as sage. And the ocean was there, waiting for me just outside Ventura, sitting at my left window all the way past Santa Barbara to where the road curves inland at Gaviota Pass, which is where US 101 goes through one of the only mountain chains in the country that runs east to west. Pretty scenery - if anyone is old enough to remember "The Graduate" with Dustin Hoffman, when he drives through that tunnel supposedly on the way to Los Angeles, he's really heading NORTH. :-D
So I spent nine hours being "between" - belonging neither to the world that exists for me here at home nor to the world my brother lives in. It was an interesting period of transition, where I could shed the persona and attitudes I needed to adopt to be of the most assistance to my brother, and become the person I generally am from day to day here in the comfort of my home turf.
During that span of time of disconnectedness, I was surrounded either by millions or by the aloneness of the desert or by the beauty of the ocean; and at all times, I had become but one of millions of metal-encrusted "ants" on the cement trails that lead from one point to another - from the food over there to the anthill over here. And trust me, when one is on a bumper to bumper freeway, with six lanes going in each direction, plumb full of cars going like bats out of Hell in both directions, one gets an idea of one's own utter insignificance in the Grand Scheme Of Things.
It was an interesting experience.
Not necessarily one I want to repeat in the near future, but worthwhile all the same.
PS: I'd have shared pictures, but LJ was being finicky. Maybe next time.