Rollin' in My Six-Fo

People always say to me, "Leonard, you have driven through the Rocky Mountains, as well as long the Pacific Coast Highway, more than once." And I say to them, yes, people, that is true. I have done both those things. And they ask me, "Which is the most dangerous?" I know what they mean. Each of these highly scenic drives is actually a total deathtrap, where a slight second of deviation can cause you to die a horrible, painful, terrifying death (in the former case, by plunging off the side of a mountain, and in the latter case, by flying off into the ocean). And the reason for that is simple human stubbornness: there is, when you get down to it, absolutely no cause for anyone to be driving a car in these areas. Piloting a hunk of twitchy steel at sixty miles an hour through the winding paths and hairpin turns of central Colorado or western California is a short ticket to suicide. But if I had to pick which one was more dangerous, I would say the PCH, and here's why: unless you're a tree enthusiast, there isn't all that much to look at up in Wolf Creek Pass and its environs. While the turns may be sharp and the drops precipitous, at least it's relatively easy to keep your eyes on the road. Whereas every two miles or so along the Pacific Coast Highway, there is a scene so heart-stoppingly gorgeous it's like God put it there just to distract you for the few precious seconds necessary to cause you to veer off the road and fall to your death.

I'm getting pretty grungy at this stage of the trip. My hair is growing out, my face has gone from five-o'clock-shadow to five-days-of-lazy-ass-not-shaving mode, and the motel I'm staying at in wherever the hell I am doesn't have a laundry, so tomorrow is my last day of clean clothes. Lucky for me I'm keeping human contact to a minimum. I really have no one to blame but myself for this; my meanderings through northern California have been more aimless than even I had anticipated, and twice today I got lost and just decided to drive the hell around wherever I found myself rather than bothering to look at a map. This resulted in an extremely weird but visually pleasant detour south of Carmel, and then later on I got lost in Mill Valley and ended up here, wherever here is. It's somewhere in the Wine Country, that's all I know for sure. I can tell because I feel even more out of place than I did in L.A. Even the Vietnamese immigrant manning the front desk at 10PM gave me the high hat. The best way I can describe it is as looking like that hideout in the boonies that C.J. uses in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, when he's fucking with that psycho Catalina chick. But I'm making progress, as much progress as can be made when I don't really care where I'm going or when I get there, and as soon as this post is done, I'll drift to sleep to the sounds of the loud drive-through p.a. outside my window.

A good night's sleep will be most welcome, but tomorrow, I gotta stop drifting and start hard-nosing the highway. I can't afford to stay in hotels every night, and I need to start doing more car-camping; and while these state roads are as scenic as fuck, I'm averaging around 40mph a day, which is kind of a bummer since, thanks to the great British Petroleum Gulf Spill Excuse of 2010, gas has shot up to well over three dollars a gallon almost everywhere I've been. I'm actually considering chickening out on the Trans-Canada Highway stretch of the trip; I don't know anyone for most of the stint, which means more hotels (unless Canada has far more liberal car-camping laws than we do, which very well may be the case), and the speed limit is pitifully low, and gas is even pricier in Canada than it is here. Still, I'd love to make the dash, so we'll see.

Listening to my recorded notes from this morning, I was a hell of a lot more tired than I thought; I sound like a guy who hadn't slept since the Truman Administration. Apologies if this, more than my normal incoherence, made the last entry unreadable. I started out in Lompoc, the home of Roger Ramjet and his crew, and headed on towards Oceano, a city named after a Chicago deathcore band and apparently consisting entirely of campers. I bought a sticker there and after realizing I didn't want to plaster state stickers all over my car like so much hippie, I decided to slap it on my rifle instead. That'll show somebody. Speaking of guns, somewhere outside of Monterrey, a cop had pulled over a truck. His motorcycle was behind the truck, so I didn't even know he was a cop; but he stepped into the shoulder area, and aimed his radar gun right at me. This was disconcerting, because it had the effect of making me think someone was aiming a pistol directly into my face from the side of the road, which is a lot more likely to make me have an accident than going a few miles over the speed limit.

The Chickwagon is running okay, but it needs an oil change. I tried to get one in Santa Cruz, but I was denied three times. One place said they only service foreign cars, like changing the oil is radically different in a fucking Saab. The second said they were closing at five and it was already four. The third just refused flat-out to serve me. What, do I smell? Oh, right, I do. Anyway, I'm outraged, and I blame hippies. I always blame hippies. (By the way, passing by San Francisco, I pulled up to a light, where I was the middle car in a three-lane highway. I decided to give a shout-out to all the lovely ladies of San Francisco, and I looked to my left, and then to my right: both elderly Chinese dudes. That'll show me to pay any never-mind to the lovely ladies of San Francisco.)

On the way through San Simeon, I stopped at the Hearst Castle. I think it's pretty delightful that the bastard spent a kabillion dollars to build a giant impregnable fortress on a hill in the middle of nowhere to keep the rabble away, and now any schmuck with a car can just drive up there and tromp all over his fancy house for nothing. And it's government-funded, too. The employees of the place sponsored an Adopt-A-Highway mile down the road. I'm sure that makes his ghost plenty happy.

Tomorrow: Oregon, maybe. Meanwhile, more photos.

NAMES TO CONJURE WITH: Lightfighter Drive; Zeeb for Treasurer; Morro Bay.