Thursday, September 04, 2003
Santa Fe to Los Angeles is a long way – 13 hours’ driving, maybe 900 miles or so. And so empty, when your tank is still half full you start worrying if you’ve got enough petrol to get you to the next gas station.
At the halfway point, Flagstaff, Arizona, is a little oasis of high country civility in a ridiculous amount of nothingness. A college town with a good walkable downtown, its pine trees and coolness make it the acceptable face of Arizona.
We stayed in a motel run by a stern-faced Russian just off Route 66, and were running parallel to the old mother road most of the way.
Just before we crossed into California, we saw the signs for London Bridge, bought to sit on a lake out here. Rumour has it the Arizonans thought they were buying Tower Bridge, rather than the nondescript 3-span version that showed up.
In Needles, CA the woman at the counter in the gas station was explaining her education plans. ‘I’m at junior college now, but it’s hard to find the time to study. When I finish there, I’m going to UCLA to do criminal psychotherapy. I’ve wanted to go to UCLA since I was five, but I’ll have to get better grades.
‘But I’ve got work too. I’m 21 now. I plan to finished at UCLA by the time I’m 31.’
The Mojave is daunting. More space than is good for a European. The SO loves it, the freedom and uncompromising nature of the place, but all I could see was the countless ways you could die out here. Humans aren’t meant to be there.
From life in Britain and Ireland, you know that the worst that can happen is that you’ll have to walk for a few hours in the rain if your equipment fails (bike, car, whatever). Too many people have lived too long in this temperate place for you to be left in serious trouble even if you’re only a little bit prepared.
In the desert, when we passed people stuck on the side of the road with a puncture or with the bonnet of the car up, you could imagine how badly things could go wrong, even if you took every precaution. On the Interstate, they were probably going to be fine, but once you were off that, it could be very serious.
And even after Barstow, the desert rolls into a set of hills near Edwards Air Force Base, and the joshua trees on the side of road had me singing ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’.
Through the hills with the traffic LA busy, and you’re into the San Fernando Valley. A few minutes later, we were turning off at Sunset Boulevard for the hotel. It’s just desert then city. As abrupt as turning a page. No rolling hills or forests as the desert subsides. One minute it’s red dust, and the next it’s all palm trees and grass so intensively tended you know it’s the result of illegal labour.
It’s easy to image all of southern California to be like LA or San Diego – perfect weather, ocean and green plants and double soya lattes all round. But it doesn’t take much to be out in the big empty continent again.
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