NOTE:  In between the previous entry and this entry I had mostly covered the story with quick videos.  Here’s a link to my drive from Route 66 in Arizona to my parents in the Bay Area in time for Thanksgiving.

Video Link.

   The final haul.

    Reversing out of the driveway, RT didn’t feel like herself.  She was sluggish.  There was no motivation there. 

    Driving along her pep didn’t improve.  I swore I smelled something burning.

    I pulled into a gas station to fill up.  Opening the car door revealed a wave of smoke.  Was this the beginning of the end?  Would I be able to make it to LA?  Or at least within 200 miles so I could be towed into LA, ingloriously?  Did I risk a spectacular explosion as I approached the coast?  Would my death help my “click through” numbers? 

    The smoke was not coming from the engine, rather it was emanating from the back.  It took me seconds to identify the problem (I’m getting good at this car maintenance thing). 

    I’d left the parking brake on.

    A foolish error, yes.  Not that foolish though.  I hadn’t been using the parking brake at all during the trip because, well, it had stuff leaking around it and I had a feeling it would cause more problems then it was worth.  My parent’s driveway though has a slight incline and when my brother parked his 2007 Chrysler Sebring behind RT I thought it best to depress the parking brake and avoid the slow motion disaster I saw playing in my head.  Of course I didn’t remember doing this until after I’d inhaled enough burned rubber to qualify for an OSHA claim.

    The instrument panel was no help in avoiding this mistake.  The parking brake light is always on, so having it lit during this five mile drive did nothing to remind me to release the brake.  I’m sure I’ve driven with a parking brake on in other vehicles but I’ve never seen that much smoke coming from a tire.  It smoked for quite a while. 

   

    The drive down to L.A. retraced some of the steps Tinaseville and I had taken on the way up.  That felt right.  It inspired no nostalgia though.  While a few things stood out such as a gas station beside a lettuce field where I’d filled up Tinaseville for about double the current price - most of the scenery felt unfamiliar.  Things you pass one way are often unrecognizable driving back - ever notice that?  The slight change in season I’m sure changed the environs as well.  The mile upon mile of produce I saw growing three months ago had since been picked leaving behind empty fields, and the empty fields I had seen before were now dotted green.  It was strange to see fields devoted to something other than corn.  I saw lettuce and celery and a lot of other crops but no corn.  I guess the rest of the country has corn covered.  The untouched landscapes looked different from any place I’d been - but that’s the way it always was on this trip.  Each region felt like a different chunk of earth.      

    RT got her first glimpse of the Pacific, north of San Louis Obispo.  We stopped for a bathroom break in Santa Maria and half heartedly looked for evidence of the recent fires that had scorched the area but I didn’t see anything.  I wasn’t disappointed.  We’d seen enough post-disaster sites on this trip. 

    When the road came close to the ocean again we pulled over and parked.  RT’s front bumper was only a few feet from train tracks which were only a few feet from the beach and the world’s largest thing, the Pacific Ocean. 

    Only after I’d dunked my hand in the water (and produced a very lame final video) did I feel the end.  I’d been mindful of the end now for the last several thousand miles, but it was at that moment when the trip actually ended.  I felt it end, and I suppose by that I mean I felt a sudden loss.

    It was a quick pang that snuck up on me.  What was I losing?  A lifestyle?  An attitude?  Something to do?  Not so much.  I think it was time.  I had lost a time.  Like most endings it made me sad, but only for a second.   

    I sat atop a boulder and looked out at the waves and the setting sun.  I wondered what I’d write about this moment and about this day but I didn’t wonder very long.  I tried to run through some of the trip’s highlights but it felt forced.  Instead I just sat. 

    The ocean smelled of salt and seaweed and wet sand.  The air was thick and warm and tasted sweet.  The sky was purple and gray and orange.  I hadn’t felt so relaxed in a long time.

    When I returned to Rustataurus I gave her a pat on the dash board.  I’d set out to kill her but she wouldn’t die.  Perhaps an oil change was in order for a job well done.

   

    I took out the pliers and switched on the lights - only one headlight was working again.  I turned the key and shifted the transmission.  The worn through floor mat beneath the foot pedals had collected sand from the Atlantic Ocean in Maine and the Gulf Coast of Texas, and now sand from the Pacific, too.

    We drove a few hundred yards along the beach before turning toward the  freeway onramp.  “The road” was is our rear view mirror. 

The past. 

    We merged into slow moving traffic, transforming into commuters we blended in with the countless lights, exhaust pipes and thousand yard stares. 

    Like most everyone else, we were just trying to find home.