diana writes:

What kind of road trip would it be if you don’t see the red and blue flashing lights of a police cruiser closing in on your vehicle at 11PM while driving through a dense fog somewhere in the middle of the Texas panhandle? Not my kind of road trip!

“DON, WAKE UP! I’M GETTING PULLED OVER!” I shout over Jeff Buckley’s rising falsetto.

White-knuckled, I veer onto the shoulder as my mind races with possible offenses. The last posted speed limit said 70 - 65 at night. I’m going no more than 69 mph. Could I really be getting pulled over for going four miles over the limit?? Is it illegal to drive with your rearview mirror completely blocked? Trucks don’t use rearview mirrors. Gahh! Calm down. Just see what he wants.

The officer approaches on the passenger side and shines a long flashlight through the opened window.

“License and registration,” he says in a no-nonsense kind of way.

I remove my California driver’s license from my purse and hyperextend my body over the passenger seat to fish my registration out of the glove compartment. With the glovebox open it’s clear that we’re not packing any guns or drugs – but just about everything else. Behind us is a wall of stuff – everything I own that hasn’t been sold, donated or left at the dumpster has been strategically wedged into the trunk and back seat. Using every last inch of space, my backpack is shoved on the floor between Don’s legs and his backpack is on his lap.

“I pulled you over because you have a taillight out,” the officer says.

“Oh no!” I exclaim, aghast. “I just took the car in for service last week. I even had a bulb replaced. What a bummer.”

“I’m gonna let you go with a warning,” he says firmly. “You’ll need to get this taken care of first thing in the morning.”

“Oh, thank you! Yes, we will. First thing. Thank you, officer,” I reply.

The officer hands me back my license and registration and returns to his vehicle. I take a moment to compose myself, heart still racing. Yes, I did actually just say, “What a bummer” to a police officer. WTF. I am not a rule breaker. I’m not accustomed to run-ins with the law.

To take my mind off of the incident, Donovan and I invent car games that occupy the next two hours. We take turns naming the 50 states, mammals, fish, birds, and match actors with their films. As we approach Oklahoma City, our destination for the night, we encounter another snafu. We’d programmed Brenda, the female voice emanating from my GPS – which is British, of course – to take us to 100 Main Street, Oklahoma City.

This is Brenda. Or, this is what I imagine Brenda would look like, if, you know, she were real. (In fact, this is a sketch by a British artist, Hannah Barnes, called Portrait of a Woman with Rosy Cheeks.)

Following Brenda’s instructions, we exit the I-40 and end up on a toll road which, as it turns out, will lead us 24 miles out of our way - to Main Street - which was just a place marker we’d punched in because you can’t just type in a city – you need an actual address. Quickly realizing how far off course we were being led, we exit the toll road, get back on I-40 and search for the next sign that boasts Lodgings.

Brenda is no help locating the nearest Super 8. She’s recalculating at every turn like a dizzy broken record. “Recalculating. Recalculating.” I no sooner pull into the parking lot of a Waffle House to enter our new destination when I see the red and blue flashing lights behind me, again. Geezus! It’s now 1AM. We’ve been on the road for 10 hours. I am tired, frustrated and beyond frazzled. Luckily officer #2 is nice and also lets me off with a warning after running my license to see if I have any priors.

In two hours I was pulled over in two different states. Helluva night.

The next morning we manage to find a NAPA Auto Parts store (no thanks to Brenda) where I buy a taillight and Donovan installs it in the parking lot. Good thing he’s handy. (above: his rendition of the broken taillight and “wall of crap.”)

Then we continue on through Oklahoma…

Dine at Big Whiskey’s on President Clinton Ave in Little Rock, Arkansas…

…before stopping at the most run-down Super 8 of the trip in Memphis, TN. The door lock was jammed so the only thing keeping it “secure” was the latch. The window was also busted, remaining slightly ajar, allowing the cold wind to whistle in.

Donovan managed to rig a towel into the crevasse so we wouldn’t freeze to death in our sleep. Good times. 

More stories and photos from the road to come…

I visited a few of my favorite spots in the days leading up to my departure from LA. I got my Chicken Tikka Masala fix at Agra Café on Sunset Blvd in Silver Lake, indulged in a Double-Double Animal Style with a Neapolitan shake at In-N-Out Burger, and scored one last croissant sandwich from the neighborhood joint located in a strip mall on the corner of Laurel Canyon Blvd/Moorpark St.

When I first moved to LA nearly four years ago, my roommate, Becky, turned me on to these sandwiches. I lived close enough to walk to the shop (a rare thing in LaLa) and I treated myself to one of these babies nearly every Saturday for months until I moved across town and scaled back to only the occasional treat.

The woman behind the counter, the owner and presumably a Buddhist, kept a small shrine of food offerings to the Buddha. She was friendly, always greeted me with a smile and knew my usual order by my third visit - Turkey and cheese on a croissant with mayo, shredded lettuce, tomato, and jalapeños; hold the onion. She knew me as “No onion” and I loved this. She made me feel at home. “Classic Donuts Coffee Croissant” was my “Cheers.”

Before the official road trip began, Donovan and I spent one last day sightseeing:

We ate breakfast at the popular Aroma Café on Tujunga Ave…

Drove to Malibu along the Pacific Coast Highway…

Dipped our toes in the Pacific Ocean (it was freezing, btw…)

Captured our shadows in the sand…

Rode the Ferris Wheel on the Santa Monica Pier…shared a Churro…walked along the 3^rd Street Promenade…sat in traffic for 2 hours on our way into Hollywood for dinner at Sunset Thai…

Swung by Amoeba Music where Don stocked up on rare hip-hop CDs and I picked up The Clash’s “London Calling” for the road…

Made a pit stop back at my apartment to pack for an hour — you may notice that my dishes and glassware were wrapped with back issues of The New Yorker…

Then headed to Canter’s Kabitz Room on Fairfax for Tuesdays with the F.O.C.K.R.s (Friends of Canter’s Kabitz Room) who were celebrating Morty Coyle’s birthday. I literally rubbed elbows with Morty’s baby mama, Jodie Sweetin (a.k.a. Stephanie Tanner of “Full House” fame) as she was handing out slices of birthday cake.

It was a perfect day; we even caught the sun tucking itself into the seam in the horizon.

The next day we (and by “we” I mean Donovan) packed up the car, chock-a-block full of everything I own, minus the Boho-chic writing desk and bookshelf I sold, the sofa I donated to the Salvation Army and the pile of small appliances and cleaning products that simply wouldn’t fit.

I dropped the keys to my apartment in the building manager’s mail slot and said goodbye to Aqua Vista Street.  So long, La-La. It’s been real.

More pics and stories from the road to follow…

“What?! You’re leaving LA to move back East?? In wintertime???” was one friend’s perplexed response after learning my plan to pack up the ol’ green Chevy and hit the road to Philadelphia. No one leaves Southern California, especially not in December. “You know that it snows on the East Coast, right?”

Last week I said goodbye to the clear blue skies of perpetually 83 degrees and sunny for the muted gray blanket of winter, driving cross country from Los Angeles to Grand Canyon, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico, through Texas, Oklahoma, and Little Rock, Arkansas. It was 27 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill factor of 8°F by the time we reached Middle Tennessee. And it was snowing.

Having spent four years living in Syracuse as an undergrad, a region I half-jokingly refer to as the frozen tundra of Central New York, I am acquainted with harsh East Coast winters. Yet, somehow, cold always feels colder than in your memory, especially after four years blissfully unaware of such things out west.

I enlisted my cousin, Donovan, as my road trip companion. We’re both travelers, creative types - a writer and an artist - currently in similar places in our lives – on the threshold of some new phase, contemplating our next steps.

The seven days we spent on the road were transformative; both of us could sense that the journey marked the beginning of something. For one week, everything extraneous to our personal growth melted away and we existed in a pocket of the universe reserved for time travelers shedding old skin. The days blurred into one another as we passed through Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern Standard Time.  

The route was mapped with target cities and requisite mileage to cover each day before we retired at the nearest Super 8 off of the Interstate 40, but we took our time exploring each new place. We sampled the local fare at Mom & Pop diners, reveled in Southern hospitality, invented car games, exposed one another to new music, talked for hours learning things about each other we otherwise wouldn’t, and left time each day for documenting our adventures in our journals and sketchbooks.

Donovan is a painter, printmaker and musician. Amused by his compulsive need to turn every surface into a canvas, I snapped several candid shots of him at work including drawing an intricate design on his pancakes with a syrup bottle at breakfast and sketching with a fingertip on the frosty fog-daubed window of our hotel room one morning.

In case you were wondering, that little guy’s saying, “HELP ME!!!” to passersby in the parking lot below.

More stories and photos from the road to come…