Head East

22 January, 2013                                                                                                                                           Mojave, California

'Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair 
And the days surround your daylight there 
Seasons crying no despair 
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air 

Bunnell, Dewey

I thought of the Loma Prietas earthquake of 1989, as we got onto the Richmond Bridge. The quake had taken out the double-decker bridge, though Frank Lloyd Wright’s Marin County Civic Center had survived with minimal damage. I thought bridges were no longer designed in two levels.

We had left the good graces of the woman I call Saint Jean in Petaluma, just a day late this time. When I was still returning a library book at one in the afternoon, and realized the San Francisco – Atlanta game was airing, I decided to defect to the Lagunitas Taproom. Lagunitas is perhaps the first of six microbreweries in Petaluma, and spawned a couple others, as well as number of interesting legends. They produced a series with Frank Zappa labels, and my friendly neighborhood features a fledgling Zappa museum, so it was a natural.

After the excitement of the bridge, we were spared the normal thick traffic due to the twin holidays, Martin Luther King Jr. and the presidential Inauguration. It was still thick to me, and I just caught drive-by glimpses of Berkeley and Oakland. Oakland looked like Mexico at first glance, a precursor on our way to Bakersfield.

Somehow, where 580 connected to the 5, I got on the 5 North, and had to get off and turn around. Lathrop provided this service and was distinctive in that it motivated us to keep traveling.

Down through the valley, almond and pistachio tree farms gradually yielding to livestock operations and cactus, I was reminded of my childhood. I hadn’t seen southern California in 44 years, and the arid plains and Westerly winds caused me to reflect on the innocence of a youth out chasing lizards.

The haze was too thick to see the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the East, and the foothills on our right grew into minor mountains as the sign read, Los Angeles 138.

Bakersfield, home of Merle Haggard and Roy Buchanan, brief home to Danny Gatton, probably has a guitar museum. As our lunch in Coalinga was failing to keep the engines turning, we stopped at a grocery store before heading East on route 58, toward Arizona. Bakersfield is rimmed in shack slums and portions of the city have been developed into tank farms, electric substations and oil fields. It is not a recommended travel destination.

It felt good when the density of traffic thinned as we motored towards Techahapi. I had hoped to make Barstow, but we decided after an hour of driving after dark that we would stay in Mojave. Today, if we’re lucky, we will go through Barstow and head for Scottsdale, near Phoenix to see some architecture.

It’s good to be back in the desert. It feels honest, inviolate and immobile. Being in the paradise of the North Bay area spoiled us both, I believe, and we are looking forward to some desert therapy. Kaya, during California’s coldest winter in 20 years, has begun shedding, as though it were spring in Virginia.  It’s almost as if she knew it was 80 degrees in Phoenix.