My first roadtrip buddies were Steve (a retired lawyer with 3 grown-up kids, a 40-year marriage and a wish to do something deeper with his retirement years) and Anna (a Belgian chic-lit authoress who has a column in Belgian Elle and is taking off soon to travel in Central and South America and write a new book). I tell you, the people I meet at Esalen and en route are always very interesting and so diverse!
We broke our journey overnight at a hilarious place called Lost Hills (where there were no hills - I guess they were lost). The place consists of motels, fast food places, petrol stations and a few Mexican style convenience stores. Nothing else. It's a temporary home to the truckers who use it as a resting stop. The most prominently positioned items on sale in all the stores were stay-awake formulas. Being a truck driver on Interstate 5 cannot be fun as the scenery is very monotonous once the drive hits the flat agricultural land. I had a very bizarre encounter with the sales assistant in the interestingly named "Love" petrol station. It was that time of the month and some panty liners were required, so I plop my purchase on the counter.
"Waste of money," says the lady with a scowl, "better to spend that money on food."
I try to dissolve her bitterness with an explanation.
"PERIOD," she yells! It's a stupid word - it's spelt weird. I hate that word!"
I will keep that as a fond memory of the utter weirdness of Lost Hills!
We all squished into a motel room, found semi-healthy nutrition at Dennys in the shape of an omelette and some veggies and took a dawn stroll past the blasting trucks. In the middle of all this fluorescent nastiness, we stumbled on a peach orchard. It was a magical find - we crept a few aisles into the orchard. I stroked the fuzzy little green peaches which were no bigger than almonds, sunlight sparkled on the cobwebs and life was still and sweet.
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