I spent Saturday morning driving up Highway 101 from Ventura, to see the ocean, and to see this part of California. It was a nice winding highway drive, very relaxing, and beautiful … much browner than I expected. I drove for two hours, stopping for for lunch in San Luis Obispo; I didn’t want my turnaround point to be a town I’d never heard of.
I was hoping to see more of the ocean, but my route took me inland instead. If I’d continued driving north I would’ve reconnected with the shoreline just north of San Luis Obispo and followed it all the way to Carmel. But I didn’t have time; Cyndi and I had dinner plans for seafood in Santa Barbara.
I didn’t bring any audio books to California for this trip, so I did the old-fashioned thing: I listened to music on the radio. I heard a song by Michael Buble’ called “Everything,� about how this is a crazy life we live but its OK since everything is about Cyndi. That’s right, I thought.
I was driving a rental car, a Mazda “5�, which seemed a pretty lame name for a car if you ask me. The ignition key was very cool; it folded back into the key fob to make it less bulky in your pants pocket. All you had to do was press a small silver button and the key swung out like a switchblade. I kept flipping it out like Nicky Cruz. It was all I could do to restrain myself from staging a pretend knife-fight every time I pulled it out of my pocket. The only reason I stopped myself was to keep Cyndi from rolling her eyes at me and my boyish ways. I thought how Jason Bourne could bring down an entire government with nothing but one of these switchblade car keys; but of course, he could do the same thing with a rolled up Reader’s Digest.
I heard another song on the radio by Hoobastank: “I found a reason to start over new; and the reason is you.� Wow, another song about Cyndi. Who knew these young rock-and-rollers knew so much about my life. Maybe I should listen to the radio more often, is what I thought.
That particular song played inside my head all afternoon as I pondered the changes facing me when we got back home … moving my office and making new friends (a cathartic experience for a loner such as me) and wondering which way the future was moving. But starting over is always easier when I have a reason.
I noticed that all the highway arrows pointing to the on-ramps for Highway 101 featured bold black arrows close to the ground, only 24� from the surface of the road, with the arrow pointing down at a 45-degree angle. These were not ambiguous arrows pointing off in the general direction of a turnoff and saying “turn somewhere about here�, no, no, but arrows pointing directly at the asphalt saying “Take this exact road right here, take it now.� Kind of like how I wish God would speak to me most of the time: “Here, take this turn, right here … NOW!�
I drove past a billboard advertising the town of Buellton, saying it was the “Home of Split Pea Soup.�
Well, good for them, I thought. Maybe “Home of Tomato Basil Soup� was already taken.
Cyndi and I actually had fun driving in LA, even if we felt a little like Ma and Pa Kettle in the big city. The traffic was pretty scary in the dark, and very fast, and of course everyone else knew where they were going except for us. But we had great directions from MapQuest … even down to the detail of telling us to make a critical U-turn on Century Boulevard so we could double back to our hotel. How could computer software know all that? I think the key to having fun while driving in an unfamiliar city with your spouse is to have good maps and don’t be afraid or embarrassed to make a wrong turn. Just use your map, recover quickly from errors, never say “I told you so,� and enjoy the adventure.
There was a time when I hated making long drives like this, but I really enjoyed this trip. I wonder why driving bothers me less as I get older? Am I more easily entertained? Or maybe I’ve grown more comfortable with my own company? Or maybe it’s simply relaxing to know all the future I have to think about is the road in front of me.
I heard the band, Carbon Leaf, singing: “Live a life less ordinary, live a life extraordinary with me; live a life less sedentary, live a life evolutionary with me.� Well, I thought, if that’s where we’re headed … I’m in!
As Cyndi reminds me: Just keep driving, relax into the stretch, and remember to breath.
