On The Road Home

Bright and early (before 10 - that's early for us!) Mel and I left the place we were staying in the San Fernando Valley and headed toward home. We drove north and merged onto a highway. The we drove east for what seemed like a very long time. The traffic was very light, for the most part, which is partly why we didn't plan to leave earlier. Once or twice in LA basin 'rush' hour traffic was enough for us! Let the traffic thin down a bit before heading out!

The roads can be quit confusing at times. First, you are dealing with the sound: thumpthump rrrrrrrrrrrr thumpthump rrrrrrrrrrrrr thumpthump rrrrrrrrrrrrr - the sound of the tires hitting the seams in the concrete and riding over the grooves in the concrete at 65 mph. Very annoying, and I'm sure over time, damaging to hearing ability. :-) I really like asphalt - I really do not like concrete.

Second, when planning to leave one freeway and get on to another, you never know which lanes are going to peel off and when traffic is heavy, you can miss your exit. For that matter, just driving down the freeway you never know when you lane is going to peel off and you'll be on some road going some where you did not want to go. So, we mostly stuck to the 3rd of 5, inside. That's how we ended up peeling off to the LEFT and making a short visit to downtown Pasadena. Whenever something like that happens, we always figure that God is keeping us from something down the road. It's happened 3 or 4 times now that after we have been delayed, we've come across an accident farther on. Mel said this time that maybe God was delaying us so we would BE in and accident, not avoid one. After all, it does go both ways! Fortunately, as far as we know, neither scenario was the case.

Third, the traffic itself. It's not too bad when people are actually doing the speed limit, or maybe just a couple miles over. The big rigs must drive no more than 55 mph and stay in the far right lane that is not peeling off to an exit, cars can drive there if slow or while they are making their way to the exit lane. All other cars, vans, pick-ups and delivery trucks travel in all of the other left lanes (as many as 5! That is a lot of traffic.) But there are drivers who think they are God's gift to the American highway system, with special powers of speed and agility, with cars that will never break down or suddenly have flat tires, who must think that a speed limit of 75 means THEY can really go 80 or 90 if they so desire. It is terrifying when these guys (mostly men, but we did notice some women) weave in and out of lanes trying desperately to "get ahead", or come up so close behind you that you can't see their headlights - at 75 mph!!!! Sometimes in the rain, even. I truly think these people have a death wish. And if these drivers are Believers - shame on them! They take not only their lives in their hands, so to speak, but could cause the deaths or terrible injuries to many more people, to say nothing of the fact that they are sinning simply by breaking the law! The speed limits are there for a reason! I wonder - why is it so important to these drivers that they must be first, or faster, or whatever it is that compells them to drive so dangerously?

But enough of the soapbox. I'm just very thankful to be away from all that traffic. It's easier to stay away from the nuts when there are fewer vehicles on the interstate, like here in Utah, where I am now. :-) I don't know how many times I've been to the LA basin - maybe 15 or 20 times in my almost 56 years. I do know that in all that time, I've only been there a couple times in the winter. Usually it is summer and hot, hot, hot. Palm trees and flowers and blooming bushes, haze, pollution, and heat waves. This time we came after a week of unusual rains and for the first time, I was able to actually SEE the mountains that surround the area. I took the photo above on our last morning as we drove, when the pollution and marine layer were starting to come back to their usual dirty milk look. But wow! Look! This is one of the many mountains that surround LA, one of those that burn in the summer, that slide during the rest of the year, that are so beautiful and steep and wild. It's amazing that such a huge city has such wild areas surrounding it.

Finally we turned left on another freeway and actually headed up into those mountains. I think we drove past Valdez Rocks, on their right side. We've actually been down to them, on their left side and I had no idea they were that close to an 8 lane freeway. Valdez Rocks are where several Star Trek episodes were filmed, and we've seen them in other tv programs and movies as well.

So, up, up, up over the mountains, and then down, down, down into the Mojave Desert. It was interesting to see where the Joshua Trees start growing again. They are obviously a higher elevation plant and do well with hot and cold temps both. Across the desert we drove, mostly in a straight line toward Las Vegas. I just started calling it LV - so we came from LA and were going to LV. :-)

I do not like Nevada very much. I've probably said that before. Oh, I like the geological formations, the desert, the sky, the dirt. I just don't like the people influence in Nevada. Legalized prostitution. Gambling - casinos everywhere. Huge, huge casinos! You can tell exactly where the border is between California and Nevada because there, out in the middle of nowhere desert, when you cross the state line, on one side there is nothing, on the other there is a big casino. In this photo we are still in California. The lake is usually dry. And here you can see the change from California to Nevada. Fortunately, most of Nevada is wild and empty and full of sagebrush and rattlesnake that crawl on their belly, not rattlesnakes that build casinos. :-) I like that part of Nevada. I like the part of Las Vegas that looks like a normal city (well, as much as I like any city, that is!). I felt so terribly sad as we once again drove past The Strip and I saw all the evidence of greed and lust, of broken dreams and broken lives. I find it sad, but appropriate, that one of the first billboards going into the city was a billboard against human trafficking. I look at all of this:


and I only see waste. Wasted money, wasted lives. Sin. Sin in all of it's enticing beauty. Lights! Colors! Sounds! Music! Naked dancing bodies! Back rooms! And so forth. Thankfully, there is another side to Las Vegas, one that is not thought about very often when you hear the words: Las Vegas.

Ok. That's it for now. A rant against LA drivers and a rant against LV. Whew! I'm really not in a bad mood this morning!

But it's time to finish packing up, actually just to get dressed! and get on our way. I'll try and write more tonight, from somewhere in Colorado. :-)

Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA :-)

Two Nights on Malibu Beach - Part 2

Two Nights on Malibu Beach - Part 1

People Are Watching You

Oh, the title of this posts sounds a little scary, doesn't it? :-) I'm not talking about the government here, I'm talking about the people all around us. People are watching you and me all the time. What do they see?

Yesterday Mel and I took "the long way" to get to Indio, CA. I had dropped my camera one too many times (actually this time it flew off the dashboard of the car when Mel did a quick turn in a parking lot that I wasn't expecting). The last two series of photos I took were only partially in focus. I was very disappointed with them. The color really looked 'off', too. So, Mel said I could buy a new one.

We don't have enough money in our bank account to buy a new one right now, so he decided that this was important enough to me and eventually to our ministry that we could put it on a credit card. (It will be paid off next month.) The closest "big box store" for that card is located in Indio, CA, which is 50-60 miles from here. We took a look at the map and decided to take the long way to get there: drive east and then south and then back west on I-10 to Indio. We'd never driven that way before and we always like to see new things. Wow! Beautiful area. Stark. Mostly empty. Fearsome in summer, a little scary in winter. Mojave desert most of the way, then down on to the Colorado desert. (In this photo you can see a lake, created by the recent heavy rains and flooding. We weren't sure if it was real or a mirage at first.) We drove from Yucca Valley east, along the north side of Joshua Tree National Park and through Twenty-nine Palms, south of the huge Marine base there, (notice all the sand on the road - this is a result of the flooding which happened during the storms last week - there are even piles of sand several feet high in some places, scooped off the road like snow in a blizzard!) toward the Arizona border. (This last photo shows how some of the photos are in focus and some are not - I never knew which it was going to be!) I think only 3 vehicles passed us the whole 55 miles east.

By the time we got to Indio it was time to eat. We found the big box store we wanted in a large shopping center. We drove here and there through the center, looking for some cafe or restaurant that looked good. Nothing sounded good at all. :-( Finally, Mel turned the wrong way and we ended up driving away from there for about 2 miles before we could get turned around again and go back. There, on the right, in another section of the shopping center, we saw a McDonald's. We decided that rather than drive all over again trying to think what we were hungry for, we'd just go to McDonald's.

We drove in and Mel parked far away from the door. I was a little unhappy with that. Why couldn't he park closer?? Grrr. But I mostly held my peace.

We walked behind a couple cars, around a corner, crossed the drive-thru lane. Just as we walked up to the entrance door, we met a man with 4 little children. Mel and I paused - they paused. I motioned them forward. The man said thank you. One of his two little girls was chattering away, all excited about being at McDonald's. The other 3 were just quietly anticipating. Mel commented on her chatter, the father commented back in a friendly way.

We walked in behind the family. They stepped to one side of the counter and waited. We stepped to the other side of the counter and looked at the menu board. I still had no idea what I wanted to eat. Finally Mel said, "Shall we just do the usual?" And I agreed. One Big Mac, one Big & Tasty, one fries to share, one drink (I always get a water). I stood near the counter while Mel went and got his drink, straws and napkins.

The man ordered for his family. The worker behind the counter put all of our food on a tray right in front of the man and his kids (it was a glass shelf about chin high on me - first time I've seen that, but this is California!). I reached over and pulled the tray toward me and he kind of apologized, and so did I - took the tray and Mel and I went and found a place to eat.

After eating we went to the restrooms to wash up before leaving. The man and kids were sitting nearby. There was only one room for the women, which meant that those waiting had to stand in line in front of the door. What else do you do when you are #2 in line for the restroom? Look around you, watch other people, try not to stare. I couldn't help but watch the man with his kids. So quiet and polite. Not at all like my rowdy bunch would have been! Not at all like the little one at the next table who was making a lot of noise. I thought they looked like a happy family, and wondered if Papa was giving Mama some free time, and wondered if there were more tiny ones at home, because these 4 were 'stair-stepped' in age.

Finally we left and made it back to our room, up on the Mojave desert.

A couple hours later Mel made a phone call to the pastor of a church plant in Indio. Some one in Yorba Linda had recommended that we contact this guy. Mel hates "cold calling" and had put it off until later. That was good.

This is how the conversation went:

"Hi, this is Mel P. calling." details, etc etc
The pastor responded: "Were you by any chance in Indio today?"
"Yes, we were in Indio today." Mel answered in a questioning voice.

Wow! I didn't even have to hear his side of the conversation - I looked at Mel and mouthed "The guy with the 4 kids!!?"

Mel nodded yes.

The pastor told Mel that the pastor of the church in Yorba Linda had called him and said we are in the area, and told him a little about us. We also met this man about 4 years ago - but we've changed a bit, and we've met so many hundreds of people in that time. But the whole time we were at McDonald's I kept wondering about him and his kids, thinking to myself that it would be so weird if HE was the pastor we needed to contact, wondering if somehow this man would be important in our life at some time. There was a connection there somehow, unexplained at the time. Now I realize it was the Holy Spirit working in each of us. He had wondered about us, too. But we were all too "shy" to approach each other.

I mean, really - what are the chances??!! There are over 2 million people in Riverside County, almost 90,000 in Indio alone, and there are several more cities in the area (Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Desert Hot Springs and more). What are the chances that we all would meet in the parking lot of a little McDonald's at the exact same time? If we had not taken the long route...if we had decided we wanted Panera instead...if Mel had not taken that wrong turn or had parked closer to the door... If any one of those things had been different, we would probably never have even seen this man with his 4 children.

Amazing!

I was watching him with his kids, he was watching us. I wondered - what kind of an impression did we make on him? I know he made a big impression on me - I would have remembered him and the kids, even without finding out who he is.

Isn't that just amazing??