Youthful Exuberance
Well, we did it. We drove 2,900 miles across country, arriving in Hidden Meadows at Casa Moonstruck at 7:00am precisely this morning. Hey, wait a minute, did I just say 7:00 AM? After driving 10.5 hours from New York to Knoxville covering 707 miles (avg. 67 mph), and 12 hours from Knoxville to OKC covering 864 miles (avg. 72 mph), we had planned to drive for just 8 hours to Santa Fe covering 534 miles (avg. 67 mph), leaving a long last day of 12 hours covering 875 miles (avg. 73 mph) and arriving at 7:00 pm give or take. Somewhere after a restless night in OKC, Kim and I jointly hit on the idea of just stopping in Santa Fe for dinner with old friend Tom and his bride Brenda for dinner, as planned, and then just carrying on through to Casa Moonstruck. That would mean a final day’s drive of 20 hours to save ourselves 12 hours on arrival, the other 8 hours saved by not sleeping. It’s tough sleeping at 7,000 feet, but I got about 90 minutes of a nap. Great plan.
We arrived in Santa Fe on the early side with only one Texas Ranger warning near Amarillo for going 80 in a 75 mph zone. We Jacob Ed an unwilling hotel clerk into letting us into our prepaid room early by three hours and while Kim walked Cecil, shopped and went for a shampoo and blow-out, I tried to cop some serious midday zzz’ s. We then found our way to Tom and Brenda’s lovely Santa Fe casita with its high desert views and its roaring fire. It reminded me of a Sedona home I had once visited. We spent a relaxing three hours on conversation (Tom and I had gone to high school in Rome together, low these fifty years ago), and enjoyed a traditional Czech dinner or roast pork, dumplings, purple cabbage, Brussels sprouts and lots of smooth pork gravy. Tom had prepared the meal in honor of his departed mother, who I had known and held in very high regard. We spoke of our young days in Rome, riding motorcycles, chasing girls, and eating off the same china from Tom’s mother’s native Czechoslovakia, that we were using that night.
One of the stories told involved a trip to London Tom and I had taken in 1970 to pick up a tax-free Triumph 750 trident (in ahead-of-its-time orange). It was a fun tale of snowy roads, train boxcars, rude Frenchmen, the euphoria of motorcycling in La Dolce Vita Rome in our teenage years and many, many high-jinx of youth. That story led to a retelling of my solo trip to London some six months earlier to gather my own Triumph TR6R 650 Tiger in “Spring Gold” green. Without retelling that story, the relevant punchline was that in my folly of youthful exuberance of being sixteen and full of beans, I rode that Tiger in one day from Boulonge France to Rome (1,070 miles or 1,722 kilometers) and I did it in 18 hours averaging just under 60 mph, a very fast speed in those days on a motorcycle. We laughed that it was the sort of day only a sixteen-year-old was stupid enough and perseverant enough to undertake.
As though on cue, that was exactly when I declared to Tom and Brenda that I planned to hop in the car after our sumptuous Eastern European meal and drive the 864 miles to Casa Moonstruck during the overnight. Tom was impressed and Brenda was too polite to speak her mind (though she did offer me a Red Bull for the road) , but I’m sure she thought it was nuts. My own wife thought it was a little nuts, but the call of Escondido was too loud in her ear to warn too much against it. I buckled in, watched Cecil curl up in his bed and waved goodbye to the tales of yesteryear.
I started strong, feeling full of pork and beans (how’s that for a mixed-metaphor?). By the time the odometer was down from 864 miles to go to 650 miles to go (three hours later), I began to question the wisdom of my plan. One stop, another Diet Coke jumbo and some PBJ crackers and I was off again. I repeated this ritual, finding salty foods to be a good Red Bull substitute. I never even got close to nodding off even though I had visions of Chevy Chase in Vacation driving off the road or John Candy seeing the devil in between oncoming semis in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I had only Rachel, Velshi and Brian of MSNBC to keep me company for three hours and then Pete Buttigieg and his My Way Home book to keep me company. Kim would wake up every hour or so and ask if I was OK, which, surprisingly I was.
It was good to rehash old Roman times with Tom and discuss the angst of “retirement”, whatever that is, as we each looked forward to filling our days. His mother, father and two older brothers (I knew all but his oldest brother) are all gone now. My mother is gone after ticking the Centenarian box. We had had unremarkable, but good times back then and there. I only keep in close touch with one other Roman friend though I FB-watch several others. As we are driving to Albuquerque I hear that FB is once again in the hot seat for the antics of BrightRoll, which seems to be a Russian heavy-duty advertisers/influencer. Sounds like the world will never be safe from social media terrorism. I may have to rethink my FB membership after all. Tom is certainly my closest high school friend at this point and I suspect we will beat a path between Santa Fe and Hidden Meadows over time.
My MBrace GPS has decided to route me all the way to Barstow on Rt. 40, which is fine with me. I like the emptiness of the Mojave at night even though my eyes do get a tad blurry at times. Barstow to Hidden Meadows at 5am Saturday should have been easier, but we made it and I felt like a conquering sixteen year old hero, having driven 20 of the past 27 hours. I hade it halfway across America in one day. It was no Canonball Run of 27.5 hours, but I’ll hold up my 42 hours at 66 years of age and let that be my accomplishment and testament to the Gods of retirement and the over-rated symbolism of youthful exuberance.