Loosening My Load

 

“Take it Easy,” the Eagles song by that 70s rock group with the lyric …standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, I’ve got seven women on my mind… came to this mind of mine just east of that southwestern town of the Eagles’ lyric. I was ruminating about a place to settle in from the ride that began later than usual due to my mid-afternoon departure from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

To be factual, the women on my mind totaled more than seven. It is what happens when you are on a cross-country road trip, well into your mid-eighties, have been married three times, fathered three daughters, and been gifted with a pair of female grandchildren.

I had yet to count any of the more prominent of the girlfriends I never found the time to marry (let alone visit) that might well have come to mind on this road trip which… has now… finally, ended.

The BMW is now in the driveway of my Studio City pied-a-terre in California’s San Fernando Valley, and my tweaked back has been elevated to the status of MRI worthy. I am caught up in the bureaucracy of the California medical establishment and may well have to wait a month or more for the imaging to land on the desk of a qualified physician willing to jab a drug-loaded needle into my spine.

There was never a plan to return via the blue lane highways to my warm Island off the coast of Miami’s famed South Beach. These trips of mine always end in California, around four weeks from when they began, with an additional four-to-six weeks tacked on for visiting friends, family… and… this year… giving eulogies. The BMW will then be loaded on a truck bound for the east coast where it will arrive in something less than five days while I fly home for the rendezvous with truck, car, and driver. Me? No need to ask. I have no desire to drive across the country in either direction in the month of December.

Today’s California session with an acupuncturist “took” better than usual, or perhaps it was my misreading of the clock and the resultant “extra” dose of the Hydrocodone pain pill. Whichever, I found myself reminiscing over this just-completed drive of mine. My return home to Fisher Island falls just before my 87^th birthday. That this last cross-country drive might well be exactly that… the last... should not surprise; yet, somehow, it does.

If, indeed, this trip is the last, then it was a good one. Never mind that the first third of the route was dictated by attempts at outguessing the unpredictable weather patterns of two of the decade’s greater hurricanes. Dealing with the storms’ subsequent impact on roads and their interconnecting communities also became a component, along with the quite predictable fact that driving across the Rocky Mountains in October… a full two months later in the year than any previous crossing I have ever navigated over that impressive range of mountains… might well present challenges never before encountered on any of my trips.

Those earlier journeys had all begun in Miami in July or August. There was no question that this October start… two months closer to the dead of winter… could make that Rocky Mountain crossing more demanding.

Eventually… if you are determined to go from sea to shining sea, winding up at the Pacific coast, The Rockies are something you must encounter and, although you might get an argument now and then from a Texan… the vastness of the West really begins mid-way during your automobile’s adjustments to the climb that makes up the essence of the Rocky Mountains.

No matter what route taken, for me there is nothing comparable to being behind the wheel of a powerful automobile, climbing westward over that vast mountain range outside of Denver, Colorado, and then descending into Utah, driving the breath of that state on a diagonal line into the southern tip of Nevada, and then on to Southern California’s Route 66…

Barstow, Kingman, San Bernardino...

There is nothing like Utah. It takes an ordinary guy like me and makes him believe that there is a God. There is just no way that dust and wind could have arbitrarily formed that incredible landscape. It has been decades since I went west without Utah as a major part of my road trip’s plan.

But this year would be different. The Rockies in October were intimidating, and so I elected to cross them as far to the south as I could and yet remain in the continental United States. It brought me, for the first time in over thirty years, to the Land of Enchantment: New Mexico… then onward through more of Arizona than I have traversed in over half a century.

It was remiss of me to ignore this landscape for so long. The shapes of the mountain ranges, the colors of the terrain, clouds, and sky. Simply breathtaking.

Winslow, Arizona had seemed a good place to stop en route from the fabulous Bishop’s Lodge by Auberge in Santa Fe, New Mexico while en route to the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.

La Posada, the historic last great railroad hotel built in 1930 in the center of Winslow, was full. There was (literally) no room at the inn.

The name of the hotel should have prepared me for that possibility long before the Eagles reference got me into midtown Winslow. Besides, I was humming the more age appropriate (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66, not realizing I had incorrectly inserted Winslow where the King Cole trio had written Flagstaff…

You’ll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino…

It goes on, but my misrepresentation of Winslow brought me to the song where Winslow belonged. A Google search on the BMW quickly produced the right tune with the seven women of the lyric.

I did have dinner at La Posada and was more than happy to have done so. The next morning, I was on the road again, this time to Phoenix and an important birthday party for my very best friend at the splendidly detailed Arizona Biltmore.

Truth to tell, The Biltmore is not my kinda place. I generally have a rule that keeps me from staying at any hotel where the USC band can march through the lobby without being noticed. The Biltmore is a bit like that. Not my thing, but one does have to admire the attention to detail, if not scale. It is an impressive edifice and must have caused architect Albert Chase McArthur a lifetime of hurt that his fellow Arizonan, Frank Lloyd Wright, so often gets sole credit for McArthur’s work on this luxurious structure.

I was by now fully dependent on the shillelagh I had acquired last year in London for use as a cane. The good news is that the driver’s seat in the BMW was so comfortable that whatever pain I had was literally left at the auto’s door. A drive along the Mexican border and then slightly north brought me to my penultimate stop, California’s The Fairmont Grand Del Mar.

It was mostly wasted on this by then near-cripple. The Grand is another one of those country clubs in the style of a more affluent time with landscaping and vistas that challenged the architectural capabilities of the team that put the whole place together. The food was terrific, but my back was worse. My plan was to be in California for the month of November and I feared it might take that long to get me fully back on my feet.

Finally, some good news. A writer-pal gave me the name of her chiropractor and, although I had sworn off that aspect of the medical arts nearly half a century ago, I was in sufficient pain to willingly agree to an appointment.

Before that date came around, I re-entered the gentler art of the acupuncturist and Chinese medicine for the first time since moving to Florida in the 1980s. Those subtle treatments, and a steady supply of hydrocodone/acetaminophen, kept me ambulatory until yesterday’s visit with a Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine.

Chiropractic is different from regular medicine. It is more of an art form. If you have ever had the experience of crawling into one of these offices… and all but dancing out… you know what I mean. I haven’t been to one of these “artists” since my days of producing Daniel Boone in the 1960s. Around about then, one of those guys scared me bad enough that I never went back. Not until this week.

One visit and I can inform you that Dr. Martin Stites is the “real deal.” I did not exactly “dance out” of his office, but I could have. Thank you, Vivienne Radkoff, for the recommendation. I am smiling as I write this…  grinning, really. On my feet and ready for family and friends in Southern California at the end of what some think may well be my last road trip.

We shall see.

 

Barney Rosenzweig