Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Oh god. It's morning again. And I'm not on the West Coast yet.
Fuck.

Ya know, once I get to California, I'm never. Driving. Again. Except to work. And back from work. And the store. Possibly to Polgara's house. But that's it. That's totally, totally it. Except for that, I'm never driving anywhere again.

Oh, who am I kidding. And now Children, we're going to re-enter Reality......

Look...there's my car! *sigh* yay.

It's the last day. I can do this. I can do this. Go me! Today we're going to cross the rest of Utah, go through Nevada, and finally, final-freakin'-ly, get to California, at which point I get to go through traffic & stop about half an hour outside of LA. So theoretically, the pain should be done by sunset tonight.

Okay. Back into the desert. Crossing those mountains.

Can I stop now? Just.....settle here and like, become a pioneer or something? I swear, that's how the West was really won - it wasn't that everyone gave a damn about the new land inbetween the East & West Coasts - they just got tired of the bloody journey and said, "Fuck it! I'm stayin' right here!" It wasn't American industriousness, I tell ya. It was the crass consumeristic laziness that everyone always says is ruining our society. Mark my words - all those farmers in the MidWest that I've passed over the last couple of days? Yeah. They're descended from the people that got bored in the wagon & just...stopped. I have no archaeological evidence to back me up here, but just wait! The day will come....
(And since I say this as I'm leaving Utah, I'm sure there's some great joke to be made about Mormons having endurance issues with all those wives, but really? There's still another whole day of driving ahead of me, so I'm not making any effort in it beyond recognizing that there's something there If you want to send in an applicable quip, you go right ahead. Meantime, I'll just keep driving.)

For those of you actually paying attention to the "journey" part of this article - while I was bitching about wagon trains, we passed the Nevada border about ten miles back. In case y'all missed the sign, the HUGE GAUDY casino billboards have ended, and now there are just huge gaudy casinos instead. You want a riverboat casino? Psh. who needs an actual river? We've got the big white mansion & a turning wheel right here.

Now, I'd been to Vegas the previous October for Halloween. We stayed on the Strip, and honestly? I thought I'd seen Vegas ostentation at its best.
I was wrong. Outside Vegas, it's far, far worse.

Vegas itself at least has the distinction that when you walk by, & you see this stuff, you can know that it's outlandish, but it's a very expensive outlandish-ness that someone spent a lot of money on. Outside of Vegas? Yeah, not so much. I saw some scary-ass casinos. They weren't even funny in a hypothetically cynical sort of fashion, where you'd take a picture and show it around later so that you and your friends could bask in the garishness. (Not that that would have worked in my case, since, ya know, still haven't had the film developed and all) They were just...well, you kinda drove by, hoping that if you went by fast enough, there wouldn't be a need for therapy later on in life. Does that make sense?

Anyway - eventually I got to Vegas. Woo. What I saw of Vegas was the gas station by the highway, and the Carl's Jr. that I stopped at to get lunch. Not very exciting, really. Pretty much the coolest thing about that trip through Vegas was the fact that someone was opening a restaurant called Zapata, which is also the name of the new puppy that 'stina's family had just gotten. That's it.

Now I realize that at this point, I might sound as though my enthusiasm was waning. So I want to take a moment and Clarisfy something to help you understand - my enthusiasm for the drive wasn't waning.

My enthusiasm was just fucking gone.

It's the desert, people. There's nothing. Nothing. You ever want terrifying, you try driving the desert by yourself with all your worldly possessions, and watching the gas gauge slowly drop loower and _lower. The whole time, I'd been okay with not having anyone driving with me. For the time it took me to get from Vegas to LA, I sincerely regretted not having company. Because, yes, I know I said above that in the Midwest, there really isn't all that much - but there's a big difference between the nothing that is rolling farmlands, and the nothing that is the absolute, destitution nothing that is the desert. Sam said that the flatness of Iowa would freak him...well the desert kinda freaked me. We don't do deserts in New Hampshire. It's just that simple. We don't have them. I don't know if that was by choice or because when they made the state, someone just forgot to pull that part out of the assembly box, or what. But the fact that I was life-alteringly happy to be able to find a gas station and pull in to pay $1.89/gallon for gas before the recent gas hikes should tell you something about my mental state at that point, it really should.

And right around the time that I was ready to just stop by the side of the road and let the heat kill me because I didn't want to drive anymore, I saw it. There it was, in all its shining brilliance. I've never been so happy to see three words in my life, I really haven't.

*Throws hands in the air in victory!* (and then hastily returns them to the wheel to drive the car) Finally! Final-fucking-ly! I took a picture as I drove on by. I am here! I am in California. It exists. It's reachable. I am here. I am almost done. Thankyouthankyouthankyou....

Now I just have to drive across the state and get to L.A.

I'm not going to lie. This part of the drive sucked too. It really did. But there's a difference between driving through the desert and seeing casinos, & driving through the desert, & seeing the distance markers for L.A. get lower and lower. Brightens your entire mood. You'll be hyper. You'll be chipper. You will wave to desert creatures that you can't actually see, but according to every Western movie ever, are sitting by the side of the road with a camera conveniently placed over their left shoulder to get a shot of you driving by.

And then there were houses. Eventually, there were towns. Soon enough (although not nearly soon enough) there were signs that L.A. was less than 100 miles away. I began to pass towns with names like Rancho Cucamonga, and immediately made mental jokes about the fact that there were people that would actually name their town Rancho Cucamonga and not giggle at saying it. (Because, really, name like that - comedy gold, baby.) I negotitated Southern California traffic, and I survived. And eventually, I saw my exit. That's when I did the most amazing thing.

I got off the highway for the last time on my trip.

I was so tired. Tired, and grubby, and ready to just go to sleep for a week. The thought of unpacking my stuff was daunting. But you know what? I was done. No more. D.O.N.E.

As I stopped, I took a deep mental breath, & told myself, "You know what? You're okay. You're done. The adventure is over, & you survived it."

The adventure was over.

*snort* Um, yeah. Sure it was.

~ Claris' Archives claris@nodignity.com