Saturday afternoon, as I reflected on the plans I made for the road trip I hoped to start a few days ago, I made a few calls, and decided I would do my roadtrip after all. As I made too many plans to set this up, my work schedule was free for the next week, and the rain didn’t seem as bad as the weathercasters predicted, I decided to just go for it. I got a late start in the afternoon, but it felt good to get on the road and do this 400+ mile journey. There’s at least 10 people I’ve been meaning to see, scattered from Santa Barbara to San Clemente, so I made the leap of faith, and jumped into my faithful iron chariot I call “Blackbird Lou” and drove south on a Saturday afternoon. It’s a good week for an adventure…
As luck would have it, there some was snow (??) in Southern California that shut down Highway 5 just south of the Highway 99 connection. As I decided it was futile to drive further south that night, I took a quick little detour and wound up in Bakersfield. I found a comfy little hotel that was supposed to have high-speed broadband access, but unfortunately, it felt like a bad dial-up connect, so I wrote this up while I was off-line, only to be slightly revised and uploaded later.
Who would have guessed that I’d be stuck in Bakersfield on Saturday night? I always wanted to see Buck Owens play at the Crystal Palace, but I missed that chance. This Sunday morning as I drove through Bakersfield, trying to find a decent gospel radio station, or a coffee shop where one might see a girl with faraway eyes, I gave up on the idea on paying tribute to a certain song written by a couple of guys named Keith and Mick, and did not run twenty red lights to honor anyone’s favorite religious icon. Instead, I jumped back onto highway 5 towards the Los Angeles region, listening to my MP3 collection that featured Amy LaVere, and Delaney & Bonnie, which both kinda sound like gospel to me in their own roundabout way.
Today was actually a fantastic day for the documentary, but frankly, I think I’ll save it for another entry. Right now, it’s time to decompresss…