I packed my bags and hit the open road for Northern California.
It was my Fiat’s first road trip, at least under my ownership. “Did you break a bottle of Champagne against the side?” a friend asked. Please, that would scratch the paint.
I call my electric blue car Lou. That’s a shortened form of the sobriquet St. Louis Blue, suggested by my former colleague Shane Newell after I bought my Fiat a year ago. In 21st century fashion, Lou can be male or female, making the name gender-neutral, nonconforming and generally woke. Also, it’s easy to say.
My destinations were San Francisco, where I spent two nights in North Beach, and then Sonoma County, my onetime romping grounds, where I stayed with a photographer pal and caught up with two other friends from the start of my newspaper career.
“We are Rising From the Ashes,” read a roadside billboard in Santa Rosa, scene of a devastating 2017 fire. I was cheered to hear it. Santa Rosa was my first home after relocating to California.
For my journey I brought along a bag of CDs to play, including Wilco, Merle Haggard and Neil Young, plus a Firesign Theatre boxed set of their Nick Danger private eye sketches. One memorable exchange of dialogue between cop characters concerning the press: “What do I do with all these newshounds?” “Keep them at bay until the D.A. throws them a scrap for the bulldog edition.”
Driving is not my preferred mode of travel, but it has its pleasures. I watched California pass by through my windows, Southern giving way to Central and Northern, and then back again. Mileage signs marked my progress to distant destinations or to near ones eyed for a meal or gas. Rest stops offered a no-cost bathroom break and chance to stretch my legs and check a map.
I used a Rand McNally road atlas for the general drift and Google Maps for specific locations or to get me back to the freeway after an excursion. I enjoyed the step-by-step voice instruction as I got on an on-ramp: “In 500 feet, merge onto U.S. 101 South.”
Imagine if she hadn’t said that. I might have got onto the highway, parked Lou on the shoulder and sat, waiting for further commands.
On the road, before and after my main destinations, I stayed in roadside motels.
Ah, the roadside motel.
We often look down upon our older Southern California motels as places rented either by the week or by the hour. But they’re not always like that, especially in popular cities. Some are kept up well.
I stayed at older motels in Salinas, Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo after a little online research. Each had a greater or lesser degree of classic motel charm: courtyards, second-story walkways, laundry facilities. One had actual room keys, the motel address printed on the plastic fob, just like you remember.
In Salinas, the Wagon Wheel Inn is a western-themed motor court whose decor includes, yes, wagon wheels. The Islander in Santa Cruz, with cheerful paint and a sign topped by a giant fish, has a vaguely tropical theme. The Los Padres Inn in San Luis Obispo (“Your Home Away From Home”) has a vaguely mission-like theme with stained glass.
All your best roadside motels have themes.
The primary theme is that they won’t charge you too much. That’s fine with me, because I don’t want to spend a lot of money on lodging. My feeling is, for the majority of my stay I’m going to be unconscious. Why fork over a lot of dough?
In San Diego last summer, hotels downtown were charging $45 a night — for parking. That made me glad I’d taken the train and had no car to park. Call me old-fashioned, but 45 bucks is what you should pay for a room, not a parking space.
Well, not really, but you know what I mean. None of my rooms on this trip were $45, but close enough. One was $55, one was $62 and the priciest was $80, not including tax. (My San Francisco hotel was a relative splurge at $157 a night.) Parking was free, like it should be.
I told my Oakland friend David that I’d stayed at a roadside motel. A fellow low-budget spirit, he exclaimed, “I love roadside motels! I would stay at them if I could.” He added sheepishly: “My wife likes amenities.”
Understood. None of my motels had a fitness room, spa, bar or restaurant. Only one of the three had a pool. But they had wifi, air conditioning and plastic cups, wrapped in more plastic for my protection.
They also had cable TV with HBO, coffee makers, mini-fridges, microwaves and landline phones, none of which I used. The off-brand conditioning shampoo and blow dryer were, sadly, unnecessary. Some rooms had dressers in case I wanted to unpack and pretend I was moving in for the duration.
In other words, even budget motels have more amenities than I know what to do with.
Did you know it’s estimated that half of all U.S. motels are run by Indian Americans? All three of my motels were. One nightstand drawer had, charmingly, the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita.
(On my journey home I noticed a motel in Pismo Beach named the Kon-Tiki and wondered idly if every nightstand has a Thor Heyerdahl book.)
Granted, these places weren’t perfect. One bathroom mirror was cracked. Another’s ice machine was across the parking lot. The table and chairs were sometimes slightly too large for the floor space.
But I’m not fussy. I was happy to save my money and support small, family-run businesses. Standing on a second-story walkway outside my room at the Islander before checking out, I leaned a moment on the snazzy wrought-iron railing and gazed across the expanse of asphalt toward the pool.
It was a moment of classic Americana that could have taken place in nearly any decade. I was communing with the thousands of travelers who had stopped here, most of them for only a night or two, before moving on, refreshed, to their next destination.
And down below in my parking space, waiting for me patiently, was Lou.
David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, columns for which no one’s waiting. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
