TRAVEL / ROAD TRIP
On My Way to LA
And yoga teacher training
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January 15, 2004 Got the car all packed up and it was full — I couldn’t pick up a hitchhiker if I wanted to. There are baskets of hair and skin care products, suitcases of clothes, clothes on hangers, an electric kettle, boom box, alarm clock, books, laundry basket, laundry detergent and considerable inventory from my pantry.
I envy those people who know how to pack a vehicle. It’s truly an art. I start with every intention of doing it right, and it works for those initial boxes. But when it comes to the baskets, the clothes on hangers, the odd-shaped items that spill out over the tops of containers, I lose all sense of order. The last items get stuffed in and I shut the door quickly before anything can spill out.
Before getting on the road, I head over for one last class at the Johns Landing studio. I choose a spot in the front row and after I stretch, but before class begins, I lie down and close my eyes. I am grateful to be here. The impatience in me wants to cut to the chase, hurry on down the road, and make haste. But there’s a more seasoned part of me that knows it's important to begin things with intention and discipline.
The class is gentle. I say goodbye to Christy, Jim, John, Pat, Ava.
The late morning weather is decent: cloudy, chilly, gray but not raining. Until yesterday when it melted, there had been a five-day ice storm that made travel uncertain. Cars slipped and slid out of control. I aborted my trip out of my apartment — the stairs were coated. I feared a fall.
I count the hawks as I head south on Interstate 5. I love seeing them in flight, perched on fences, or on the towering metal giants that support power lines running adjacent to the freeway.
Just north of the Corvallis turnoff, a huge, dark bird swoops out across the freeway from west to east. I look after him as he ascends and lo, he has a white tail and a white head. A bald eagle! It's only the second time I’ve seen a bald eagle in the Willamette Valley.
In the indigenous North American people’s lore, eagles represent spirit. They stand for the tests that result in stepping into one’s personal power. That he showed up as I began my trip is an omen. My heart sings. He, along with Bat — rebirth — showed up in the Medicine Cards I pulled for this trip.
When I signed up and paid for this teacher training, I received a copy of the dialog — 90 minutes worth — in the mail. Learning verbatim will be one of the biggest aspects of training.
After avoiding it as long as I can, I practice, reciting the first two postures from memory over and over. Alternately, I speak loudly, slowly, quickly, with inflection, dramatically — in short, every way that I can think of to make my voice less tedious, more interesting.
I plug in the cassette tapes that I’ve recorded and repeat the postures along with them. After about 40 minutes, I’m pretty much sick of dialog so I fumble around for some old standby tapes, mostly recordings my daughters have made for me: mixes with Sarah McLoughlin, Shawn Colvin, Seal, Enigma, Tori Amos, Indigo Girls, Crash Test Dummies, Steely Dan, Sinead O’Connor, Lorena McKinnet, Moby, Annie Lennox, Sting and others.
The skies clear up some as I travel south. My butt aches and I’m sure that I must be getting callouses on my cheeks from all of the sitting so I stop at a rest area. I use the women’s room and stretch a bit and look at the map. God, is that all the ground I’ve covered in three hours? I look ahead and according to my calculations, I’ll be rolling through Sacramento just in time for Friday night rush hour.
I get back on the freeway and continue south. Driving is hypnotic. I’m barely aware of the landscape. I continue to count hawks — 21 by the time I reach the California border. Even with that diversion, now and then I come to and I’m amazed at the lapses. I am fully capable of traveling for miles and miles with absolutely no memory of the terrain that I’ve covered.
I plug the dialog cassette back in and drill for a while — not because I want to but because I should.
True to calculations, I arrive in Sacramento at rush hour. I consider finding accommodations before hitting the city but none of the motels pull at me so I motor headlong into the Friday evening gridlock. The night is clear and mild and I appreciate the city lights. I relax and accept the inevitable brake lights that extend for miles ahead. I check the time: 6:05 PM.
I’m through Sacramento in 40 minutes and now I’m dedicated to finding a place to call home for the night. It takes another hour and I settle for one of those off-the-freeway motels with a handy gas station, grocery mart, Subway and Taco Bell, all within a stone’s throw. The teeming little hub is purely for the convenience of the interstate motorist. There are no other signs of community anywhere in sight.
I check into my room at around 8:00 PM. After ten hours behind the wheel, I am bleary-eyed and ready for sleep. But my mind isn’t. And neither, as it turns out, are my neighbors.
After a long, hot bath, making journal entries and playing far too many games of Free Cell and Spider Solitaire, I read but can’t keep my attention on the article so I turn on the TV. Soon enough, my eyelids are heavy. I turn off the light and a few minutes later, doze off.
I wake up to rhythmic and I notice, very enthusiastic, thumping on the wall that separates my headboard from the headboard in the adjacent room. The digital display on the bedside clock reads 11:07 PM.
For a brief moment, I consider calling the front desk and asking for another room but no, dammit, I’ve got everything spread out, I’m settled, and how long can it go on, after all? According to the law of averages, less than 10 minutes.
So I turn the TV back on and turn up the volume louder than I might otherwise. I switch channels and after going through about 20 of them, congratulate myself on having the good sense to forego cable TV at home. Even with more than 100 channels to choose from, there’s seldom anything worth watching.
I take another melatonin tablet.
Later, I wake up to Conan O’Brien. The couple must have been exhausted and so was I so I turn off the TV and return to a fitful slumber.
Somewhere in the early morning hours, I wake up. I’m buzzing with an unusually strong energy. I try to stay with it, to keep my awareness of it. The same thing happened earlier in my yoga experiences. I’d wake up and feel energy whirring throughout my entire body. It is nothing I’ve ever experienced before. And I wonder what it is? I’ve always exercised but this never happened when I was running, working with weights, or doing video aerobics.
At 6:30 AM, I’m wide awake and up. I make myself only sufficiently presentable so that I don’t scare some hapless soul who might run into me in the halls or the lobby on my way to the free coffee. I’ll willingly settle for the watery bilge that is served in place of it.
I tuck my keycard into my pocket, open my door slightly and peek down the hall. No one’s about. A relief. I take the stairwell to the first floor and locate the breakfast station. Not so surprisingly, the only containers available are those tiny little styrofoam cups that hold about six fluid ounces. I figure that four of them should get me started. So I pour the coffee and spike it with half-and-half and steady one lidded cup on top of the other, two in each hand.
I retrace my steps, balancing the stacked cups, down the hall. I place the coffee on the floor and open the door to the stairwell, pick it back up, proceed up the stairwell, put the coffee down again to open the door at the top of the stairwell, pick it back up and proceed to my room, where I again put the coffee down to use the keycard to open my door. I consider a second trip as I drink the nasty stuff and work on my journal.
By 8:00 am, my car is repacked and I’m back on the road. I figure that I’ll arrive in Los Angeles at around 3:30 or 4:00.
Once the morning mists lift, the landscape warms up as I continue down the interstate. Though I average 78 MPH, my speed does not meet the standard set by most fellow travelers. I get over and they whiz by me, perturbed, no doubt, at my sluggish pace.
The traffic starts getting frantic about 85 miles out of LA. Completely nuts. I sit up straighter, hold the wheel a little tighter, and pay closer attention.
I feel so out of place here, so frenzied. I can’t believe that eight lanes are heading into LA. It does not stretch my imagination, however, to think that eight lanes are heading out of LA.
Sharon’s directions take me through the famous grapevine, over the mountain pass, and then onto Interstate 405 heading south over another range of mountains. Turn right onto Sunset Boulevard and wind west for about 20 minutes, through Brentwood and all of its high-end estates.
I scored a place in Pacific Palisades. Didn’t and won’t meet the owner, Katie, a woman in her 80s who’s gone for a three-month cruise. My yoga friend, Sharon, set it up; Sharon had done training the year before and knows Katie and now I’m the beneficiary of Katie’s estate for the next six weeks. Complete score!
Oh, thank God because accommodations set up for students would have been unlivable: five to a two-bedroom apartment in a large complex. No privacy. Party atmosphere.
Here at Katie’s place, I have a four-bedroom house to myself, full kitchen. Quiet, down a lane off the main thoroughfare. All for $200 a month, just clean up after yourself, take out the trash weekly. No problem. I’ll happily do far more than that.
Skies are clear and the air is warm and the colors are bright. Even at this time of year — January — bird-of-paradise and hibiscus are in full bloom.
And so begins my teacher training adventure.
Thanks for reading.
Here’s a sweet read from @AlexC . You’re gonna want to pack your bags for Capri. Great photos too!
