Goin' through Winnemucca, bud. Through, through, through. Goin' to California. Open. Up. Your. Gol-den Gate... the way Tom Waits sings it in his Kerouac song. But that's tomorrow morning. Even Winnemucca is the middle of the night.
The sun's going down over Great Salt Lake and I'm about to undertake the single most glorious epic haul of my road trip career. Across, hands down, my least favorite state.
I haven't been everywhere, man, but I've driven over massive amounts of those United States of theirs. Half of them, so far, and for all but Hawaii I've driven myself there. Myself and whoever I was lucky enough to have along. In a few cases I've just bombed through a corner of a chunk but the ones I love I've criss-crossed and crosshatched and just generally buzzed all over.
California, I've pretty much cut to ribbons.
Texas, less conclusive strings of silk. Texas, home of the most courteous drivers on the planet. Like I'd know. Way more courteous than Canadians, though, and I've heard that's saying something.
Washington, of course. Six ways to Tuesday. Not sure what that means but it sounds right.
Montana may be the second ugliest and the second most beautiful state in that whole story they've got going on down there. From what I've seen. Which is half of 'em.
Fucking Idaho. Like a little concentrated best of home. My B.C. interior.
Oregon. Off I-5 and down the wretched Rogue River hell road to the ocean. And the dunes. A cool beach of a Sahara right on the Pacific.
Utah. Where you learn that those childhood Wile E. Coyote cartoons weren't inventing any landscapes after all. Down the Virgin River to sleaze pit Vegas. Cathedrals to everything the other churches vilify or at least downplay. Legal brothels like fast food joints with menus posted on the walls outside. No joke. Hit the low note.
But, yep, it was across this very same weird, amoral project called Nevada that time stopped all night on a highway with no one on it and everyone with me asleep. And not much for towns. Or anything else.
Just a beige-grey ocean that included the sky. And a highway that rode it's gentle waves. Windows down. Desert breeze and tumbleweeds. Still warm in the dark, except that we were flyin'.
Our skin still crusted with salt from our unseemly dip in Great Salt Lake. It's pretty much just not done, apparently. By normal people. Lots of them, in Salt Lake City.
"Oh, it's not good for swimming," they'll mutter, if you enquire. Add something about brine flies, maybe, if you push it with the obvious question. Why the hell not? Or just repeat that it ain't no good.
It's great for swimming, actually. Especially if you can't swim. Cause you can't sink in the damn thing. There's so much salt in there that you float like a cork even with your hands and feet stickin' up in the air.
Flyin'. Touch down in Reno for gas. Once again at a barren rest stop in the pre-dawn chill, somewhere in this endless, scrubby desert. Then it ends as the sun truly starts to rise, and we're in California.
It's a perfect blue day, and now we're climbin'. Cause there's always gonna be a mountain range if you want to make the ocean. Sierra Nevadas, then. Up and over. Past Lake Tahoe and down, way down.
The day heating up like the brakes. Now it's lakes and evergreens like home.
Only the brakes cool off as we flatten out around Sacramento. Transition to palm trees as we settle in for the last little pull.
Labor Day Traffic. It's a little more than a week till 9-11, in fact. Last sunny fun in that happier old world.
No idea that's all comin' down though. What's ahead for us is a little beach. We'll pass the Golden Gate Bridge like it's not even there and hit the ocean up towards the 101. Rinse away the Utah salt in the breathless chill of the Pacific.
Then, finally, rest on the sand after one pure haul. Soon. And it'll be welcome, cause now it's really hot. Except that we're flyin'.
Flyin' from the tepid, concentrated little Mormon ocean to the thinner, cooler solution of the fuckin' big Pacific. San Francisco. On the edge of absolutely everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment