Travels With David, pt. VII

June 20-21, 2001: Fortuna, CA - San Francisco

Morning comes early at the Best Western motel in Fortuna, California. The clattering and thumping of vacationing tourists fills the air, with car trunks slamming shut, and young children wailing "But I don't want to sit next to Edwina! She keeps sticking her finger in my belly button! It's gross!" No doubt David is sleeping through it all in the next room, but it wakes me up and reminds me that I've got three hours to pick up e-mail, make some calls back to the East Coast, and take care of a few other pressing business demands before our drive resumes. A snag develops, one that we've not encountered thus far in our travels: outgoing calls on my cell phone are blocked, with an unfriendly recorded message indicating that the local cell phone overlords of Fortuna, California don't feel like dealing with my service provider, Verizon. Five years ago, this was such a common experience that it made cell phones almost unusable for anyone who traveled a lot on business; now it's almost unheard of. We must be in a very remote, God-forsaken part of California, even though we're only 285 miles north of San Francisco.

Aside from this minor nuisance, the morning gets off to a reasonably good start. Our departure routine is now a clockwork ritual: at 9:30, I call David's room to wake him up, and at 10:00 he staggers down to the car, where I've got the trunk lid and passenger door open. He throws his suitcase and guitar into the trunk, makes whatever arrangements are necessary to the "rack" situated in the back of the card holding the CD selections, and then slumps into the passenger seat. It's a nice, cool, breezy morning, the odometer is showing an 2,500 miles since we left Taos last week, and we're looking forward to a scenic drive down the California coastline. This requires first heading down highway 101, past the little towns of Scotia, Weott, and Miranda, together with a few minor detours to see some of the local redwood trees.

We make a quick stop at Garberville to fill up the gas tank and grab a snack, and David turns on the CD player as we pull out of town. Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits album accompanies us to the little town of Leggett, where we find a tiny, winding road that leads over several ridges and steep hills to Highway 1 on the coast itself. An indication of the tortuous nature of this part of the trip is that, even though it was only 20 or 30 miles as the crow flies, Leonard Cohen had finished crooning all of his songs, and we were half-way through the Shirelle's Greatest Hits before we finally saw the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

From there, it was another 50 miles down the empty coastline, along steep, winding roads, and mile after mile of empty beaches, jagged rock outcroppings, and steep cliffs. But it wasn't all beaches: from time to time, we passed long stretches of meadows and pastures -- some with cattle, and some with hay that had already been cut and baled in neat, tidy rows that stretched off into the distance. It's hard to see in a small picture, but if you click on the thumb-nail photo to the left, you'll get a slightly better sense of the rows of hay bales, and the water off in the background. And yes, that is a human being sitting in the little yellow car, waiting for his photo-obsessed father to stop wasting his time and get back in the damn car. By the way, the photo also gives you a pretty good sense of how parched all the hills and meadows were, uniformly, all the way down the coast.

We finally reached Fort Bragg and decided that it was a good place to stop for lunch. A local Denny's restaurant presented itself, and we marched inside; I was prepared to do battle with yet another obstinate wait-person (see pt. VI of this saga if you don't know what I'm talking about), but was pleased to learn that yes, they did have Diet Coke, and would be pleased to serve it to me. Halfway through lunch, David offered a stunning revelation: it turns out that this was the first time, ever, that he had eaten in Denny's. I asked him if we could tell the waitress, so that she would know how lucky she was to have had the honor of serving his first such meal; he demurred.

"Maybe we could tell the Mayor," I suggested.

"How do you know that a town named Fort Bragg even has a mayor?" he countered.

"Well, if not, then maybe the Commanding General," I responded. "We could get it published in the daily newspaper. It's probably the most exciting thing that has happened in this town in years!"

We finally decided that the event would have to go unnoticed and uncelebrated, something to be known only to David and me and whoever has the misfortune of stumbling upon this Web page. We finished up our meal, paid the bill, and climbed back in the car. David turned on the CD player again, and it was time to listen to a Beach Boys album that I had never heard: Pet Sounds. Trust me: this is not the California surfing music that you remember from the 1960s -- assuming that you were even alive in the 1960s. It's interesting music, but it's very different from "Good Vibrations" and songs of that ilk.

It turned out to be a long, long afternoon. We navigated past Albion and Point Arena, along an endless succession of narrow, incredibly contorted hairpin curves, and unexpected delays caused by highway construction crews repairing the damage from winter storms. The Beach Boys sailed off into the sunset, and the CD player switched to Whenever and Ever Again, by Ben Folds Five. I was concentrating so hard on the driving that I didn't pay attention to most of the music; but there was one hilarious, and mildly obscene, song about a young man's insistent demand that his girlfriend (for lack of a better term) give his money back, and his black t-shirt, too. There's more to it than that, but you'll have to get the album and listen to it yourself.

Meanwhile, we drove on through Gualala, Sea Ranch, and Stewart Point. "What do the residents of Gualala call themselves?" I asked David. "Gualalians? Gualoons? Gualots?" We considered the possibilities and finally gave up. Meanwhile, the music selection moved on to the Turtles' 20 Greatest Hits, and I was pleased to hear some songs, once again, to which I still remembered a few words. I considered singing along with the band on a couple of the tracks, but I was afraid that David would open the door and jump out to escape the awful sound. As a student, he's still covered on our family insurance policy, but I couldn't remember whether the policy included self-inflicted injuries caused by escaping a parent's off-key singing ... so I decided to keep my mouth shut. I'm sure it was a wise decision, and when David grows up to be the Grand High Poobah of his chosen field, the world will thank me.

By the time we stopped for a quick snack in Jenner, we decided that we had had enough of scenic coastal highways. We had originally planned to follow route 1 all the way down to Stinson Beach and directly onto the Golden Gate Bridge, but we were suffering sensory overload from too much gorgeous scenery -- so we climbed wearily back into the car, navigated through Bodega Bay to the sounds of The Orange Juice playing what David described as a "self-titled" album, and found our escape route just past Valley Ford.

Some 20 miles off to the East, we linked up with Highway 101 near Petaluma, for the final 45 miles down to San Francisco. By now, the music had changed once again, and we were listening to Robyn Hitchcock's Moss Elixir. Never heard of the guy before, though it appears he has turned out lots of albums over the past few years. I really like his music, but after 9 days of being reasonably patient about this whole musical education, I can't help asking: where on earth do they come up with the names for these albums?

By now, it's after 6 PM, and the traffic is heavy -- moving fairly steadily, but three or four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic in both directions. The traffic is heaviest going out of the city, but as we approach the Golden Gate Bridge, there's a two-mile traffic jam that makes us crawl along. I had intended to stop at the entrance of the bridge, to take a picture of the San Francisco skyline, but the traffic is too heavy, and we're too tired. Instead, we listen to Bruce Springsteen's hoarse voice regaling us with selections from Born to Run, and finally make it across the bridge, and into the city.

It takes a little while to navigate to the top of Nob Hill to the Fairmont Hotel, where we've decided to spend two nights in San Francisco. I couldn't remember whether the hotel was situated on California Street or one of the adjacent streets -- but it's hard to get lost when all you have to do is navigate to the top of the tallest hill in this section of town. So we finally reach the hotel, turn over the car to an unctuous valet attendant, negotiate the appropriate details with the desk clerk, and slump into our respective rooms.

I spend the next day making phone calls, visiting the Federal Reserve Bank for a brief meeting with the bank's CIO, and catching up on e-mail. David spends the morning catching up on his sleep, and the afternoon walking up and down the steep hills of San Francisco to explore the sights and sounds and the local record shops. He returns at the end of the day with an interesting piece of information: his own newly-released album, Detectives, is available in one of the local record shops; not only that, he was also able to find it in a record shop in Portland.

In any case, it's been nice to have a quiet day, away from the highway, before we resume our journey tomorrow. Thank you, David.

Continue with pt. VIII of this series ...