Monthly Archives: October 2006

what? she’s going to write about the damn vacation again?

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10

That’s right.

I realize I wrote about it a little as it was happening, and I also realize that I wrote about it when I got home, but do you REALLY KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?

DO YOU?

Well, truth is, it was more than a month ago. I’m not sure I remember anymore.

Okay, that’s not true. Because I just looked out the window at the pouring rain and then online at the weather in San Diego and DAMMIT ALL TO CARLSBAD I WANT TO GO BACK.

So, for you, some random observations and memories from The Trip ™ AND enough California lovin’ to make the sun shine for me through all this downpour and graycloud and wetfoot Vancouverishness…

The first city I really experienced in the great state of California (and I’m using that term loosely, as you will soon see) was Redding, CA.

We’d been driving for more than nine hours at that point, since we were hellbent on getting that far from Cannon Beach, OR.

Look that up on Google Maps. That’s a fair drive in one day, I’d say.

And I’d also say that one of the most alarming things I’ve ever experienced was watching Catherine’s “external temperature” gauge — that which tells us how warm it is outside — slowly climb from 19 C (66 F) to 43 C (109 F) in the space of nine hours.

Just FYI, the peaks on the Oregon-California border aren’t much like the mountains that sit stoically near my home here.

Our mountains are gray and rocky and covered in dark green trees. The high elevations in our first peek at California, however, were all parched earth and pitch black pebbling and odd scrubby bushes.

And — in my fertile imagination — absolutely laden with scorpions and tarantulas and other sunbaked creepy crawlies.

Catherine threatened to take my computer away if I continued to look up “species of tarantula in California” one more time, so it’s really hard to tell you what was actually there. But man — warmth? To me?

Means bugs.

I did see one scorpion by the side of the road in Bakersfield. But that’s not someplace I ever really wanted to stop ever again, anyhow (DAMNED ATM CHARGED ME THREE DOLLARS FOR A TRANSACTION! HIGHWAY ROBBERY! LITERALLY!)

So we’d camped in Cannon Beach, and we intended to camp in Redding. After all, we’re hard core. We’re outdoorsy girls. We like nature. And we even liked our tent, despite the fact that we ended up spending the second night in Cannon Beach sleeping/sitting up in Catherine’s car because I had an insane stomach issue as a result of hot dog consumption only hours earlier by our pretty, pretty campfire.

I’d never had a problem with hot dogs before. I have an iron stomach, you know. I can literally eat iron filings — no problem. Don’t ask how I know that.

But this hot dog?

IT TOOK ME DOWN.

I felt like Johnny Cash had actually written “Ring of Fire” about my esophagus. Which he may well have, despite the fact I had not yet appeared on this earth when he penned the song. He was a forward-thinking man, though. And my pain was significant enough to have resonated through the ages.

Since I could not lie down without thinking I would die, and Catherine didn’t want to sleep alone in the tent without me, we both swaddled ourselves on slightly-reclined seats and enjoyed a night of luxury in the Corolla.

I think this slightly off-kilter slumber may have contributed to the fact that we thought so much of the terrain on the way from Portland to Redding was kind of… well… ugly. Or flat. Or dry. Or something.

Everywhere we stopped, the people seemed to feel the same way. They looked uncertain in their own surroundings and slightly overheated. And in Grant’s Pass, where we stopped at the Tourist Information Center to ask how the hell far away WAS freaking Redding now, anyway, we also spent about 15 minutes ordering a cheeseburger from the most disoriented and startled McDonald’s employee I’ve ever met.

It may have been that the aggressive air conditioning in her store had frozen her brain solid. I know I was shivering. Or it may have been that she was just starting out.

But, really. This girl responded to my order as though I’d asked her to offer me a fresh variation on the Pythagorean Theorem, and not just a slightly-smushy bun laden with gleefully-processed cheese.

All things considered, it still tasted road-trippin’ good.

Redding was about four hours away at that point, and this is where the temperature really started to concern us. I mean, Grant’s Pass? Freakin’ hot, but not in the 40s yet. In Vancouver, a day at 32 C feels melty. We were at 36 C ALREADY and how much warmer could we get before our Canadian bodies would melt away like the Polar ice cap?

Two hours out of Redding?

39 C.

An hour out of Redding?

41 C.

Sweet flaming monkeys of DOOM, we were unprepared for this.

The sun was still high in the sky, and in a matter of minutes? We were going to put a tent up and crawl inside and bake like two junebugs in a Ziploc on the Interstate.

Then it was 43 C, and the only option really seemed to be spending three days worth of our holiday budget on a hotel.

A cheap hotel.

But not a motel, because we’d watched enough Cold Case Files to know that this was a recipe for death.

Two out-of-towners and Room 5 and the free HBO and as-yet-unfound body under the bed? Yikes.

So we got a room at the La Quinta.

The current advertising campaign at our La Quinta had all sorts of signs that said, “La Quinta. Spanish for… somethingorother.”

Like, “La Quinta. Spanish for free in-room wireless.”

Which seems really forward-thinking on the part of the Spanish people, coming up with a word for that.

We took this little saying on the road with us — really, how could we not, being who we are — and soon La Quinta meant everything from “Spanish for PLEASE PLEASE I NEED A BATHROOM” and “Spanish for WE’RE GOING TO DIE IN FRESNO.”

I still don’t know what it actually means.

Our hotel room was air-conditioned, and only seconds from the pool, which TELLS YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WHY I MAY NOT LIKE REDDING BUT I’M DOWN WITH THE LA QUINTA.

There were many creepy mid-week business-travellin’ men who watched us swim in that pool, standing on the balconies of their rooms, pay-per-ewwww porn flickering in the background. As I wrapped my towel around me to return to the air conditioned paradise of our lodgings, I even thought I saw one man try and snap us with his camera phone.

I comforted myself with Stuffed Jalepenos at the Jack In The Box.

The next day we left for Fresno.

But I’ll tell you about that later.

calibration.

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5

Back in the days when I worked as a barista, I used to loathe the word “calibration.”

“Calibration” meant something had gone very, very wrong with our espresso machine.

Our shots would pull too long or too short, the grind would be too fine or too coarse, the water pressure would be too weak or too strong… essentially, something somewhere would be just intangibly (and annoyingly) “off.”

Then the “tech” would arrive to fix it an hour later — an hour of explaining to an endless lineup of caffeine-crazed people that, no, I’m sorry, no lattes or mochas, we’re… “down.”

And apparently? There was no worse down to be. My normally polite customers would turn into petulant children when denied their five-dollar drinks.

And the “tech”? He would spend an hour tightening screws, only to announce that he didn’t know what was wrong. Then he’d head out on another call, promising that he’d be back in a couple of hours to work on it again.

This is how I learned to fix espresso machines.

Desperation.

And soon, there was no force majeure of calibration that I could not fix. I learned to predict the impact of a particularly humid day or long rush of drinks on our temperamental La Marzocco, and head it off with a rinse of the groups or a draining or a long pour (or perhaps an ancient Celtic chant or cheap hockey check.)

Hell, I don’t even remember what worked.

But I knew then. Because no trick of mis-calibration was going to rob me of my sanity. Especially not at the hands of an unnaturally-tanned soccer mom who’d apparently been denied nothing in life… except her Caramel Macchiato.

But it’s hard to fix things when you don’t know what’s wrong.

When your calibration is off, and you can’t figure out quite why.

That’s really the biggest thing I learned — that mystery was the great enemy of solution. If you could solve the mystery, your life would be rolling in the doppios once more.

If you couldn’t, you’d have no choice but to put your green apron over your head and run for cover.

I think my calibration is off right now. And though I know why to some degree — to a large degree, really — all the things I’ve done to try and fix it have fallen flat. I have a lineup of my normal emotions and experiences waiting to be felt and lived out, and yet I have to keep saying to all of them…

“You know? Not today. Things are just a little off. But I’m working on it.”

I wish I could work it out quickly, but at the end of the day, I’m well aware that I’m far more of a challenge than even the most fractious espresso apparatus.

These days, I don’t know what will knock me off course. It could be hormones or illness or sadness or grieving or frustration… or the absence of any feeling at all.

Apathy. That’s a serious, serious mis-calibration for me.

I’m never one to feel nothing.

But sometimes, right now, that’s about all I have going on. It’s probably a defense mechanism, but that doesn’t feel like much of an excuse. It’s like refusing to look in a mirror because you don’t like what you see; how you look won’t change because you refuse to face yourself, but at least you don’t have to deal with it right then.

And it seems like not dealing is how I’m dealing.

I don’t like being unsettled.

I don’t like being unnerved.

I don’t like feeling weak.

I don’t like complaining.

I don’t like being sad.

I don’t like not knowing when things will change.

And I hate that I keep overreacting to things, I hate that I keep making stupid mistakes that I can’t explain or justify at work and at home, I hate that I keep not living up to my expectations and my potential, and especially — especially! — I hate that I keep losing track of how I’m supposed to feel… how I would normally deal with the simplest things.

I miss the days when the solution was a quick one, and I could get the lineup of drinks back underway in a matter of minutes.

Because it’s been months now. And I’m afraid that I’ll go so long like this that I won’t even remember normal anymore.

Granted, normal IS different now.

But calibration can’t elude me forever.

Because I wouldn’t even know what “tech” to call to get me out of this mess.