It's tough to not whine and complain about California. Two sodas and a pizza is 50 bucks. Everyone wants a tip too. Hotel rooms with what you hope is a beard hair on your pillowcase and not something else are a one day mortgage. The gas pumps require wrist and wallet gymnastics to put car food in your shitbox. The list of disdainful things is long, and untruncated. Infinite really. At times California is an absolute nightmare. If you live there, you know it. Don't lie and tell me you don't.
Unfortunately for napoleonic complainers, if you can get away from the centers defined by their taupe stucco painted hellscape, it has everything your car soul is longing for. California has the most diverse topography in the entirety of North America. Multiple biomes. Microclimates. Deserts. Mountains. Mediterranean feeling valleys give way to environments you wouldn't survive an hour without the cold, or warm, comfort of your metal cocoon. The roads are incredible, the views are unparalleled. You just have to survive the trip out of hell to get there.
After picking up the tires from our new friends in somewhere or another, we had to head back to Monterey to finish doing Overcrest work. It had taken us two and a half hours to fight through farmland and state highways to get there. It was brutal. Lazy drivers were a true test of patience. There was zero chance we were heading back the same way we had come. Especially not during rush hour. We had to find another way. We looked, and yes, we were far enough out that there was another way back to the fold. It would cost us an hour or so of our lives to do it. Fine with me.
It looked squiggly enough. From the satellite view the road looked bombed out. Asphalt patches everywhere, but at least it wouldn't be bombing our souls like the San Luis Reservoir route did. It was a lonely spaghetti western kind of place. We saw a few other vehicles, all strange in their appearance.
An old vehicle pulled up. A Chevy work van. Mid 2000s. Beat. Chalky. Clattery.
"Hola."
"Hola."
A man. Thirties, dirty hands. A blue knit shirt with little squiggles on the collar. He'd worn it a lot of times. His wife was with him, dimmed into insignificance by the coming dusk darkening the passenger side.
"Nosotros estamos casi sin gas."
"What? Gas?"
He was pointing behind the E23 on a road that went as far as the eye could see.
"I don't speak Spanish, sorry. Uh. Lo siento. No gas. No gas. Aqui."
I pointed in the same direction, then peered awkwardly into the cabin of his van. The gas gauge was in the position it's in when the van was turned off. Negative gas. None. Zero. I raised my eyebrows, apologized again, and pointed at a house off in the distance, and shrugged.
"Emergencia, casa, gas, bueno."
"Adios."
"Adios mi amigo."
I gotta work on my Spanish.
The van turned around and slowly picked up speed towards the house. Later, we'd see it at a bar a couple miles up the way. A saloon of sorts that looked to be the only place living within a three day walk.
The road was indeed bombed out. The front passenger wheel rubbed. Jasin, ever industrious and resourceful, found a small branch. We rolled the fender the best we could. The ancient paint cracked and fell away. We stood in the dimming light staring at it.
"We could take the wheel off and pull the spacer out."
"Could."
We didn't.
The light turned from blue to amber, to blue, to black. Somewhere behind all the hills and trees the sun slipped away. Things got cold, and we hammered back to Monterey. It was a brief detour, but it shook up our minds for a couple hours. It slowed things down. Considering the faster time tends to go these days, mediating it, and making father time my bitch, is one of the biggest expenditures of energy I have.
We drove thousands of miles around Monterey. Scouting is no joke. Its a matter of pride. At the end of it all we had one last stop. Things were bleak, and I hadn’t yet found what I’d been looking for. I'd seen something on Google Maps days earlier. A satellite dish. Massive. The kind of thing you zoom in on and go, what is that doing there. I had to see it.
When we got there it was gated off. Chain link. The gate was rusted in a way that suggested nobody had touched it in a very long time. Decades maybe. There was a post with a camera dangling from its coax cable like a fish on a line. Not working. Clearly not working. The road behind the gate was cracked and weedy and barely a road at all. The whole place looked forgotten.
Jasin and I sat there for a minute. The gate wasn't locked. It would have taken one hand to swing it open and a few minutes of driving to get in there. We were thinking about it. You could tell we were both thinking about it. Then I caught a glint. Off to the right, maybe two hundred yards out. A rambler of a house sitting low against the hillside. The kind of place you'd drive past a thousand times and never see. The only reason I saw it at all was because of this guy's belt buckle. Silver. Caught the sun and threw it right at me.
I waved. He started walking.
It took him thirty seconds to cover the distance but he moved like a man with nowhere particular to be and all the time to not be there. Tall. Lean. Sun worn in a way that ages you past your years but keeps you upright. Gray hair. Blue jeans. Cowboy boots. Plaid shirt buttoned up. Bright eyed. The kind of guy who looks like he was built out of the landscape he lives on.
He was matter of fact. No small talk. No pleasantries beyond a nod and just the facts ma’am. He told us the satellite dish was still active military. Had been since the Cold War. Used to track missiles coming in and going out of the United States. I looked back at the dangling camera and the rusty gate and thought, well, good thing we didn't just drive in there.
We talked for a few minutes. He asked what we were doing out there. I told him. Scouting for an event. Cars. Monterey area. He nodded like that made sense to him even though there was no reason it should. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Wrote down a name and a phone number.
"Call this guy. He's who you want to talk to."
I looked at the paper. Looked back at him. He was already walking back to his house.
That name ended up being the guy. Greg from Tira Nanza, a winery just down the street. The one who gave Overcrests' Sportscar Vacationland a place to live. The contact we needed. We found him because a belt buckle caught the sun at the right second on a road we had no business being on in the first place.
Sometimes the only way you find what you're really looking for is to actually look. You have to be there. Boots on dirt. Eyes open. And sometimes the best way to do that is to get a sideways car from friends and just start driving.
