After spending my Friday night in a comfy Houston hotel room, I got a late-ish start on the road… beginning the 1,150 mile drive to my dad’s house in Naples, FL around 11am. The rest of the day was consumed by the Gulf Coast scenery passing by. Crossing state borders every so often provided a nice sense of progress that you miss when driving through a state like Texas.. where you start to wonder if you’ll ever make it out.
Before too long, night fell.. and I began to try to figure out where I would be spending the night. It was a matter of another night in a rest area, or toughing it out with several more hours left to go, but once i was within 200 miles I got a second (or third?) wind that carried me through to dad’s driveway.
I pulled in around 5am, climbed over the seat and passed out in the van.
Texas… what to say about Texas other than its frickin’ HUGE to drive through… gorgeous in spots, and entirely bizarre in others. After a few long days of driving on the interstate since leaving SF, I decided some scenic by-way time was well deserved. Needless to say I had a lot of time to reflect on my life over the 533 mile scenic drive from Ft. Stockton to Houston. I stopped quite a few times to take pictures which you will find below for your enjoyment.
After a relaxing though brief stay with the fam (thanks guys!), I worked my way out of Phoenix (it takes a while) and back onto I-10 in an easterly direction. It was a gorgeous day… perfect for taking in the desert scenery, and I just sat back and relaxed, listened to music and watched the world go by for 669 miles before pulling into a rest area outside of Fort Stockton, TX for a lovely night’s rest in the van in near-freezing overnight temperatures.
Picture it… Sicily.. 1922..
Or San Francisco… 2007… whichever works for you.
It’s 12:30am, an hour and a half before I’m due to leave for the first stretch of a no-joke sort of road trip… and I’m sitting on the floor, surrounded by all my worldly possessions, full of pizza, and watching Little Miss Sunshine for the 3rd time with my 3 favoritest people in SF… hardly making progress toward that leaving thing.
The movie ends and I look around to find everyone with that look of “time for bed” on their faces and acknowledge my fate: several more hours of packing. I say my goodbyes and reluctantly start in.. frantically finishing the packing and loading. Before I know it it’s 4:30am.. and sleep is necessary. I resolve to wake up at 6am and get on the road.
My eyes open to see the time on my alarm clock: 7:32am! FRICK!
I jump out of bed, brush my teeth, throw the last few things in the van, get my crazy cockpit electronics setup worked out, tell Gitzie (the lady that lives in my laptop GPS navigation system) to get me to Phoenix. I pull out of the garage and right into the beginning of San Francisco rush hour traffic.
Before too long I’m out on the open road, and the feeling is somewhere near the intersection of excitement, reluctance, and disbelief. After weeks of planning this all out I seem to have forgotten why I was doing it. It seems like this is always how it goes when I do stuff like this. I make a decision that I’m going to do something and then when it comes time to do it I start to question whether it’s really what I want to do or what I should be doing. I’m usually happy with my decisions I guess. My Central America trip was far more amazing an experience than I could have hoped for… and San Francisco managed to worm its way into my heart after a semi-underwhelming early introduction. I have a life in San Francisco… people who might even miss me a little while I’m gone… and that means a lot. That’s what makes the leaving hard I guess… there are people there who I’m going to really miss.
With all this churning its way through my mind, I encounter some unexpected snow coming over the Tejon Pass just north of LA. Once over the mountains, I pull off the freeway in “the Valley” for my first refueling and final In-n-Out meal until May. Back on the road, I breeze through the LA area without a hitch and get on I-10 headed East… straight into the desert. Somewhere around Palm Springs there was a crazy dust storm with winds up near 60mph which replaced nice desert scenery with air that looked like stingily prepared chocolate milk.
Once that was over it was smooth sailing all the way into Phoenix, where I arrived at Melanie and Brandon’s for a very nice rest stop with some nice time spent with some family I don’t see nearly often enough. I even got to go to the vaginacologist with Mel… who’s having another little one. Congratulations, guys!
So that covers the first segment of my trip… stay tuned for the second installment which I should have up tomorrow. For now, enjoy a few pictures and a video of my first state border crossing into Arizona. The pictures and video will get better… I have some video of me gabbing away while driving for the next few entries… Stay tuned!
So… if you don’t know by now, I’ve decided to take a couple months sabbatical from my life in San Francisco. The best answer I can give as to why is that I need some time to gain some perspective on some things, and provide myself with some momentum to get a more “real” job upon my return to SF… ‘cause $10.12/hour is not nearly enough money for a college graduate in what is probably the second most expensive city in the country.
I’m already a good ways into my travels so I’m going to present my trip in segments.
