Road Trip: Las Vegas to Bishop, CA

There are at least 3 roads leading from civilization to my hometown of Bishop, CA and all of them travel through the middle of desolation. There are very few towns, very few other cars and no cell phone service. The closest airport is four hours away in Reno but nonstop flights are practically nonexistent and even the flights with detours in Denver (not my favorite place ) are usually super pricey. I tend to start my drive in Las Vegas where flight costs are subsidized by the casinos and the drive home is an hour longer.

I made this drive on Saturday in a rented PT Cruiser even though I had been promised an inconspicuous Ford Focus. This is the 3rd time a rental car company has stuck me with a surprise cruiser and I have to assume this is some elaborate practical joke for the people of Hertz.

Once you escape the clutches of Vegas suburbs you can kiss civilization goodbye. You'll pass through the Las Vegas Paiute reservation and the Air Force base in Indian Springs which skirts the edge of Area 51. There will not be any aliens or government secrets to spy on -- only a minimart with the claim of "Last Gas Before Area 51!" One assumes that aliens have access to alternative fuels.

The only real town you'll pass through is Beatty which, though it was once featured on an episode of that Aaron Spelling SNL show as a rough and tumble cowpoke town, is actually an old mining town which now is mostly occupied by the gas station Eddie's World. I discovered Saturday that they're laying claim to the title "most beautiful gas station in the world" which I guess might be true -- they do have a turret outside. I tried to twitter from here with that sunset picture on the left but it turns out Beatty is not exactly iphone friendly. For some reason the market at Eddie's World specializes in bulk dry goods. There are no nut trees, gummy bear factories or pea plants within 200 miles of the outpost but the store is filled with 2lbs bags of snack food. I bought some rice crackers on the theory that they were more healthy than corn nuts which is probably not at all true.

Outside of Beatty the road is peppered with whore houses my favorite of which (yeah, I have a favorite whore house, doesn't everyone?) is "The Shady Lady" which is housed in a trailer. I guess I can imagine some trucker needing some loving on the road and even imagine maybe paying for it (imagine, not condone) but I'd think that even a dirty trucker dude would be all "a trailer? HELL NO." Apparently not.

There are two ways to get from Beatty to Bishop, the normal way and the Horst Klemm way. Dad's way is admittedly about 50 miles shorter than the other way but it also takes you along a windy mountain road that prohibits speeds in excess of crawling so I fid his claims that it's faster somewhat dubious. The road is also famous for making people who don't usually get car sick demand frequent puke break (and by people I mean me). This has no effect on Dad's insistent that this be the road of choice for my entire childhood. Regardless of the speed and high probability of barfing I'm enough of Daddy's girl to always take his road -- assuming I can find it. The turn off appears suddenly in the middle of dessert, it used to be marked by the Cottentail Ranch (that's ranch as in "we have girls who will sleep with you for money" not, "we have cows") but that was raised a couple of years ago and now I have to consider the implications of not being able to find my way home without the becon of a brothal to light my way.

CA 168 travels through the White Mountains and would be beautiful if i didn't drive it every time I wanted to go to Wet Seal from the ages of 10-18. In the 85 miles from NV to the 395 turn off in CA I passed 4 other cars and almost ran over 2 mice, a rabbit and a fox. I also almost got into 45 car accidents as I tried to push the PT above 45 on curve after curve. I eventually made it to town, passed the radio station, the BBQ Bills, the feed store with a huge red horse statue outside, the garish dutch bakery in the middle of town, the sad empty former home of KMart, and my parents house. It was probalby worth the 11 hours of travel time.

The Mean Streets of Florida

Thanks to my job and JetBlue I spent Monday in central Florida and while I enjoyed the 84 degrees and this Italian meal from a cute little place called Olive Garden (where they give you unlimited bread sticks! have you heard of this?) the majority of my time in Florida was devoted to desperately digging through the bottom of my laptop bag in search of change. You know what they have a lot of in Florida? Oranges? Oldersters? Mickey Mice? Sure, I suppose, but it is a little known fact that 64.7% of the Florida population is made up of tollbooths. This is the main reason why there was so much voter confusion back in 2000 – tollbooths are notoriously bad at using punch cards.

In my short visit I estimate that I donated roughly $700,000,000.82 to the Florida tollbooth association and quarter appreciation society (on the Florida quarter? A tollbooth with Mickey Mouse ears). While I’m sure that if I lived in Florida and had to get a second job at the local Orange Julius in order to afford the cost of tolls I’d likely be pretty pissed off but for my one day visit my main complaint had less to do with money and more with annoyance.

The tolls on a Florida highway are not for any uniform amount – this means that as you sit at tollbooth #37 praying that your aim is good enough to toss $.62 into the maw of the FL Transportation authority and you peer down the road and spy tollbooth #38 about 700 feet ahead of you there will be no way of knowing exactly how much money you’ll be asked for next. I assume that this random toll system was adopted to offset the monotony of living in a climate that hands you 80 degrees day after day all year long and while I appreciate a surprise even more than your average senior citizen I worry that the system could lead to confusion, car accidents and me defacing a tollbooth with lipstick and spit and the leftovers of a 12 ounce can of Diet Pepsi (which I totally would not dream about doing even once officer.).

As fun as the surprise price tag is the absolute best feature of the Florida toll system is the “exact change” rule that is enforced at roughly 40% of tollbooths. The first time I came across one of these machines changeless I panicked. Afraid that my picture would be snapped and Hertz Rent a Car would hunt me down and throw me into some Florida prison where inmates are forced to accurately toss dirty coins into metal baskets or go without their nightly mai tai I dared not driving through without paying. My first instinct was to get a dollar bill out of my wallet, smile pretty and stare at the basket hoping for some sort of bill accepter contraption. By the time I realized that there was no such input device (and that tollbooths are impervious to the “but I’m cute, please forgive me!” smile) there was a huge SUV pulling up behind me which caused further panic in the form of dropping the dollar bill out the window. I immediately opened my door and started to exit the vehicle before remembering that Florida is technically the south the person behind me was probably armed and FOR SURE wanted to kill me – I left the dollar on the highway and slowly got back in the car. Of course I still had no change and I could see Bubba in the rearview looking for a clear shot. While my travel companion (aka He who Never has ANY Change) dug around in the muck at the bottom of my bag (would that you could pay your tolls in ATM receipts and bobby pins) I twisted around to grab my jacket from the back seat and fish desperately through the pockets while wistfully dreaming of the huge can of change that lives next to my front door back in the heaven of New York City where I’m never expected to drive and everyone takes credit cards. I was eventually able to scrape together the $.50 getting off the freeway fee and for the remainder of my stay in the penis of the USA took to keeping a dollar in coins on the dash at all times.

In California there are no such thing as toll roads (And the streets are paved in gold. And everyone has their own personal ray of sunshine that follows them around. And the cows can talk) so my experience with tollbooths didn’t begin until I attended college in western New York – the land of the NY Thruway. The Thruway may place ridiculous expectations on drivers like “speed limit: 55” and “30 miles for only $75!” but at least they don’t force people to stop every 5 miles to pay a toll. You’re handed a card when you get on the road in Schenectady and you pay one toll when you exit the road for an evening of debauchery in Oneida. This allows traffic to keep moving rather than shuttling cars through a tollbooth once ever 17 feet. Can someone tell Florida to get with the program?

Something Here Will Eventually Have to Explode

If you've ever had the pleasure of riding in a car with me as a passenger then you know that I am perhaps the most annoying person on the planet. I spend most trips sling-shotting between forcing all occupants to *enjoy this song right now* and trying not to pee my pants while quickly reviewing all of the life events that I'll be missing out on after I die in the car crash that is about to happen. While traveling in a car (much like while doing anything) I am incapable of shutting off the background noise of my brain and all spare neurons are so devoted to freaking out about their impending death that I cannot help but occasionally (every 40 seconds or so) grip the door handle, sharply inhale and slam my foot down on the floor in mock brake slamming (the fact that I am alive to write this post proves that all of these are effective ways of tricking the Grim Reaper). Because as a New Yorker with no car of my own I very much do not want my friends with wheels (Hi Joe!) to take away my access to Target I try to hide my certainty that the driver is steering the car and its occupants into the afterlife. This is very difficult because no matter what Disney says I'm all but certain that cars want to kill me.

For the record none of this is my fault (turns out this statement is true about all of my flaws). Growing up my mother was an ER nurse with very little fore site when it came to scaring her children for life. She would come home from a hard day of life saving/bring home the bacon and while frying it up in a pan describe holding some poor schmuck's brain in her hands. This displacement of gray matter was almost always the result of the combination of icy roads, stupidity, fast speeds and God's sick sense of humor. Somehow this resulted in a son who purchases cars for the sole purpose of crashing them into things and a daughter (me!) who cannot get into a vehicle without wondering who will show up at her funeral. This means that in addition to worrying about my livelihood I have no choice but to also put in some heavy worrying time trying to avert my brother's certain death (see: here).

This past weekend I was in a car with a number of coworkers (aka people who I would like to convince that I am sane) and had to work extra hard to hide my fear of the driver slamming the vehicle into another car or the guardrail or that Duncan Donuts up ahead (though in this last case my ejection from the vehicle might be cushioned by piles of fluffy french crullers which would be pretty awesome). This was made extra difficult by the fact that the driver was busy DJ-ing and getting us lost. At one point he suggested that someone jump out at the next light and get the directions that he left "somewhere in the trunk." Because everyone else in the car was apparently not concerned about our eminent doom I was left with no choice but to blurt out, "Oh my god I'd prefer that no one DIE on this trip, pull over like a normal person." I may be insane but at least I'm alive.

Thank God I live in New York City where one can limit her car exposure to once a week otherwise even if I somehow managed to avoid death in a fiery wreck the ulcer from worrying about such things would certainly have done me in by now.