SURREAL DRIVE

4:00 AM. Time to get up. I’m usually up this time of day. Force of habit, I guess. But this night I must drive 150 miles from our home in Helendale (Silver Lakes) down to Duarte, for an interview/appointment at 8:00 with a surgeon at City of Hope. This will be a two hour trip, so I will get there about 6:00. But if I had left at 6:00, the trip would take me four hours, due to traffic. Thus, the paradox of driving in the middle of the night.

I’ll miss my sleep. If I usually get up at four, I am back in bed by five. But not this morning.

I hit the road after a speedy bit of getting ready. I am not like my wife, who takes an hour to do this. In five minutes of waking up, I kiss her goodbye and I’m gone.

Driving out through the lakes, I see the full moon setting in the west, over the water. Smoke from summer fires have made it bright orange. I wish my iPhone had a decent camera, so I could stop and get a shot, but I am on the clock anyway. Out past the entrance, into the desert, past the double tracks. Lucky there are no two-mile long freight trains out this time of night.

I wend my little Focus wagon onto the two-lane heading south. The land is totally black, without even Botts Dots on the road to mark the center line or edges of the old asphalt. I go into a dream, sort of. Not really, even though this night driving is surreal. This trip is real, and those dark sides of the road are deep sand. I would not want to drop my wheels into that, so I concentrate on driving in my lane. Not too many potholes in this old pavement, thankfully. But I reflect on the basic insanity of driving a narrow, snaky road in the dark, only by headlight.

In the daylight this road is full of traffic, but now I am alone in the night, with just feeble headlights (set on High) to guide me. I increase my speed to 70 mph.

(My car is a 2003 Ford Focus wagon with the 2.3 liter, 168 bhp Zetec engine. IOW, its fast, even though I don’t drive it that fast. The speedometer goes to 140. And this engine in a wagon makes it a stealth car, because it might go fast but you never see it, since its just a wagon.)

I have my trusty iPhone with me, as always. I love this thing. I have a playlist called “All Of Them” and I play it on shuffle. (Ventura Highway is playing).

My iPhone’s Belkin dock recently broke apart at the end, where it goes into my power port (nee, cigarette lighter), so I just put the sound on, on my iPhone and put it into my shirt pocket, upside down. (This is the amazing part as I am nearly totally deaf. I wear a left hearing aid, and with it I can hear the music on my iPhone’s three tiny built-in speakers perfectly. Its like I don’t hear the speakers, but rather the iPhone telegraphs music directly into my brain. Awesome! I only have it at nine-tenths volume. Upside down in my pocket, facing forward, I get the full effect of the music right into my left ear.)
(Slip Sliding Away)

The freeway is only ten miles away, so I’m already there.
(Wichita Lineman) (Black Water)

I stop for a large iced coffee at the brightly lit Arco next to the on-ramp. The gas lanes are spacious here, for all the semis coming through. There is a crazy baker here at a kiosk inside the Food Mart, where I get a hot and fresh baked chocolate iced long-john for less than a buck. I’m set for breakfast, and I’m on the on-ramp in minutes.

Again, there is no traffic, but I regretfully turn off my iPhone, and settle for some FM station on the car radio. The road noise is too loud at 90, to hear my own music. Later, I’ll turn on the Maps app on my iPhone, so I can find the right off-ramp at my destination, but for now, it is off.

I remember how for decades I did the daily drive in rush hour traffic. Sometimes I pushed some real junk down the road, and back then when we were starting out together and the kids were small, there was never enough money for things like car insurance. But now I am fully covered, and besides, I am only doing this dance once, and then I will be back home in a place that knows no rush hours.

I am getting traffic now, so I move over to the right and dance with the semis, while the through traffic flies by on the left. My trusty old Focus is six years old now, so I don’t push it as I used to, when it was new. I used to be one of those anonymous drivers hitting a hundred plus in the left lanes, on trips like this. Trips I could count on my fingers, they were so few these last days.

I wend through Victorville on the 15. I barely can keep up with the trucks this time of the morning, but I am already in the right lane, so they go around me, one lane over on the left. “Sheese, these guys are insane, driving so fast with something so big!” I think to myself. Some country music is playing on the radio. Good. Country music will keep me awake. Its 4:30 and already I am getting sleepy. That part is not good.

The 15 is a major artery from Las Vegas to San Bernardino and parts beyond. It is a great six-lane, with smooth pavement, and well-defined lanes with ribbons of Botts Dots. “I could drive this in my sleep,” I think to myself. But I suppress the thought of sleep once again.

I feel safe in the right lane. When did I get to have the mind-set of an old man, where I seek the safety of the slow lane? I’m not that old, surely. The trucks thin out. Most of them are getting off at the truck stops, to rest and refuel. The highway is open as we go down into the Cajon Pass. There is no fog at this time, thankfully, else I would have to drop to under 15 mph to snake through the clouds, down into the LA basin.

The speed increases as we go down the hill. I am hitting 100 at points, since there are no trucks in the slow lane, and traffic has picked up. Its 4:45 and people are going to work. There are a ton of big pickups in the fast lane, going faster yet. “These things are so big! Gas guzzlers with just one person inside. I’m glad I don’t have to feed one of these, or make their monthly payments. And the biggest ones are the new Toyota full sized trucks!

We are down the hill, so our mutual speed is a bit more sane, but just barely. The legal limit is 70, but no one drives that. How could they, unless they wanted to purposely impede traffic? All the lanes are full now, and it is starting to get to be bumper-to-bumper. We are all in a fantastic dance as we keep in step together down into the 215, heading west. Its not even an hour and I’m halfway (75 miles).

At exactly five o’clock, I turn onto the Foothill freeway (210). My destination is the 210 and the 605, where the hospital is in a small cusp of these expressways. The traffic picks up, but the mighty 210 has many more lanes than normal, with side lanes for merging from on-ramps. I change the station to the Wave (94.7), where the soft Jazz is Brassy!

No chance to doze with this music. They are trying to keep people awake with this loud, obnoxious noise, and it is working. I need it too. My eyes suddenly quit tracking, and I have to shake myself to get my mind focused on this moving mass of metal and flesh.

Again, the surrealness of all of this hits me. It cannot be real. I am still at home asleep, and dreaming all of it, right? I can feel the warmth of the down comforter we sleep under. Surely this is all just a dream.

I see motorcycles now. “How insane to drive one of these in this traffic!” I think to myself once more. I’m having old-man’s thoughts again. There was a time I would have thought nothing about getting on one of these and going anywhere, regardless of traffic, road conditions or weather. When did I lose that spontaneity?

Another cycle goes by, with blue tail lights. One of California’s finest – a CHP officer, riding the Bott Dots in the double yellow line between the carpool and fast lane. He has my respect, putting his life on the line this way, any time of the day or night. Everyone doesn’t slow down at his presence. We are all over the legal speed limit, but he ignores us, speeding on, looking for someone even more insane than we, lane weaving, or doing triple digits in the fast or the carpool lane.

My eyes lose their tracking again. I put on the air conditioner, to make to cold inside. The heater is not my friend now. I also put down my window, but quickly put it back up. The air out there smells strongly of diesel fumes, and I have enough problems as it is with my lungs. Living in the desert, there is no smog, but here I am in the thick of it. My respect, and pity, increases for all those bikers and patrolmen.

The pavement changes. Now it is concrete, cut with thousands of grooves to prevent hydroplaning during sudden downpours. “It never rains in California, but babe, they don’t tell ya, it pours, girl, it pours.”

Gato Barbieri is on the Wave (“94-7, the Waa-aa-ve”). His legendary “Europa” is playing. I can groove to this. That song is on my iPhone. I get it out, this seminal Apple device, and set up by touch the Map app, so that I can see where I am going when I need it. These freeways always go exactly where I need to be, for some unknowable reason, and this time is no different. My off ramp is blinking on the iPhone, and I’ve got 20 miles to go. The iPhone goes back in my shirt pocket.

I set my shoulders and shake my head to clear the cobwebs. I really miss my sleep, but I console myself that I can nap in a narrow plastic chair in the reception area of the hospital. Nah, I will probably stay awake, hitting the snack machines and playing Shanghai on my iPhone, to pass the time. Or perhaps I will read one of the SciFi novels I downloaded recently (Asimov or Niven?) I reach for the coffee cup, but it is all gone.

Traffic still increases, but our common speed has not diminished much. We are down to 70, and we all still drive insanely close to the person in front of us. Whoever drops back to a safe distance will invite someone to pull in and fill that gap. The slow lane in now filling with decrepit pickups, pulling metal wireframe trailers; migrant gardeners going to their client’s lawns and gardens. The slow lane is becoming a real slow lane.

I move over one lane to the left to keep my speed up. I think to myself how stupid to be in a hurry to an appointment that is hours away. I could drop into that slow lane, doing 45 mph, and be safer, But old man or not, I am just not that kind of guy. So I hurry along, bumper-to-bumper, lock-step in this surreal traffic dance. Welcome to the future, the 21st Century. Its not what you thought it would be, is it? At least we’ve got our rocket cars our Apple Computers, and These Fantastic (iPhone) Devices.

The exit lane is exactly where my iPhone said it would be, and suddenly I am here, slowing down into a 25 mph entrance to a well-gardened oasis that is the City of Hope. I hope this doctor here can zap these tumors I have. I’ve been on chemo for six years now, on and off, knocking these things down, but never killing them. That is yet another insane, surreal dance, and one I want off of.

I pull into the empty valet parking lot, and lock my car, putting the keys into their night drop box. The place is deserted, but there are six other people here, just like me, who have driven more than a hundred miles to be here early, when they would have been two hours late if they had left on time. 10 mph traffic jams are a thing to be avoided at all costs. I put on my iPhone music on shuffle. (A Day In the Life plays)

Standing outside, I pull out my iPhone and text my wife that I arrived alive. I look at the sky. Light is showing in the east. The sun will be up soon. I am contemplating something. Just because I sometimes partake of the insanity, that doesn’t make me insane too, does it?

Oh well. Its not yet 6:00 AM, and I am ready to hit the hay in a reception chair, or a coffee and snack bar, whichever I find first.

I hope you enjoyed the ride.

Regards,
Roger Born
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
Sorry. No Refunds.
Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary.
Film at 11.

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