TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

09 – Road Trip – September, 2004

The night in Astoria marked the end of the road for us. Nothing left but a couple days of driving the straight arrow of the 5 back home. On the way, we saw many things neither of us had seen before ? experienced other things we?d dreamed of experiencing and enjoyed a few old favorites at the same time.

It was a simple premise: rent a convertible and drive Highway 1 from San Francisco to Astoria. Run with the top down and play music really loud. There?s a certain bent appeal to buzzing through some dead coastal town making all the locals glance up as you whirl by in a cloud of exhaust and the thumping sounds of Negotiation Limerick by the Beastie Boys screeching out before you disappear around a 35-mph turn. We had to keep the music up to hear it over the constant noise of wind and tires. We chose to keep the top down because it was all part of the trip.

So, yes ? it was a little inconvenient. We stopped in at my grandparents before making the trip out over the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. My grandmother wanted to know why we were making the trip while granddad had some ideas for cutting time off the journey. Truth to tell, it was a little unclear to me as well. On paper, it sounded like a great idea: drive up with no reservations and no plans. We ate when we were hungry and stopped when we were tired. The part of me that thrives on planned experiences with no jokers in the deck was unnerved by the prospect. But as the time to leave approached, I had to tell the voice to be quiet and go.

Preparations for the trip included the basic clothes. Enough to handle about 90% of possible situations. As long as I?m not required to attend a black-tie dinner, a funeral or a wedding with a strictly enforced dress code, I?ll be just fine. Personal electronics including two cameras, a laptop and two phones. Music ? twenty albums and twelve burned CDs. Four cans of diet Pepsi. Camping accoutrements to allow us to survive up to 22 hours in a single spot at a time; food not included.

Discoveries were made during the drive and I was able to answer (to a limited extent) one of the big questions I had: how to people live out on the coast? The answer was as simple as something you?d read in your Living California text book on page 196: agriculture, ranching, farming and commercial fishing. Only in this case, there seems to be two distinct classes of people in terms of the economy. Those that can afford to live beyond it and therefore enjoy a benign relationship with money, work and possessions. The other class was so aware of their economic situation that you could hear the desperation in their cheery ?Hello!? as you walked into their roadside stand and read the fear in the Magic-marker signs that read ?Handcrafted gifts! Cold Drinks!? that are almost a blur at 60 miles an hour.

There were many places like that in California and Oregon. The one that sticks with me the most is a place called ?The Petrified Forest? in Oregon north of Brookings. A roadside attraction that features fiberglass dinosaur statues in the middle of the Oregon forest that you can walk among for seven dollars (4 for the kiddies). I stopped because Nicole mentioned a petrified forest on the beach in Oregon and I wanted to make sure she got to see it. As I walked up to the ticket window I took in the garishly painted Tyrannosaurus Rex standing 18 feet tall on the side of the road (Pronounced ?tye-RANN-o-sar-us? according to the sign). Clearly this place had been around long before Jurassic Park. The woman inside was friendly but apologetic: this was not the petrified forest Nicole had heard about. There was no one else in her gift shop and I couldn?t bring myself to spend seven American on a place when I found the animatronic crap at Universal Studios boring and a waste of time. Walking into the place, it smelled musty and faintly of the restrooms. A door marked Private was standing slightly ajar and I could see that it was obviously the woman?s living quarters.

I am forthrightly against making assumptions about anything but instantly I formed a picture in my mind about this person?s life. She seemed friendly but not content ? very likely this was some place she inherited or was running out of necessity. None of the furnishings looked new ? the house decorations I saw were circa 1971. I felt bad because I was forcing her to admit that she didn?t have what I wanted to see and was willing to pay to get to. It occurred to me that she probably had that conversation with many people and it bothered me that I was making her go through it again. I?m sure that I?m probably off with what I?m saying?most likely it?s wrong and woefully presumptive. Still, I couldn?t shake that feeling and looking around the gift shop, I realized that I was going to have to turn her down twice. I bought a few printed signs she was selling for a buck each; Nicole found a anklet and a bracelet she liked and I bought a fossilized shark tooth still in a piece of sandstone that I also readily purchased. We never did find the petrified forest Nicole was looking for.

Reading what I just wrote, I realized that I made that assumptive leap an awful lot?thinking that I knew anything about why anyone does what they do. It?s a human need to give meaning to your surroundings and maybe better understand your own. Either way, the conflict I felt in my contacts with people on this trip left me feeling uneasy and vaguely depressed. Stopping in a little gas station and store south of Fortuna and Crescent City ? I found two old gals behind the counter gossiping about their own lives. The store was dark and just slightly forbidding ? in a place where grocery stores contain stacked rows of canned goods ? this place had shelves where canned goods were spread apart to make the shelves seem less barren. The prices indicated why they didn?t sell often?trying to sell black olives at $2.25 a can in this out-of-the-way place means that you?re selling to a very specific person who is very unlikely to be traveling this way any time soon.

Again, I?m probably wrong and this is just an indication of how much I don?t travel. My own uneasiness made for a lot of awkwardness that I tried to counteract. Noisy and boisterous cheer tends to rattle people. But then I retreated into trying to speak softly and be less in-your-face. People couldn?t hear what I was saying. In the end, I thought less about it and became more anonymous. Then people could stand me and I could stand myself.

There are two distinct cultures out on the coast: Blue-collars and hippies. The hippies are seen in the domes of their geodesic houses, organic vegetable markets, rainbow flags and the propensity of the two states to change the names of their visitor centers to ?Interpretative Centers?. The blue collar people were quieter, road-less-traveled types. They eked out their living doing jobs that the hippies found distasteful and the conflict was evident throughout the drive. They were loggers, fishermen, CO?s (that?s ?correctional officers?, I found out) and ranchers. Kids from the cities out here still try to be urban and can do so, thanks to the local Anchor Blue and Hot Topics I found in the mall in Eureka. Being urban in a place so obviously rural takes talent.

The landmarks of the coast are not something well documented, to me ? you rarely hear about the cities of the coast and they remain something vague and unseen outside of an episode of Bay Area Backroads or an article in Sunset. With good reason, I suppose ? the coast ain?t easy to get to. There are no major airports and no major thoroughfares. A quick trip to Crescent City from Fremont would still take me a day and that?s from the guy who can drive from home to Tacoma or Tucson in 14 hours. I?ve grown up in California and this was my first time going to Fort Ross or Fort Bragg. One is a historical landmark; the other will be a historical example of how losing a military base gives cancer to the local economy. Fort Ross is highly interesting, they offer stunning views of the coast on a sunny day and still have many of the original cannon that were supplied when the site was built. Lots of Russian themes in the architecture and that?s something that jolts you when you think about the last sixty years of world politics.

Crescent City was the jewel of the trip in that it seemed to be so free of the economic desperation I witnessed everywhere else. Why? Because it housed the worst prison in the state of California: Pelican Bay. The people of Crescent City were so friendly that I was able to strike up a conversation with a stocker at Rite Aid and a friendly old fart who detailed to me the quick history of Crescent Bay (The Tsunami of ?64 and his son who worked at the prison, etc.). The tsunami was another one of those jolts that I got?the Tsunami Evacuation Route signs I saw posted in the low points of the highway were not idle jests. The wave killed several hundred people and wiped out the downtown of Crescent City. Why hadn?t I heard of this before, being such a nut for local history? It left me with a creepy feeling?like waking up to find you had a brother that everyone else in the family knew about except for you.

Other facts became evident as the journey went on. I took a Patricia Cornwall novel out of the hotel I stayed at the first night in Sebastopol. Over the course of the week, I tried to read it at our various stops along the way. After a while though, it became apparent that not only did this movie stoop below her usual standards of pulp trash her writing had become this mollycoddle of several stories told from her one-dimensional characters? point of view, also including these asides told from the characters pets. After several days and only getting to page 156, I left the book on the washbasin in the men?s restroom of a rest stop on I-5. Her writing seems to mesh well with the other writing in there. Yes, I?m talking about the graffiti. Only it runs to advertisements for anonymous sexual services rather than gang symbols. Shades of our time, no doubt. What struck me was the currentness, if there is such a word, of the adverts. Today?s date, yesterday?s date ? something filthy will be performed on you or for you if you show up. I can?t imagine who would stoop to such a level but obviously they?re local because they keep coming back. Aren?t the cops seeing this? At any rate, Cornwall?s writing and the vile Sharpie scrawls I witnessed seemed to belong together. I left the book propped up on the washstand and walked away.

At the end of the journey I experienced what John Steinbeck wrote about in Travels with Charley; that feeling of fullness that only comes when you?ve reached your saturation point for taking in new experiences. What?s left is what oozes out in the days and weeks that follow. I finish this on the last night of the journey sipping scotch and slamming out some prose while clouds gather over my head in Eugene, Oregon. The hotel features a balcony that looks over a small and languid brook ? the ducks that live in (and the fish) expect a regular tribute from their human visitors. Failing that, they startle me by skimming in for a landing just below my feet and honking loudly. Last light on the last day of the trip and already the demands are starting. The journey was weird, we just reached out and held on for the ride.