26
May
1994 Cross Country Drive
Topic: Family and Friends
I’m hard at work on Part II of my “Anachronistic & Impulsive” post (I saved a draft this time, so it won’t get lost again). In the meantime, here’s a message that I wrote in 1994. I came across it while doing the archiving work I described in an earlier post. It’s a description of a cross-country drive I did with my friend Jay. I’m just now realizing that the 10th anniversary of that drive is just a few weeks away…yikes! Anyway, when I went to college, I drove my 1968 Lincoln Continental from RI to CA, and Jay inherited it after I left CA for grad school in DC. But I missed my hot-rod Lincoln (I had put a hood scoop and racing stripes on it), and he was kind enough to give it back, so we drove it from CA to DC.
I flew to San Francisco on the 17th of June. The next day (a
Saturday) I spent working on my car, because, well, it wouldn’t start.
To make a long and convoluted story short, I got it started and running
fairly happily. Sunday was Claire’s graduation. It was really eerie
being on the other side of things (i.e. being an audience member). It was
also sad - except for a few people, basically everyone I know is now
gone from UCSC. An era has ended (boy I’m egotistical! using my own
personal frame of reference to define “eras”). Anyway, it was a pretty
standard ceremony, although the student speeches were better than the ones
at my graduation.
On Monday I helped Claire pack up her stuff, and off we went (along
with Jay) to her parents’ place in Oakland. I got to spend some time in
Berkeley and otherwise relax, which was very nice. On Tuesday (my birthday!)
Jay and I began our great journey across the bowels of the US. In brief:
Sacramento, as expected, sucked.
Nevada was OK, but we were low on gas one night in this small town,
everything was closed, and it was 100+ miles to the next town, so we had
to spend the night there. But oh no! The car wouldn’t start again in the
morning! I ended up getting a new battery (I had already replaced most of
the ignition system before we left). That seemed to do it, for a while….
Utah was cool. Very desolate and imposing; not to mention lots of neat
rocks. Colorado was very pretty. Somewhere before Denver we passed 11,000
feet. The car was choking on gas a bit, as the air was thin, but it managed.
Kansas: big, flat, green, hot, boring as hell. But when we entered we got to
go past the giant “Welcome to Bob Dole country” sign. Not to mention the
“come see the 5 legged bull & 3 legged chicken!” signs that occasionally
dotted the roadway. The only excitement was the car: every time we turned it
off, we couldn’t start it again without a jump start. Each time it got
harder. When it got to the point where this giant RV was barely able to get
my car jump started, we simply decided to not turn it off again. A
complicating factor was that the engine would come close to overheating if we
let the car idle too long. Whenever we found a gas station attendant kind
enough to let us use their water hose, we’d hose down the radiator, so as to
keep the engine cool. Because of these two problems, we could only stop for
very short breaks, so the trip got a little uglier.
Most fittingly, so did the scenery. Missouri - Illinois - Indiana. AKA the
rust belt. Fields interspersed with decaying cities. I got to see the arches
in St. Louis though - we came through right after a rain storm and had to
take a lot of detours because many of the roads were flooded. Jay and I
passed the time telling each other life stories, as well as a tremendous
amount of nonsense (you can decide if there’s a difference between the two).
So, we got to Ohio on Thursday night; scruffier, stinkier, and more tired
than when we began our journey. But we felt like we had almost made it. But
no! We got trapped in the biggest lightening storm I’ve ever seen.
We kept travelling, but only slowly. We went to get gas and, before we
got there, the car stalled while Jay was driving. It’s the only time I’ve
heard him scream in fear: trapped on a lonely Ohio road in the middle of
the night in a massive downpour. But my ever-reliable car started right
back up. Over the years it has demonstrated a consist pattern of behavior:
it will annoy me and frustrate me, but it will never totally screw me over.
Anyway, I drove the rest of the night and into the morning. Poof! Flat tire.
I got to do my first tire change on the side of a highway (with the car
running, of course). Jay and I did it in under ten minutes.
I thought I’d be clever and take a shortcut through West Virginia, instead
of taking the highway north into Pennsylvania. Mistake! The road looked fine
on the map, but in fact it was a winding country road through the
Appalachians for about forty miles (similar to driving in Bonny Doon, but
a bit more treacherous). It took about three hours. It was hot, and I
started feeling nauseous. Very pretty country through. We also got to
drive through a few incredibly hick, hick, hick, towns - they looked like
they hadn’t been touched in at least fifty years.
Maryland was just plain irritating. Or maybe we were just irritable. It
was very hot and extremely humid and we kept going up and down, up and
down the hills. Between the lack of proper sleep, lack of proper food and
drink, constant altitude changes, and mild sunburn, I got heatstroke. I
wouldn’t recommend it. Jay wasn’t much better off. Nonetheless, we finally
arrived at my humble home on Friday afternoon (making the trip in almost
exactly four days). 2,740 miles. I rolled over my odometer right outside of
DC. My car only has 42 miles on it now. We came in, both drank about a
gallon of water, took showers, and then slept for about 12 hours.
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