I have arrived

After driving 6,851 miles over 74 days (minus 25 I was out of the country) and spending way more than I bargained for on gas, I have arrived at my quasi-final destination: Berkeley. I am installed in the downstairs mother-in-law apartment at my aunt and uncle's house and am settling in. It feels soooo good to not have a car full of stuff any more!

The days after Yellowstone were uneventful, simply driving back through Wyoming, Idaho, hitting up Nevada for the first time, and coming west into California. Driving through Reno, the most exciting thing I saw wasn't a casino; it was a sign for a Sierra Trading Post outlet store. Unfortunately, I completely missed the exit due to a renumbering scheme that I'm sure was meant to make things easier, however doesn't work so well when the billboards don't keep up. That was sort of the highlight (and subsequent disappointment) of the final leg of driving. Nevada is a fairly uninteresting state to drive through, I hate to say.This dude was highly amused by me taking a photo of the sign, when he clearly just did the same thing, and even pulled over to do it.

I had an interesting driving experience, though, on the day that will heretofore be known as the Day of Things Flying at Me. First it was a bee that was somehow not killed when it hit my car, bounced into my open window (no AC, remember?), hit me, and fell between my front seats. I could see its stunned little body (little relative to me; big for a bee) laying, legs up, below my emergency brake. This made me nervous. Very nervous. I was on edge, which was not a good thing, since I was on one of those windy, steep mountain passes, which are usually fun to drive, especially in a 5-speed. This, however, was one of the most stressful driving experiences of my life. Just try to keep an eye on cars in front of you, behind you, and in the oncoming lane, the windy, skinny road, the falling rock signs, and a Mexican killer bee 6 inches from your thigh (I'm sure that's what it was; what else could sustain a trauma like that and survive to taunt me?). It ain't easy, my friend. It even managed to eventually flip itself over and crawl around, which elevated my blood pressure and my heart rate considerably. Even thinking about it now makes me rather nervous, and I'm just sitting at a bee-free desk. Anyway, it was 20 minutes before I could pull over to extract this death machine from my car using an ingenious method of two sheets of paper as a scooper. Again, elevated vitals. Those things might look all cute and fuzzy and chubby, but really they exist to make people scared for their lives.

Incident 2 on on Day of Things Flying at Me: a rock. I was casually hanging my arm out the window, working on my trucker's tan (which is pretty decent by this time), when a rock from an oncoming work truck flies into the side of my wrist. Ow. People observing me probably got a good chuckle from my reaction(s): pain, shock, embarrassment, and anger, all mimed for their pleasure within a few seconds. And then my arm went back out the window (it was hot).

Incident 3: UFO. I don't know what it was, where it came from, or where it went inside my car, but something hit me in the chest. Not as hard as the rock, but disconcerting nonetheless. (Aside: I was hit - by myself - several times in the arm, head, and back while fly fishing. Those bigger lures can really getcha.)

And now for some more notes to begin to wrap up this portion of our hero's epic journey. This little joke came to me more times than I can remember while driving:
What's the last thing that goes through a bug's head when he hits a windshield? His butt.
It made me laugh a little each time. Eventually, though, I felt rather sorry for some of the nicer bugs that I hit. It was kind of their fault, though - I would see a very pretty something-or-other flying willy nilly down the road, then suddenly veer into my path, like it had a death wish. What if all those bugs that go splat on our windshields are just suicidal? That would be really bizarre, no? (When you drive almost 7,000 miles completely alone, you have time to think these things over as if they are reasonable queries.)

Hay. It's really pretty, especially at this time of year when the fields are being cut down and hay bales (I almost just wrote hales there, which would be a neat conjunction to shorten up farm conversations) are being dried and rolled up in fields. There were many times that I wanted to stop and just look around some farms, clamber around on the 20-foot high bale piles, or take some pictures. There was that nagging fear of being shot from the porch by a slack-jawed yokel that usually won out, though.

One of my new favorite treats, introduced to me by Tori of the Great Sand Dunes (her official title), is Cocoa Roast Almonds. Yum.

Today's driving highlight was on Route 80, approaching San Francisco from Sacramento, where I had to go around a smattering of about 15 or so individual shoes lying in the road. I don't know if there was a pair among them, which was intriguing.

And finally, from the archives, an image which I meant to share earlier but forgot to:This is a stunning work of art. Just look at the movement in the figures, the camera falling to the wayside as the surprised man's bleeding butt cheek goes flying from the bison's horn. I do have a question, however: how many is "many"? It's said so casually, in passing: "Many visitors were gored by buffalo last summer." This was so vague, blunt, and startling that I laughed out loud. Probably not the reaction park rangers were looking for, but, hey.

To be continued when I'm not half asleep.