Unlike most of my past cross–country road trips, I wouldn’t be making this one alone. Also, this one had a goal at one end: our relocation from San Francisco to Charlotte. We’d already shipped a pod and about 35 boxes to our destination, and we still had a rather sizeable load in the car as well. We’d had a lot of work done on said car, and I was relatively confident about its ability to get us across, despite its age and its nearly nonexistent shocks…

The weeks prior to the move had been brutal; it’s even more of a pain in the ass to leave San Francisco than it is to live there. And the day of our departure was no different. We had one final run-in with our psychotic downstairs neighbor which ended in me telling him (in so many words) to go fuck himself. And the last thing we did in San Francisco involved sitting on the sidewalk in front of FedEx on Harrison Street, packing up one last emergency load of stuff to ship, since the car was overflowing. I’ll probably always chuckle thinking about us squatting down on the sidewalk South of Market sorting our undies into neat little piles for shipping, although it seemed slightly less amusing at the time…

After a torturous drive out of San Francisco, we made our way to Cupertino to have lunch with Dan in the Apple employee cafeteria, which made both of us wish we worked for a big high-tech company. After our goodbyes and yet another torturous drive across Highway 152 from Gilroy to Los Banos, we were finally on Highway 99 headed south and it felt like we had escaped the City of Doom for good…

The car was a little overloaded with a few things we’d been planning to drop off with Mark’s sister in Fresno, but it had been holding up just fine. Until we pulled into the Red Roof Inn. There was a loud thunk and a rattle, and then the car got really LOUD. I had very little doubt that we’d just lost our muffler…

All the same, we managed to keep our spirits up through dinner with Mark’s parents. It was only the second time I’d met them, and I thought things went really well. They were friendly and nice and we all got along very well and ate and talked well into the evening. And they offered us the use of the house for Saturday night since it seemed we’d still be in Fresno another day getting the car fixed…

The morning brought a quick tour of Riverside and a chance to resolve some last minute banking issues before leaving California. We saw the theatre where “Gone with the Wind” had its sneak preview, and looked around downtown. Riverside is surprisingly pleasant, although I can’t swear I’ll ever have a craving to return…

Then, it was off into the desert. California is an unusual place; its possible to see snow-capped mountains in the distance even in June, when it’s over 90 on the valley floor. We drove through Palm Springs — a first for me, and I’ve now done it sufficiently and see no real reason to return — and Indio and Blythe, where I visited my last California supermarket. Sadly, it was an Albertsons…

Eventually, we arrived in Phoenix, which was a bit of a relief after 125 miles of pretty much nothing. I was excited to see Waffle Houses at most freeway exits. And I spent a good bit of time trying to determine what our really large, formerly fancy (and currently adequate) Red Roof Inn had been in its earlier life. I decided it was probably a Holiday Inn or a Ramada, since it had a restaurant and cocktail lounge…

We had dinner at Whataburger, even though I’d thought we’d have to wait for Texas for that. And we drove around Phoenix a bit, rather instantly liking the place…

Another exciting day of desert driving took us through Tucson (where everyone apparently lives in his own double-wide), Las Cruces, and not much else. We saw the award-winning rest area near Las Cruces, and it was very nice…

We were running really late, so we were unable to visit a friend in El Paso, since we (alas) didn’t even know he was living there until we were still about two hours out of town. And I DID like the town; it looked like a rather compressed, hilly, and landlocked version of what would otherwise be a flat, sprawling Texas city. And the lights of Juarez across the border were very tempting…

Dinner at a nondescript Subway on Lee Trevino Boulevard…

It’s really too bad we didn’t have more time, because I’d love to have spent some time in El Paso and Juarez. As it was, we had breakfast at a great (and dirt cheap) Mexican place and then drove through downtown, heading out on the very well-fortified Border Highway. It’s amazing how much money and effort we spend keeping trying to keep Mexico from crossing the border. By the way, why is it IMPOSSIBLE to buy a map of Juarez in El Paso?

The drive was from hell, one of the worst of the trip. West Texas is one of the most godforsaken stretches of nothingness I’ve ever experienced. We went almost 600 miles without passing through a single town of more than 10,000 people…

When we hit Fredericksburg, we were excited. It was the closest thing we’d seen to civilization in hours: a cute little German-themed town in the middle of Texas. It also signified that we were finally close to Austin, although there seems to be some sort of ordinance against mentioning the state capitol on any directional signs along US 290. We were ready to be somewhere. Anywhere…

And then, about three miles out of town, we heard the rattle. It got more “rattly”. The oil light came on. The engine went off. And suddenly, we were stranded with a dead car beside a field just outside Fredericksburg TX at midnight…

We called AAA. They promised a tow truck within an hour, which gave us plenty of time to get really pessimistic and start wondering what would happen next. We wondered what was wrong and how much it might cost to fix. We wondered how difficult it would be to ditch the car there and rent one to drive the rest of the way home. Either way, we knew the fun part of the trip was pretty much over. But we kept it together fairly well until Boomhauer showed up to tow us to a garage, and even took us and all the stuff in our trunk to a nearby motel…

Sleep was not forthcoming…

On a hot Friday morning in Fredericksburg, we called my parents and asked them to FedEx the newly-issued North Carolina tags and title for my car, lest we need to rid ourselves of it. Then, we walked over to the garage, which also doubled as the local impound lot. The idiot mechanic at Behrend’s (if you’re ever in Fredericksburg, avoid this garage) looked under the hood, told me all the coolant had leaked out of the radiator, filled it up again, and told me he couldn’t find any additional leak nor any good reason for one. The car started just fine. He took a small payment under the table…

Back at the motel, Mark and I were unconvinced by his diagnosis. Why, for example, had the car been running so smoothly and even so much cooler than usual over the past few days. Why did this happen all of a sudden and with no warning; it wasn’t as if we’d had a slow radiator leak which would have been gradual and noticeable. Our suspicions were confirmed when we realized we were still leaking. We drove to a Goodyear dealer on the outskirts of town, where the mechanic said, “I can’t work on this foreign car.” Mind you, he was talking about my 1991 Toyota Corolla, constructed in Fremont CA, which is one of the most common cars on the road today…

We then went to Chassis by Zach on his recommendation. We love Zach. He has a certain wry humor and a talent for finding what’s wrong with cars and fixing it (and Mark thought he was cute). He surmised that our problem was a busted radiator drain cap and a pinched O-ring. After one incorrect part delivery and one brief moment when he feared he might need to pull out the radiator, he sent us on our way with a fully-functional (in relative terms) car. Yay, Zach…

We stopped at the H-E-B and bought me a souvenir 100th anniversary bear to celebrate. And we went for a drive in the evening to test things out. So far, so good, although a significant damper had still been put on the trip. At least we slept reasonably well…

We made a morning tour of Fredericksburg so Mark could pick up some souvenirs for his parents, and to kill some time which waiting for FedEx to arrive with my car paperwork. We no longer needed the paperwork, but we also didn’t want to leave it in Texas. We also checked online and found that all our stuff had safely arrived in North Carolina…

Given the time frame and our level of paranoia, we skipped Austin (and a couple more friends) and went straight to Houston for the night. The car was running slightly hotter than it had been, but it held up just fine. All the same, every rattle filled us with dread. And given the state of our shocks, there were lots of rattles…

Lunch at Whataburger and dinner at Luby’s. We’d finally arrived in cafeteria country and I somehow knew everything would be OK as we made a whirlwind tour of Houston. I also knew I wanted to visit Houston again. I’m less convinced that I want to visit Fredericksburg again…

We left Houston, went through Beaumont, and finally — after four days and 900-plus miles — we escaped Texas. We determined that Exit 880 off I-110 is probably the highest-numbered interstate highway exit in the country. Even I-5 in California, which goes from the Mexican border to the Oregon state line, only makes it to Exit 796…

Of course, our Texas car trouble paranoia was replaced by Louisiana state trooper paranoia. We’d both heard for years about how they look for any excuse to pull over cars with California plates here; there have even been news stories on the phenomenon. So we didn’t speed. We stayed at least 1MPH below the limit even as cars passed us, cursing all the way. And we had no problems…

We have no problems with TROOPERS, I should say. The roads were a different story. These were some of the most godwaful freeways I’ve ever driven, with undulating waves of bumps which threatened repeatedly to send the car airborne. Say what you like about the mechanics of building of sinking soil, but both Texas and Mississippi seem to have discovered a technique Louisiana never read about. It was hell…

Settled for lunch at a KFC next to a Wal-Mart (where we bought a pillow) in Lafayette…

We arrived with just enough time to unload, shower, change, and drive into New Orleans for Poppy Z. Brite’s Prime Dinner at Marisol, around which much of our trip had been scheduled. It was a great place and a nice dinner (even the calf’s brains and sweetbreads weren’t nauseating like I expected) and it was nice to be recognized. The only mildly uncomfortable moment was when we apparently freaked out the entire restaurant by informing our server that we don’t drink and thus would be skipping the wine…

After dinner, we drove around just a bit, being careful to avoid scary neighborhoods like the one we drove in through, and I got to see the oldest continuously-operating A&P store in the country…

We slept. A lot. The big dinner and the stress of the past few days had taken their toll…

We had lunch at Piccadilly and headed for New Orleans again. We’d planned to spend several nights here, but shelved that idea in Fredericksburg, so we only made a quick drive-through before heading out the Chef Menteur Highway toward Mississippi in a valiant effort to avoid the shitty freeway. We ended up taking the scenic route up US 90 all the way to Biloxi before moving back to the freeway. It was at about this point that the landscape really started looking like home to me…

Dinner was at a lovely spot called the Creek Family Restaurant in Atmore AL. Imagine listening to a country remake of “Take a Letter Maria” and eating bad catfish and onion rings with a side of something which may have been either yams or carrots, served by a surly waitress who apparently woke up that morning and realized “I have to spend the rest of my life in Atmore, Alabama, and that sucks so much that I’m going to take it out on every customer I see all day.” That was dinner…

We detoured briefly into Florida near Atmore, just so Mark could say he had, and in the process he also got to visit his first Piggly Wiggly. We made it into Montgomery pretty late…