Of Budget Trucks and Traffic Treks

I think we fit about as much as humanly possible into the truck, short of bending space-time. I drove a 15 footer across the country along with our two pups in the cab. We drugged Jupiter as she's not thrilled about moving vehicles, particularly being inside of them. The meds seemed to calm her down a little, although honestly, she was still a nervous wreck: shaking on the floor and then leaping up into my lap whenever the automatic transmission down-shifted. The trek across the country was actually really enjoyable. When I'm really tired I sometimes have a heckuva time staying awake behind the wheel. I found that cranking the AC at such moments was the perfect fatigue elixer. The western plains/deserts between Grand Junction and Los Angeles have an odd sort of beauty. Purples, oranges, and sienna interact in a strange sort of terrestrial train wreck. Boulders smashed into bluffs, limestone and flagstone piles, petrified lava flows, and meteor craters all conspire to fill the witness with a great sense of awe and an even greater hope that the Budget moving truck one is travelling in won't break down. Out there in the midst of that vast splendor, I was happy to be clad in a 15000 lb. vehicle with intense AC and Budget painted on the side. A large debt of gratitude goes out to all of you who so strenuously insisted that I avoid UHaul. The journey claimed many a UHaul moving van. The road sides were littered with these tormented hulks.

After spending a quiet, long night in St. George, Utah, famous for its polygamists, the pups and I saddled up and hit the road again and drove right through Las Vegas without stopping. Like sirens, the city called us in, but my iPod protected my ears from clanging e-major song of the slot machines that seems to pervade every inch of the city. It's funny, I don't really remember much after that point. I was tired of driving and ready to get into LA. We did stop in Barstow for a couple of In-N-Out Burgers, fries and a chocolate milk shake. I was really surprised by the diversity of the clientele. There, I saw Eastern Europeans, Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics all sort of hanging out and dealing together, and the interesting thing was that for the most part they seemed to be middle class. In Denver, race and class are all bound up into one relatively simple stratified bar chart. Race and class seem to be pretty co-determinant. I'm generalizing, but it was interesting to compare the In-N-Out picture to what I've been used to in Denver.

There's traffic and then there's LA traffic. I drove into town on the 10 at the beginning of rush hour. What began as a lighly traveled three-lane freeway quickly became a 5-lane nightmare of slowly snaking reflected-sun-off-of-back-car-windows. Ahh... this is my city now...