Going with the Flow

Boy, Hot Enough for You?!

Took a little road trip Out West to see Daughter a while back. Got on I-10 and headed west.

If you go far enough west, you can see remnants of the old Route 66. Sometimes it's on your left, other times on the right. Just over there.

A little sign of life clings to some of those strips of pavement. I recreated the scene above, "Oasis", from memory, of a restaurant out there on a stretch of old 66.

I was moving along that I-10 flow. There wasn't time to stop, so this is pretty much a whole-cloth image, capturing the feel of the moment and not necessarily the details.

There's something about traveling at 70+ mph for hours or even days that makes it hard to stop.

That momentum builds up and takes over the trip.

Now, when I look at that painting, I think of another trip taken even earlier with Daughter's grandfather. Gramps needed to go to California and I went along.

We put all our stuff in his Chevy El Camino and headed west from Tallahassee. Then stopped in Quincy (19 miles west of our starting point). A radiator hose was unclipped and got burned by engine heat. Ka-ching.

Hose fixed, we started west again.

We stopped for different engine or radiator problems two more times (ka-ching, ka-ching) and switched over to Highway 40 in Arizona. We finally got to Needles, on the eastern edge of California, crossing the Colorado River. Last water until the Pacific Ocean.

In between the Colorado and the Pacific lay the Mojave desert and the San Bernadino Mountains.

That radiator started acting up again when we attempted the rise outside Needles. The El Camino just couldn't make it to the top without the radiator boiling over.

I could spend a lot of time on this part of the story, but I won't.

Let's just say we decided to fill up on water and move out into the desert. And overheat. And stop. The engine and radiator would cool and we'd add water. Then get on the road again.

After 20-30 miles the engine would overhear again. Re-read the paragraph above.

We crossed the Mojave that way, 30 miles at a time. We went without a.c. to stretch the mileage.

At about the halfway point, we pulled into a chain/family sort of restaurant. Some entrepreneur always stakes out these halfway points. Think of the drive the staff has to make. The parking lot was full.

We got a booth and I noticed most patrons seemed red-faced, flush. And tired. The kids were lying on the booth benches. Neither Mom nor Dad nagged them to sit up straight. Waitresses kept the water coming.

We cooled it as long as we could, then climbed back in the saddle and moved out again.

That crossing lasted all day and we climbed the mountains in the setting sun. The car was able to go longer and longer without overheating. Then we headed downhill and on to our destination, Pomona. Glorious Pomona.

What a trip! We didn't die. Memories are made of this.