The End, pt.1

Today is the day that Lily and I fly back from LA (redeye flight at 11pm).
The trip from SD to LA was about what we expected.

We're staying at this cool old hotel named Cal-Mar.  The rooms are little apartments and the feel of the place is very 50s-60s.  A place Don Draper might stay for a while in Santa Monica.  Pretty much all we did here is the beach (the water, like everywhere else we've been, is cold, cold, cold.  what the hell, it's july in the desert, why is the water cold?) and the Santa Monica pier for Lily's first official rollercoaster ride.  She hated it. She liked the Ferris Wheel, however, and the hot chocolate and the popcorn.  She did NOT like coming in second on the carnival race game where she could have won an evil Minion from Despicable Me 2.

Clare enjoyed the Tesla dealership a couple blocks away immensely.

Today Clare's friend Kerri comes in from Norfolk to accompany her back across the country, so we'll probably have some more beach time and the ceremonial passing of the car keys before we fly back.

At the end of this trip, I have to reflect a bit.  A vacation like this takes so much involvement, effort, time that if you don't come out of the other end of it changed a bit, you might feel a little let down.  A week at the beach doesn't demand anything of you and doesn't necessary give you anything but a break, that's what it's for.

A car trip across the country demands patience and imagination and teamwork and, sometimes, just plain work.  What has this given me/us?

Perspective, certainly. The sheer size of this country, the variety of landscapes, the variety of experience just looking around and walking around removes any thought that where we live is representative of the country as a whole.  Nowhere is.  

A sense of where I do and do not fit.  I could live anywhere we've been, but i don't want to be talked to as much as these friendly bastards what to talk to me.  I'm decidedly East Coast that way.  I don't fit in the small towns, in the bleached out western villages filled with strip malls, cactus and sand.  I'm surprised (for the 2nd time) that I liked Denver, even though John Elway is all that is wrong with the world.  I don't fit with the hippies or hipsters or granolas that live there or boulder, but the parts of the city they live in are nice. i can see the reason Clare's desire to walk to places, having options for the daily items that you need in your day within a few blocks of where you live.

A sense of accomplishment, we've done things.  We've not passively vacated, we've driven places, walked miles and miles, climbed high places, improvised, negotiated, resolved conflicts and worked together.  If 3 people as prickly as we are can do this, then most any family can do this.

I think, for me and perhaps Clare too, the most important thing we've gotten is what we've given Lily.  Not just a sense of what this country has in it, but also, hopefully, the general knowledge or feeling that there are other places out there she can go.  We hope that, when the time comes, she won't be afraid to venture out there to parts unknown because she's already seen so much of what's out there that she know it'll likely be ok wherever she chooses.

So, Clare will keep up the final leg of the trip and I'll become a reader.  I can honestly say that I don't want to end this yet, but that's just how it works.  I talked at the beginning about the possibility of being the Loud family from that very first reality show on PBS in the 70s that disintegrated on film, or the Griswold's of National Lampoon fame.  Now I can say that we did well, that we didn't disintegrate or have too many disasters.  We're a good group and a family of smart and funny people who can get along even when that's the last thing we want to do at the moment.  I guess that knowledge is the best thing the vacation has given me.