Seattle to New Orleans Part 1: The Corridor

A bon voyage gift and photo for posterity, before backing out of the driveway. | White Center, Seattle, Washington | USA

“Energy is liberated matter; matter is energy waiting to happen.”

― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Shipping your own car to a final destination and having your body transported separately via airplane to meet it is a thing people do when they move across the country. It wasn’t something I wanted to consider because I knew I’d end up jealous of my car and all it got to see without me. Sacrificing the temporal bliss of morning sleep and trading it to get some solid miles in before sunrise on a cross-country road trip is another thing people do, but a late afternoon departure was more my speed on that first day. Five hours on the road was about all I had in me. As it was, I had only been driving an hour before I pulled off the highway in search of a drug store and throat drops. My throat still hurt from talking my head off at a trade show in the high altitude of Salt Lake City the week before. 

My best friend called as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. I thought she might be calling to reflect on the weirdness of me driving off to live somewhere else after all the years we’d spent close by each other since meeting in seventh grade (including as roommates during and after college, and me becoming a second mother to Onion, her late cat). I picked up. 

“What do you need at Walgreens?” she asked. 

This was my first laugh at exactly how well my loved ones with whom I’d shared my GPS location via the Glympse app on my phone could track me. I got so used to having actual followers on the trip that when I took a restroom break, I had to remind myself that it didn’t track to that degree. I wasn’t actually peeing in front of an audience. 

I drove well into the dark that night, a bit worried about running out of gas as the road got longer, the fog rolled in, and the “Gas This Exit” signs seemed few and far between. I panic-stopped and filled up the tank at what turned out to be only about ten miles outside of Eugene, Oregon, where I had a motel room reserved downtown. 

I got checked in by a man that was all business and no social, though he did manage to ask me where I was headed. I told him New Orleans. “I have to be honest with you,” he said solemnly, slowly stapling slips of paper before finally looking me in the eye. “I would have flown,” he said, handing me my key.

The motel was classic 1970s, but they went with that as a hip thing and had upgraded the rooms. Being my first night on the road, I was mostly concerned with the safety of my car. After getting rid of 75% of my belongings, and putting most of the rest of it in a small storage unit, I had only brought stuff with me that my creature self would need (okay and some costumes, camping gear, and rollerblades) to live and work from my already-furnished temporary home. But I didn’t want my car to get broken into for them, which is why I parked right outside the room, and obsessively checked on it for reassurance. 

The Oregon Caveman (erected 1971), a fiberglass effigy to the men who dressed up as Neanderthals to promote tourism in the 1920s. | Grants Pass, Oregon | USA

The target for the next day’s drive was Sacramento-ish, and I decided I should make a reservation at a hotel before I left so that I had a goal. I ended up choosing one in Davis, California because I’d been there once before in the early aughts when I was entertaining the idea of going to UC Davis grad school for cultural studies. My biggest memories from that trip were: 1) sleeping in a “private room” in a hostel in Sacramento that was actually a closet in the attic; 2) how hard everyone at the university worked at talking me out of applying by reiterating that this should only be pursued if I wanted to be in academia for the rest of my life; and 3) having my first kaiten-sushi experience (sushi on a conveyor belt), only the kind with tiny boats on a running moat.

I woke early and calibrated how far I had to go for the day: 7.5 hours, 475 miles. I think if I blow town right now, I could make it to Grants Pass for breakfast. Two hours later in Grants Pass, I drove aimlessly down one-way streets on the lookout for someplace to feed me, and came upon the glory of a Mexican restaurant serving breakfast burritos. 

This breakfast burrito was fucking perfect. A warm, stretchy-rubbery flour tortilla, with a slightly scrambled egg that still had the yolk and white parts slightly separated. Some bacon and cheese. Fresh tomato salsa. This perfect breakfast burrito set the standard for which I spent the rest of the trip seeking out other breakfast burritos to live up to, with no success. Not even breakfast tacos in Austin, Texas (a place that seems to have the monopoly on the dish) beat it. I snapped a picture of the 17-foot tall Caveman statue on the way out of town, and headed south.

As I crossed the Oregon-California border, I started listening to the audiobook A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, which filled my time with thoughts about the origin of the universe, the planets, the evolution of humans, geology, science, the time and space continuum, our very existence, and the characters that figured some of these things out. In this context, a move across the country by myself to a place with no friends or family is a mere blip in the blip of my existence in the blip of life itself, or infinity if I wanted to take it that far (which I usually do).

Mt. Shasta, California | USA

My only two stops were on either side of Mt. Shasta: the lookout from the north, and then lunch in the town of Dunsmuir nestled in a valley south of the mountain. Dunsmuir’s official city slogan (as spelled out on a giant mural) is: “Home of the Best Water on Earth!” So I made sure to get my bottle filled when I got a sandwich. My wish for a second bottle to fill was quickly dashed by my satisfaction in becoming a minimalist. (I also only had one pen.)

I pulled into Davis right after dark and check into a colossal, oblong-shaped suite with a king-size bed and a sitting area I’d never use (guess that’s all they had left?) and promptly went downtown to walk around and find the sushi boat place. I found it still there, and on this night, filled with people who just finished playing soccer. Things are sticky at the sushi bar, and I try not to think about how long the water has been in the stainless-steel enclosed lazy river. I realize that the deal is all-you-can-eat for $17.95, boat cargo, and menu items included. Things aren’t looking so hot, so I order a roll off the menu, and it arrives on a plate bigger than my head with deep-fried things covering the rolls and zig-zagged drizzles of teriyaki sauce and orange mayo. The woman next to me sees my face and informs me, “You can order a half roll.” Great, thanks. Would have been good if they told me that. I hate wasting the majority of it, but I’ll be damned if this roll is all I eat for dinner. I want some variety. I eat the fish out of it and then order a hand roll and some pieces of sushi, which help a little, but I leave feeling like I just ate at one of those deep-fried-everything booths at the county fair.

I wake up at the crack of dawn and head to the lobby for the continental breakfast, because I am my father’s daughter and breakfast is free. There’s a heated waffle maker and a batter dispensing machine, topped with individually wrapped plastic cups for transferring the batter. I pour it in and try to follow instructions but the timer doesn’t seem to set automatically, so I ask the kid at the front desk, who knows absolutely nothing and doesn’t give one shit about it. He’s just as perplexed as I am why there aren’t any napkins. “Oh yeah, I noticed that. I was wondering where they were,” he says. I use my intuition to decide when the waffle’s done, then place the individually-packaged fake butter pats on it, followed by the individually-packaged fake syrup, and eat it off the styrofoam plate with a ridiculous, floppy plastic fork and knife. I vow to start carrying my own fork in my purse like my friend Kara does and be more diligent about curbing my plastic consumption.

I head towards the freeway just as the rising sun is starting to create a pink and blue watercolor painting in the sky, and wish myself a good morning. Though I’ve refreshed my Glympse, anyone interested in following me is still sleeping. So it’s just me and Bill Bryson. “When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there,” he says, “but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimeter), your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.”

So here I am, floating in a seated position for hours, in a machine that was invented by humans. It transfers energy to propel itself (and primarily its contents), from one place to another. I’m both the contents and the operator, and I’m transferring myself to Santa Monica, California tonight where this time, I’ll be levitating at a friend’s house.