Getting to Mexico 3 - California

From Redding to Sacramento is about 3 hours. We arrived into town, pulled over and called Luis' nephew Oscar to see if we could use his shower. He was awake and invited us over. After cleaning up, and trying to get a few moments of sleep while Luis was showering, we went out to a pancake breakfast. We ate well, drank lots of coffee and caught up with Oscar and what was going on in his life. Then we got back in our own cars and took off once again. Our stops were few and short, and I wasn't sure how long I could go at this pace. Luis is more accustomed to driving like this, so he had a bit of an easier time of it. But he says he's getting older and it's harder to do every year.

We stopped at a Target to return an item we had been carrying with us since Portland (a sign of how quickly we left town), and found a Starbucks. Two large coffees later and we were on the road again.

We headed out of Sacramento and into the great valley of California. There isn't much to look at on that highway. Some stinky cow farms, lots of agriculture.... nothing much else. I remembered driving it at night on purpose when I lived in Cali and was driving between Berkeley and Los Angeles. That way I could imagine the wonderful things on the side of the road that I couldn't see in the dark. Driving it in the daytime was disappointing and boring. The hour or so of sleep I had gotten the previous night started to wear on me.

Then we hit Los Angeles. Man! Those people drive aggressively! I thought it was bad in Atlanta, but this was much worse. Or maybe I had been in a nice polite smallish town for long enough to forget what it is like to drive in a major city. No one wanted to give an inch. And they all drove at least 80mph. At least. Here we are, two out of state cars, loaded down with stuff, trying to find our way through the maze of highways, and everyone around us is zipping along probably annoyed that we were on their highway to begin with. Add to that the fact that the Jeep's right side rear view mirror didn't work and wasn't adjusted in any way for Luis to see what was in his blind spot. So i was his spotter - I would change lanes before he did so he could see that it was clear for him. That didn't work smoothly in LA.

By the time we got out of that and onto the edge of the desert, it was 10pm and we needed to stop. We found a hotel, brought the bikes in, and fell asleep.

The next morning we were desperate for a Starbucks. We figured none would be open at 5am, so we drive for 2 hours and stopped for breakfast. Their coffee wasn't too bad, but there was a Starbucks nearby, so we hit them up for more caffeine and got back on the road.

By this time the lack of sleep was starting to get to me. A lot of this time is fuzzy in my memory and I can't remember which hotel was in which state. I remember drinking coffee wherever we could find it. I even tried one of those high energy drinks (the Red Bull type), but it had no effect on me. Scary. Either it wasn't what it said it was, or I was so tired it couldn't break through that wall.

We made our way across Arizona, then New Mexico, and hit El Paso, Texas. It was early - 9pm - but we were both exhausted, so we stopped, had a "real" meal at Appleby's, and once again fell fast asleep.

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