Spring Break
Death, anxiety and ripoffs on the highway
D.S. Perez / Daily Senior Staff Writer
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Sometimes, I dream of doing that kind of schtick. I often fantasize of stopping at the little towns that I pass by during my commute across the state.
But I don’t. Maybe it’s because I’m busy, or that I’m lazy.
Besides, it’s freaking boring to drive 350 miles from Point A to Point B and pass through the orchards, grapevines and cattle farms that make up the space between the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Still, there is the occasional fascinating gem that spins my mind.
Usually, issues relevant to self-preservation come foremost to mind.
Roadkill, for instance, can be a great psychological burden. Yet, I always wonder how animal populations are affected by highways, and I’m surprised there has yet to be some species go extinct because of traffic.
Then of course, there are the carcasses, which are always interesting. Bits of fur or feathers, red smudge and bones smashed into the pavement. A decapitated coyote takes the cake for most exotic kill — the body was intact, except for the neck.
Sometimes, the animal looks like it got hit, struggled to make it to the other side, and got eviscerated by another rolling tire.
I should know. The two animals I’ve hit — a bird that flew into my door and a cat someone threw onto the road in front of me — hobbled to get to the other side while quivering from shock. Too bad the next car couldn’t get out of the way, either.
Death is a common traveler of the highways. Not only does it strike the creatures of the wild, but it also comes to people as well.
I almost get religious when I travel. I wish polytheism were the “in-thing,” so there would be a god or goddess to pray to before hitting the road, like ancient mariners hoping Odin or Poseidon would bless their travels. “O Asphaulteus, god of the California Interstate, grant me haste,” sounds pretty cool.
Believe me, witnessing some of the crap I’ve been through is scary. Winds that blow cars into other lanes, drivers paying more attention to the invisible person in their cell phone and sleeping people at the wheel, like the woman I just passed by on Interstate 5, who was appearing to use The Force to navigate her car through traffic at 75 mph.
It all makes the guy jamming his SUV or compact car 5 feet behind my car’s trunk seem tame.
I also wish there weren’t idiots who crane their neck to view an accident, slowing my 80 mph travel to a crawl and placing my car sandwiched between a Ford Pinto and a big rig.
And then there’s the fatigue factor. When the mind starts thinking about the words “bed,” “Sealy Posturepedic” and “sleep,” it’s time to get off the road. Getting tired behind the wheel is as deadly as driving drunk.
I remember driving through the desert in the middle of the night, freaking out over any time my eyes closed — what I saw, a black, lightless void, was similar to what I see in my bedroom at night. Thank God for truck stops with jet-black coffee, or else I think I would have died.
Anyway, let’s get off the death subject and on to something else.
Eventually, you have to get off the road. Usually, when one disembarks from the rivers of asphalt and blood, a hotel is the likely location.
At a hotel, however, one should not spend a dime on anything other than the room and maybe a bite at the restaurant.
God forbid you have to spend any more money in those rat holes. It’s one thing to buy up a room for the night, but try the gift shops that double as rip-off bazaars and tourist traps.
An example includes a $1.25 candy bar that normally retails for half the price. And only in an emergency should someone use the phone for longer than three minutes.
To e-mail this column, it probably costs $2 from this hotel where I’m staying.
On that note, I’m running low on cash and time. Catch you next week, if I survive my next travel assignment — via airplane.
Ye gods, it gets worse there.
Please, Apollo, don’t have me sitting next to a corpulent, flatulent old person like the last time ...
D.S. Perez is a Spartan
Daily Senior Staff Writer.
“Born Under A Bad Sign”
appears Mondays.
