Driving the long way home

Despite being a raging environmentalist I’ve not been able to kick the love of driving. Blame rural Australia and its lack of public transport, or our exploited labour as kids when we were driving tractors as soon as we had enough weight to depress the brakes so Dad could throw hay bales or irrigation pipes off the back. My brother thinks a V8 is a thing of worship, my sister is a member of a 4WD club, and my nephew races cars in South Carolina. So the chance to drive around California for a couple of weeks is a salve on an itch that just can’t be soothed in Britain, where motorways are carparks and getting from north to south can be done in less than a day (if you can get out of the carpark).

It is a sign of the American dependence on the car that it is the easiest and cheapest option to hire one. You don’t even need a cheerful sales assistant in front of you any more. Carl was in Tennessee, I was in San Francisco, and we just skyped on the airport terminal. Industrial strength numbers of rentals are poured into and out of the airport each day in a well-oiled display of organization and car love.

I settled on a little Chevy Spark, no muscle except in a brand name reminiscent of utes and American pop songs, and within half an hour of arriving, including last minute refreshment and comfort breaks, we were on the road. Now the first days of driving on the right are slightly taxing. I repeat the mantra ‘right tight, left loose’ at every crossing. I get flummoxed by intersections and who has right of way (still don’t get it). My Navigator must remain calm at all times even when the digital and the paper map are at odds and I’m demanding to know the next set of instructions every five minutes.

In anticipation of any tension I planned a route that would break us gently into the rhythm of a road trip, and to begin, the classic, Big Sur, Highway 1. It is the smell of the Pacific on one side and mighty red wood forests on the other, mountains and cliffs falling into an ocean that has created a ragged edge of broken sculptures and tombolos. Ridiculous sunsets fall behind lurching yachts as bells and gulls call out the mood of the sea. Among the churn of the water sea otters pop up to play, officially replacing the wombat as the cutest animal on the planet. Let's face it. Who doesn't think floating around on your back in the ocean, cracking crabs and eating mussels cleaved from the pylons of a pier, isn't a good way to spend a day.

Taking our cue from the sea otters, we spend two days pulling over to cleave treats from various outlets: tea at Big Sur River, sprawling on the lawn with a quietness falling, even over the groups of students on Spring Break sitting on wooden chairs in the river; taking a window seat at Post Ranch restaurant hanging over the cliffs for three courses of yumminess (I recommend the trout with fennel puree and tapanade, or the blue cheese, orange reduction and almond bread); an organic breakfast at Los Osos where the wild people, hippies and hipsters hang out. We gawp at the excess of wealthy architecture in places like Carmel with some schadenfreude that it will all end in tears when the next big earthquake comes along.

Occasionally the otters were confused for seals that also cruise along Big Sur’s coastline. Stopping off to see a colony of hundreds of the elephant variety, we can only conclude they are not so cute. They molt. They stink. They yawn and pick fights. They look like I feel some Sunday mornings.

The calm of Big Sur was ruptured by the ever increasing heat and volume of traffic as we approached Los Angeles. I am no fan of this monstrous conurbation so the deal with the Navigator was a two day layover in Venice Beach so he could tick ‘working out at Gold’s Gym Venice Beach’ off his bucket list and I could sit in cafés on the beach and remember Sydney. 

Former spiritual home of Arnold Schwarznegger and several Mr Olympias, Gold’s Gym is a freak show. We entered behind a minor celebrity body builder, famous for the size of his veins that stick out from arms the size of my thighs. But it’s LA and it’s all about excess. The driving done by someone else on a tour bus in Rasta colours, we cruise downtown, Rodeo Drive and other islands in a sea of conspicuous consumption. Celebrities, their houses and our guide's stories of his encounters with them, are all about excess. On a Tuesday morning in a Santa Monica street with nine coffee shops and 12 yoga studios, everyone is holding cups and/or yoga mats.

For the excess homeless, they hold onto whatever bag, trolley, dignity they can. Mostly black and hispanic men, Venice Beach allows rough sleeping and they keep it tidy. In the public toilets, some lay out their shaving kits in the morning, holding on to some hope. Clothes are packed in bags and stacked away for the day. The panhandlers are honest enough:

'Fishing for buds'

'Why lie. I need weed'.

'This is awkward for me too'.

Food is of course the thing that is most emblematic of American excess. As our dinner arrives one evening, plate by plate, it becomes an archipelago of gluttony. Even ordering half portions we still needed the ubiquitous take home box. Food now even seems to be getting its own national days. Apparently 23 April is National Cherry Cheesecake Day. Who knew? Motel breakfasts featured excess amounts of powdered or pump dispenser coffee-mate, chocolate muffins and cheerios, pre-cooked scrambled eggs, and turkey sausage/rissole/non-descript shape, served in plastic plates to save washing up. Heaven forbid anyone should sit down with real cutlery and crockery. Even when food was a lovely, fresh salad from 'Lemonade' on the uber-trendy Abbot Kinney Boulevard, it was all served on paper and plastic that slides into a bin when you're done.

Having had a whinge (note ‘raging environmentalist’ above) I will miss unlimited iced tea and splenda, but not as much as half/half milk in my coffee. And motel breakfasts could become a useful tool for orientation should you happen to arrive late at night and forget where you are. If you’re in Napa you will get: almond milk, berries, fat- AND sugar-free yoghurt, healthy toppings for the oatmeal and honey instead of maple sugar on the waffles. If you are in Pahrump or anywhere other than Napa: none of the above and all of the chocolate muffins, cheerios, turkey meat shapes etcetera.

Having warmed up to driving on the right it was now time for the ultimate test of nerves: leaving L.A. Crossing lanes at 60 miles per hour, with inches to spare front and back, traffic is relentless for four hours. It's only reaching the desert that it starts to thin. Sweating at 100 degrees, the excessive Skechers factory looms out of the desert as does the Molongo reservation casino and billboards for various 'legal and naked' gentlemen's clubs.

The Spark’s tyres began making strange noises that sounded like a flat. In desperation I pulled into a nameless Spanish town on the outskirts of Riverside, forgotten except for the Blue Diamond cafe with its amazing home-made tortillas and vegan taco. It is a universal truth that a man's foot is genetically predisposed to check for flats by kicking tyres and a quick poke determined there was no deflation. Now the Spark was a lovely, sound car with all sorts of digital mod cons, but it did have little tyres and a propensity to reverberate any unevenness in the road, and surprisingly some of the highways were quite uneven. Over the two weeks we got used to its quirks and capacities, its vibrations and, spookily, occasional incursions into my iplayer podcasts via its bluetooth connection. It became our mobile restaurant, washing line, and extra cupboard space.

The open road of Californian desert let us test the Spark’s capacity for speed and the surreal wonders of cruise control (which I eventually learnt is rubbish on anything but flat and straight). It even managed a little off road excursion into the back lanes of Joshua Tree as we tried to find our accommodation for a night: earth bag adobe pods made by Lisa, an artist who also makes medicine drums. The village turns out to be a mini-Venice Beach with a hipster coffee roaster who knew what a flat white is, and a cafe that serves tofu scramble. It’s that kind of place; full of seekers of quiet, big skies with hearts called to the light, space and ethereal forests of rocky outcrops and spikey yucca. The pods are surprising comfortable, even for the 6’ 1” of the Navigator. We just about fit on the futon with half the swing door left open so we can fall asleep to the sound of nothing and the feel of a night with a piece of the day's heat still in it.

Heading for Death Valley National Park roads became even straighter. So straight I can over-take two semis and an SUV in one go and still have road to spare (despite the Navigator’s nervousness). In the search to be alone we pass hamlet after hamlet of trailers in the middle of nowhere, sharing space with big-eared black tailed jack rabbits. Dry lakes and wide valleys are interspersed with sage bush and grey clouds. Crushed and buckled geological layers mark the earthquakes of times past, as does the 'ghost town' of Calico.

In the present, we must skirt the blank spaces on the map that mark US Naval weapons’ testing grounds, and skim desolate junction towns like Baker, whose sole purpose is to refuel cars and people on the way to or from Las Vegas. The question of why some towns exist where they do becomes a conundrum to help pass the time. For example, why is Pahrump where it is, and how can it possibly survive on a diet of down-at-heel casinos and ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. It’s close enough to Area 51 that it can use aliens to advertise everything (and clearly fireworks are legal in Nevada along with casinos and prostitution). On the upside, if ever in need of a cheap feed you can't go past a casino buffet. It is subsidised by the Smoking Joes in the pit and at the slots. For all you can eat at $10.50, us and the poor of Pahrump load up for the next day on assorted braised and deep fried animal parts, a salad bar, pasta bar and sugar free peach pie and frozen custard (with sugar).

Thus fortified we entered the badlands in an apocalypse threatening one of the 18 days of rain this area has each year. Wind picked up the sand so that from a distance it looked like fog. Around the oasis of Furnace Valley is the desolation of white salt pans and baked clay streaked with red and green minerals. The wreck of the land is matched by that of deindustrialised America in the Panamint Valley. Trona, where even the trailer parks have given up, has seen much of its population move to nearby Ridgecrest, but the borax and salt processing plants remain. Belching smoke into a dark blue sky, it is unsurprising that Star Trek V and Planet of the Apes were shot in this location.

It is inevitable, perhaps desirable, that despite all the technology at our disposal, some driving days are just days of wrong turns and closed roads. Leaving Ridgecrest we attempted to cross the Sierra Nevada via Sherman Pass ... closed. Back to the main road to Kernville we tried another back route. Ignoring the 'road closed in 20 miles' sign we plough on to Johnsondale to find … the road closed. The locals seemed unsure why. Back to Kernville for lunch and another route over the mountain to flatlands and north to Three Rivers. 

In almost eight hours of driving, we pass through every conceivable geography: from high desert to rocky mountain, ravine and river, from pines, short and blackened by last year’s fires, to dense forest, to grass lands bright after good spring rains. Then foothills and ranches as we descend till the trees disappear into rolling bumps of grass that are eventually ironed out to plains of orange, olive and grape groves. Then back towards the east, upwards again, skirting dams and valleys, until Three Rivers at the entrance to Sequoia National Park.

We ask our Air BnB host about road closures ahead and she promises to check for us but not before first blaming 'the government'. This was not the first time we had heard 'the government' blamed for something ... generally a mysterious rule or inconvenience. We later spoke to the National Parks and Wildlife Service who gave us a pretty good rationale: snow, fire repairs, poor road conditions and they're sick of rescuing libertarians who ignore 'road closed' signs. It wasn’t until some days later, at Yosemite Point, that we were able to look across the Sierra Nevada and realized just how much snow was still up on the passes we had been trying to cross. The Spark would never have made it.

The excess of space in California also eventually resulted in an inevitable 'tried to do too much' day complete with a disagreement between digital and paper maps. Starting at 8am, and driving through a winding entrance into Sequoia National Park, we spent several hours walking with giants. There is no rushing time in this place. They are indeed unearthly, or perhaps too earthly, such is their size; sometimes in congress, at other times single sentinels. They warp our sense of scale and perspective and we become small, mewling creatures at their feet. Snow in places gathered in drifts and hollows to cover ancient root systems, while sonic frogs hid in bowers and woodpeckers axed into bodies with the impact of a gnat. General Sherman is 2,200 years old and has seen it all come and go several times by now. They are pretty much fire, drought and pest resistant.

Having been lost in the wood for several hours we then realized we still had miles of switchbacks to descend, through intermittent mist, sleet and rain, much of it unhelpfully stuck behind an SUV driver that, despite the power of the vehicle, didn’t seem to know how to drive it without riding the brakes. The Spark had enough and eventually overtook, only to be later passed by the same SUV on the flat freeway at 70 mph. Racing through Fresno, then a right turn north we realized I’d been driving four hours without a break (the Navigator has yet to get his licence). This required an emergency stop at a gas station for rations of something that was apparently food. At this stage another route is suggested by the paper map, duly taken, but then the digital map intervened with second thoughts. Human intervention went with the perfectly rational 'we're going forward and if the road is closed too bloody bad'. Proving yet again that Silicon Valley should not yet be allowed to let driverless cars on the road, paper won. The alternative route, from the southern entrance to Yosemite National Park, was not only faster but astonishingly beautiful.

The other area of potential conflict was who gets to recharge first. The modern road trip now apparently includes: one adapter/recharger, one laptop, one iPad, two iPhones, two electric toothbrushes, one camera battery, one runner's GPS. 24 hours in a day was barely enough to keep us both going.

Something about emerging from a tunnel into the Yosemite Valley restored perspective, with a glimpse of El Capitan on the left, waterfalls impolitely crashing down granite walls, the smell of pine permeating a cold mist, and deer wandering through the river valley, unworried, unhurried. There was no room for argument in the immensity of this space. The Spark was parked and forgotten for three days as we remembered our feet and our lungs.

From Yosemite there was just one final stop off in Napa Valley for a last night in the vineyards before heading back to San Francisco to drop our beloved Spark home. And it was on the way that, even after two weeks of driving, my nerve finally failed me. With back to back cars I couldn't bring myself to seamlessly merge from the slip lane onto the highway and had to hit the brakes to wait for a break in the traffic. Vehicles backed up behind me but there were only a few desultory honks. Even Californian drivers seem to realize there are limits to what a Spark and its driver can do.

Despite its excesses and the current political imbroglio, a road trip highlights the things we can still say the USA has contributed to civilization and that we could even think about adopting here in Britain:  

1. automated petrol dispensers (covering 1963 miles we spent just US$120 in petrol. No wonder everyone drives); 
2. enormous hotel rooms with shampoo AND conditioner; 
3. and customer service. 

Purchasing even an ice-cream entails half a dozen questions to make sure my preferences are honoured. Would I like a half scoop of each flavour and still pay for just one scoop (even if the scoops were the normal size we'd expect in the UK)? Yes please. And which flavour would I like on the bottom? The avocado and strawberry sorbet or the olive crisp and goat's cheese icecream? (actually I passed on the olive and goat ice cream and went for chocolate sorbet).

It is not possible that the culture that invented such customer service, and a Four Way intersection system based on politeness and care, could possibly vote a man for President who is all snarl and selfishness. I live in hope.

Hola, Señor el Capitan ...

Here then may be lived a life of the senses so pure, so untouched by any mode of apprehension but their own, that the body may be said to think. Each sense heightened to its most exquisite awareness is in itself total experience (Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain)

There are those places, probably seen in an old copy of National Geographic in a doctor’s surgery when you’re a kid, that just stay with you in your imagination until finally percolating into reality at the time of adulthood when you have an income, annual leave and a desire to track it down. Such for me is El Capitan, the world’s largest granite monolith in California's Yosemite National Park.

Admittedly, it was only when a couple of lads finally free-climbed it in 2015 that I remembered that this was a place that I wanted to see. It is also perhaps a testament to Yosemite’s abundance of remarkable landscapes that it took three days before we made the effort to stand at El Capitan's substantial base in awe and wonder.

The first attempt was stymied by mist and rain after a long driving day, arriving into the Park in the evening by which time the Navigator and I just wanted to find our ready pitched tent and go to sleep. Our campsite was near to the western trail-heads so it seemed easier the next day to grab an early morning hike after the birds helpfully provided an alarm clock at the crack of dawn. It is a brisk 8.7 km up to Nevada Falls, including 600 granite steps through red wood conifers, talus, mist and river thunder. The falls were raging spectacularly and to stand above them as they shot over the cliff generated wobbly legs and a precarious sense of fragility in contemplating how many seconds it would take to become part of the current and then the eco-system after a drop of hundreds of metres.

By the time I was coming down the crowds were assembling and the paths, especially at the lower levels and in the valley, were overflowing. The Navigator was by now also stirring from the tent and requiring an afternoon walk around Mirror Lake. Given the numbers of people that visit the Park there is a question of how to manage its cliffs, forests and rivers. Information boards suggest that the National Park Service now practices 'natural' land management; letting the wilderness manage itself as much as possible. This is in contrast to a past that saw private interests dam rivers, making Mirror Lake larger to attract more people to the 'saloon' and various other entertainments that used to run there.

But the only way ‘natural’ land management works is if the thousands of tourists staying and visiting every day are managed, and that is what Yosemite does on an impressive scale: sheltering, feeding, bathing, supplying, transporting, backpackers to high-end luxury visitors from a babel of destinations. The mess hall in our camp area alone (Half Dome Village) could seat almost 500 people. There is a small village for the workers and village supermarkets at either end of the valley stocked everything you would need, from firewood to souvenirs.

For the most part, we follow the rules. After 10pm the camp site quiets down with just the occasional banging of bear bins opening and closing. We stick to the paths. We queue for the shuttle buses. We don’t light fires. I did regrettably break my own rule of never using the end stall in a communal shower if it contains the only drain, with my feet in contact with hundreds of other people's soap scum, band aids and hair balls. But the one area of open rebellion seemed to be the desire to feed the wildlife. Not the bears of course. It seemed to me a redundant instruction to ask visitors not to feed or try to take food away from a bear. We religiously locked away anything that could even remotely attract a bear, although I was disappointed not to see one and had to be satisfied with a coyote appearing for a bit of scavenging. And the deers weren't an issue; they just meandered around the camps grazing, not giving a toss who was taking their photograph and how close they were. 

The real culprits were the ground squirrels. Despite the signed pleas, people could not seem to stop feeding them in return for the ‘too cute’ digital reproduction (they seemed to have learnt how to strike a pose). 

I avoided the squirrels as we have enough in London, but there is a larger question of how to photograph a place already so mediated, not least by Ansel Adams. Today a landscape is not complete without a selfie in the foreground, and I was asked half a dozen times each day to take portraits on smart phones and iPads with waterfall, forest, mountain, lake in the background, a modern day etching of ‘X was here’. My own images are mostly bleached out by the wrong-time-of-day light. Without the patience of Ansel Adams the reproduction of Yosemite can only ever be faded, but at least we had the joy of not having internet in the campsite so the images are stored until home.

By the end of Day Two we still hadn’t seen El Capitan as a full day was needed to get to Yosemite Point, a three hour hike up innumerous switchbacks to the top of Yosemite Falls and beyond. Given the statistics for obesity in the USA, it was fantastic to see so many families with young children on these more difficult trails. We ran into Beckley and his mum on their way to a lookout:

Me: 'He's come a long way on his own'

Mum: 'Yes, last year I carried him half way but this year I decided he could do it himself'.

This is a three year old walking up 60 rock strewn switchbacks. Admittedly he was having a strop when we ran into them, having thrown his hat on the ground signaling his refusal to go any further, but his mum was having none of it, telling him to pick it up and get on with it. 

At the top of Yosemite Point we came across a Japanese family, two adults, two children, already there and picnicking. This means they left VERY early. The two kids were older than Beckley but less than ten. They had climbed the first set of 60 switchbacks, then the even longer set of switchbacks to the top of the falls, then the short but snowy section to the Point. And they looked like they were lunching in Victoria Park.

As it was still spring break, the Park was also shared by an older cohort of young people; college students who seem to have taken dressing for hiking to new levels. In the morning, a young woman spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom adjusting her beanie (which it's too hot for) and spraying stray hair to make sure there was just the right amount spilling out from under the beanie's ribbing. Feeling slightly frumpy I managed to wash my face and smear on sunblock, running fingers through my hair knowing that I’ll be keeping my hat on all day. I also managed, by sheer accident, to coordinate the colour of my T-shirt with the contrast stripe of my hiking shoes and was very pleased with myself as a result.

And so finally, Day 3, it was time for El Capitan, although it wasn’t much more than a moment. It felt slightly disrespectful to just pull over in the car by the side of the road to stare for a few minutes and take a few pictures, but the sheer size of El Capitan precludes any foreplay. Our ten minute presence is a blip in the rock’s 100 million year time line. Like all mountains, to walk to its summit, to feel the rock with each step, is the only way to really pay one’s respects. So we piled back into the car, talking of return one day, and headed out of the Park on Route 120, catching a final majestic vision of the valley in the rear view mirror.

Running Away from Home

I can’t complain about a job that takes me to places like Hawaii and India, but combining it with running has its drawbacks. Once in training for an event it must be committed to, and in combination with a job that is also mobile it seems that I can no longer get away with one carry-on bag. Trainers and running gear must be packed along with water belt, gels, running watch, iPod and rechargers. In addition to the excess baggage, the jogger in transit also has to contend with conditions that may not always be ideal, requiring adjustments in order to mitigate any propensity to embarrassment.

In Jaipur, for example, there was a 400m running track around the hotel grounds that led nowhere (indicative perhaps of India's infrastructure). Heat and dust seeped into everything as attempts at a degree of modesty were also necessary; my baggiest shorts over knee length leggings is never going to be impressive. While I’ve always admired women who can still look gorgeous at the end of a marathon (like 'glamour' model Jordan, who I happened to run the Brighton Half with a few years back … well, not so much ‘with’ as a fair distance away from her bodyguard), I always end up looking like a stumpy, soggy mop at the best of times. To go beyond the bounds of the hotel grounds meant attracting more stares and the possibility of encounter with the ever-present stray dog against which no joggers' legs stand a chance. So a running machine became my best friend, in a one room gym facing the pool and lawns on which expensive tourists sunned themselves while pervy peacocks leered in through the window. Clocking up kilometres on a running machine is about as exciting as watching an odometer click over.

At the other end of the spectrum, Honolulu, I realized I had forgotten what space feels like after years of living in London, and this particular space is filled with smells of damp loam, Pacific salt, frangipani, wet neoprene, board wax, sun screen lotion, and sweat. An ambient soundtrack of mechanical growling was provided by US Air Force cargo planes taking off and landing, in tune with growling grey skies. It was embarrassing to have to confess to an Hawai'ian that I didn't know it was the rainy season, hence the amount of sweat (nor that the volcanoes were on another island). Just as well it's a reverse time zone to the UK. Wide awake at 5am meant I may as well get up, put on my running gear and get out for a long run while it was still cool. And no need to worry about being alone at that time. The streets and main roads along the coast were full of joggers and cyclists throwing themselves up Diamond Head before sunrise.

It is a sign of Hawai'i's status as a desirable retirement home that it was a mass of brown, soft, leathery flesh that I joined. Going at a slow pace, we pottered past a memorial service on the Honolulu promenade where the homeless waited for the crowds to arrive so they could begin their day's survival. Birdlife, cardinal red and pointy-headed, accompanied the route, while my angry toe became angrier in the heat, and all the time upwards towards the crest of the old volcano that marks too much of my childhood television. I had an uncontrollable urge to yell '5-0' or 'book 'em Danno' every time I ran by a police car. I ineptly attempted to find one dollar for the entrance fee to the Park by patting my pocketless outfit, but the ranger eventually lent it to me. It's worth the climb for the view and the admiring looks of Japanese tourists who jumped out of the way as I sweated past.

The theme of hills continued in San Francisco recently. San Fran joggers must be world champions at hill running with some streets sloping up to 31.5%. Running here is an exercise in masochistic calf work out. It is also a city marked by: 

1. cheeriness as fellow joggers acknowledge the loveliness of the day; 
2. elastic distances as the ocean moves beyond actual map coordinates (it’s those hills); 
3. clouds of marijuana at eight in the morning; 
4. homeless people camping in all available parks and crevices of this high tech, digital city.

That same mix of despair and optimism marked out what is now my favourite jogging track: Venice Beach. Another early start required to beat the prescient heat of a spring day, and along the beach the crowds started to gather for a collective paean to the outdoor life of California: volleyball and basketball courts, gymnastics pitches, muscle beach gym.

I wondered at first why Venice Beach was called a freak show, but then realised I'd mistakenly jogged to Santa Monica (turning right instead of left). Heading back along the promenade there was at some point a momentary crossing of an event horizon and then tumbling head-long into wonderland dodging every conceivable form of mobility: bicycles pimped with luminous wheels, skates and skate boards of all sizes and varieties propelled by human and dog, both wearing sunglasses, hoverboards, segways, other joggers, surfers, artists, musicians and the muscle bound. Past cafés, synagogues, medicinal marijuana, sunglasses, and knickers with slogans like ‘It’s not going to spank itself’ writ large across the arse. Down to the pier where the fishers try their luck in momentary respite, and then back into it again as noise and light and all the other shards of dysmorphia propelled my legs along the sandy boardwalk. Two hours of moving bliss.

Outside the cities, there have been many assorted hills, desert and deserted roads jogged along, skirting trailer parks with invisible dogs and people in search of a life off-grid. There was an aborted attempt to have a run in the high Sierra until I spotted the helpful signs warning of mountains lions’ taste for solo joggers. Running away from home may be occasionally inconvenient, even slightly mortifying at times, but it is always inevitably a slow engagement with the life of a place.