Needles
It's been 14 years since I rode through Needles in a beat up Ford Probe with a puff of blue smoke. That smoke was my air conditioner - dying - in the heart of summer in the middle of the Mojave. I was 19 and making my way to Los Angeles, running away from one life toward another.
I don't think I ever thought that I would make a return trip on that same route. I've delineated the horrors of Interstate 40 for the better part of a decade, always bashing it while extolling the wonders of 8/10 Interstates in southern CA/AZ/NM. (I still stand by that.) But more than that, I never thought I'd actually make the drive again - I always felt like it was a trip meant to be taken in one direction. Either you're going to CA with your life in boxes - or you're leaving. It's a semi-permanent kind of thing.
But here I am, 14 years later, with a wife who loves to road trip and hates to fly. I must admit that even though I'm not fond of 40 - I do love to road trip. What's more - I actually kind of enjoyed the cities on 40. Flagstaff and Albuquerque. We'll run through both of them today.
But back to Needles. It was my first hint that my magical "western destiny" was not everything I'd imagined it to be. Hot. Barely a speck on the map. And more than a hundred miles to the nearest outpost of civilization. It was nothing like the drive from Yuma to San Diego. I'm not sure what I thought it would be. Maybe I expected to see a city just on the horizon. A hint of the ocean. Perhaps I expected a neon sign that would confirm that I'd made the right choice in leaving everything behind to start over. But Needles didn't give me any of that. Needles brought the heat - and nothing more. In a way, it was a signpost - but a signpost I ignored. I can see it more clearly now. "Life is not going to turn out how you think it's going to turn out."
I'm thankful. I'm not a petulant 19-year-old anymore. The road has been hot and long - but it's been good. I know that I needed to sweat through the desert. I needed to change. California is the place where God decided that he needed to do some serious work on me - and He certainly has. The 33-year-old man driving out of California is not the same person who came here 14 years ago. Thank God for that!
A short recap of yesterday and this morning:
Allyssa and I made the trek from San Jose to Barstow. There's not much on the trip. We left at around 1:30 and made decent time to Gilroy - we only ran into a couple of small traffic-y spots, and Google Maps was good enough to direct us around them. When we were hitting the Starbucks of Destiny to switch off driving, I realized that I hadn't added Allyssa as an authorized driver - she wasn't with me when I picked up the car.
Since the thought of driving 3600 miles to Missouri and back by myself didn't appeal to me, I figured the best option was to find a Hertz. We found one - fortunately, about a mile away from where we were. We drove over and waited for a while only to find out - if you rent in California, spouses are automatically added as authorized drivers. So we had a brief scare there, but we were back on the road pretty quickly.
Then we had a little adventure trying to get gas in Bakersfield. I made the mistake of trying to pursue the CHEAPEST GAS IN BAKERSFIELD. I want to tell you right now - I found it. And then I turned around and got out of there as fast as I could because I didn't want to get mugged and/or skimmed. It turns out that with gas - as with all things in life - you get what you pay for. And if you want to get shanked, go find the cheapest urban gas a mile and a half off the freeway.
And then we made it to Barstow! It feels like an oven in Barstow, even at 9:30PM.
We were out of Barstow at around 7. The hotel was a nice family owned business, and other than the heat, it was a good stop.
And that big empty space between Barstow and Needles that I've always complained about? Given an air conditioner and a passenger seat, it's actually not bad at all. I think I can finally appreciate the desert. God really does make things beautiful in their own way. Even what used to merely be "the wasteland".
I don't think I ever thought that I would make a return trip on that same route. I've delineated the horrors of Interstate 40 for the better part of a decade, always bashing it while extolling the wonders of 8/10 Interstates in southern CA/AZ/NM. (I still stand by that.) But more than that, I never thought I'd actually make the drive again - I always felt like it was a trip meant to be taken in one direction. Either you're going to CA with your life in boxes - or you're leaving. It's a semi-permanent kind of thing.
But here I am, 14 years later, with a wife who loves to road trip and hates to fly. I must admit that even though I'm not fond of 40 - I do love to road trip. What's more - I actually kind of enjoyed the cities on 40. Flagstaff and Albuquerque. We'll run through both of them today.
But back to Needles. It was my first hint that my magical "western destiny" was not everything I'd imagined it to be. Hot. Barely a speck on the map. And more than a hundred miles to the nearest outpost of civilization. It was nothing like the drive from Yuma to San Diego. I'm not sure what I thought it would be. Maybe I expected to see a city just on the horizon. A hint of the ocean. Perhaps I expected a neon sign that would confirm that I'd made the right choice in leaving everything behind to start over. But Needles didn't give me any of that. Needles brought the heat - and nothing more. In a way, it was a signpost - but a signpost I ignored. I can see it more clearly now. "Life is not going to turn out how you think it's going to turn out."
I'm thankful. I'm not a petulant 19-year-old anymore. The road has been hot and long - but it's been good. I know that I needed to sweat through the desert. I needed to change. California is the place where God decided that he needed to do some serious work on me - and He certainly has. The 33-year-old man driving out of California is not the same person who came here 14 years ago. Thank God for that!
A short recap of yesterday and this morning:
Allyssa and I made the trek from San Jose to Barstow. There's not much on the trip. We left at around 1:30 and made decent time to Gilroy - we only ran into a couple of small traffic-y spots, and Google Maps was good enough to direct us around them. When we were hitting the Starbucks of Destiny to switch off driving, I realized that I hadn't added Allyssa as an authorized driver - she wasn't with me when I picked up the car.
Since the thought of driving 3600 miles to Missouri and back by myself didn't appeal to me, I figured the best option was to find a Hertz. We found one - fortunately, about a mile away from where we were. We drove over and waited for a while only to find out - if you rent in California, spouses are automatically added as authorized drivers. So we had a brief scare there, but we were back on the road pretty quickly.
Then we had a little adventure trying to get gas in Bakersfield. I made the mistake of trying to pursue the CHEAPEST GAS IN BAKERSFIELD. I want to tell you right now - I found it. And then I turned around and got out of there as fast as I could because I didn't want to get mugged and/or skimmed. It turns out that with gas - as with all things in life - you get what you pay for. And if you want to get shanked, go find the cheapest urban gas a mile and a half off the freeway.
And then we made it to Barstow! It feels like an oven in Barstow, even at 9:30PM.
We were out of Barstow at around 7. The hotel was a nice family owned business, and other than the heat, it was a good stop.
And that big empty space between Barstow and Needles that I've always complained about? Given an air conditioner and a passenger seat, it's actually not bad at all. I think I can finally appreciate the desert. God really does make things beautiful in their own way. Even what used to merely be "the wasteland".
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