Description: Wherein Marty and Heather begin their big road trip journey!
(11/6/14)
The "Evacuation Procedure" sign in our hotel in Angels Camp, CA.
(Marty's Report):
Which made me late to pick up Heather from work, but she was magnanimous. I listened to Marc Maron interviewing the lead singer of Weezer, who was at the same three week meditation course in India that I did, except he had a camera crew and I didn't. He looked intense and unhappy, but sounded happier on the podcast.
My beloved looked tired but not cranky. We'd talked about this trip in couples counseling and agreed to be very nice and deliberate with each other and not create more painful vacation memories. So it was a good start. Vacations have been not-fun events for us, and for me in particular, I've hated them more and more recently, because rather than doing life in a different form, I've been playing out my family's template of vacationing, being to try to get away from the work world as an act of redemption for all the day-to-day miseries of our day-to-day lives. That was how we did it. I suppose it helped us stay not-dead, but it engrained a work versus play mode that I've taken the last few years un-moding, scrubbing away at that sharpie black line between the two till my fingers have bled and tears mixed with the soapy black water. But picking her up, I'm proud to say I was not afraid!
She had been working and dealing with office politics--well, it's a big open room, but still, in terms of function, it's an "office," and politics are politics. So it's office politics. Don't be an asshole for details, c'mon.
But she was in good shape, and she drove, as usual when there's threat of traffic. The Map Woman told us how to get where we needed to go, and we puttered through remarkably not-so-bad rush hour traffic, towards the Gold Country, our night's camp. En route, we burbled. Though I didn't have tea with me, I burbled nonetheless about life, about my life, and Heather did the same. We had a sweet start to our agnostic vacation, and drove through the dusk up into the foothills, one of my favorite places on earth. We got into Angels camp past dark. I had already had my celebratory Carls' Jr. chocolate shake (which I made Heather promise not to let me have again on this trip) from a young man with a badge that had a "loaded" sticker on it, a tattoo of a swallow on his arm, and ear loops for his neo-tribal hoops (which he was not wearing). I asked about his badge and he replied craftily and playfully, with complexity and reflection. It looks like he's already lived a life of near-misses, and may he not waste his gifts on the virtual reality of needles, because it seemed like he had something to offer the rest of us.
We got into the Gold Country Inn and a middle-aged night-keep checked us in and wouldn't let me use his bathroom, which he claimed was dirty. I went off to unpack the car, and pee, while Heather finished the check-in and (as she reported later) had a conversation about water politics. (Heather's Report):
So, I took the bus into work today so Marty could pick me up there and we could head out from the city right away. It was a really long bus ride during which I thought I might have to get off the bus in order to throw up, I got so "car" sick. Work went well, I ran my first scavenger hunt program for a bunch of 5th graders. And yah, office politics are present, but they are nothing like the ones I used to experience. Or maybe I’m just holding my own more than I used to. But in any case, Marty arrived and off we went.
Now Marty and I do not play well together on vacations. We are usually grumpy, bitchy, irritable with each other. We’ve never really found a good medium to live in while out and about. Maybe Egypt where we were civil to each other. So we spent a few weeks with our couples therapist preparing for the trip. No joke. But it seemed to work as we plopped into the car and began chattering away amiably. I was driving, as is the usual when there’s any sniff of possible slow traffic. I seem to have some weird patience when it comes to stop and go traffic whereas Marty claims that he would just lose his shit.
We burbled along about all sorts of topics, as is our usual wont. It is something we excel at, the think-tanking, no matter what form it takes, be it surface musing or deep reflection and exploration. It’s fun. It can be serious but often may look super goofy to the outsider. Little do they know that grand plans are being created in this space. Super important understandings of the Universe being unfolded right in this very space! True story!
Our first "stop" on our big road trip adventure was Angels Camp, CA, a town that grew out of the gold mining rush, way up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas a little northwest of Yosemite. We had gotten a little cheap hotel from Hotel.com, it didn't really matter since we were only there for one night. It was small and had that usual feel of rural, somewhat blue (conservative) town but there’s a specific feel to the gold mining, foot hill towns of the California Sierras. Not really sure how to parse it out. There’s definitely the sort of conservative feel, somewhat “redneckish” as pickup trucks jacked up to silly heights roared passed us. But there’s less of a rigid exclusion to these towns. Maybe because they see lots of tourists, maybe because they grew out of a movement that was all about independence and having to fend for yourself, the gold rush. In any case, they do and don’t feel like towns in the southeast where I grew up.
So we pulled into the hotel and checked in. I asked the hotel keeper knew if Tioga Pass was going to be open tomorrow as we knew it had been temporarily shut down due to snow. Snow!!!! I mean, really! But I mentioned that even though it was a little bit of a hassle, it was sorely needed up in the Sierras. He agreed and we chatted a bit about water politics and the potentially impending apocalypse around climate change. Not really, we just talked about the scarcity of water and what that might mean for communities of humans. Everyone seems to think we would de-evolve into rampaging animals and cannibals. Bah. I’m holding out for some civility. Or at least pockets of it. That can defend themselves easily. Yeah.
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