What a day that was...
The night before I was basking in the fun of catching up with my cousin and goofing around with her boisterous and gorgeous little boys in Phoenix, AZ. I woke up the next morning to set out for Los Angeles and stay with one of my dearest long-time friends for a few days before I was set to start the final drive north to San Jose and San Francisco.
I left at eight in the morning, with plenty of extra time to fill in the six-hour trip before my friend arrived home from work at 8pm. Although the government shutdown had railroaded my initial intention to spend part of the day at Joshua Tree National Park, I decided to take the scenic road that goes around the park, through the Mojave desert.
I turned off of Route I-10, the main thoroughfare that runs across the southwest and connects Phoenix and LA, and headed up Route 177, which runs up the eastern face of Joshua Tree. I passed creepy palm tree farms in the desert, with nothing but mountains, sand and road as their view, before turning onto Route 62, the road that follows the northern border of the park. I drove for sometime through the haunting moonscape of the San Bernadino mountains, and then finally into the 'desert oasis' of Twentynine Palms, where the eastern entrance to Joshua Tree park is located. It was amazing to see the little outskirt homes that are scattered throughout the preceding empty stretch of desert, and imagining the lives of people who choose this barren landscape as their home.
As I drove into town, I gassed up and started to head further west, until something stopped me. Why am I just driving through? Although I knew that the park was closed, I figured that I could still head up to the gate and see what there was to see. So I turned up a surreal suburban desert street and on to the gate of Joshua Tree, which was indeed, barricaded closed with no signage or explanation of the closure. I found this interesting, as I feel like I would have been the rogue park ranger writing up some passive aggressive sign for the park that both explained that it was closed and exactly who was responsible for it being closed. The fact that there was nothing though - no 'Closed until Further Notice', no 'Do Not Pass' sign, nothing - only indicated to me how strange it must feel for these park employees to close a public place, owned by The People, that, ostensibly, should be open every day, barring only Mother Nature's weather whims.
Noting that there was nothing to see, I turned my car around and pulled into the one other place on the road that had caught my eye. The "Sky's the Limit" Observatory and Nature Center appeared to be a small, locally owned garden and telescope for star-gazing at the famously clear skies of the Mojave Desert. I parked in the loop and hopped out to wander around the garden model of the Solar System and the mostly undeveloped Japanese rock garden.
I had been there for a few minutes, with no signs of any humans anywhere, when a white van peeled up the drive of the observatory, and into the loop where I was parked. A man jumped out of the driver's seat, leaving another man in the running car's passenger seat. The man walked directly up to me, and immediately said, "New York, huh?"
(Side note…this has been one of the most common greetings that I have received on this trip. Whether someone notices my license plates in a parking lot, or my driver's license at a cashier station, or simply notices my accent, the response of "New York, huh?" or "New York, eh?" or from the more verbose, "You're a long way from New York, aren't ya?", has become as predictable as the sun rising and setting each morning).
I normally get a big kick out of this greeting identifying my homeland, but this guy just struck me as being ambiguously aggressive from the start…I had a bad feeling the moment I saw them drive in, and the fact that he got out and headed straight for me was creeping me out even more.
"What part of New York are you from?", he said, skulking closer to me as I started walking around him towards my car.
"Rochester", I warily replied.
"Oh yeah?", he answered enthusiastically, "I lived there for a while. I was setting up some sort of [insert some random and uninteresting tech/media/whatever thing that I don't remember] for MTV and [some other high profile media company he was trying to impress me with that only annoyed me more]. Yeah, really cool stuff. I liked it up there."
"Great", I said and started walking a bit faster away from him as he continued to mirror all my moves to follow me.
"Yeah, I own that house over there - the one with the A-frame". He YMCA-style mimed an unseen A-Frame somewhere out in the desert beyond the Observatory's park. "Me and my brother-in-law own it together; we're just out here looking for outlying campers. You gotta come over and see the place. It's just over there...the A-Frame. So come on over, ok?"
As I wrestled with my intuition that this man was not someone to trust and my heretofore wonderful luck and experiences with outrageously kind strangers along this trip and wanting to be the fancy-free cool girl that takes every random opportunity offered to her. My intuition and the very loud internal voice of my late Grandma Dottie saying "Do not go with that weird man!" won out, and I politely (because God forbid I forget my manners with an aggressive dude in the middle of nowhere with no one to cry for help to) explained to him that I had to be in LA that afternoon and needed to get back on the road.
Thankfully, he didn't press me too much after that, and I high-tailed it back to my car to drive back towards town. As I drove away though, I started having those pangs of self-doubt: "Was I just over-thinking the whole thing? I mean, he seemed nice and friendly, maybe he's just a bit over-desert-ifyed and excited to show off his place. I've had great luck with new people this whole trip! What was I worrying about?"
I tried to let go of this feeling though, telling myself to trust my intuition and just let go. I was starving by this point and reached over for some veggie chips I had brought along for the ride. I drove through town with the bag in my lap, contemplating the rest of the day's drive. At one point, I looked down for what felt like just a moment to reach in the bag for a new chip. When I looked up, I saw that the car in front of me had stopped to make a left-hand turn…
“Oh my God; how did I not see them slowing down? Were their brake lights obscured by the glare...did they just stop out of nowehere..?” I slammed on my brakes, but not in time and careened into the back of their car as the airbag deployed in my face and the car came screeching to a sudden, horrible stop.
“Oh shit.
This is not happening".
I got out of the vehicle and looked at the front end of my car smashed in. "It's totally fine; this is not happening", I thought again, as I turned around to see a young couple exiting the Dodge Charger in front of me. The young man catapulted out of the passenger side and made a beeline towards me, posturing as if he was gearing up to hit me and shouting "What the hell?!", in between other, less savory, expletive questions and accusations. His anger jolted me back to reality as his female companion raced from the driver's side to intercept him and hold him back from coming any closer to me.
"It's okay," she seemed to be telling both him and I as she restrained his arms for a few moments until he seemed to gain a modicum of control. "I'm cool, I'm cool", he reassured her, then turned to me and said, "You're lucky you're a girl". Um...yeah, gee, Sir; I sure FEEL lucky!
His initial rage seemed to have been slightly quelled and he steeled himself to tell me, "We don't need to call the police".
"Well, I don't know", I said, looking back and forth between the dented rear end of their car to the entirely smashed in front hood of my own. "I should probably call my insurance company before we decide that".
"Can you still drive the car?" he asked. "We should at least get these out of the road".
I had no idea if the car could still drive. I pried open the driver side door, and got back in the car, shaking all over, and simultaneously grateful for an apparently narrow escape from brawling with a buff and infuriated hot rod passenger. The car started up immediately, thankfully did not blow up, and safely drove me across the street into an empty parking lot.
The couple brought their car over to the same lot and the three of us started the dance of strangers meeting under less-than-favorable circumstances and attempting cordial, but cool evaluations of each other's physical status and the well-being of our cars. We called our respective insurance companies and agreed that calling the police would, most likely, only complicate things and earn me at least one or two nasty tickets for failing to stop and having a ridiculously overloaded car to boot. As we said our goodbyes, the 'gentleman' from the passenger seat saddled up along side me and said, almost under is breath, "I'm sorry for the way I acted before".
I then spent the next hour on the phone with a lively, effeminate sounding Geico representative, named Dan, who pretty much saved my sanity that afternoon with his over-the-top sympathy, concern, and complete take-charge-assistance to my crisis. Dan fixed me up with a tow company in Twentynine Palms, and the owner of B & B Auto Wrecking arrived to get my car on the lift before I'd even gotten off of the phone. I made sure to inform Dan before hanging up that his talents were probably even better suited to something like a suicide hotline; with the calming and rationalizing effect he seemed to have on people it seemed to me that he was not living up to his full potential. He, understandably, responded with an awkward thank you (I say the most moronic things to people when I'm upset ) and I hung up to meet the tow man.
His name was Steve; he was a middle-aged plain-clothed gentleman who'd taken over the company that his father had started long before my time. He told me how the family was stuck with the business, because “What do you suppose they did with all that used oil back in the day? [Insert my “I have no idea” reply] They just poured it right into the ground. So now, the land's no good for anything else and no one will buy it from us.”
He'd lived in the desert his whole life and told me he was just waiting for the day he could retire so that he could move to the beach. “Here, we've got all the sand...we're just missing the water!”
I asked him how long he thought that it would be until he could retire, and he replied, shaking his head, “Well, I'm waiting to see if one of my nephews will ever get their act together, but it's not looking good”.
I told him about my encounter with the weirdo at the observatory and he reassured me, “Always trust your gut when you get that feeling. There are all kinds of crazy people out here. You just don't want to risk getting mixed up with some of these kooks Who knows what kind of trouble you could've gotten yourself into”.
As I tried to block out thoughts of the kind of trouble I could've gotten myself into, we pulled into the tow yard, where my next ride was already waiting for me. A tall, lanky man, who somewhat resembled Gomer Pyle from the Andy Griffith show, greeted me with annoyance at having to wait five minutes to take me back to the nearest Enterprise rental office, located in Yucca Valley. The traffic was surprisingly slow, and I spent the next 40 minutes gripping the Jesus handle on the passenger side while Gomer weaved in and out of backed up cars and interspersed local gossip into his excruciatingly boring life story. I was happy for the opportunity to not have to talk though, and kept my ears half open for moments that I was obliged to feign sympathy or surprise while I let my slightly traumatized brain relax a bit and gear up for tasks ahead.
I was greeted at the Enterprise by two flirtatious and friendly representatives who set me up with an enormous Chevy Tahoe SUV. I needed something large enough to transfer all of my belongings into and it was the best they had to offer.
“Wow”, I said as I looked over the car for damages with one of the flirts, “I feel so California right now: a five-foot-tall woman driving around an unnecessarily large 4-wheel drive vehicle for no apparent reason whatsoever”.
“You're living the dream”, he replied half sarcastically, half seriously, “Living the dream”.
I nervously made the trip back to Twentynine Palms, and became aware that it was already three-thirty in the afternoon and I had completely missed lunch. I was starving and exhausted and beginning the slippery decline into hypoglycemia, which was only exacerbated by the physical and emotional crash that follows an adrenaline rush. I still had to transfer my remaining objects of material wealth from my car into the Tahoe though, and B & B Auto Wrecking closed at four.
I pulled into the dusty drive and Steve had me follow his tow truck back to the wrecking yard...an eerily picturesque graveyard of twisted, rusting cars, probably some of which dated back to the 1950's. He signaled at me from his truck window to continue down the drive along the fenced yard. He shouted “Good Luck!” and told me that his nephew would direct me to where my car was awaiting its fate.
A giant, young, red-bearded bear of a man met me at the gate and instructed me to pull the Tahoe right up to my car. He introduced himself as Mike and offered to help me transfer my belongings out of the sad little Kia Hatchback that was no more.
We began the humiliating and somewhat daunting process of unloading your belongings out onto a dusty desert ground and then trying to figure out how to refit the perfectly puzzled pieces into a completely different-shaped puzzle. As we talked, I found out that we were working him well past his 4:00 quitting time, and started to apologize profusely for keeping him so long. He just shrugged and said, “It's no bother...see that trailer up there? That's my place”. I followed the direction of his pointed finger and saw a trailer, perfectly balanced on what I can only describe as part sand bank, part pile of cars – like some real life Jenga tower.
“That's amazing”, was the only thing I could come up with. We continued working and talking, during which time Mike apologized for his current appearance. “I don't usually wear a beard, but I'm going to be Wolverine for Halloween, so I'm growing it out. I'm usually much more clean cut”.
“No worries, Mike,” I replied. “I think beards look great on men. You shouldn't be embarrassed; they're sexy”.
“Yeah,” he replied, “my brother's girlfriend likes them. A lot of my friends are growing out their beards to look like the guys from Duck Dynasty. I guess they're kind of 'in' right now”.
“I guess so,” I said and laughed. But as the belongings piled up and I discovered broken items, spilled car wax from cracked bottle that just kept showing up on more and more things, and the unfortunate and ironic lack of space in the Tahoe, I started to crack. I was hungry, unsure about how this was all going to play out as I made the move to San Francisco, and terrified that this was going to cost me a whole lot of money. As a pile of delicately placed boxes toppled over while I was trying to rearrange them, I burst out crying. Mike ran around the car to my side. “Are you okay? Do you need a hug?” he asked, already opening his arms to invite me in.
“I don't know!” I cried, and gave him a totally skeptical look.
“Are you sure?”
“No”, I said and turned to get the biggest bear hug of my life from a complete stranger who lives on a car wreck mountain.
“Now sounds like a great time for a cigarette break”, he said. “You don't look like you smoke.”
“No, but I do when I'm having a meltdown and there's one handy”, I replied.
We smoked our cancer sticks and then got back to the business of loading up my Dream Machine. When it was all said and done, it was 5 o'clock and we were both ready to get the hell out of there. We said our goodbyes with bear hug number 2 and I assured Mike that he was going to find a great girl, beard or no, and that I had every confidence that he wasn't the loser his Uncle Steve feared him to be.
I hopped into the Tahoe and drove out of the tow yard without even glancing back at my car. I was somewhat shocked to realize that I felt relief at driving away from it. It was only one more source of debt and worry; and even though I had no clue how the next few weeks, or even months would play out without a car, I wasn't going to miss the burden.
I stopped at a Burger King, out of sheer desperation and blind hunger, and called my friend, Christen, in San Jose...one of those prize gems of a friend that you can call in any state of mind and you know they'll just listen and hold space for you. I cried into the phone and into my Dr. Pepper and knew that I was crying over everything and everyone that I've had to leave behind these last few months...and that, somehow, it was all going to be okay.
After eating, as I drove towards Route 10, towards Los Angeles and into the sunset, with the mountains in the background and an actual Joshua Tree forest in the foreground (and I am not joking or fibbing on the timing), U2's “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For” came blasting out over the radio and somehow reassured me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be...that perhaps this was all California's way of telling me, “You've been on your way here for a long time kid, and we're not going to let you make this just another pit stop. You're stuck with us for a while. Soak in the sunshine and get used to it.”
R.I.P Kia Forte 2012 - 2013 (Photo Credit: Heather K. Moran 2012)