Roadtrip

Getting off the ship was something that just made sense. The ship would be going from San Diego to Seattle, and there was no reason to just ride the boat all the way up when there was so much beautiful scenery along the way. I had planned and dreamed about going up the coastal road from San Diego to Seattle for years and had never gotten around to actually doing it.

The ship's itinerary gave us nine days in which to do it, and I had a partner for the road trip. Ellie had been born in San Diego, and I had been born in Glendora, and as it turned out, her birthday was the day that we would arrive in San Diego. I had been in touch with my brother in Glendora, and because it was so hard to get things on the ship, I had ordered a bunch of things from Amazon and had them shipped to his house where I'd get a chance to connect with my brother, who I hadn't had a chance to see in years and years. Lyn had arranged for Ellie to experience an interactive dinner along with a friend of ours, Shireen, at La Petite Chef on her birthday. It was a fun event with video

The next day, Ellie and I went to the San Diego airport to pick up our car for the long, long ride from San Diego to Seattle. We finally picked the car up, and we had gotten no more than a mile or two from the airport when the check tire pressure light came on. In spite of my urge to get on our way, Ellie reminded me of the safety factors involved in driving over a thousand miles with a low tire. We went back to the airport and traded out the car for one that wasn't quite as nice but seemed to be much safer. Now with everything ready to go, we were on our way to visit my brother when I got the message from him that we really would not be able to spend any time together. It seems that his family had moral objections to see me or Ellie because of the recent divorce and my being involved so quickly. My brother Mark said that he would love to see me and that we would figure out how to get together. Besides, I had to pick up the Amazon packages. While we were in the car, Ellie texted him a short note that I was busy driving and that she was willing to not come along during the time that I would be seeing him so Mark and I would have a chance to be together. I thought it was sweet, and so did he, that she was so concerned about my relationship with my brother. By the time we got to Glendora, I had dropped off Ellie nearby at the hotel where we would be staying and went to meet Mark.

He was waiting outside his house with a big bag of the items from Amazon, and he got in the car with me, and we went to chat for a bit. It seems his family were concerned about how and why I'd broken up with my wife of 44 years and how and why I was driving for days with someone new. Mark was fine and happy with everything that I said, but we weren't sure if the family would ever understand, and we wanted to be sure that my change in life did not change the relationship between me and my oldest brother. It would just take time for them to come around, or not, as the case may be.

After spending a couple of hours chatting with Mark, I dropped him off back at his house and went to pick up Ellie and take her to dinner at La Tolteca. La Tolteca was the restaurant owned by family friends going back over 60 years. Since Ellie had been living in Mexico for about a decade, Mexican food was something she appreciated, and although it wasn't quite up to the standards of an original Mexican restaurant, it was still a wonderful meal and nice to share the memories with Ellie.

The next morning, she wanted to share a deli from her childhood, Canter's in Los Angeles,

later that day. On the way, we swung by the house that I'd grown up in, and when we got there, the gate was open. Someone was standing out front, and I went up to chat with her. She asked if I would like to see the owner of the house, and it turns out that the family that had bought our old house 50 years before was still living there. Her husband had passed, and she invited Ellie and me in to talk for a while. Her husband had passed not too long before, and she told me how the house had been used for Filipino missionaries to come and stay as they transitioned in and out of life in the United States. The small house attached in the back that my family had built for my grandmother and grandfather had been used for her mother and father. It seems that it was destined to care for the elders of the family. The owner, Violetta, bid us farewell, and Ellie and I took a walk around the outside of the house. It seemed to have shrunk since I had grown up there, and everything was worn with age and did not look quite the same. It reminded me a bit of the value of money and the toll of time on things that we hope will give us pleasure. It reminded me of the value of experiences and how important they are to me, and going forward, experiences were going to be the center of my life as well as Ellie's.

Before we went to Canter's Deli, I decided to share a little bit more of my childhood with Ellie. We drove by my old grade school and junior high as well as the house of my stepmother. No one was home, and so I left a note on the front doorstep in hopes that she would reach out and get in touch. With time to kill on the drive to the deli, we decided to swing by the Griffith Observatory. It seems that everyone else had the same idea. Bumper to bumper traffic for the last half mile up to the vista. We were able to see the city below from the car windows as well as the observatory.

We drove back down into the city of Los Angeles, passing Sepulveda Boulevard, Hollywood and Vine, and all the other famous streets. When we finally got to the deli, the only thing familiar to Ellie was the food counter. The rest of the restaurant had been added to the back and to the side, allowing us a place to sit and have our lunch. A hot pastrami sandwich piled high the way that it should be, followed by a few sweet treats, including a black and white cookie which we saved for later.

My cousin Alex lived in Ventura, which was along the route that we'd be taking. I'd been in touch with him a few days earlier, and he said it would be nice for us to come and visit him on the way. The last that I remembered seeing him was when we were kids in Hawaii, and I had been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war. Getting into Ventura a little bit early, Ellie and I had a chance to find the Pierpont Hotel, and when we stopped there, we were fortunate enough to find beautiful flowers all over the place and a little rose garden where a couple were sitting with their deaf, blind golden retriever that Ellie had the opportunity to pet. She had wanted to pet a dog in every port in every place where we stopped.

I realized later that dinner with Alex and his wife was the first time that I had introduced Ellie to any of my family, and that it could have been awkward, but it absolutely was not. We enjoyed catching up on our pasts together, talking about our futures, and just enjoying each other's company over a nice fish dinner. One memorable piece out of the long, long conversation was when he told me about his dad, my uncle, having tickets for the Lockerbie Pan Am flight that blew up over Scotland and how he had missed it because a meeting had run too long. Ellie asked if there was some deep, meaningful observation he took from the event. The answer was that it doesn't really matter if a meeting runs too long. I guess after living through being in Lithuania during World War II, a life switch like life or death from an airplane flight is just one more event to have or not have in a lifetime.

The morning light on the twisted tree outside our window gave an indication of how beautiful the day would be. We were looking forward to driving up the coast, but a section would be cut off due to a landslide. But that didn't preclude our objective for the day, which would be 17 Mile Drive at Pebble Beach. I thought about, planned about, and tried several times to get there but never had. Today would be different. All my todays would be different.

Old phone

New phone

On this drive, I would be pulling out at the scenic overlooks more often, stopping to look at things, taking my time, not worrying about when we got there or even if we got there. This was about slow travel and enjoying the ride. Not far into our drive that day, there was an overlook where we stopped, and I saw a small bird on a tree. It would be my first chance to try out my new camera phone. I had ordered the best camera in a phone that I could find, with the objective of taking more pretty pictures for me to remember and to share with friends and strangers. After two quick pictures with my two phones, I could immediately see that I made the right choice and that things were going to be a little brighter and a little clearer in my memories.

Crossing back out towards 17 Mile Drive, we went through eucalyptus lined roads. As we passed through them, I opened the windows to smell the scent that reminded me of my childhood home, where I had been just the day before. There were fog clouds shrouding the coast, obscuring what I hoped would be beautiful pictures of my first time ever at this memorable site. When we finally got to the 17 Mile Drive, the clouds lifted, and the sun shone; it was a beautiful, beautiful day.

First, there were waves crashing on the beach, then there were the rocks jutting up out of the ocean, and soon we started to see the wildlife: the seals, the otters, the thousands of birds welcoming us on our long road trip. A mother and baby seal lounging on the rocks were a comforting sight, and the man from Alaska telling us about his memories reminded us that we're all travelers.

When we finally pulled off at the Lone Cypress, I was excited at the classic beauty of this scene that was probably the most photographed tree in the world. After dozens of shots that probably looked like almost everyone else's, I finally had a bluebird stop on top of a tree just before we got in the car to give me the art shot that I was hoping to get—happy me. Knowing that we had to go north from here and having not had lunch, I picked the closest In-N-Out Burger that I could find going our direction, and we stopped there to decide what to do for the rest of the day. If we could get through San Francisco before the morning, it would make the next day much easier for us to get to the Armstrong Redwoods, which would be our first visit to the big trees on our way up the coast.

As luck would have it, the sun was setting as we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, which gave us a beautiful vista of both the bridge and the lights coming on in the city. As twilight progressed, we found a cute little hotel with roses in a planter outside the window and stopped for the night.