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It’s been more than a month since we got back from our West Coast Odyssey, and let me tell you: we’re ready to go again.

I’m not sure we’d drive it this time — flying seems so chic, really, and about three million times faster — but a little bit of Cali sunshine or Oregon ocean seems just about perfect.

Then again, we live in Vancouver. We only get rain here because we’re a bunch of ingrates who don’t know how nice it is where we live. Or so you think.

We DO know… we just don’t like to tell everyone else. We bitch about the rain so you stay home while we prance about in the woods like nymphs in fluttery clothing and sparkly eyeshadow.

(Everyone does. It’s in the bylaws.)

I wrote a couple weeks ago about the second leg of our journey south, and promised I would write about Leg Three (ew! third leg!) soon.

Yeah. I totally got RIGHT ON THAT.

***

When we woke in Redding, CA on Day 4 of our journey…

…we were immediately startled by a large poky sculpture guarding a footbridge!

I’m completely lying.

I have no idea what that thing is, and we saw no footbridges anywhere. Actually, all we saw of Redding was the proverbial “outskirts”, and let me tell you — I wanted no further forays into the skirts of the city from there, based on what I saw.

Catherine disapproves of my logic here, pointing out that the outskirts of Vancouver can be a little sketchy as well (Whalley, anyone? No? How about Newton? No? Richmond?), but it’s my logic and I’m going to stick with it like bare legs to vinyl.
Anyway.

When we woke in Redding, we were both fairly reluctant to leave the air-conditioned magic of our room at the La Quinta (which is apparently Spanish for GET ME THE HELL OUT OF THIS HEAT, AND PRONTO), simply because we feared we might melt on contact with the already 39 C weather outside.

At 7 am.

Because THAT’S normal. Geez.

Starbucks awaited, though, so we pulled ourselves from the Hotel Sheets ™ and got our asses back on the road.

I had a Venti something. I know it was a Venti because I had to pee approximately five minutes after we left Redding.

Oops.

Today’s destination was Fresno.

Fresno is where Catherine’s friend from bible school, Mike, lives. Mike is a lovely, lovely man.

But he lives in a scary, scary place.

I’ll get to that in a minute.

When I hear the word Fresno, I think “fresh.” After all, those words have four letters in common. It’s a logical conclusion.

Unfortunately, I should have paid more attention to the “no” at the end, because Fresno?

IS fresh. BUT NOT IN THE WAY I MEANT.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I keep getting ahead of myself. You would, too, if you knew what lay ahead.

Actually, the first thing that lay ahead was Chico.

I have little memory of the city itself, though Catherine tells me it was nice. No… I have more memories of a construction crew on 99 just outside of Red Bluff (what’s with all the redness?)

Because — and I say this with complete sincerity, having been exposed to Vancouver road crews who show all the initiative of a Mormon at a strip club — I have never seen a more confused group of highway workers in my entire life.

To this day, I STILL have no idea what they were doing, and I believe with all my heart that they are STILL there, STILL misdirecting traffic, STILL trying to resurface something with a substance oddly reminiscent of napalm (the smell! the smell!) and STILL making Canadian road-trippers irritable.

I’m not one of those people who fumes in traffic (you’re so welcome for that pun.) From my perspective, it’s just another excuse to turn up the radio and sing. But when you’re inhaling Lung Death ™, it’s slightly less exciting.

When we finally got past those road workers, we were on our way through endless nut orchards (did you just giggle?) and small towns with names like Biggs (NOT), Gridley (off the grid, more like it), Live Oak (I didn’t see it), and Yuba City.

And when you get to Yuba City? Yu better keep going.

We took that wacky 99 all the way to Sacramento. We thought it would be faster. We thought it would be more interesting, more “California.”

What it actually was?

• Laden with small communities with one Mexican restaurant and an Umpqua Bank.
• HOT
• The site of Catherine’s introduction to prison trash crews, which she actually thought were just “nice men in orange suits.” Because she waved. And the ones that weren’t SHACKLED? They waved back. Including the nice guardsmen with guns.
• Did I mention HOT?
• Also? FLAT.
• Rife with Call Boxes.

We need to talk about the call boxes, California.

I know you guys like to keep in touch, but having a phone at practically every mile on the highway? That’s overkill. Even if your re-elected governor (what the holy hell, people?) is trying to take away your cell phones.

And yes, I know they are just there for highway trouble or highway workers or some such thing and DON’T EXPLAIN BECAUSE I DON’T ACTUALLY CARE but the call boxes fascinated me. I wanted to stop at each one and say “hello!” to the person who answered. Because, hey… they might be lonely! Even if it’s just an automated thingy, I’m still curious as to what it might say to me.

This is why, for many of the call boxes we’d pass, I would say, “Hi, Call box? We’re in the middle of nowhere, and I’m scared.” or “Hi, Call box? Coronado is super cute!” or “Call box? I HATE BAKERSFIELD.”

I think I started to freak Catherine out a bit.

But I owed her one. Because her desire to stop in Modesto freaked ME out. But again, getting ahead of myself.

Not too far, though, because all I wanted to say here was I DON’T LIKE THE MIDDLES OF STATES.

It’s true.

Not central Washington, not central Oregon, not central Idaho, not central Montana, not central Minnesota … and whatever other centrals I’ve been to.

Including the belly button of California, Sacramento. Which I like to spell “Sacremento”, like “Sacre bleu!”

That’s pretty much how I feel about it.

We drove right through. Which was easy, because EVERYTHING WAS REALLY, REALLY FLAT.

I guess now is as good a time as any to explain how I feel about Modesto.

Catherine — who is a lover of the “true crime” TV shows, as am I (though only the ones on A&E and NOTHING INVOLVING NANCY GRACE) — wanted to see Modesto because of the whole Scott Peterson case. I thought this was a really macabre reason to want to see somewhere, so I kept shunning Modesto as we drove through it, ignoring her repeated requests to take pictures.

I finally took one, because I am only a mild jerk.

I think there was a highway sign and an overpass in it.

MODESTO — MAGICAL CITY ON THE WAY TO FRESNO. GATEWAY TO SCANDAL.

I fell asleep shortly after Modesto, but awoke in Merced when Catherine stopped, fearing she was going to fall asleep on the road. We went to McDonalds in Merced (there are too many “m” words in this paragraph already, so I will now replace all “m”s with “x”s) where I had a Xilkshake and we phoned Xike in Fresno to tell him we were nearby.

Awesome! Freshno!

Well, Freshno looks like any city, really… nothing too exceptional going on there. The farmlands around the city are rather something, and the sunsets, OOH THE SUNSETS….

…but the part of Freshno Mike lives in? Is affectionately called “Sin City.”

(My father just sat forward in his chair and shook his fist at the sky.)

It’s actually not far from another university area, but Mike’s condo (which was adorable and had a fountain and air conditioning and wireless internet and Tivo and the largest liquor cabinet we’ve ever seen — apparently that’s how they roll in Freshno) is ALSO framed on different sides by…

• an adult daycare for people with behavioural and social issues
• slumlord apartments (and we know our slumlords, believe you me)
• police cars, 24-7

EVERY SINGLE TIME we walked out his door or went to the car to get something, the Fuzz would roll by, just making sure we weren’t selling our bodies to the night or shooting up in the driveway.

Which we WEREN’T, Dad. Don’t worry.

NOTE — NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART: During my second time standing in Mike’s driveway, waiting to go somewhere, a girl walked up to me and said, “Gimme a dollar.”

Or something like that. It fades in memory. What I recall was the sense that she wanted to kick my ass for EXISTING.

So I replied, “No.” Because I exist. And that’s how *I* roll.

At which point she did that thing that people do — that “hoarking” thing — when they are planning to spit on you.

Well, now.

My father taught me — because this is the kind of thing you learn when you grow up in the ‘Wack — not to show fear when someone threatens me. This is the kind of counsel that led to me breaking my friend’s nose when he snuck up on me in the dark.

In THIS instance, it led me to raise one eyebrow — which I have NEVER been able to do before or since — and give her a look that said, “Oh, as IF we’re going there, you skinny twerp.”

And lo, she did not spit, and tiny Californian angels (in surf shorts and SPF 45) swept down to save me from any further distress.

We got in the car, and headed out to the LARGEST DESSERT OF ALL TIME at some place called Claim Jumper. I want to reiterate that EVERYTHING IN CALIFORNIA IS BIG.

Big cities, big highways, big fun! Big SEPHORAS!

And a note on Mike: Mike is one of the funniest people I have ever met. He is also one of the most generous and welcoming, because he pretty much let us take over his home. And he’s a “bear”, which is not something I intend to explain but I think you might get if you belong to a certain subset of a certain population? I’m just saying.

… and then we left for San Diego.

Which I’ll talk about… later.