Hello, Pacific Ocean!

I pulled out of our Tahoe City driveway at 5:40 in the morning, took a left, then another, and in no time was heading up the ramp to westbound I-80. It was cold enough going over the Donner Pass that I not only had to roll up the windows, but, for the first time the whole trip, I turned on the heat. Good sized patches of snow were close by on both sides of the interstate.

Then down, down, down into San Juaquin Valley. I raced past Sacramento and soon climbed up the straw-colored grass hills that always make me think of John Steinbeck. I tried to use my FastLane transponder on the Bay Bridge, but it (predictably) didn't work, and I had to fork over the six dollars in cash. I hopped out on to the roof of the SFO parking garage at 9:15.

I was able to get some summer school work done before Marshall arrived. With my traveling partner, my Sancho Panza, safely strapped in beside me, we turned west to complete the east-to-west portion of my odyssey. We grabbed some sandwiches and tee shirts at George's Zoo, a favorite deli that we frequented three years ago during our San Francisco stay for my cousin Taylor's wedding, then drove the last eight or so blocks to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. I pulled out my Nalgene bottle of Revere Beach water, waded shin-deep into the surf, paused for Sancho Panza to ready the camera, and poured. Then, on my son's suggestion, I refilled with Pacific water to take back to the Atlantic.
Marshall was worried that I was going through this monumental moment a little too mechanically, as if I was simply ticking off items from a "to do" list. Maybe he was right, so I slowed down a bit to give myself a time for reflection. And wouldn't you know it, emotions welled up in me. I thought back on my last days driving, on the magnificence of our country, of my want to do this kind of trip for decades, of the dramatic differences between my five day journey and those of Lewis and Clark, the early settlers of the west, the Pony Express riders, the refugees from the Dust Bowl. Before I knew it, the Revere Beach water was joined by my own salty tears falling from my cheeks into the Pacific.

Okay, that's not true. I didn't cry, and I didn't think of most of those things. But a pause for reflection was a good idea, and I was happy to have done it.

With the first half of the trip done—my Mazda covered about 3550 miles in going from Hopkinton to the edge of the continent—we turned back west after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.
For the first time since I left last Saturday night, I encountered traffic, lots and lots of traffic. The expected one hour trip from the bay to the capital city required over two hours of sitting in the car. We got dreadful directions to the capitol building from a guy at a convenience store ("Get off at...Jefferso-, uh, the capital mall? Turn on 8th...or is it 10th street? You can go left or right; left or right doesn't matter...Uhhhh....But 10th...uh, the capi...uh....Jefferson is fine, I guess. But at the mall go...left? And you'll be there. Okay? Got it? Would you like to me write it down?") but somehow found the seat of the state government. Marshall and I agreed that it was a perfect capitol for California: stately and impressive but not overdone, with a very attractive botanical garden on the grounds. We liked it.

We also liked the apparently unhinged man preaching the gospel in the garden. Young, somewhat disheveled, and overweight, he was delivering God's message to absolutely nobody, so we decided to move closer to better hear what he had to say. As we approached, he seemed to get very nervous. He stopped talking, pulled his Bible up to cover his face, and sneaked glances in our direction. He turned completely away from us as we passed, and only after we were safely seventy-five yards away did he resume his sermon. One or two other people walked past him without his appearing to care a bit, but when Marshall and I walked back on the same sidewalk, he raised his Bible again, walked deeper into the park, and watched us suspiciously as we made our way back to the car. I considered taking a picture, but he was clearly already unnerved by us, and turning the Canon PowerShot SD20 on him would surely have sent him even further over the edge.

The rest of the return to Tahoe was uneventful. Traffic finally cleared, we climbed back up and over the Donner Pass, and joined the crowd in the rented ski cottage.