1,100 miles

last signs of beauty until you drive out of LA

It’s 1,100 miles from Seattle to Los Angeles and the directions are fairly simple.

-Get on 1-5 drive south for 1,100 miles

-Take Los Feliz blvd exit.

These deceptively simply directions can make the trip look shorter than feel longer.

The day after we returned from Los Angeles with a new lease I celebrated my 24th birthday.  Looking back on it now I can’t believe that my parents didn’t try to stop us from going.  At the time 24 seemed incredibly old I thought that having lived on my own for the last three years that I was prepared to live 1,100 miles from all my family and take on any of the challenges life could throw at me.  The 27 year old me could tell some stories that would scare the shit out of me.

The count down was on, we had one month to get our affairs in order before we left Washington what we thought was for good. I began taking boxes home from work and we started packing up our life which was akin to weeding a garden which had been growing untamed for three years.  Those weeds had grown deep roots and we had had to dig deep to get them up, then instead of throwing those weeds in the compost we packed them up into boxes.  A lot of boxes.

I have a problem with keeping things, I wouldn’t call myself a hoarder but I’m definitely one step below, I keep meaningful receipts, tickets to old baseball games and theater performances, bags from items I have bought as well as their tags.  Theses things all got packed up into boxes along with two full sets of silverware, three electric shavers, five boxes labeled keepsakes, and two boxes of unbuilt IKEA furniture.  When all was said and done we packed a 17 foot U-Haul to the brim and still managed to fill our car.  We even had a garage sale and were still over flowing with stuff.

Days away from our moving date and we were mostly packed.  Halloween was on Monday (our moving day) the Saturday before was my older brothers wedding.  It was enjoyable and afforded us the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to family before we were headed out.  I expected the goodbyes to feel bittersweet but they didn’t, they mostly just mad me excited for the future.  I know Jaime and I didn’t share the same feelings about this as me, I knew that as excited as she was to finally be leaving it was hard for her and I was anticipating many nights in LA where she would lay in bed with debilitating grief for her distant friends and family.

The night before we moved we slept in my parents basement on their fold out couch, a 17 foot U-Haul with a dolly hitched to the back and our car strapped in sat outside on the street containing every thing we owned.  The following morning we woke up at 5am, it was still dark outside and we forced a sedative down our cats throat.  We said goodbye to our parents and loaded up into the cab of the truck and as we started down I-5 the tears started for Jaime, big wet sad tears like little children cry when they are genuinely sad.

Then somewhere around Enchanted Village (about 15 miles down the road) our cat lost her fucking mind.  She whaled as if she was being jabbed with a hot poker and clawed at her carrier door so hard I thought she might rip her claws out.  We stopped the car to try and settle her down but she wouldn’t.  I couldn’t get her to relax or at the very least to be quiet, in turn I didn’t know what to do... we’d been away from home for 20 minutes and I already didn’t know what to do.  It hit me like an incoming tidal wave that I was jobless and homeless and all I wanted in that moment was to turn the truck around and unpack everything back into our apartment.  But somehow, don’t ask me how because I really don’t know the cat calmed down and we were able to get her into her carried, soon I calmed down too.

* * *

If you’ve made the drive from Seattle to LA there are three landscapes you experience.  The first is Washington/Oregon, full of small run down towns resting at the edge of an evergreen filled forrest, blue-green rivers slicing through them like they were cut by an unsteady knife.  The drive is easy the views are enjoyable and things seem to move by quickly, before I knew it we were stopping for lunch at a Taco Time in Eugene Oregon (those of you from Washington should note that the Taco Times in Oregon are not the same).

The second landscape begins in southern Oregon and continues down through the Siskiyous in northern California.  Giant snow capped mountains, rolling hills of fir trees.  Deep fjords with black glassy water and Mt. Shasta sitting like a big grandmother looking over her grandchildren.  This part of the drive you don’t want to end, there is so much to look at and be in awe of it takes everything inside me not to stop the car there and say, “I’ve gone far enough.”

We stopped right in the middle of this for the night in Redding California, a city which as far as I can tell contains a Motel 6 and a Super 8.  I’ve stayed in both and on this particular occasion we stayed in the Super 8.  Laying on that bed in the room watching Mythbusters for the first time, all the fear from earlier was far behind me and for a brief evening I didn’t have any worries or fears or stresses about anything.  Navigating a new city, finding a job and balancing a very tight budget would all come later but for me on that evening I watched superhero myths get busted in a giddy excited state.

The third landscape is mind numbing in its simplicity.  Mile after mile after mile after mile of brown flat nothing.  One could become a connoisseur of these little truck stop towns and billboards urging you to “stop at Auntie Ethels, Next two exits.”

The blandness of this drive stretches time out, sign post seem to go backwards and you feel like you’ll never get to your destination.  This doesn’t change until the Golden State Freeway splits off and you take the Hollywood freeway all the way right into the heart of LA LA land.  Right into the heart of our new home.  1,100 miles later we pull up in front of our building.