My partner and I split up six weeks ago.

We all travel for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes we travel for inspiration, sometimes for relaxation.  Travel can enrich us, educate us, entertain us.  And sometimes you travel for something a bit more existential…to change your perspective, to find yourself, to deal with, or distract yourself from something.  Sometimes you travel because you can’t find what you are looking for at home…whether that’s peace, or understanding, or a sense of being centered.  Or simply because you have something painful to deal with, and sitting at home staring at the walls is not helping.

I’ve gone through a few phases of my break up, from wallowing in pain to trying to not feel anything, from regret to anger, from logically parsing the break up to distracting myself with activities and people and work and any shiny thing that will take my mind off of him.  I got through the phasase of going to bed at 8pm because I wanted the day to be over, and the repetition of having the same sad conversation with him over and over in my head.  But finding myself in all of the familiar places that we shared still brings up thoughts of him constantly, like a broken record of loss and angst – We used to love having coffee here on the weekends, he introduced me to this song, this is the iphone plug that belongs on his side of the bed, should I wear this tank top that he left behind?

So, after working through my first few coping mechanisms, I’m returning my tried and true therapy from when I was in college – a road trip.  By myself, with nothing but open road, good music, my thoughts, my camera phone and my computer to record my progress.  (okay, in college it was a notebook, but times change – it was also a mixtape back then, instead of a playlist.)  And since I live in Los Angeles, I am already at the starting point of what I think is the best drive in the world, Hwy 1 between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

10 am.  The first stop on any road trip that starts in Los Angeles is at Intelligentsia Coffee.  It doesn’t matter whether you go to the Silverlake outpost (hipsters, dogs, tattoos) or Santa Monica (hippies, yuppies, granola), just go.  It is the best coffee in the country.  Yes, New York, I’ve been to Grumpy’s and Bluebird Coffee Shop.  Yes, Seattle, I’ve been to Seattle’s Best (which you are not) and Café Fiore.  San Francisco, I’ve been to Blue Bottle…and I’m sticking to my guns.  Intelligentsia may be cooler than thou, but the coffee is better than yours too.

I merge onto Pacific Coast Highway (Hwy 1) from the 10 freeway, shooting at high speeds onto one of the busiest and most urban stretches of Hwy 1 that I will encounter during the trip.  This is the PCH I travel regularly, whether going to the wide flat beaches of Will Rogers (Ginger Rogers for those in the gay know) to play volleyball or to Malibu for an overpriced meal.  The drive through Malibu is a painfully ugly stretch of houses turning their ugly garages to the street and strip malls.  It’s not until I get past Pepperdine and see the deserted and slowly turning curves of beach and rock as I approach Point Mugu that I start to relax.  It’s in those first moments of crashing waves and rocky beaches that I let go of my Los Angeles persona.  The agricultural fields of Ventura and the stretch of 101 thru Oxnard and into Santa Barbara  may be more developed, but I’ve already left LA, people.  It’s gonna take more than a few tractors or big box stores to get me out of my Southern California, beach town, wide vistas, open road state of mind.

I stop in the overly cutesy historic downtown Ventura for food.  Coffee alone does not fuel the whole trip.  Main Street in Ventura feels like Main Street in Disneyland if it were a beach town, and that’s not a wholly bad thing.  I walk more slowly.  I take a couple photos.  I notice there’s a breeze, and remind myself that I don’t have anywhere I need to be.  Slow my LA roll.   Don’t rush around, Tom.

Twenty miles further, I pull into the Santa Barbara Roasting C ompany for my second coffee of the day.  Yes, I have one daily vice, thank you very much, and it’s caffeine.  I leave Santa Barbara quickly because I’ve been here so many times, but it’s a great place to stop for an afternoon break.  A bustling (but touristed) State Street, restaurants that are one and a half times too expensive, a laid back vibe, good coffee and great wineries (if you’re not doing a road trip by yourself that is).

But I want to get into the less familiar stretches of road – the ones I haven’t driven in more than a decade.  Most Angelenos take the 101 when heading north.  It’s much faster and if your destination takes priority, that’s the way to go.  If the journey is the priority, well, Hwy 1 is second to none.

Out of Santa Barbara, Hwy 1 merges with the 101, but whenever Hwy 1 veers away from the 3 lane freeway, take it.  If you input a destination into your navigation, it will keep trying to herd you back to the 101.  Ignore your technology.  You can see a freeway any time.  Hwy 1 takes some curving detours, inland through rolling hills and large swaths of agricultural land.  The road slows down thru the center of Guadalupe, an oddly located towns that makes you wonder why it sprouted there.  Every restaurant is named Tapatia.  As in every town I’ve gone thru today, there is an old movie palace with a vintage neon sign on the front.

The water tower of Guadalupe (I love small town water towers – they seem so retro – can we really not figure out another way to get water pressure than build a big bubble on stilts above town?) proclaims it “The Gateway to the Dunes.”  I don’t know what that means.  The road out of Guadalupe drops suddenly, revealing a beautiful pastoral valley, very different from the classic rocks and surf images of Highway 1.  Then into Pismo Beach, where I finally figured out where the dunes were.  Right in front of the mating grounds for RVs.  I swear I’ve never seen so many RVs in one place.  I could barely see the dunes, much less the beach.  Keep moving north.

Driving by yourself for long periods of time puts my head in a different space.  In my normal city mouse life, I have twenty-first century ADD.  I multi-task constantly.  I can juggle multiple projects, keep my email inbox low, answer calls, check texts.  That may be productive in the office (sometimes), but it’s disaster on introspection or thinking big picture about your life, or taking the time to heal the wounds of a badly ended relationship.  The open road and nothing but music slows my mind, cuts down on the number of inputs coming in.  It’s a little like yoga.  My body is distracted just enough by driving that my mind can flow around my thoughts more easily.  At home, if I try to sit and think for an hour, I feel guilty for not being productive.  There’s too much I could be accomplishing.  And it’s easier to avoid those painful thoughts with TV or the phone or the internet.  On the road, the simple movement of the car through space seems to be purpose enough, and I let go of that guilt and just think.

How do I go from point A to point B, when point A was being in love, and then point B is not talking at all?  I circle gently around the question instead of beating it against my head, but even the thrum of the road isn’t making it easier to answer.  I make up stories in my head…he’s been out of love with me for a while, and I just didn’t realize it.  He’s been faking it as he moved from point A to point B unbeknownst to me, pretending to love as he fell out of it.  Or maybe suddenly, because of my fuck up, in one quick instant he fell out of love.  And all of the wonderful moments in the past year and a half are wiped away, or closed into a scrap book no longer marked “the present” but “the past.”

The road veers inland for quite a while along this stretch, past more fields, past Vandenburg Air Force Base where the Fourteenth Air Force of Space Command is headquartered.  Then towards San Luis Obispo.

I keep thinking about the road trips I took when I was younger.  My senior year at UCLA, I dropped out for a semester to “find myself.”  I cancelled my classes, threw a duffle bag into my black Jetta and headed north, first along Highway 1 and then through San Francisco into Oregon and Washington  until I reached Vancouver.  Back then, I was struggling with my identity, who I wanted to be after college, what I wanted to do with my life.  Now, I am retracing some of those steps, and even though my circumstances have changed, many of the questions are the same.  What is the next step in my life?  Am I living the conscious life that I aspire to?  Where is the center of me?

I forgot how this kind of travel affects me.  Or maybe I didn’t, and that’s why I’m here.

I keep going thru SLO and past the Madonna Inn, a must stop if you want the ultimate in kitschy décor.  Rooms boggle the faux imagination, from Flintstonian rock décor to Wild West, from Swiss Chalet on Crack to I Barfed Pink All Over the Room.  Right now, I need more truth in my life, not cheerfully fake surroundings.

The sun is low in the sky though, so I continue on to Morro Bay.  I arrive as the sun sets fiery behind Morro Rock, as sea lions barked a discordant but endearing accompaniment.

It’s cold up here.  There’s a heat wave in LA, but apparently I should have brought long sleeve shirts.  If you want quiet and cheap, stay in Morro Bay.  Everything closes at 8:30 (including restaurants) and my hotel room cost me about as much as room service in New York.  But stay in SLO if you want a little more life.  Chic-adjacent restaurants, granola-flavored college kids everywhere, a quaint main street with the same brand name stores as every upscale mall, and yes…a great coffee house called Kreuzberg, CA where I’m writing this right now.