and who is he, mr. rand mcnally?

About a week after we returned from our Thanksgiving break roadtrip to Santa Barbara, my father remarked, “You know, I think we should go on a trip again soon.”

“Oh?” I said. “Are the nomadic tendencies kicking in again?”

“Not really,” he admitted sheepishly, “It’s just that I kinda liked your guys’ music.” I let out a shout of laughter and yelled into our bedroom, “Bean, did you hear that?!”

On Christmas day, we packed the car again and headed back out to Highway 1 along the coast, but northward this time. We passed creeks and lakes and drove along the ocean itself, endless water that looked like sheets of glass tinted by a vast expanse of sky.

The daddy-o gave us the hysterical inside scoop on many of the small hill towns we passed by. Apparently, many of these are hippie towns that songwriters referenced in songs back in the day (“Hippie from Olema” – the tongue-in-cheek take on “Okie from Muskogee” – anyone?) where people supposedly used to grow marijuana. Passing by a horse ranch in the hills, the daddy-o said confidentially, “That’s how he got rich, you know. Selling horses. It’s all a front. His real business is drugs.” Daddy translated Farsi songs for us, while we all made smartass comments about the towns we passed.

Re. “Olema – Population: 55”:

Me: “Get ready, you guys. Population in the double digits!”
Daddy-o: “This is the one town where the elevation is higher than the population.”

Re. the cow attempting to chew its way through a wire fence:

Daddy-o (suffering from caffeine withdrawals): “Well, he must have found some coffee on the other side of the fence.”
Bean, jokingly: “Or marijuana!”

Later, my father looked down at the ocean to his left. “My bebe,” he murmured, “used to say to me when I was little, ‘At this time of evening, even the oceans come to a standstill, and yet you are still working.'”

I was reminded of a line from my Muir Woods post from last year: Miles out from the cliff, the clear bay met the unclouded sky, and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

The mountains and ocean stayed consistent, while the eucalyptus tress were eventually replaced by redwoods, majestic in their own right, but my childhood – and the lines of trees behind my house – taught me to love the eucalyptus ones above all.

We stopped in Gualala for the night (the daddy-o kept referring to it as Gul-i-Lala, with the Pukhtu accent on the very last syllable: Lala, we kept repeating in amusement. At the hotel that night, we turned on the wall heater (yes!) and settled down on the beds to channel surf, because this, of course, is apparently what children who were denied adequate access to television while growing up do when they go on roadtrips through the northern portion of the state. They watch cable TV to make up for all those empty, traumatic years. Right.

Horror of horrors, we got caught up on the Lifetime channel and three movies that were each two hours long, and didn’t go to sleep til 1 a.m. “Keep your eyes glued to the screen!” the daddy-o kept sarcastically instructing us. “Forget ‘glued,’ I’m keeping my eyes rolled,” I said dryly the first time around, but by the time he repeated it for the tenth time, my response had upgraded to, “Oh, I am!” Oh, the depths to which I have sunk! Disgustingly fascinating, what can I say.

So what did the Lifetime channel teach me? Babies can get switched at birth in hospitals in a case of “Mistaken Identity.” And being too nonchalant and trusting with your social security number and credit card information will likely lead to “Identity Theft.” (I’m paranoid now, thankyouverymuch.) And not only that! But even poor, downtrodden, disadvantaged teenagers can go from “Homeless to Harvard”! The end.

The next morning, we stopped at Café LaLa for some quick breakfast munchies before we hit the road again. How could I not fall in love with a café that had comfortable armchairs and bookshelves with a sign instructing, “BRING US MORE BOOKS! TRADE OR BORROW”? And how could I not love the girl at the counter, Laurel, who asked me, “Would you like extra chocolate in your hot chocolate?”

She was so helpful and good-humored that when I introduced myself and she said in response to my name, “I’m sorry, say that again. Is it like ‘Jasmin’?”, I didn’t roll my eyes or do my infamous “evil death glare” with one raised eyebrow like I normally do, but only laughed and replied, “Yes, but with the ethnic twist.” She gave us coffee on the house – “It’s on me,” she winked, gesturing towards the coffeepot – and did an excited little dance around the counter as she told us about her sister who works at the Whale Watch Inn in Anchor Bay and will be expecting a baby in May.

The rest of the day was endless rain and curving roads. As official navigator once again, I snuggled on the passenger seat with the thick fuzzy blanket, ate apple pie with my fingers, congratulated myself on learning to read the highway maps, and watched the roads, slick with rain.

On the way home, I mispronounced all the French names of the wineries throughout the Napa Valley. Where’s my lovely L lady when I need her? Pinot, pinwa, what?

the open road for the travelers’ souls

I fell asleep last Wednesday night to the sound of my father asking, “Who wants to go to Santa Barbara tomorrow?” When we woke up the next morning, it was Thanksgiving Day and Santa Barbara was almost four hundred miles to the south. We showered, dressed, and packed in record time, far more efficiently than we’ve ever prepared for any visit to the relatives’ in Sacramento, and that’s only an hour away.

I will be the first to admit that I have an obsession with mountains, but this time even I couldn’t help but keep my face practically glued to the car window mainly in the direction of the ocean instead. Following the twists and turns of Highway 1 as we made our way down the California coast, mountains to our left and vast expanse of water to our right, we took endless photos and filmed the sea and otherwise thoroughly behaved like giddy, overawed tourists. Something in the (salt)water, I guess.

I was somehow accorded the position of official navigator, which brought back some déjà vu feelings of the summer when I was nine and we drove from California to Toronto, Canada, me reading The Wizard of Oz while propped up on pillows on the backseat as we laughingly renamed obscure Midwestern towns after imaginary relatives of the infamous Oz. Then, as now, I stared in bewilderment at the map, tracing my finger along the red, yellow, and blue lines, trying to unravel the junctions and interchanges with the tip of my finger, squinting at highways and interstates and the point at which one would meet another. This time, at least, all we had to do was follow all the signs labeled “South” (and, on the way home, those labeled “North”), so thankfully I didn’t make any damaging navigational suggestions or decisions.

In the hotel room the first night, I made a predictable beeline straight for the wall heater, where I stood for several minutes gleefully warming up my hands, and was finally dragged away only to watch Spiderman on TV. Later, I lay on the couch, reading Ray Bradbury’s short stories, while Bean listened to Josh Kelly and studiously flipped through her two-feet-thick, bajillion-pound biology textbook.

In San Simeon, our father kept raising his eyebrows at the hordes of tourists there to check out Hearst Castle, muttering, “Foreigners!” under his breath with mock superiority and outrage, while we laughed and retorted, “Look who’s talking, Daddy!”

Roadside billboard advertisements that made me laugh:

(1) “Big Bubba’s Bad BBQ”

and

(2) “BUELLERTON: HOME OF SPLIT PEA SOUP – Everything For the Traveler”

I hope the humor in these is self-explanatory. Or maybe I’m just far too easily amused.

I had a cough and cold, so I spent much of the trip listening to my father say things like, “Yasminay, did you take your Vitamin C tablets? Take two right now. Right NOW. And this is YOUR water bottle, okay? The one with the blue label. I’m putting it in THIS cup-holder. Make sure you don’t drink from mine. Don’t make me sick. What about Sudafed? Have you been taking Sudafed? Take two right now. When’s the last time you took some Vitamin C? THIS one is YOUR water bottle, Yasminay, don’t forget now.” I’m five years old, in case you ever doubted it, really.

Bean filmed me singing the chorus lines to various songs, including Jagjit and Chitra Singh’s Kaghaz Ki Kashti, Sardar Ali Takar’s La Kha Wakhte De, and random songs from the Beatles (like Hey, Jude). And, just to clarify, this portion of the family video is not available for public perusal, sorry. Actually, even I haven’t seen it yet either, come to think of it. Sadly, the Haroon Bacha tape is currently down, so we missed out on old family favorites such as O Zarojaanay and Bibi Shirinay. We all agreed that our father’s version of Yellow Submarine is better.

The best part, hands down, was praying on the beach, and later on one of the turnoffs for a narrow mountain road where you could look down over the side of the cliff and see the beach and the ocean below. Gorgeous.

Our father translated the Pukhtu lyrics for us while singing along to all the songs, and approvingly drummed his fingers against the steering wheel when Bean played her sitar fusion CD. He also became suitably enthusiastic at our suggestion of listening to the Beatles. In the late evening of the second day, highly bitter at the fact that he couldn’t find an NPR station signal along the coast, the Daddy-o finally resorted to singing along with the oldies station on the radio. “Don’t you know who this is?” he bellowed towards the backseat where I was laughing at him. “This is Bob Dylan!” “Bean!” I hissed at my drowsy sister, as our father continued loudly accompanying other artists on the radio, “Is this normal?”

And, of course, no discussion of my Thanksgiving weekend is complete without mentioning missed connections with 2Scoops, Audioblogger Extraordinaire [link is from the November 23, 2004 audiopost on Chai’s blog] from Southern California, who was in the SF Bay Area this weekend. On Friday, we were still driving down to Santa Barbara while he left me a voicemessage saying he was going to Jummah (congregational prayer) at SRVIC. Bean and I just stared at each other and moaned, “That’s our masjid!” Yeah, so the one day we’re not there. Geez louise. The next day, Bean and I were at a Unity Halaqa in San Jose while 2Scoops was also in the city, but we couldn’t coordinate a meeting because of our convoluted scheduling conflicts and stuff. So hey, next time you’re in the Bay, 2Scoops, we need to grab some ice cream and continue that list of all our mutual friends and acquaintances. Small world, man. It’s amazing.

Also, I ate a lot of french fries over break. And cranberry juice. And ice cream, too, of course (two scoops of double fudge chocolate in Santa Barabara, yeeeuhhh boyyeee). I knew you all would be proud.