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 Our journey begins, as all do, with a bitter-sweet departure from family and friends. Our last few months in Southern California were spent saying good-bye to all those we had come to love and who are still dear to us. It seemed to be an endless series of last events. The last dinner with close friends. The last performance at the church. The last time we hugged Will's sister before she also departed SoCal to begin her course work for her Master's of Music.
It was also a series of firsts. Most notably, it was the first time we had ever loaded all of our possessions as a married household into a U-haul truck. The poor vehicle could barely house the contents of our two-bedroom apartment. Miraculously, there were only a few items that were somewhat ceremoniously disposed of.
 The journey from San Diego to Sacramento was a long one, and proved to be rather dangerous. Since we were laden with a U-haul towing a car, the going was slow and cautious. Slow and cautious is a concept that is foreign to many Southern California drivers. We watched several vehicles whip around us as we traveled in the right-most lane of the freeway. Barely twenty minutes into our journey we saw some of these same vehicles come to a screeching and twisting halt, tires smoking under the friction, as they tried to avoid plowing into an overturned vehicle in the center lanes. One man leaped out, holding a small child, afraid that his van would be struck by the traffic that followed close on his tail. The experience was a little nerve-wracking, though not a-typical of the area we were leaving.
 We headed through the Central Valley on Interstate 5, inching towards Sacramento as deliberately and safely as we could. This stretch of the 5 is long and monotonous, and occasionally interrupted by small oasis of fast-food and gas. We stopped off in Kettleman City and a debate ensued over which franchise we would grace with our patronage (Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway). Since we couldn't seem to find a consensus on where to eat, we ended up at a greasy grill, where we finally agreed that anywhere else would have been better.
Over twelve hours later, we arrived in Sacramento, safe and exhausted . . . |
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