Keeping conversations trotting well past middles of nights, and dawn pounces on my eyelids again and still I am more awake than should be possible and on the road again without Starbucks or stimulants. Physically the toll of this journey must be more than I know. I expect to Rip Van Winkle for the next twenty years, but I figure I’ll just shove off exploring then too. What will the grand road be like in 20 years? And so, I muster up and out the door and avoid a slow mourning morning by shoveling all my pertinences into the carriage-in-wait looming dew covered in the now brisker turning autumn air; mornings less and less forgiving as this month dwindles away. I’m off. Last bend bent.
At the border within the border: on the H-97 South at the California state line there is an unexpected inspection-point.
A head nod slowing my mustered muster, ‘whirr’ of the automatic window lowering to a crisp cowboy accent just above monotonous:
“Where ya comin from?”
“Just Oregon last night.”
“Any fruits?”
“Nope.”
“Have nice day.”
A minimalist for conversation… don’t you want to ask what I meant by “‘just’ Oregon last night?” Come on I loaded that for hours of bargery conversation! but unnoticed it goes and I too brush away the situation as a bothersome halt to my objective: Santa Cruz by mid-afternoon.
And such is my entrance to California, questioning the meta-quest of ‘just’ a month of nowhere meandering, thoughts stoic as the mid-morning mid-September sun massaging my left temple deep in contemplation about my mid-afternoon mission reminding me that it’s almost over. Nope, no fruits, but I’ve stowed away a month of hard-earned, worked for memories; each mile under my tires more booty to add to my chest of treasure, each conversation a precious stone never to be rendered to any ‘Thought Police,’ nor to the dangers of ‘just’ another summer jaunt, estivated in un-planned, free-wheeling wayfaring across the New World (as it may be perceived), and definitely not confiscated away like a ‘fruit’ at a border between ‘never and never again.’ Four wheels thru caliginous obscurity at the luminous thresholds of liminality, thousands of pilgrimaged miles along infinite intertwining interstates leading to a hope that, as is sung, I will awaken when September ends.
Weed, California
There is a rumor, tested or no I am not sure, that eating Mexican food above 40° latitude is asking for trouble, either digestive-wise, taste-wise, or otherwise, but there is also a Taco truck in Weed that sold me a mighty fine taco, and those of you travelling thru, don’t be afraid. The “Ricos Tacos” truck with Oregon license plates provided me with just as its eponymous name suggests ‘delicious tacos.’ As for the town of Weed, although the name sounds like a stoner’s paradise, it is in my humble opinion, one of Northern California’s finest stops location-wise for aesthetic-wise enjoyment, pocketed in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and the farouche Mount Shasta standing all alone in her grandiose stature just a few miles south.
.s.
"Slowly, desperately slowly, the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway was removed. With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner. And then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. The hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. x Can you see anything? q” –Howard Carter
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