On the Road

Notes from Margo:

First day on the road – the familiar exit from San Francisco in the evening rush hour traffic. How we ended up leaving home yesterday late enough to catch the evening rush hour is a long and familiar story… all the last-minute chores: the outgoing message for the answer machine, clean sheets for the new tenant, stopping the newspaper. In addition, there were less familiar chores: Lynn wanted to send an e-mail to friends announcing our departure, and to alert them to watch our blog for details, and I was still tinkering around, trying to make an awning for the side of the van.

But we inched along across the Bay Bridge, and reveled in the beauty that is the bay, which we could actually see from the minivan. Our Volvo, which we’ve driven for the last 10 years, is so low to the ground that there is no view as you cross the bridge. We’re a few inches higher in the Previa, and we are loving it. Treasure Island, Angel Island, the huge cranes (cargo-loading, not whooping) in Oakland’s port.

Our destination for the first night was my father and stepmother’s home in Oroville, county seat of Butte County. So we went up Highway 113 and then north on 99, through orchards and rice fields.

The rice fields are brilliantly green-yellow now, just before harvesting. Lynn said, “Is that chartreuse?” I said, “Yes, I think it is. But chartreuse is really a fashion color, not an agricultural color.”

I was looking out the car window and thinking how lovely the fields were, and Lynn said, “Man! It’s beautiful here!” And we both kind of laughed, because for some people, this is just the flat stuff you drive through to get to the mountains, but we both love the variety, the richness of the land.

I was thinking it’s like those boxed foods: “Just add water.” One field would be completely bleached out, parched and dead. And right next to it, there’s a deep green rich crop of alfalfa or rice or a whole field of sunflowers turning in unison to the sun. The land is so rich, you just add water. Lynn said, “… And fertilzer, and pesticides, and seeds, and back-breaking labor…” Oh, yeah, maybe a little more than just water.

So we rolled up to the modest cat-rich house in Oroville where my folks live. We caught up a little bit and went out to dinner at Francisco’s, where we often go. Lynn pointed out that it’s the only Mexican restaurant on the planet where you have to order your tortillas as an extra item.

Footnote from Lynn:

We like to talk about back roads, but we tell ourselves that we’re in a hurry. We were happy to leave I-80 and the freeway’s roadside colonies of Chevys, Walgreens, Kragens and brightly bannered auto malls. As soon as we turned north on State Highway 113, a banquet of vistas was set on a table of fields as level as the Bonneville Salt Flats – but with 11 shades of green. The minivan’s big windshield gave us an ever-changing diorama of valley oaks, field corn, baby nut trees with white stockings, the rich black soil of fallow fields, lazy dairy cattle and skinny goats, produce stands and farm towns too small to have their Main Streets blighted by Walmart and Home Depot. In one ebullient burg, we saw a archway over the street leading to “Historic Downtown Gridley.”

Mileage today: 151 miles, San Francisco to Oroville

Total mileage: 151

Notable sighting: The Sutter Buttes, hazy in the distance, the nation’s smallest mountain range.

Notable sighting II: Rows and rows of clunkers neatly lined up next to a car dealership on Interstate 80 near Vacaville. We knew they were clunkers because someone had carefully lettered in huge script on each windsheild: “Clunker.” It’s the script you usually associate with “Low mileage!” or “Runs great!” New situations demand that our traditions evolve.