Route One Rebirth

We left Santa Cruz having finally hit that mid-trip slump, the one my mother describes as "the depression that sets on and causes you to question who you even are in the world." We were travel weary, not quite ready to be back on the road. We visited the city of Santa Cruz on our way out from the Quaker Center. I tried to lift my spirits with a little retail therapy but before I couldn't even take a gulp from my coffee mug, a bum stole it from outside a Salvation Army. If you know me, then you know how I feel about my coffee. It wasn't pretty. We decided to get some buffet Indian food and I insisted on sitting in the window and scrutinizing every homeless or seemingly-homeless person who walked past. Lucky for them, I didn't spot them. I bought another coffee and headed back at the car, where we found we'd gotten a parking ticket. I was fuming. We drove further down Route One to Monterey Bay and Seb, who had just read Cannery Row, was disappointed to see that the crusty old port town of Steinbeck's classic had become a tourist trap replete with wax museum and all.

We bought two bottles of wine to drown our sorrows in later that night and dragged ourselves back to the car. It seemed like nothing could lift the dark, existential cloud above us...and then we hit the coast. Suddenly the cracked cliffs of the Pacific reached out to us and bore us out into the endless sea. Red cows chewed peacefully on the grass above the waves. The sun was in our eyes and on our faces and everything that had seemed so close was far away. Everything that had been far away, close. We felt like we could breathe again. We rolled down the window and watched the sun set.

That night we camped out in Big Sur. We made chili and drank wine out of our cowboy cups. Seb coaxed up a roaring fire and we washed our faces in the hot water from the tap. We woke up the next morning to the sweet smoke of the redwoods and headed out early. We visited the Henry Miller library and when we emerged from the ramshackle cabin the gray of the morning had cleared into clear clear blue. We wound our way down the coast for hours, stopping every once in a while to sit out on the cliffs and watch the waves break. It felt like a whole new beginning. With both windows down and our hair dancing like mad something seemed to be whisked right out of the car and carried off in the wind to somewhere far far behind us.