My Last Roadtrip

I’m finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. So…vacation planning time! I’m still entertaining some serious thoughts on an extended solo backpacking trip, but I’ve got recent invites to the Bay area that I’m thinking could be worked in there somewhere. While Ian was here for work, flitting by every once in a while, I made the time to stop by to say hi and bitched (bitching is my true not-so-hidden talent) him out for having the world’s shittiest timing. He always seems to visit when we’re a little deranged from being over-worked…or are we always just a little over-worked and deranged? He laughed and responded, “You know, this simply means you have to come down to the Bay area for a visit.” The man was skirting the key issue that his timing sucks. Focus!
Later when I actually got a bit of rest and I stopped thinking everyone sucks and I’m awesome and that the world should revolve around me, I thought Ian’s suggestion might not be such a bad thing. I do have my extremely gay (seriously, the guy wears hot pink stripped skin-tight Speedo shorts to go shopping downtown) but very much in the closet cousin there that I haven’t seen in a long time. He’s what 35 or so now? His mom is very old-fashioned Chinese so I think he stays in the closet for her benefit. It’s cute how she insists that his “best friend” that always hangs around the house has a crush on his sister.

Still, I’ve got this longstanding tradition of running off to do some crazy solo things after every project. Last year, I thought I ought to do a solo road-trip to Grand Canyon. The planning for the trip went something like this:
My boss: So are you have any vacation plans for after the project.
Me: Nothing solid yet, but I’m thinking about driving down to the Grand Canyon.
My boss: You driving with a friend?
Me: No, just me.
My boss: YOU’RE GOING TO GO ALONE?
Me: Yeah, I’ll be fine.
My boss: Well, if you must drive solo, I highly recommend books on tape. We have Eragon around here.
Me: Thanks, I’m sure I’ll love them.
My boss: So when are you thinking of doing this?
Me: Well...whenever we get the okay from Nintendo.
My boss: We should be fine, it would be better if you leave and come back sooner.
Me: How about tomorrow?
My boss: Tomorrow sounds fine.

I left work early and started sort of packing, but I had a birthday party to go to….so I went to that, crawled home at 3a.m. I woke up way too late the following day with a nasty hangover, packed and was on the road at 3p.m. I think I threw everything from my closet into my trunk. I plugged in Grand Canyon on my GPS and realize…fucking 22 hours drive. So um…if I drove it straight, I could be there by 3p.m. the following day, but if I stop for 8 hours, I would be there close to midnight… Since I had so obviously planned the hell out of the trip, I didn’t want to get stuck in god knows where land at midnight, so I figured I should drive it straight.
Solo long distance driving trip is a strange religious experience of its own. You start to hallucinate when the sun goes down and all you see is the road and the light. The only thing that really matters is the light on the gas meter. I get a panic attack every time the gas light goes on and there isn’t a sign of approaching gas station anywhere. There was a point around 2:30am, when the gas light went on…but exits after exits went by without any sign of gas…then finally…”Gas”. I drove into a town with the population of one dim lightbulb…drove up to the gas station and my eyeballs nearly fell out of their sockets. They were out of gas. How the fuck can you run out of gas when you’re the only station within 30 miles radius? I asked the gas attendant lady if there was another gas station nearby, she said there is a smaller one two blocks south, but it’s not open until 8 in the morning…or another 30 something miles down the highway. WTF!? I’m thinking I could maybe crash out, but this would throw off the arrival time even more. And the place was creeping me out…you have this giant brightly lit gas station (you said, population dim bulb? it's a metaphor, jackass!) in the middle of nowhere with NO GAS and there’s one lady with a mullet attending the gas-less station. It’s the perfect setting for a B-rated slasher flick. I got back in the car and started driving. Serious, religious experience…if you ever want to find god, do this. I’ve never prayed so hard in my entire life to just be able to get my car to the next gas station…I pleaded, I bargained, I begged…I’m pretty sure Brian’s left nut was thrown in there too. I was noting the highway numbers as I drove, in case my car dies and I have to call for help. Oh and my phone wasn’t getting any signal, joyful! And then…there was light…and gas.
The rest of trip was thankfully less exciting. Utah, dear god the place was gorgeous. Driving through Mount Zion was…wow. I’m so sad now that I wasn’t a backpacker back then, because man oh man, the place deserves a good backpacking through.
Around 4pm the following day, I arrived at Grand Canyon. I got out of the car, all pathetic shakey and wobbly…and nearly died from being underwhelmed. The Grand Canyon was a pile of rubbles.So, I’m trying to make myself feel a bit better about the place…it’s not that bad. It’s a nice tall (very tall) organized pile of rubble. It’s…um…a shithole. I knew I was delirious from being on the road for too long and sleep depravation…but the place looks nothing like the pictures… Now I know sometimes, the photographers make the place out to be much prettier…but this is not even close.
I walked into the visitor center/gift shop to see pictures of the Grand Canyon mocking me…then got a map of the place and realize…I was on the wrong fucking side of the canyon. Now my extensive planning for the trip had included me quickly googling “Grand Canyon” so I was vaguely aware of the fact that there was “North Rim” and “South Rim”…but what they really should have done is labeled it as “South Rim” and “Do Not Fucking Go There”. The site had drawn maps that really doesn’t show you the difference between “Fuck You” and “Oh Wow”. Why bother directing people to the pile of rocks that form a shithole of nothingness? That's another 1/2 hour of driving that I would love to skip.
Now comes the good part…South Rim is 2.5 hours drive away. The place was fucking huge! Apparently that’s why they named the place “Grand Canyon” and not “Modestly Sized Canyon”. I’m a genius, I figured that one out by myself.
Problem now is…do I even have the energy to do another 2.5 hours? You know…when you’re going through something that’s tough but you see the light beyond the horizon, so you tell yourself you can keep your shit together for another moment longer and that things aren’t so bad? Well, I used up that reserve. When I parked at North Rim, I had moved onto uncontrollable sobs and, “Thank god it’s over.” I stood there for a moment and found energy in, “Fuck you, website designer!” And got back in my car and drove. I have to say…when I got to South Rim, I got out…looked around…and thought, “Now THIS is Grand Canyon.”My buddy, PJ called me later that night to check when he should be expecting me in San Diego…I said tomorrow night. Yeah, I thought I might like to camp at the Canyons for a few days, but I had quite enough of alone time by then.

I emailed my buddy, Josh (not to be confused with Josh from L.A.) yesterday day asking about mountaineering gears and classes then bitched him out for flitting through town like a ninja butterfly. He apologized (even though he didn’t have to, but he is a silly sweet man like that) and mentioned that I was still invited for a visit. Last I checked he lives in the Bay area. So that’s three people that I wish to see in one area.
In case I doubted his words that California is beautiful, he linked me to sites of his climbing destinations. Tempting.
Josh, was my climbing buddy. I’ve almost completely stopped climbing since he moved because climbing is one of the few things you can’t do solo. Everyone thinks Josh got bitten by a radioactive monkey because his climbing ability is inhuman. Judging from all his photos, all his friends are really marmots, so he really must not be human after all.