A Road Worth Taking

from 11.25.20

The possibility churned in my stomach. California. Just for the weekend. Just for the heck of it. It was the kind of sudden opportunity that causes you to wonder how many others slip by unrecognized.

The occasion was perfect for entertaining an improbable fantasy. Late appetizers with close friends in an empty restaurant, a new year stretching out in front of us. The kind of conversation with enough sustained enthusiasm to bolster even the wildest of dreams.

I expected the idea would die, put out with a splash of common sense. Who would commit to the luxury of a weekend jaunt to the West Coast? But still, I desperately wanted to go. And once I had entertained the idea, I almost needed to go.

I was disappointed with my life— not the totality of it, but the day-to-day monotony that had set in slowly like a suffocating blanket of humidity. I realize this sounds extraordinarily selfish, but it is the truth. Though my life has been littered with blessings, I was struggling to see past a job that engaged none of my creativity and an unshared apartment that was growing lonelier all the time. A year and a half after college, the grand expectations I once had felt vague and unreachable. And while I knew a trip to California could not change any of these circumstances, I hoped it would rescue me from this rut.

Fortunately, my friends Matthew, Tim, Joseph, and Jon were just as enthusiastic about the trip. And so, without lengthy deliberation or weeks of waffling back and forth, we booked it. San Francisco. Pacific Coast Highway. Los Angeles.

I was running back and forth across my apartment, jumping up and touching the ceiling, everything short of disturbing my landlords upstairs. “Everything changes,” I wrote. “We’re going to Cali!!!!”

That was February 17th.

. . . . .

Turns out it was a bad year to book a spontaneous trip. By March everyone’s dreams were endangered, and as the months wore on, they folded and slipped away, debris in the unrelenting current. My parents and my brother never made it home from South Africa. Our biannual family vacation to the Outer Banks was canceled. A week at my Aunt Pearl’s cottage in Maine became another hope deferred.

We waited until the last possible minute, but finally we were forced to cancel our trip to California. “This is hardly a tragedy,” I wrote, ashamed I could harbor such self-pity while hundreds of thousands of people around the world lay dying. “But trying to keep it in perspective hasn’t brought me any comfort.”

The worst part was not that I might never see the Golden Gate Bridge or the California coastline. It was the loss of a designated weekend to spend with some of my closest friends, a rare gift in a busy world. And the fear that I might never escape the prison of routine — that my days would unfold in an endless strain of keystrokes and windowless rooms.

It’s ironic that in a year of unprecedented events, I was most terrified of the mundane. Maybe I have an unhealthy lust for the extraordinary. Or maybe, when reduced to its most basic structure, the life I’ve chosen is not the life I want. Either way, I’d staked quite a lot on this trip, and the thought that it might never happen was sickening.

We might have spared ourselves a lot of heartache if we’d just resigned ourselves to the initial disappointment. But we remained determined to go and were met with no shortage of adversity.

A Brief Timeline

May: Fortunately, the airlines gave us flight credits, and we are able to rebook the trip. We decide to forgo LA and spend all our time in San Francisco. We gamble on the weekend of September 18–21, hoping travel restrictions will be lifted by then. The trip is on again!

July 20: Our return flight from San Francisco to Atlanta is canceled by the airline due to financial strain brought on by Covid. We scramble to book another flight home. The closest flight is out of LA. We book it. Trip salvaged.

July 28: Our flights to San Francisco are rescheduled by the airline, costing us an entire day on the ground. There should be a better alternative, but there isn’t. The best we can do is a ten-hour layover in Vegas and a late flight to San Fran. Guess we’re going to explore Sin City.

August 18: An unexpected work obligation arises. Seriously, it’s non-negotiable. Our flight from Atlanta to Vegas is too early. It won’t work. We cancel the entire trip and rebook it for the following weekend, September 25–28.

September 9, two weeks out: Apocalyptic images of San Francisco emerge online. The sky is bright orange. The California wildfires have gotten close. The Air Quality Index is over 200. People are encouraged to stay inside. We purchase N-95 respirators and hope they won’t start canceling flights.

September 19, one week out: I find out that I’ve been directly exposed to Covid. The chances of testing positive are high. If I do, I can’t go, and neither can Joseph since we’re now roommates. The others won’t go without us. By now the air quality is healthy again and all other obstacles have been overcome. But the entire trip is in jeopardy.

I got tested as soon as possible and waited two agonizing days for the results to come back. I checked the health portal compulsively, wanting desperately to know one way or the other. When the results finally arrived, I was terrified to open the link. Up until that moment, I’d been convinced I was negative. Now I was sure the opposite was true. How would I tell the other guys I’d ruined their trip?

Negative.

It was the kind of relief and happiness that cannot be channeled into deliberate action. I had so many people to tell, and I didn’t know who to text first. I said a guilty but sincere prayer of thanks, knowing that had I been positive, in the absence of anyone else to blame I probably would have blamed God.

And so, after seven months of planning and hoping, we were finally taking our “spontaneous” trip to Cali.

. . . . .

The first stop was Vegas, though it was really more of a detour. We would really have liked to go straight to SF, but we decided to make the best of our pit stop in the desert. First, we enjoyed breakfast at Egg Works. (If you’re ever sitting in LAS with time to spare, it’s worth the Uber.) Then we found a local coffee shop so Tim could work on a grad paper.

We spent the late afternoon exploring the iconic Strip. I’m glad we did because I was always vaguely curious, but aside from the musical fountains outside the Bellagio, we found it underwhelming. “It’s like spending the entire day at a big outdoor mall,” Joseph observed. He wasn’t wrong. With a kitschy Eiffel Tower replica, an improbable number of sports cars, and tourists toting 100 oz. margaritas, the whole place felt like it was made of oversized happy meal toys. It had all the hallmarks of a place everyone comes to visit but no one comes to stay.

But as we flew over the city on our departure, I realized that many people do in fact call Vegas home. Hundreds of subdivisions glowed under the night sky, a sprawling suburbia bounded by mountains in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Maybe that’s the alluring paradox of Vegas — to be somewhere and nowhere at the same time. From the plane window, with all the lights glowing orange, the city looked remarkable. Then we passed over the mountains, and it was gone.

We arrived in San Francisco too late to see anything, but by that point Tim, Joseph, Matthew, and I had been up for almost twenty-four hours anyway. Jon picked us up at the airport, and we found our way to our Airbnb in Outer Mission.

We’d made it. We’d set foot in a place that had only been a pipe dream. As many times as I’ve traveled, it still amazes me that you can wake up on one side of the world and find yourself on the other side of it by the end of the day. How miraculous that every place is connected to every other place, that the life we live is only as small as we make it. Why don’t we take the road more often?

. . . . .

I have barely alluded to my traveling companions, so allow me to introduce them properly because they’re some of my best friends and they’re worth knowing.

Matthew is a senior Social Studies Education major at North Greenville University. We’ve been friends since my senior year of college when he became an honorary member of our campus house. Matthew is one of the most enjoyable people to be around. He is easy-going, good-humored, and funny. He took it upon himself to be my hype-man for the trip, a role he is perfectly suited to as one of the most positive and affirming individuals I know. The best part is that none of his kindness is affected; he is always sincere, earnest even. A friend described him as the human equivalent of a golden retriever, and while that may not be the most flattering comparison, I understand the sentiment. Matthew is always ready to have fun. While waiting for a shuttle at the airport (after midnight), he and I completed a two-man luggage-cart race course in under a minute. Just saying. Matthew gets married in December, and I already know it’s going to be hype.

Joseph is my roommate and one of the stabilizing forces in my life. His intellectual rigor, straightforward manner, and motivation to improve challenge me constantly. He is the kind of person who pushes you to grow by empowering you rather than tearing you down. He is also a promising candidate for world’s most interesting man. He can transition from watching Formula 1 to belting a musical number to demonstrating a jiu-jitsu maneuver with ease. He was the mastermind of our trip and the primary reason it was such a success. A strategist at heart and the only one of us who’d ever spent a significant amount of time in San Francisco before, he mapped out an itinerary, booked an Airbnb, and navigated our excursions throughout the city. He insisted that the Ghirardelli store at Fisherman’s Wharf had unrivaled ice cream and that we must stop there or he would not join us on the trip. His insistence turned out to be more than warranted, and I am grateful to have a roommate who feels so passionately about ice cream.

Tim is earning his masters degree in counseling, working as a behavioral therapist, and planning a wedding — a busy man to be sure. To be fair, the trip was supposed to happen before he started grad school and before he was engaged. But he set aside wedding planning for the weekend and brought along grad work so he could spend a weekend with the boys. Tim is one of the most wholesome people to spend time with. He listens well, chooses his words carefully, and remains flexible. His easygoing nature makes those in his company feel at ease. He is highly perceptive, and I always admire how well he understands his friends. When decisions are being made, Tim will express an opinion, but he never has to be the one making the final call, even though he’s one of the wiser, more mature 25-year-olds I know. Somehow he managed to complete a grad paper over the course of our trip, and I never heard him complain about it. He gets married in January, and I couldn’t be happier for him because he has found someone equally kind and admirable.

Jon is a bird on the wind. Right now he is living in LA, working as an interior design assistant and charting his future, which I truly believe could take him anywhere. Jon is the most daring, adventurous person I know. He is always traveling somewhere or exploring something, often without a plan. His networking skills are unparalleled— he can find a friend or a friend of a friend in any city. Jon’s energy and intensity have always astounded me, mostly because I am no match for either. Quite honestly, a low-energy introvert like me could find these qualities exhausting, but over the years I’ve come to admire Jon’s fervor, his ability to seize opportunity, and his visionary, unshackled mind. Just the other week he texted me, “Wanna hit South Africa [in the] next week or two?” If only. Jon chauffeured us around for the weekend. The aggressive drivers of LA had prepared him perfectly for the inner-city hills and winding ascents of San Francisco, and we saw the city with a speed few would venture.

Left to right: Joseph, Matthew, Jon, Tim

San Francisco is the improbable marriage of nature and metropolis. Never have I seen these two opposing environments blend together so seamlessly. In fact, I almost considered them mutually exclusive. When in New York, you are decidedly in the city. When in the Blue Ridge Mountains, you are clearly in nature. But in San Francisco, you can experience both at once. This is because the land was not cleared away to make room for the city. The slopes were not leveled or the water pushed back. Instead the city was draped like a necklace over the collarbone of the coast. Even when driving the downtown grid, you can feel the undulations of the earth beneath. Standing on the beach, you can see the bridge blush in the setting sun. And you can sense that creation and construct are at peace.

And maybe this is the philosophy that governs the whole city — that we can be at peace with each other. San Francisco is sometimes ridiculed for being the city of “anything goes.” And while there may be a degree of truth in that, what I saw were people profoundly comfortable in the place they call home, and more importantly, comfortable with each other.

I suspect it has to be this way because everyone lives so close. After all, it’s the second most densely populated city in America. The little houses climbing the hillsides are crowded together like too many friends squeezed in the back seat of a car. To live there is to live with other people.

I admit this is purely speculative, but I imagine years of proximity have taught people how to live together in a way most suburbanites can hardly imagine. Often, space makes withdrawal easier, and perhaps by choosing the acreage and “elbow room” of the suburbs, we’ve lost the ability to coexist with others. We’ve turned distance into a luxury, and when we find someone’s lifestyle or ideals troublesome, we put up a fence, plant a hedgerow, and increase our degree of separation. Could it be that what looks like liberalism is actually just kindness?

The thing I remember best about San Francisco is its movement. Bikers, runners, hikers — people with momentum. But it wasn’t the mechanistic pounding of industry or the frenzied dash of a large city. It was youthful, organic, free-spirited.

We spent Saturday evening at Marshall’s Beach watching the sunset. Among the children playing in the water and the bride with her dress blowing in the breeze was an elderly man practicing martial arts in the sand. He moved gracefully and decidedly to meet an invisible opponent, his focus erasing all the seaside revelers. It was just him and the thrusts of the ocean.

On Sunday morning, as we left our Airbnb for a second day of exploration, we passed a middle-aged woman doing calisthenics in the neighborhood park. She windmilled her arms vigorously and marched in place, high-step after high-step, oblivious to our amused staring.

Later that afternoon as we passed Washington Square, a local band was performing for clusters of people spread out on blankets around the park. A lone women, past middle age, hair streaked with color, was dancing in front of the lead singer, twirling an umbrella and waving her arms. She was clearly having the time of her life, and no one seemed to mind.

Maybe these people simply didn’t care what others thought. The dancing woman may even have been drunk. But it’s not hard for me to believe that the city breeds the young at heart.

I too felt young while I was there. As if most of life’s opportunities lie ahead of me rather than behind me. I think that’s why I like big cities — they testify to possibility. Their scope, brightness, and diversity are more than one person can ever absorb. They make your dreams seem, if not more plausible, at least less foolish. And San Francisco, with its fault-line skyscrapers, tapered houses, and mile-long bridges, is an ode to once-foolish things become possible.

Even before we left for California, I knew I’d be writing about this trip, and I imagined this travelogue would be full of noteworthy reflections like Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. I hoped that on this trip I would intuit some undiscerned truth about human nature or uncover a veiled facet of the American psyche. That I would be able to report dazzling discoveries from our journey west. But I am not Steinbeck, and we were not traveling the country in the gallant Rocinante.

We were crammed into Jon’s Subaru, Juniper, pressing into each other on every split-second turn, bracing against the front seats as we sped through the course of inner-city hills like a rogue rollercoaster.

Steinbeck had time on his side, but we were trying to see as much as we could in two days. Thanks to Joseph’s careful planning (and Jon’s *opportunistic* driving), we made the most of forty-eight hours.

I suppose a travel expert would distill the city to five must-see attractions and attempt to persuade you that, should you see those five sights, you will have seen the city. But San Francisco is irreducible.

The silent magnificence of Muir Woods. The way you stand almost above the Golden Gate Bridge at Battery Spencer and watch the morning mist blow through the steel cables. The unparalleled view of the city from Coit Tower. The crowds at Fisherman’s Wharf cheering on the dueling sea lions. The ferry tour of the bay. The lovely man at the antique shop along the Wharf who let me try on a Stetson and pretend to be important. The many parks that feel like they belong to a little neighborhood rather than a big city. I cannot conscionably tell you to skip any of it.

But, I suppose with any experience, good or bad, it is helpful to break it apart. Somehow this compartmentalization enables us to remember with greater precision, greater intensity. As we neared Greenville on our journey home, Joseph asked Matthew, Tim, and I what our favorite part of the trip was. We all had the same two answers.

The first was Marshall’s Beach on Saturday evening. The little beach rests below the Golden Gate Bridge and faces the Pacific. It’s recommended as one of the best places in San Francisco to watch the sunset. We spent over an hour here, observing the other beach-goers, arguing over which one of us had been cat-called on our way down the trail, and watching the sun blaze its way around the curve of the earth. Matthew and Jon found a rock and tried to punt it like a football, something Jon quickly regretted. Joseph, in his enthusiasm to capture a video of the action, had his shoes soaked by the incoming tide. Tim removed his shoes and waded into the water, explaining, “I can’t come here and not at least put my feet in the Pacific Ocean.” I took more pictures on that beach than I will ever be able to use. We were in no hurry to leave. When would we ever be together again under the dying glow of the western sun with the spray of the Pacific hanging in the air?

The second was dinner in Chinatown on Sunday evening. This was on our itinerary from the beginning, but we hadn’t figured on most of the restaurants closing down early on Sunday night. After visiting a fortune cookie factory and finding the Dragon’s Gate, we wandered around aimlessly, searching for a place to eat. Finally, we stumbled across an open place with tables spread out in the street. With the light from the shop windows and the Chinese lanterns hanging above, it looked like a movie.

After a busy day in the city and an hour of walking through Chinatown, we were feeling indecisive. We sat down and ordered waters before we’d even decided if we would stay. The waitress kept asking us if we were ready to order. At least three times we asked for five more minutes to look at the menu. By the time we finally made up our minds, the waitress was a bit exasperated. “Finally,” she let slip. We all started laughing. “I should keep my mouth shut,” she scolded herself. This lapse in etiquette made her cuter than she already was.

I have to admit, for one short moment I thought, “Maybe I should ask for her number. What would I have to lose? I’ll never see her again.” That was the point I decided and chose to keep my mouth shut. Jon, however, was more seriously infatuated. We spent most of dinner trying to persuade him not to ask for her number.

I can’t even remember most of what was said, but we spent a long while laughing, sharing food, and enjoying the warm glow of the street. Though we never acknowledged it, I think we were all aware in the moment just how special it was.

On our way back to the Airbnb, we realized we weren’t far from Lombard Street, so we decided to make a detour. After one trip down the serpentine road, Jon wanted more. So we drove around the block again to wind our way down a second time. This time Matthew and I rode down hanging out the sunroof. The night was cool, and the lights of the city shone silver. The beauty and the brevity burned like a sharp inhalation of cold air. A second time was still not enough for Jon — he wanted to ride out the sunroof. So we drove around the block a third time and made our way down the brick slope.

Jon’s adrenaline must have peaked then because we were speeding home to the Airbnb. I think we hardly stopped the whole way. It was risky, but I didn’t care. It felt like freedom.

. . . . .

We left the city early Monday morning so we could drive the coast down to LA. If ever there was a scenic route worth losing sleep for, it is the Pacific Coast Highway. It is the road on the edge of the world.

That morning the ocean was completely covered by clouds, which swept off the water and barreled into the mountains. I rode out the sunroof again as we wound around the tight corners of the coastline. We passed the stately pines of Big Sur; the elegant form of the Bixby Bridge; and the green fields of Carmel, which are home to some of the most privileged cows in the world. Yes, cows. On the California coastline. Completely oblivious to the fact that most of their species do not graze on a cliffside by the ocean.

There isn’t much along this road except random driveways that disappear into the woods, occasional inns facing the ocean, and overpriced gas that’s the best deal around. I can’t help but think it would be lonely to live there on the edge of the world. And yet it’s like the city in some ways — endless, incomprehensible, irresistible. No wonder it beckons to insatiable imaginations.

I wish my jumbled musings would lead to a conclusion, to some point by which I may justify having taken this trip. But as it turns out, even Steinbeck did not find exactly what he was looking for. He writes, “It would be pleasant to be able to say of my travels with Charley, ‘I went out to find the truth about my country and I found it’ . . . But what I carried in my head and deeper in my perceptions was a barrel of worms.”

I don’t think this trip has saved me from a rut or lent me any profound insight for living, but I think Steinbeck would say — and I’d agree — that these trips are worth taking.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.” We said it over and over. That’s how we justified this trip. But maybe we didn’t need to justify it, and maybe we bargain away opportunity by assuming we’re only allotted so much.

When we made it home and went back about our lives, I had to write the guys to thank them for being my friends and for taking the road with me. If there is one thing I did learn on this trip, it is how deeply I love and respect each of them. I finished the letter by breaking our pact: “I really hope this wasn’t just once in a lifetime.”