Yeah so I drove 650 miles today. Like I did 10 or so days ago.
Here’s what was different:
-Getting up earlier really helped, I think (though I’m nearly dead on my feet right now). I didn’t end up pulling out of Nuevo Rancho Lake until 5:15, due to the whole packing-the-car thing again–complicated by the fact that I was doing it in the pitch dark, and my trunk light is broken again. So that was an adventure, packing by feel. 🙂 And I have somehow acquired more stuff. Most of it books. Hmm.
-The first at least two hours of the drive was in total nighttime, which made it kind of other-worldly. Which was cool. And even when the sun did come up, the day was overcast, so it didn’t feel like daytime for a long time. All the cars had their lights on till well past 9am, I think.
-This time I had learned to go ahead and use the cruise control right from the start, instead of waiting until my heel was aching like crazy and my whole leg was exhausted and I had worn myself out monitoring my speed. WIN. I only “drove” (turned cruise control off) the last 60 miles, once I hit Highway 80 (and of course during the random crazy moments when one semi decided to whip out and pass another, etc etc).
-I made better time, which I think was a combination of stopping less often (less heel fail due to cruise control), less traffic (due to starting earlier), and general stamina. Plus, once I realized I might make it to SF in time to check my PO box, that became a deeply motivating factor.
-This is another reason I made better time, but it deserves its own separate notice: I had fast food for lunch. I don’t even know how many years it’s been since I’ve eaten literal fast food, from a chain. But, um, it was fast!
-I noticed an incredible amount of roadkill, especially in Oregon. Also, the highway surfaces in California are a WHOLE lot better. (Sorry Oregon.) Although once you get to the Bay Area, that is no longer true; it is suddenly painfully obvious that our state is completely out of money. But Highway 5, all the way from the border to the 505 turnoff: smooth as a baby’s bottom. I could hear my music so much better (more on music below).
-There is a stretch of southern Oregon where every rill, brook, stream, and small river is called Bear Creek. For serious: like 10 Bear Creeks in a row. What gives?
-The final thing that was different: nobody was cooking dinner for me when I arrived here. 🙁 Even so, I am happy to be home, and the orchids are certainly happy to be in the sink right now.
About the music. Even though I own a nearly-brand-spanking-new car, it is not equipped with an input situation whereby I could plug (for example) a device into it to play music. You know, like a phone that has all my music on it, that can play songs randomly, whether they came from CDs or were bought from some helpful online service. The car does have a single CD player. So I brought lots of CDs and played them. Here is what I listened to today, in order: (I like to start and end long drives with Pink Floyd…then I just sort of grabbed whatever felt right.)
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
The God Machine, Scenes from the Second Storey
Led Zeppelin [no album name, just symbols–the one with the guy with the sticks on his back on the cover]
The Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet
The Pixies, Doolittle
Beck, Mellow Gold
Bauhaus, Burning From the Inside
The Eagles, Desperado
The Alan Parsons Project, I Robot
Tindersticks [no album name on this CD, but I think it does have one, so this is odd]
Love and Rockets, Love and Rockets
Pink Floyd, Meddle
I let “One of These Days” play twice, because I was on the bridge and that seemed good. Then I switched to KFOG.
I need to take another picture of my nightstand, because it has gotten far worse. There are now 14 books on it. I don’t know how this happens.
What I do know is that I need sleep…and I am not looking forward to the Return to the Day Jobbe tomorrow. Oh well!