Eureka!

Not too long after the New Year, I said to Adorable Wife, "As long as I'm off we should go to LA and see your brother before he moves back here. Drive out. You have vacation. Why not?"


She couldn't come up with a reason not to, which took me a little by surprise, so we decided to try it. I had expected not a "NO" but a "HELL NO" because Wife cares little for excursions by automobile. Thus stunned, we made a few calculations regarding where to stay and how far to drive each day and what the weather would be (pretty much wore out the Weather Channel website.) And then, on the appointed day, we left. You couldn't ask for a better trip.

We were gone ten days and had nine days of sunshine. Across the great Southwest, it was actually warm. Amarillo, on the first day out, was above 60. Kingman, Arizona, our second night's stop, was 65. Every day in Los Angeles was 80 or better; it was actually hot one afternoon. We had nice accommodations in each place we stayed overnight, including Uncle Jim's house, and never had a bad meal. It was a nice trip in every way possible and leaves me with a few observations.


*Except for local freeways here and in LA, you only need three highways to get there: I-35, I-40 and I-15. Very simple, and we didn't even take a map. We should have, just to keep tabs on where we were and what town was coming up next. But we didn't anticipate much highway construction and gambled.


*The interstate highways are very good, even in cold-weather states like Kansas and Oklahoma. In fact, the freeways in Kansas City are superior to those in LA for smoothness and roominess, but obviously don't take the beating that the cousins in California endure daily. Even on our worst days, the traffic in Missouri is far better than what the Californians grapple with. LA has no rush hour. It's just a mess to drive in all the time.


*All of what is called "LA" is incredibly populous. It's a long ride to the east before you begin seeing open space; pretty much up in Cajon Pass. There are just too many people there, too much traffic and no where to park. Uncle Jim's apartment has a gated garage which was undergoing repairs one day. If you took your car out it had to stay out until after five. That isn't good because there is very little street parking and on Tuesday there is no street parking because they sweep the streets. It gets to be a bit of a hassle, but if you live there and never lived anywhere else you wouldn't know about how roomy and low-maintenance America really is.


*Los Angeles TV reporters are easily mistaken for movie stars except that the reporter babes are far better looking. Seriously, where do they come up with these gorgeous women to cover the daily school shootings? I was stunned. Even the weather was aired by babes, one of whom seemed challenged just to stand up on her platform shoes and balance out her big fake boobs. Well, it is LA. Entertainment capital of the world, you know.


*California is unreasonably expensive. Gas was $3.45 or more. Deli turkey was $12 a pound. A two bedroom apartment with a parking space is over $2200 a month in a decent neighborhood. Forget buying a house; nice suburban homes such as you find in KC north or Johnson County for $200,000 weigh in around $750 large (and up) in Torrance. I didn't even ask about the property taxes.


*Latin influence is even more noticeable that three years ago, the last time we traveled there. Cali has always had it, but now there is more. I guess it all seems to work, and I can't put my finger on it, but there is just more.

*The Mojave in winter is certainly easier to inhabit than in July, but it seems wrong to wear a jacket. It is still just as foreboding and impressive in the 40-degree range and no less beautiful. I marvel at how anyone got across there to the coast before the railway was built through.

*Route 66 is alive and well in the five states through which we and it travelled together, although we stuck to I-40 due to time constraints. The next time we'll take as much of 66 as we can and make it the destination rather than LA. Doing that we will be able to stop at Jack Rabbit, Bluewater, Sky City, and Clines Corners. We can explore Tucumcari, Albuquerque, Grants, Winslow and Barstow as we wish. Long pieces of the Old Road are still out there as frontage roads or secondary routes, but there just the same.

All went well until the last night on the way home. We attended 5:00 mass in Amarillo at St. Thomas the Apostle, arriving uncharacteristically early. A family of five came in and sat next to us, two little boys and a girl toddler. The younger boy was squeamish and uncomfortable until he finally erupted in a magnificent show of vomiting as the homily began. He fouled his mom's stylish black dress and much of the nearby pew and carpet. Adorable Wife immediately went to DefCon 2 and left in search of help. The mom sat stunned with her hands cupped together, full of junior's puke and completely helpless. After getting his bearings, the dad scooped up the offending child and headed for rest-room solace but poor mom was immobilized until Adorable Wife reappeared with a highway-department-sized trash can and some rags. With a disgusting SPLAT mom dumped the festering and fetid contents into the can and set about to cleaning herself up, eventually gathering the rest of the brood and filing out.

After that and in need of some pampering, we treated ourselves to a nice steak dinner at the Big Texan Steak Ranch. Big Texan is a tourist-oriented, barn-like steak house which offers a well-known challenge: If you can eat a 72 oz. (that's four and a half pounds) sirloin, baked potato, roll, butter, salad and shrimp cocktail in an hour, it's yours free. If you can't, it costs $50. They say only one of each eight contestants succeeds. We settled for a couple of normal steaks and paid for them ourselves, but the place was very entertaining and the food was great. This shocked me because I usually don't expect much from highly hyped establishments that feed on travellers. I would go back again, or if I lived in Amarillo, often.

Thus fortified, we returned home the next day with cold and snow slowly reappearing as we worked our way back north. It's odd how, after only a few moments back in the house, that it seemed we were never actually gone. But we were, and I have the credit card receipts to prove it. And I think we're both ready to go again!