Day 30 - 11/15/07 - California Here We Come

When we got up the next day, we were sad to see that we were still in the sullen Oregon RV park, for which we had to pay $12. Dozens of fake campers surrounded us, and after our billionth round of tuna sandwiches on the trip, we jumped back on route 5 south and headed…south.

This was a pretty spectacular drive. We were surrounded by the most lush, saturated colors of forests as we left Alaska and its temperatures far behind. The sun was blazing in the sky, and the thermometer slowly crept into the 60’s. (Not the decade. That would have made for a bizarre sci-fi twist if our thermometer had time-traveled out of the car.) With myself at the wheel, we drove through warm forests filled with tall, old evergreen trees whose bark was a rich rusty scarlet color. As we passed from the towering woodlands of southern Oregon and into California, the landscape changed to a strange hilly place with steep slopes, short bushes and yellow grass. The sky was raging its blue violently into our eyes and the heat of that big crazy star of ours was absolutely intoxicating us, which would have made me, in a literary sense, DWI. We kept rolling through the gorgeous gentle landscape, making only one rest stop to use the bathroom and to bask in the hot sunlight. Only a few days ago in Fairbanks, the temperature was -3 degrees, and now it was 71. We drove past Mt. Shasta, a big snowcapped mountain that seems wildly out of place, and I believe the namesake for that generic soda.

We stopped at a gas station to get some doughnuts and we encountered the cheeriest gas station attendant on earth. He was this young middle eastern guy with a white turban who squealed and laughed unintelligibly at literally every form of communication. I think he freaked out the middle aged lady in front of us, but we fully appreciated his humor, and the awkward sexual innuendos/jokes he kept unloading on that lady and her shriveled, disapproving soul. We scrounged enough change up to get some Shasta soda and doughnuts. We each had four out of the box of 12, and I ate all of mine immediately and then felt sick for a while. Darren took over as we neared San Francisco, so that I wouldn’t have to drive in a city, repeating my Montreal debacle. We were all splitting up once we got there, so we figured out where we were going, and the trip split into a simultaneous Canterbury Tales format for the night.

I was dropped off unceremoniously in Oakland before the rest of the gang headed into Frisco. I was staying with my childhood friends from home who had moved to Oakland, Kathleen and Harris. I met Kathleen at their place and we reminisced and just sat while she made an unbelievable dinner, which kicked the ass of everything I’d eaten on the trip so far. When Harris got home from work, we all ate and just sort of reunited in the apartment. I hadn’t seen them since before I went to Scotland, which was over a year ago. After touring their place, Kathleen’s boyfriend whose name was Brad came over, which was weird because that was the first person I’d ever met who had the same name as me. The rest of the night was confusing because of that, but not confusing in a bad way. We went out to get really expensive California ice cream, which was awesome. I got peanut butter and chocolate. It was like 60 degrees out and they were all complaining that it was a little bit cold, to which I erupted about Alaska and its weather and “what’s really cold” and so on.

The next morning, I got up and had an amazing breakfast from Kathleen, and got ready to be picked up by the car once again to continue on to Salt Lake City. Harris and Kathleen both made themselves late for work to dress up in aprons and pretend they were my parents seeing me off at the school bus. I met up with the car and they gave me a banana and waved me off with random kitchen appliances, and with that we were on our way east to Utah.

-Posted by Brad