Day 8 – To Carmel

N36º 30.004' W121º 56.121'

2009/06 - California or Bust...
2 July 2009 in Alessandro, California

Dinner last night was fascinating. Unbeknownst to us, we broke one of our travel rules again. But we didn’t know we were breaking a rule, so we’ve decided that it doesn’t really count. And if someone wants to get really technical about it, then we’ll amend the rule about not eating in a chain to read “We won’t eat in a chain restaurant that we KNOW is a chain restaurant.” So there.

Dianne had done research before we left on possible dining locations for each stop (a behaviour that is not new, is regarded by some as slightly excessive, is regarded by others with something akin to awe, and when you’re the beneficiary of it — as I usually am — is seen as not at all unwelcome). One of the places that she came across was called Chart House, which was described as having great views, great food of the steak and seafood variety and pretty good service. All of which we deemed to be perfectly satisfactory for a second night in Lake Tahoe.

As it turns out, Chart House is not just a chain, it’s part of a dining empire. Something like 30 different restaurant brands, and umpteen dozen actual locations. It also turns out that Chart House is one of those restaurants that is considered to be a destination for special occasions. Every town and city has one of these, and it’s the sort of place that people save for, or visit only occasionally, and in doing so imbue it with the quality of being ‘special’. The people that do this, of course, come from every walk of life. And I mean absolutely every walk of life. Which means, for two dedicated observers of the human condition such as Dianne and myself, the people watching was just fascinating. You had the birthday celebrations, the anniversary celebrations, the girls-night-out celebrations, the really raucous girls-night-out celebrations, the family dinners, the downstairs engagement party and the quiet elderly couples just out for a nice intimate dinner. All cheek by jowl with each other in the same room (except for the engagement party, but they kept coming back upstairs to the bar for reasons that continue to escape me). Nonetheless, the view was spectacular, the food was really quite good, the wine list was commendable and the service was actually quite exemplary. All in all it was an excellent meal, accompanied by the same level of voyeuristic stimulation one normally associates with car accidents.

We had a nice quiet breakfast in our room at Lake Tahoe, and prepared to once again hit the road. Sadly, our plans were temporarily delayed through the unfortunate demise of a bottle of cranberry juice in one of our carry-alls. A formerly full bottle of cranberry juice, with the aforementioned contents now occupying the carry-all rather than the bottle. This led to a rather laborious exhumation and cleaning of the contents, and the floor of the closet the carry-all was in, and everything else it touched along the way out the door and into the garbage. Fortunately, nothing significant was lost. The event would be a portent, however, of how the day was shaping up. For the dedicated reader of this blog, you can see where this is going. For the faint of heart and the weak of constitution, you are strongly advised to stop reading now. What comes next is not going to be pretty.

There was a fundamental inevitability to today’s travels. Get on a highway, head west and keep going. First we needed gas, which led to a heated exchange with a Chevron gas station manager over the lack of customer service provided by their gas pumps. Now I know that gas pumps are inanimate, and probably shouldn’t be anthropomorphized, and certainly shouldn’t be expected to provide good and effective customer service. But these ones really, really don’t. It turns out that every Chevron station in the great state of California (at least, that’s what Arnold calls it. Go, Arnold!) demands the zip code associated with the credit card to be entered in to the pump before it’ll deliver the goods. Only I’m Canadian. Which means that I don’t have a zip code, I have a postal code. And the postal code isn’t five digits, it’s six. Which basically means I’m screwed.

In fact, it doesn’t. What it does mean is that you have to pull up to a gas pump, get off the bike, take off your gloves and helmet, walk to the store, line up at the cashier, give them your credit card and ask them to authorize your pump, walk back to the bike, pump your gas, walk back to the store, line up at the cashier again, remind them what pump you were using and actually pay for the gas. This in a gas station that prominently advertises it’s ‘Fast Pay!’ service. This is not customer service. This is annoyance on a grand scale. Especially when you have to do it between two and three times a day, because you ride a motorcycle and can only go so far between fill-ups. The truly dedicated reader, I am sure, is seeing all the portents line up here. Remember, you were warned. It’s not my fault you kept reading.

And so, finally gassed up, we were off. According to the GPS, it was supposed to be slightly less than 4 hours of travel to Carmel. At this point, it is probably worthwhile pointing out that any phrase prefaced with the words “According to the GPS…” is now looked upon as fundamentally suspect by Dianne. In this regard, today she would not be wrong.

Of course, the first giveaway should have been that our distance was only 10 kilometres less than the trip from Klamath Falls to Lake Tahoe, but the time difference was something like 3 hours. The other factor that needed to be taken into account, of course, was RVs. The implication of ‘head west’ when your initial point of departure is Lake Tahoe, is that there will be mountains. As has already been discussed, mountains are the natural and preferred playground of motorcycles. They are not the natural habitat of RVs. Although, apart from serving as tornado bait, I’m not entirely sure what the natural habitat of RVs actually is. But in the mountains, RVs are as awkward and out of place as American tourists in Paris.

The consequence of this circumstance, apart from cementing my resolve to actually become supreme commander of the universe so for the sole purpose of banning RVs from the planet, was that our first hour of the trip took two.

We eventually found our way to two-lane interstate that would guide us to our final destination of Carmel. Which became three, four and five-lane interstate as we progressively got closer to San Francisco. I’ve already provided some discourse on the nature of interstate travel in the States. This, however, does not and cannot provide appropriate context for the reader to understand what interstate travel in California actually embodies. The roads are insane. The drivers are insane. Overexposure will in sufficient time (two hours ought to do it) reduce the most hardened and resolute individual into a babbling, incoherent psychopath. Which explains a lot, really.

I’ve often said before that the roadways in Edmonton, particularly those surrounding the river valley, were designed by someone under the influence of some seriously psychoactive recreational pharmaceuticals. Apparently, this person moved to the Bay area at some point in their career, no doubt to be that much closer to reliable sources of supply. Or because their need for hard core hallucinogens had escalated to new and interesting levels. The result is that you get interchanges that involve soaring two lane off-ramps, elevated to heights of 100 feet and more, meeting two or three other off-ramps in mid-air, and all having the combined effect of merging six lanes of heavy rush hour traffic into two. And I am in no way exaggerating here. Well, perhaps about the road designer, but certainly not about the roads.

About 35 miles prior to experiencing the deranged nature of these merge lanes, however, my idiot light came on. This would be the bright yellow signal that says I have 4 litres of gas left, and the bike is no longer willing to provide an estimate of how far that I might get on that. My (at the time reasonable-seeming) strategy had been to get to San Jose, turn on to Interstate 101 and then fill up with gas (the presumption being that 101, as a US-designated highway, would be the usual two-lane roadway with regular services). Unfortunately, nothing in California is as it seems, and this was a monstrous five lane autoroute being fed by aforementioned onramps. By the time we were sitting on top of the on-ramp in stop-and-go traffic, I had done about 40 miles on reserve. It is an open question how much fuel was left, but I’d argue there wasn’t much.

As a testament to Dianne’s creativity and tolerance for insanity, this was the point where she asked “Isn’t lane splitting legal in California?” For those not familiar with this term, this describes the process of riding a motorcycle ON the white lines between the lanes, not between them, threading your bike between aforementioned psychopathic drivers. On an on-ramp, this did not seem a wise strategy, but it is a reflection of the desperation of the situation that Dianne was willing to suggest it, and I was willing to temporarily contemplate it. I didn’t lane split, and I didn’t run out of gas, but I probably came awfully close. Fortunately, one mile after we (eventually) merged, there was an exit, with a gas station. After a further argument about the inability to use Canadian credit cards in US pumps, that finally resulted in my estimating (badly) how much gas I needed to buy, we were sufficiently fuelled to finish what we had started.

By the time we were halfway to Carmel, Dianne had sworn off all future interstate driving in California. By the time we were close to Carmel, visions of martinis were dancing before her. By the time we reached our destination, she was well qualified for a position in road design herself. Fortunately, the Tickle Pink Inn (great place, really unfortunate name) was as we remembered it, and Suite 31 had our name on it. We finally got the truck unpacked, settled in and headed off to dinner. And a martini. Or two.

The Tickle Pink Inn is a bastion of sanity and civilization, at the end of a very, very maddening stretch of highway. That it exists is a blessing. That it is so painful to get to is its curse. But really, folks, we’re just getting started here.

ban all RVs, dining empires, embracing diversity, leaving town, revising the rules, testing the rules