I’ve written on several occasions in the past about wonderful trips to Palm Springs to visit my friend Bob. This one went sour. I don’t understand what went wrong on my last evening, and don’t have much hope of ever doing so since in spite of my pressing, the only explanation i could get for all the sudden rage simply makes no sense. So be it. If he won’t tell me what’s wrong, i can’t fix it. Now i don’t have to drive a thousand miles to pay visits.
Here’s a shot of the hunter while things were still good, home with my quarry, a wild grapefruit that i captured on the condo grounds. You wouldn’t believe the fight that sucker put up! I was hoping that once i got it skinned and filleted it would turn out to be one of the old Marsh variety that i love so much. Alas, by the time the condo complex was built, the Marsh had long since been replaced with sweet varieties.

For the trip back up to San Francisco, i decided to cut over to 101 again, and this time farther south than i’d ever done. I’d studied my road map and seen that a very thin blue line ventured west from I-5 at the exit a mile or two north of Tejon Pass. Since it was the only road going west off of I-5 for a distance of over 50 miles, i took it. It has no official state number, but at one point it was identified as “Pine Mountain Road”. I followed it westerly though the northern portions of Los Padres National Forest, gradually descending until it hit State highway 33. About a mile to the right on 33, i turned left onto “Soda Lake Road”, which heads straight northwest through the middle of the Carrizo Plain, paralleling the San Andreas fault.
More thrilling than paralleling the fault, though, was when i flew across the first of many cattle guards and suddenly found myself not on pavement but rather dirt. At this point it struck me that i had not seen a single other vehicle since i turned off the Interstate many miles back and that i had only half a small bottle of water. And then, to ice the cake, my mobile phone gave its little out-of-battery bleat.
Oh, but wait, i’m thinking, if i’m stuck in the mud, surely i’ll be able to survive by sucking moisture out of it until somebody comes along. Ah, what i’ll do for a thrill.

And speaking of thrill, down that road a ways i spotted off to the right this shortcut to the San Andreas fault and thought, hmmm, doesn’t look all that closed to me. But an upwelling of sanity prevailed and I didn’t run on down it for a few miles to see why they were calling it closed.
