Day 5: I leave Universal in smokey ruins

I absolutely had to leave today, Sunday. My sister Leslie and her family made plans to drive from upper Maryland down to my folks in Virginia (a two hour drive) this coming weekend. I'm supposed to join them there on Friday night, 5 days hence, covering about 3000 miles.

I hadn't shopped for food and the likelihood of farmer's markets dotting I-40 was remote at best. Heading down to the car, an overcast sky suggested a pleasant marine layer break from days of sunshine but the air was acrid with burnt plastic and rubber. Typical LA, I snorted. Driving up Laurel Canyon, strategizing an assault on Trader Joes, I crossed Riverside and happened to notice the two block wide column of twisting gray and white smoke venting upwards, a couple of miles away. (Not that I took this picture, let alone was even up at 4:30 am, but what an impressively destructive fire).

The smell and the smoke of copies of "Dracula (1931)", "Around the Equator in Roller Skates (1932)", newsreels from 1945 and "The Deer Hunter (1978)" not to mention the Marvellettes' recording of "Please Mr. Postman" drifted overhead while I bought pork chops, steakburgers, olive oil, eggs, breakfast cereal and kefir, packages of lettuce and arugala, dog food to last 10 days, soap, two bottles of Spanish wine, cheese (Port Salut and a wedge of Asiago), and salami.




When I finally rolled out of town, it was already 2 pm. I made my way along the 134 to the 15 passing through corridors between the insurmountable San Bernardino mountains. I zoomed past the white and dusty tracts of Victorville where the motels have blood on their sheets, and finally banking right onto I-40 cutting through the Mojave, past the half-way drained Lake Havasu, ultimately climbing 7000 feet to Flagstaff, AZ, pulling in around 8 pm.

I meant to grab a campsite somewhere between Flagstaff and Sedona, but by the time I even made it into Flagstaff, it was after 8 pm. and I wasn't sure of where I was going. I took the first motel I could find, a tiny Rodeway Inn downtown. Loading into the tiny room, getting ready to go out for dinner after travelling 466 miles, I happened to check my email and found a semi-desperate email from my producer asking for a whole new actualization of the budget by the morning. As if I'd never said I was going away.

...

Today's Mix:

Mainly from my colleague Alex Pearcy's own cd mix of inspirational tunes for his rodeo noir screenplay Ten Dollar Man:

• Rainy Day Woman, Waylon Jennings
• Indian Willow, BJ Cole
• Miracles, Jefferson Airplane
• A Dream that Can Last, Neal Young
• When I Loved Her, Kris Kristofferson
• and the last six innings of the Giants-Padres game, (somehow beaming into the desert from SD) in which the Giants managed to hit off Trevor Hoffman in the 10th and win.