I drove away from the Witchnest at 6:40–slightly later than I’d planned, as packing the car took longer than I’d thought. (One doesn’t pack a car the night before when the car lives on the street.) Even so, traffic was light, and I got over the (reconfigured!) Bay Bridge and up 80 past the Berkeley snarl without incident.
The sun came up right about the time I had the car pointed northeast–so that it shone straight into my eyes through the spot between the two sunshades. And by then traffic was heavy (though moving all right) on 80. The whole business was stressful and angsty-making….”Ugh,” I thought, “this is going to be a long day.”
But then I turned off onto 505 (I think! directions are still in car) cutting over to 5, and all became lovely. I was just about the only car on the road, and now pointed very nearly due north. Yay!
Mostly, it was just a really long day. I’m not going to give a mile-by-mile, because it all started running together after I relaxed into the drive. So, just the highlights and lowlights:
-Being alone in my head all day was great, but not quite as productive as I’d expected, since I had to pay a reasonable amount of attention to actual driving. Even so, I had a few small life-matter thinkees and realizations. Nothing about fiction though, which is odd.
-I also had a few patches of deep ennui. Like, OMG there are still 400 miles to go I am going to be driving for the REST OF MY LIFE I just want to get out and walk around…
-But then I had music that I liked and that would distract me, and I’d stop watching the odometer so carefully, and all would be well again.
-California is HUGE. Once I passed Yreka, I thought, That’s it, that’s got to be all the state; I’ll be in Oregon soon. But dudes, it was like another hour or something.
-And then! I finally cross the border, and there’s this huge sign: “Welcome to Oregon, Speed Limit 55.” Doh! Careful what you ask for…
-I had lunch in Grants Pass, but did not find a suitably photogenic sign to memorialize the occasion. The grilled cheese/meat sandwich I had was LOVELY, however.
-I checked in with Jay every time I stopped, via brief emails. My favorite one said, “Stop 6. Gas. Weed.” (Weed, California, you guys.)
-Nearly here, 20 miles to go: Traffic hell! Gah!
So that it was 6pm when I rolled in here. Nearly 12 hours, counting the stops and the lunch. Whew.
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I hadn’t logged into my work email since Tuesday, so I logged in this morning, saw more than a screenful of messages, and was about to read them when Jay and Zellandyne started eyeing my smoothie and making hinty-appreciative noises. So I got up and made them one. Upon returning to my computer, the work email server had gone down. Oh well!
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Now, off to the Coastal Lands of No Internet. Bye!