I’m driving towards my first love, the man I fell in love with more than 15 years ago.  My most recent partner and I split up six weeks ago, and after weeks of wallowing in sadness and then distracting myself from my pain, I set off on this road trip up Highway 1, to find myself, maybe to reconnect with my younger self who did this same trip 20 years ago.

I begin Day 3 in Monterey.  Avoid Cannery Row.   Any tourist destination that funnels busloads of tourists toward historically refurbished Pinkberrys gives me hives.  Skip the camera wielding hordes for the slightly worn downtown Monterey.  The main street looks like a regular town, with cafes, vintage clothing stores, locals, and not a Johnny Rockets in sight.  I get my morning caffeine fix at Café Trieste, which is having it’s one year anniversary, so all drinks are one dollar.  Lo and behold, the best coffee since my departure java at Intelligentsia in LA.

I’m not far from San Francisco, my final destination on this road trip, and I’m anxious and second guessing myself.  Am I running away – from the end of my relationship, from the broken heart that I haven’t been able to knit back together, from the man who broke my heart?  Am I just hopeful when I say that I’m running towards something… a future without my partner, a reconnection with my 21 year old self who had so much potential and joy and unadulterated hope in the future?  Am I running towards my first love because I mistakenly think he’ll have answers for me?

Or am I running away from the unexpected crying jags in the morning that come without warning like a summer thunderstorm, and disappear as quickly?

Today, the road is paved with questions.  Will the peace I’ve been creeping up on as I drive disappear when the car is turned off?  Are these feelings of progress just a function of my movement, and will they fade away when I arrive in SF, or when I return home?

Outside of Monterey, Highway 1 returns to open sun and scrub covered sand dunes, very different from the redwood shaded cliffs of Big Sur.  I am less isolated as I drive today, and cars compete for my attention on the four lane highway.  I wonder if I will feel this crowded all the way into San Francisco.  I’m not ready for the masses of people.  I want my deserted road back.

I notice the quality of light as I drive, that Californian crispness of shadow and the glow hanging in the air that the painter David Hockney spent much of his career exploring.

I take an exit into Santa Cruz, and search for a coffee house.  Not hard to find in this land of uber progressive politics, medical marijuana agitation, facial tattoos and everything else that Glenn Beck lives to hate.  If Big Sur is hippie history, Santa Cruz is bravely gunning for a future new New Age of organic everything, Occupy the World, and nuclear free activism.   And with the constantly refreshing population of idealistic students at University of California Santa Cruz, it’s a downright pleasant place to caffeinate.  Firefly Coffee is a good option and I settle in amidst the mismatched chairs and cheap lamps of a classic college coffeehouse.

I think back to a couple nights ago.  In Morro Bay, I ate dinner in a ragged around the edges Mexican restaurant next to my “cheaper than room service in New York” motel room.  A young couple with two preteen daughters sat near me in a beige naugahyde corner booth.  They reminded me of my parents and I when we would travel together.  My Dad was an officer in the Air Force, which meant that we didn’t have money to splurge on 5 star hotels, expecially while we were stationed in Europe.  My youngest memories of travel are of strange roadside hotels in random European villages, on winding roads through countrysides marked only by street signs with foreign sounding names.  I don’t remember us ever having reservations, unless we were in a big city.  We found a place to sleep where ever our VW poptop camper put us at the end of the day.

I remember the day before Easter one year, we were on a family vacation and we stopped at a tiny one pump gas station attached to a house in the middle of Nowhere, Netherlands.  An stooped old man pumped our gas, and when my father tried to start the VW van, nothing happened.  The old man had filled our tank with the wrong kind of gas.  It wasn’t fixable until the next day, so he put us up in his guest bedrooms.  This negotiation was worked out with hand signals and smiles and unintelligible apologies because we spoke no Dutch and he spoke no English.  I woke up Easter morning and my Mom and the man’s wife had hidden Easter Eggs around the room during the night.  Later we had Easter lunch with the couple.  It will forever be my favorite Easter memory, this strange family that we shared a joyful, unexpected and untranslated holiday with.

My first travels informed the rest of my journeys.  I love not knowing where I will sleep at night.  There’s a freedom when I don’t overplan my vacation.  On family vacations, my parents and I (I am an only child, so our family unit was just the three of us) alternated choosing a restaurant for the night.  To this day, my Mom and Dad still tease me about an empty trattoria I chose in Italy.  My Dad warned me that no customers is sometimes a bad sign.  Though the food was horrible, my seven year old pride never let me admit it.  To this day I defend the trattoria and the grouchy waiter who served us.

Embracing the unknown and allowing it to unfold is half the fun.  One night in Austria at a ski lodge, I pointed to a random item on the dessert menu.  This was not an uncommon occurrence since we couldn’t get by in most of the languages we heard while road tripping around Europe.  As a kid I had learned to be extremely flexible with food and menus, and I liked a surprise once in a while.  But when baked peaches arrived at the table, I thought it was hilarious.  For an 8 year old American kid, a plate of baked  peaches as dessert was preposterous.  I started laughing hysterically, in the infectious way that young kids do.  My parents laughed with me.  Soon, the entire restaurant was good-naturedly laughing, though none of them knew exactly why.  They were just enjoying this strange little American kid who was tickled by what he was experiencing.

If I ever get to have kids, I want them to experience that kind of travel.  Yes, sometimes it will be nice to stay at the W Hotel and luxuriate in amenities my parents couldn’t afford.  But sometimes, I want to be like the family eating next to me in the Mexican restaurant.  I want them to experience roadside motels, no reservations, chimichangas for dinner, and unexpected interactions with all kinds of people.

I am procrastinating getting back on the road.  This is my last leg of the journey.  I can’t wait to see Troy, but I don’t want the road trip to end.

I don’t remember the stretch of Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and San Francisco last time I did this trip, and today I almost let my navigation take me to the freeway.   But I persevere and turn left towards the coast.  The road leaves behind the stoplights of Santa Cruz and opens up into a landscape as beautiful in its own way as the rough drama of Big Sur.  Headlands jut majestically into the sea, not the soaring heights of Big Sur, but stunning and with wide swaths of caramel beach spread out below.  It’s like the untangling of a denoument following the climax of Big Sur, as satisfying in its own way as any place I’ve been so far.  It is an adagio following an allegro movement, slower, paced, still beautiful and complex and wonderful.

The sun begins to set and burnishes the grasses and rock in an amber glow.  A phalanx of kite surfers launch from the whitecapped waves, and their coloful kites twirl and dive and rise again.  I stop to watch them for a while and the sun sets in slow motion below the endless blue black horizon.

The questions aren’t playing bumper cars in my head any more.  I’m driving towards something, and whether that something contains answers or not, I know that at least it contains my future.  And at this exact moment, right here and right now, I’m okay with that.  I like who I am as I sit here.  I’m at peace with where I am in my life, even if it’s not where I thought I would be when I was 21, or 31, or even 4 months ago when I was with my partner and our parents in Hawaii.  None of the versions of my future looked like this.  Sitting on the side of Highway 1 near Pescadero, watching the sunset, single and alone, wasn’t in my game plan.  But it’s where I am.

I drive into the outskirts of San Francisco at night.  Troy lives a bit outside of the city.  I stop at a boba house in his neighborhood to wait until he gets done with yoga class.

And then he walks into the boba house.