New Years 2003 and an Impromtu Cross-Country Road Trip

For Christmas in 2002 I took Audra on her first trip to Upstate New York. We landed in Buffalo and rented a car to drive to the Finger Lakes. When drove towards the Thruway from the airport the wind was fierce. The cable-hung traffic lights were swinging nearly sideways.

“That's insane,” Audra said. She looked up warily as we passed underneath the dangling lights.

We were engaged at the time and it was her first time meeting my family in addition to everything else. It was wonderful for me but rather stressful for Audra. Between that and the weather she got sick; sick enough that we had to postpone our flight back to LA to New Years Eve.

There was problems with our next flight as well. We stood facing each other in the airport with that “what the hell do we do now” look in both our eyes.

What happened next solidified our relationship in more ways than we can even guess eight years later.

“Why don't we just drive,” Audra said in frustration.

She says the expression on my face was priceless. She describes it as: “It was as if I had suggested to a little kid 'why don't we have two Christmases this year?'.”

“Are you serious?” I said enthusiastically.

I am king of the road trip, highness of the highway.

We secured a rental car for the trip. All that was available was a Chrysler Sebring... convertible.

Perfect!

As we were loading the car, Audra said, “Someone left their garbage back here. She emerged from the back seat holding wood-handled device with a red plastic blade at one end and red bristles sticking sideways out of the other.

I laughed good and hard and introduced her to her very first ice scraper/snow brush.

It was already evening when we embarked down the Thruway on another first for my wife: A trans-continental road trip. I loaded a “Shadowbox” disc into the CD player and just like that, we were road-worthy.

That disc got repeated several times during the journey and I ended up leaving it in the car. I hope the next folks enjoyed it as much as we did. I got a replacement from Jim Schreck himself later on.

Audra's favorite part about driving at night was the radio towers with their red lights glowing a message of solitude into the dark. My favorite part was watching Audra watch the radio towers.

We reached Toledo, Ohio around eleven PM and checked into a Motel6. I had always had good luck at the “6” so we didn't even shop around. Little did I know I had found the absolute worst Motel6 in the world... Until we found a new king in Arkansas this summer.

In our first room, the bathroom had been left in a disgusting state so we moved to a room that had sort-of been cleaned. We toasted the New Year most humbly in paper cups with Caffeine-Free Diet Coke (the absolute antithesis of a good tasting beverage). The clock on my mobile phone served to count-down to midnight.

The room next door was later occupied by some kids who had no intention of letting 2003 in quietly. The front desk guy came by twice but it was the third knock on the door from the police that seemed to do the trick.

The next day we ate breakfast at a busy local diner. It was so authentic it could have been in a movie. The pink clad waitress called me sweetheart... And yes, this was no -“Hey, I'm Tiffany, your server. Can I start you off with something from the bar or maybe some Insane Chili Cheese Fries™ ”- this fifty something gal was a 'waitress'.

She laughed when I ordered the eggs Benedict. “The chef hates cooking eggs Benedict, so I looove ordering 'em.”

The states ticked by slowly. One by one, Audra added places to her 'been there' list.

We made a long hard drive out of New Year's Day. We made it all the way to Lincoln Nebraska.

The next day Audra saw something she had to have a picture of. We had to loop back several miles to get back to what she had seen. All she had with her was a simple disposable Kodak camera she gotten in her stocking from my par... er, Santa. It had one picture left on the roll.

It was the only picture from this trip. Sadly or not, neither of us has taken a film picture since.

An abandoned church in Milford, Nebraska. 

Audra took the print from the disposable camera,

enlarged it on a copier and gave a couple more 

generations through the copier before 

scanning the final copy as you see it here.

The stretch through Nebraska and Eastern Colorado is so flat, featureless and open it can freak you out a little if you're used to hills or mountains. In Eastern Colorado I once saw a mailbox next to a driveway that lead off into the horizon. There was no structure in sight. 

Having grown up where there was always a mountain range to look at, Audra found the Midwest and the plains overwhelming. She felt uneasy with all that space around her. Driving towards Denver and watching the Rockies emerge on the horizon was an especially wonderful sight for her. It's something every American should do: cross the plains then see the Rockies appear before you.

We spent our next night in Denver. No more Motel6!

The climb through the Rockies is another incredible experience. Jaw dropping postcard scenery is all around you for one-hundred and fifty miles. At one point the two lanes of I-70, the Colorado River and two sets of train tracks are crammed into such a small canyon the I-70 lanes are stacked one above the other!

We were lucky that the weather was mild; it's not the best place in the world to get caught in a snow storm. That was the only time I've attempted that route during the winter months.

One thing during the journey that became obvious to us was that Audra and I, relatively new in our relationship and stuck in a small space together for several days, had not had any fights. 

Okay, okay... I was just reminded (My friend Ned Lucas once wrote a song titled: Men Can't Remember What Women Can't Forget") there was one fight we had about hardworking Eastern folks being superior to lazy Californians. It's a subject that still comes up once in a while and I'll bet will again after I post this.

If you are unsure about a relationship I totally recommend a long road trip. If that person is not completely right for you, you will know all about it in short order.

Even our bliss started to break down a little around Las Vegas. I have never been a huge fan of Las Vegas. I had always seen it as the place where people who smoke and cuss went on vacation. Most notably my farmer neighbor Stu Middlebrook. Now, I am a tight wad who has never enjoyed gambling or even playing cards for that matter. In addition, my association with Las Vegas is complicated by the fact that though I have been there about ten times, I have never vacationed or even been there for convention; only work: A low Budget Feature, A Taiwanese 'American style' coffee commercial, several trips for various poker shows, a demo for a possible gambling show that never got off the ground and most recently a Jeopardy remote.

Audra, by contrast, had grown up in Southern California and has been on several nice actual vacations to Las Vegas. I, being a superior Easterner (what Audra calls simply- “snotty”) made no bones about my feelings for sin city.

I know, I know, I'm an idiot.

We started talking again somewhere in the Mohave Desert in California.

Traveling across the country is all about incremental changes in weather, climate and culture, but there are a few, like going from the plains to the Rockies, where the change is more abrupt and obvious.

One of those places is the Cajon Pass (say ka-Hone -yes, yes, similar to the Spanish for testicle, can we grow up now, no, okay me either).

When driving on I-15 South from Las Vegas to LA most of the trip is in the Mojave desert. It is a spectacular of mountains and particularly bleak and desolate desert. In the daytime it can be incredibly hot and at night, below freezing. If you have seen “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, “Bagdad Cafe” and ten thousand other films, you have seen this place.

Once you start down the Cajon Pass (technically the highway traverses Cajon Summit) it takes you through a transition of altitude, weather, flora, fauna, economy, pollution and population over 15 miles that days of travel cannot match.

The Pass itself is through the San Bernardino Mountains which prevent moist ocean air and weather from going any further. As any flight into LA will clearly show you, they are desert tan on one side and mountain green on the other as if someone had painted them that way with opposing airbrushes.

The Cajon Pass

 

The southbound lanes of the freeway wind and dive on a descending slalom weaving through the other ribbons of the old route 66, the Northbound lanes and three sets of very busy train tracks.

Route 66 through the pass.

It's still partly there, known these days as Cajon Boulevard

 

There are several runaway truck ramps and in 1989 a runaway train reached speeds of 110mph before derailing into a residential neighborhood at the bottom.

The pass is also known for...

 Fog & high winds (and the mayhem they cause),

 snow (and the mayhen it causes),

 and fires (and the... you know).

On a later trip, a trans-con train journey on the Southwest Chief, Audra, who was sick in bed in our train berth at the time, wrote a wonderful poem about descending through this pass on our way home and it's healing effects.

With her kind permission here it is.

                   Southwest Chief

                   by Audra Glandon

                   I was a bag of spastic muscles
                    lithely divided by small alleyways
                    of bloodless veins. 
                   heaving gently over swollen sacks of air.

                               I am released from the rugged birth canal
                                of the dessert. 
                               Joined at the heart 
                                              of a watery
                                                          slip’n’slide

                                               highway ride.

                   Sinking deep 

                                         into the

                                                                 basin

                                             of golden city lights. 

                   I am home. 

We had crossed the greater part of the nation in a convertible in the dead of winter, but we were determined to use our convertible to convert at least once. In our plunge through the Cajon Pass we proudly put our top down. It was freezing but we didn't care.

We had just conquered a nation!

We have had several road journeys since, and I had had several before that one, but nothing will ever quite match the magic of embarking together on that impromptu adventure, looking in childlike wonder at all the radio towers along the way.

Kinda like life.