In Between Dreams

I see zebras and humpbacks along the coastal highway toward Big Sur. The zebras are leftovers from newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst’s zoo in the backyard of his castle in San Simeon.  The striped horses are trotting through fields of lifeless grasses dried brown under a relentless sun.  The pod of whales is splashing waves with their tailfins and shooting geysers of seawater through their blowholes.

 

California is in another drought.  This means that you have to bear the stench of a Porta Potty to relieve yourself at a museum, or otherwise hold your bladder until you can find a convenience store or a convenient set of bushes that provides ample camouflage.  Americans flocked to the Golden State because they wanted the sunshine, but now there’s too much of it.  I am only passing through, but I don’t understand why people like it here so much.  Gas is expensive.  Grocery stores charge you for plastic bags.  It’s dreadfully hot and overly crowded.  Yet there’s a specific brand of dreams solely fixed on Californian imaginings.  A California dream is a subdivision of the American Dream, but the two could be synonymous.

I never understood the allure of moving to a place you’ve never visited, but we’ve all been exposed to advertisements inviting us to California.  Hollywood is an omniscient force invading nearly every American home.  Super Bowl teams go to Disneyland after their victory.  Nobody mentions a trip to a mid-sized city in Missouri where people can earn decent incomes, drive a reasonable commute to the office, root for a baseball team with a history of consistent success, and have a big backyard.  We are engineered to think that a move to Missouri is settling, so we shoot for the stars and head to California.

The same drought that made water bills soar also made a trip to Yosemite less eventful.  There is no water left to fall in places where it is normally gushing.  A sign that indicates the position of Yosemite Falls looks like a mislabeled exhibit.  The Tuolumne Meadows are not luscious with wildflowers but mostly a barren field with few survivors.  My timing is off, so I decide to head for the eastern exit.  Darkness falls, so I car-camp at nine thousand feet in a parking lot before a campsite that is under construction.  The temperature drops into the thirties, so I bundle up beneath the covers.  In the morning, there is frost on my windshield that melts on the way to the desert.

The car plunges into a sweltering furnace where I’m surrounded by sand.  A coyote pants under the shade of a creosote bush; the animal’s tongue dangles from its mouth like a strand of over-chewed bubblegum.  I have heard about dry heat, and I’m not sweating, but I feel as though someone is forcing me to breathe through a hair dryer while someone vacuums the insides of my lungs. 

Death Valley is the hottest place on Earth, and today’s forecast calls for 113 degrees Fahrenheit.  The temperature gauge on my car surges toward the red, and I wonder if this twenty-year-old machine will break down in one of the most dangerous places to be stranded.  I have a gallon of water, two bottles of sunscreen, and a fold-up bike in the trunk in case all goes wrong.

A sign warns me to turn off my air conditioner to avoid overheating, but my air conditioner doesn’t work.  I have the windows down, and the heat is on full blast and directed toward my shins.  I read in the Chevy manual that you can pull heat from the engine this way.  My shins are burning as the car chugs its way up the slope.  Any minute the engine could die, so I ease forward gently until I can pull over to the side of the road on flat ground.

 

I lift the hood to let the engine breathe the scant desert breezes, and I recline the driver’s seat and try to read a book that fails to engross me.  Every minute or so I check the temperature gauge to see if it is falling.  I know I will have to descend even further below sea level.  Today will be a true test to see if the car can survive a coast-to-coast journey from California to Florida.  Anything beyond Texas will surpass my expectations.

I wait a half an hour before revving the engine again.  The gauge is on the halfway point, so I press onward.  After stopping and resting another three times, I finally reach Stovepipe Wells where I eat a pint of ice cream in the shade and race the declining sun before my dessert melts.  Even in the shade, I feel desiccated from inside-out. Instead of removing layers, I don a thin hoody that covers my arms and neck.  The Bedouins know how to survive these climes, so I emulate their strategy. 

The crusty salt flats at Badwater Basin, the lowest land elevation on Earth, indicate a lake that dried up.  Somehow, in all of California, there is a puddle of water here.  I wonder what the night sky would look like from Death Valley, but I can’t stick around to find out.  Behind me to the west lay the Alabama Hills, a popular backdrop for Hollywood cowboys to ride off into the sunset.  As I cross the Nevada border with the sun at my back I can see the light pollution from Vegas.  In between dreams lay a harsh, but beautiful desert and an overheated car that thought it could but barely did.

The Memory of a Bridge

The rolling hills of San Francisco make driving a nuisance, or a thrill if the ubiquitous threat of a fender-bender is your idea of fun.  With my trunk pointed downhill at a red light, I keep my left foot on the brake and accelerate simultaneously so my bulky car won’t smash the one behind me.  I am heading toward a picturesque angle of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Once I saw the red, symmetrical architecture from Fort Baker I realized the view on the opposite side of the bay wouldn’t change much, but I went to Presidio anyways. 

I get out of the car with Erin, and we stare at the bridge.  She takes photos on her camera while I do my best with my iPhone.  I don’t even know why the Golden Gate Bridge is famous, and I’m not even that fascinated by impressive feats of modern civil engineering.  But here I am. 

This is another one of those checked-off items I can use to compare my wanderings to other travelers.  Traveling to iconic destinations has more to do than bragging rights alone.  There may be an innate desire for each individual to build his own empire:  to roam from his doorstep and stake claim to a faraway land, however minuscule that claim may be.  We’ve come from chimpanzees who drive away neighboring communities for control of resources like nuts or fruit-bearing trees.  Dictators and imperialists have invaded other countries to expand the nation’s boundaries, and now the average person explores the previously-explored not for resources or political prestige but for knowledge, self-worth, and memory.

             

Objectively, the bridge is worth little more to me than a pretty picture.  Seeing the bridge is symbolic, instead, because of I can measure the passage of time from a memory that stands out.  The end of a country and the beginning of the Pacific Ocean is a way to mark progress for someone who was born in the east. I can begin sentences with:  “Ever since I returned from the West…”  And this could prove useful.  At the same time, however, merely laying eyes on this structure doesn’t qualify me for anything.  For some, the bridge represents a commute for which a driver has to pay a toll.  I never got a bill.

After we have taken all the pictures we deem necessary, Erin and I retreat from the windy outcroppings and meet up with a family friend who happens to be an interior decorator, the perfect tour guide for one of the most expensive cities in America.  During a tour of the city, he tells us that if you think driving up these hills is a difficult task, then we should try pushing a refrigerator on a dolly up these steep slopes.  I decide that it’s not only the outrageous rent that is preventing me from moving here. 

The decorator is staying at a client’s apartment for the time being, and he make our way there.  We turn past one of those gas stations you can tell by looking at that they don’t have a bathroom, or if they do you have to ask for a key and walk behind the store to find it.  Construction rages in a narrow alleyway littered with questionable looking apartments with dumpy facades.  The occasional porch light next to a grand door suggests what lies behind is a different world from the empty garbage cans and stray cats that live in the street. We pull into a garage that is large enough to fit two Range Rovers with two inches of space remaining.

The apartment is immaculate and excessive.  There are fuzzy sofas and statement pieces that serve no purpose other than warranting questions such as:  “What’s this thing for?” and nothing more.  The stairs look as though they are floating.  The walls in the bedrooms are full of pictures that belong in medium-sized city art museums.

  

Altogether, the space is roughly the same size as the two-and-a-half bedroom house I rented in Pittsburgh.  The Pittsburgh house cost $1,200 per month for three people, one of whom volunteered to live in a space more suitable to be a closet.  That was the nicest house on the block in a sketchy neighborhood where occasional gunshots weren't strangers.  

The San Francisco apartment in which I currently stand has those same qualifications but is worth over a million dollars.  If I had a million dollars, I don’t know how I would spend it exactly, but I wouldn’t live near one of those gas stations that people only stop at reluctantly because they’ve run out of gas.

Music from a decade in which I wasn’t yet alive is playing from speakers that I cannot locate.  They are probably built into the walls, and I don’t have the WiFi password to shut off the music.  I manage to find a volume knob and mute the incessant thumping.  I pour a glass of faucet water and sit on the bar stool and consider limitations I would impose when buying furniture.  The dining room table looks more artistic than functional.  I would hesitate to eat my cereal there in the morning in case I spilled any milk.  I feel uncomfortable surrounded by such unnecessary wealth and yearn for the warmth of my wood-burning stove inside the cabin in Wyoming.

Finally, we leave and head toward AT&T Park.  I am taking Erin to her first baseball game:  the San Francisco Giants against the Cincinnati Reds.  The match-up has extra sentimental value because the Reds and Erin are from the same city.  I could not have planned for a better coincidence.  The night before I bought six dollar tickets on StubHub, but the next day we negate that frugality with a ten dollar cup of foamy beer and a seven dollar soft pretzel.  We climb endless stairs to the nosebleeds where we have a view of the bay blackened by night and a roof to keep us out of the cold summer rain.  The game below is background noise.  I don’t remember who won the game, but I remember the company.

Driving the Getaway Car

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing on my iPod when we cross the California border into the darkened redwood forest.  This is no accident.  I like my arrivals to have kitschy musical accompaniments.  Erin is maneuvering the top-heavy car down extremely winding roads with unpredictable curves.  Having grown up in the flatlands, curves are not her strong suit, but the course is admittedly the most difficult we’ve encountered yet.  After an alert bout of night-driving, we pull into state park campsite two miles off Highway 1 and find a vacant spot under the awning of the giant trees.

The Redwoods are not like most national parks I have visited.  They are scattered pockets of protected lands, both state and federal, throughout northern California.  There is no entry fee to use the coastal highway or to visit the park.  However, you do have to pay sixteen dollars a night for a campsite, but I cannot justify putting exact cash into an envelope inside a wooden collection box so that I can park my car overnight in the forest.

 

National parks are federal lands that citizens pay for with their taxes, and usually they pay additional fees to enter parks such as Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon.  On top of that, the parks charge you for camping, and some will even charge you two dollars for an individual shower lasting eight minutes.  I bought a park pass for eighty dollars that gets me into any park presided over by the National Park Service for a year, but I refuse to pay for campsites.  I drive into the campground after the workers have clocked out for the day and the toll is vacant.  I back into an inconspicuous spot far away from the camp host but close enough to the exit in case I need to flee.  This is exactly what I do in the Redwoods.

Before dawn, I divvy up my supply of quarters between Erin and me to activate the hot water.  The air inside the bathroom is chilly, and the concrete floor vacuums the heat from my body.  I shove the quarters through the slot, and they rattle inside a silver cage.  A weak stream falls from a puny nozzle.  I race through the procedure because the sun is rising soon, which means the rangers will take their posts.  Then I pack up the car while waiting for Erin to finish, and we soon hit the road.

 

I creep up to the gate slowly and peek inside the window without coming to a complete stop.  At first glance I see no one seated until I press the gas and see a female ranger leaning forward, staring so intently at her computer screen that she doesn’t notice me driving by.  I accelerate to get some distance between myself and the toll booth.  In my rearview mirror, I see the ranger run out of her office and wave her arms to signal for my attention.

“Should I stop?” I ask Erin.

“We can’t go back now,” she says.  “What are they going to do?”

My heart beats faster, the way it did when I knew shame was awaiting me in principal’s office in seventh grade.  I imagine the female ranger is radioing her partner on the highway, and he will be waiting to catch us, like a grizzly bear standing in the river before a salmon run.  I think it’s a minor possibility we will be caught before we reach the highway, and I am ready to plead ignorance.  At the same time I am thrilled to do something slap-on-the-wrist illegal.  Pretending to be an outlaw is as close as I will ever get to notoriety, and I can live with that.

We reach the highway and head south.  I feign paranoia that we are being followed and that a high-speed chase will ensue, but it seems we have made a clean get-away.