I suppose I could have tossed some shirts and shorts into a backpack in an hour, found my camera and checked the NOAA weather report for the Siskayous and central California. Friend Jimmy came into the Cafe Brosseau Monday morning to announce that his son Gregg was leaving before lunch to drive to San Luis Obispo and Tucson before lunchtime, and I was welcome to ride along.
Two years ago, I leaped at a next-day offer of a similar ride, to San Luis Obispo, where Gregg was teaching at Cal-Poly. He's a wonderful driving companion, expert at the wheel and well-traveled up and down the Left Coast. A year later, we repeated the trip, with "a short cut to Eastern Nevada," where Gregg introduced me to a 5-millenium-old bristlecone pine. We slept on a salt flat, and next to a glass mountain, and in a forest only yards from an unseen ring of Native American drummers beneath a full moon. We climbed amid the roots of ageless redwoods, their tops lost in perpetual fog, and I painted sea stacks at the wave-tossed edge of the Pacific.
I knew I'd have a good time. I actually spent a few moments imagining what I'd have to do to be ready, what I'd be leaving behind for Virginia to solve or bear, what I'd remember I'd forgotten as we rumbled across the Columbia River bridge. I knew I'd be sketching roadside scenes on blank postcards as we zipped past them at 80 miles an hour. I'd mail them from the hotels where we'd sleep over on two nights. Gregg is generous with expenses, so I knew that even picking up one restaurant meal a day, my costs would about the same as the Amtrak ticket I'd otherwise acquire for the San Luis trip.
I had already made plans to Amtrak to San Luis Obispo next week. My brother Chuck was moving his fifth-wheeler from Paso Robles over the range to a ranch on the outskirts of San Luis, a short drive from Morro Bay, where I planned to stay with a retired newspaper pal, Boxie.
But I wimped out, citing "too many things going on," and "I've already bought my tickets".
I've been convincing myself that was the right thing to do. Gregg would have given me all the time I needed to get ready, I'm certain. I told myself that it wasn't fair to leave Virginia alone on such short notice--I hadn't asked her. I told myself that my arrival would interfere with Chuck's intricate arrangements for moving his home--he wouldn't need to be told, since Boxie would have picked me up at the S.L.O. station. I had bills to pay--I could have taken them with me--the U.S. Post Office has a mailbox in Morro, I'm sure. December is no time to be I-5-ing through Sikayous, with all this now--I've done it before, and there's always U.S. 101 along the coast.
No, I wimped out. I wonder if at 82-and-a-half I'm simply becoming an old man. Afraid of what's around the next bend. Weary of change.
Turn out that light!
Get off my lawn!
Lordy lord, I hope not!
