Linnea picked me up in my van - an old, white Toyota Previa with surfboards in the back. She hopped into the passenger seat and I drove us to Palm Springs. We decided it wasn’t cheating because I’d spent six hours by the side of the road and, though it wasn’t the longest I would wait, I would never be passed by as many cars again… maybe not even for the rest of the trip combined. Two lanes non stop, all day. I can’t imagine how many thousands of cars that is. And now we were inching along four crammed lanes of the I-10, the blood red sun dropping into the sea behind us, setting the glass office towers on fire.
Somewhere after downtown the traffic began to thin out as cars peeled off onto the 5, 710, 605, 57, 15 and 215. Headlights, streetlights, billboards and buildings began to light up the night. An hour further east in Colton, greater Los Angeles inhaled one last impressive electric breath in a halo over the warehouses, loading docks and freight train depots that link LA and the Port of Long Beach with the rest of the country and blew us out into the darkness beyond. It wasn’t quite desert yet, but a grassy, sagey no man’s land of low cut hills and dry river beds. The shadowy hulks of 11,500 ft. San Gorgonio Mountain and 10,800 ft San Jacinto Peak loomed in the distance.
When we reached the low pass between these two giants we punctured an invisible curtain and the temperature suddenly rose twenty degrees. We were officially in the desert. But It’s not a barren, sandy desert. Every inch of the Coachella Valley from Palm Springs to Indio is covered with lush fairways and lawns - all thanks to a massive underground aquifer that is being sucked up and sprinkled out in every direction. They even water the sidewalks here (which didn’t seem like such a bad idea that night because you could see the heat rising from the pavement in waves.)
Linnea and I stayed in a cute Spanish-style BnB in historic Palm Springs called Casa Cody. We drank a cold bottle of sauvignon blanc by the pool and marveled at the stars - so much brighter than in Los Angeles.
The smell of the desert is amazing - a brew of Bermuda grass, sage, mesquite, hibiscus and a million crazy cacti with arms of flowers shooting from their spiny bellies like fireworks. The summer heat is its own intoxicant, draining strength, loosening cares. We lay there speechless and soon drifted off to sleep.
The morning came cooler than expected. A slight dew covered the chairs and tables. Our host Eliza laid out a simple breakfast of fresh fruit and bread. We moved a total of fifty feet in four hours - from our chairs to the pool and back again. Finally, around eleven, Linnea and I looked at each other and realized the time had come. There was no avoiding the inevitable.
We drove five minutes back to the I-10 and pulled into a gas station. Linnea watched in silence as I unloaded my pack and sat in the shade of the tailgate and penned a new cardboard sign that said “Sedona, Please.”
“You really want me to just leave you here?”
“That’s kind of how it works.”
I was putting up a good front. Yes, I’d hitchhiked thousands of miles before… along many of the same roads that lay ahead of me in Arizona, Utah and Colorado. But that was years ago. The world had changed. I had changed. It seemed far more daunting now.
And there was an emotional element to starting in Palm Springs too. This was where I’d come seven years earlier when I decided to leave the east coast for good and caddy year round - when I broke up with a serious girlfriend and turned my back once and for all on a traditional career path. I’d golfed my way away from home and now, with my father dying, I was golfing my way back.
Colorado held a lot of history as well. Not only did I go to college there, but my brother went to college there before me and we spent many Christmases there as a family. In places, I would literally be retracing my footsteps.
It felt like I was time traveling.
Sensing my somber mood, Linnea poked fun at how much care I was putting into the creation of my sign.
“Geez, it’s not the Mona Lisa.”
“No. But a driver has about three seconds to decide whether to pick me up or not. Good penmanship can be the difference between getting a ride and choking on dust all day.”
Linnea giggled. She clearly thought I was nuts.
When I finished, we said our goodbyes. I watched her pull away. She gave the horn a final tap and disappeared down the I-10 on ramp back towards Los Angeles.
The dress rehearsal was over. I was on the road for real.
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