California: The Final Frontier (pt 1 of 2)

* I need to predicate this post with the following:

I am writing this while on the red-eye flight from San Francisco back to D.C. I need to note the miraculous nature of this flight as there is no one in the middle seat next to me. The guy in 25F and I did a little fist bump when they closed the doors.

There is a man about four rows up from me watching some show on an iPad. He has been watching continuously since he sat down, including during takeoff when even a life-saving pacemaker is pretty much supposed to be off. The flight attendant asked him to turn it off, but no, he had to keep it on.

I say this because he has it perched atop the seat in front of him. Now, I know you sort of have to hold it up, but I am 99% confident there is a better place to put it then holding it up with both hands on the seat in front of you. Which means only one of two things:

1.      He wants everyone sitting behind him to share in the wondrous glory that is the lurid and graphic sex scene. This is definitely a show that doesn’t air before 10pm. PS: The person sitting directly behind him is a maybe-14-year-old girl. She is wearing a Catholic school uniform. I kid you not.

2.      He wants  everyone to gasp that he, Mr. Phenomenal Airline Traveler, actually owns and is successfully using the Overly Large iTouch.

Am I bitter? Only a little bit. I am just a little taken aback at the abject rudeness of completely ignoring a perfectly nice and polite attendant who asks you to turn off your seven hundred dollar ipod.  

Also, group poll: jorts. Good or bad airplane wear? I vote bad. But that’s what 25C is wearing.

-----Anyway…-----

Conor and I spent the night at Cal Jensen’s house, after a remarkable afternoon at Thacher Boarding School, which I covered briefly in the previous post. The nearby town, Ojai, is remarkable for the following reason: everything is named “Ojai” and then the chief product. As in,

·        Ojai Pizza

·        Ojai Burrito

·        Ojai Coffee

·        Ojai Grocery

·        Ojai Sensual Massage

Okay, I made the last one up. But it’s kind of eerie to see the rest in real life.

So we spent a quick night at the Jensen’s, woke up the next morning and were out the door by about 9:30. Commence nine-hour drive to San Francisco. The drive can actually take as little as 6.5 hours, but we wanted to take Route 1 up the coast because it’s prettier. And after all, we’d just driven for nine days. What’s a couple extra hours?

You know all those car commercials where the car is streaking along a curvy, perfectly paved road along the ocean at sunset? That’s Route 1. No, seriously, that’s Route 1. They film all these things on that road. I got to drive, which was AWESOME! I only thought we were headed for certain, painful, cliff-related death four times.

It’s one of those curvy, fun roads to drive on, plus the view was amazing. We stopped relatively early on (maybe an hour into the trip) at a vista point to see elephant seals. They are truly hilarious creatures, because when they are sunning themselves on the beach they look dead. No movement, no breathing, just abject lack of vital signs. It’s really funny to watch, although it’s arguably funnier to watch them try and hump their way up and down the beach.

A couple of funny things happened along the way. First, we tried to stop for lunch at a delightful café right on the water on Route 1 called Lucia’s. And it really was delightful-looking. I sat down at a waterfront table (red flag #1) while Conor went to the bathroom. As I waited for a menu, I realized everyone around me was either old (red flag #2) or very well-dressed (red flag #3). The menu came. The following items were listed:

·        Caesar Salad…….. 16

·        Soup du Jour…….. 12

·        Flatiron Steak.….. 36

·        Bird Feed……………17

Again, last one made up, but you get the point. You’re reading about two kids who camped and couchsurfed across the country to avoid paying for motels. This was way, way out of our price range. So when the server asked me if I wanted a drink, I replied, “I think I’ll wait for my friend to come back before we order.”

Conor comes back and I whispered, “I think we’ll have to find a different place.” Conor opened the menu and literally staggered backward.

We left.

Now starving, we kept driving until we saw another sign for a café. It ended up being a café on the top of an art gallery, conveniently located three hours from civilization on a road with no electricity. Good solid business model. Conor and I paid seven bucks apiece for a cold, prepackaged roast beef sandwich and got out of there.  

Five hours later, we were… still on the road. But almost there, to Conor’s house in San Francisco. We finally arrived around 6:30, unpacked the car (grosssss) and thus concluded our road trip. As before, Mr. and Mrs. Farese were incredibly hospitable to me and went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. I am deeply indebted to them.

I have uploaded most of the pictures to Picasa; you can find them from the link earlier in the blog.

Well, this concludes the story. Conor and I have journeyed close to three thousand miles over nine days, camped four nights, gassed up the car about twelve times in as many states, ran into people from all walks of life, and generally fulfilled the one Myers-Briggs personality characteristic we share – Judging.

I’ve had a truly amazing time on this road trip avoiding the real world. We saw some pretty amazing things – from extraordinary numbers of girls wearing Bumpits to extraordinarily straight roads in Kansas to extraordinary scenery in Zion.

Part II of this post will be separate, since it’ll be more reflective. Half of y’all probably don’t want to bother reading it, so if that’s the case I’ll put a little sap disclaimer on it so you can skip to this one.

So long, farewell, aufweidersen goodbye… Goodbye!

PS: Pictures can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/nafriedm