The Late Afternoon of Time

"It seemed a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue pacific and it's advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldeness in the late afternoon of time ... he drove into the Oakland Bay Bridge and it carried us in. The downtown office buildings were just sparkling on their lights...." - On The Road.

Yes, indeed! Here we are! I can see the Pacific Ocean from where I'm sitting. From the Lincoln Tunnel all the way to the Oakland Bay Bridge which carried us into San Francisco late this afternoon (I have a video clip of this but it has been uploading all night and still isn't finished, so I'm going to cancel it) - we've driven across a whole continent, seemingly in a matter of minutes, as if in a dream.

From El Paso we had the longest day's driving to reach Palm Desert where we found a warm welcome and hospitality with Bud and Penny (whose real names aren't Bud and Penny, but that's what everyone calls them!). Originally we were due to break that leg of the journey in Tuscon, Arizona at the Desert House of Prayer, but because of the delay with the car we had to make up time to get back on schedule for Sean to catch his plane from SF to the UK on Friday morning. I'll be returning to Arizona the week after next to spend some time at the Desert House of Prayer.

We headed north into New Mexico and then west into Arizona with the desert becoming hotter and drier as we went. We stopped at a rest stop just before we crossed into Arizona, and an elderly woman who was walking past the car spotted the B.C. licence plates and asked us where we were from. On hearing that I'd come from Vancouver, her face lit up and she told us that she'd spent her whole married life there before moving to Ohio. In 1946 she won the 100m sprint for Canada, but then sadly suffered an injury in training and so never made the olympic team. She was our generation - she'd have been a young woman when Jack & Neal made their journey across the country in 1949. I've been thinking about this generational shift idea a lot on this trip as I've met people of Jack & Neal's generation (my parents' generation) and found a connection with them - I think of Frank who hosted me in Lowell, who was born the same year as Kerouac (1922) and who grew up in and around Lowell.

At one point on the road driving in Arizona, I looked up to the left and I was sure I could see The Lions that stand above Vancouver as if transplanted in the deserts. See what you think:


We made our way up through Arizona past Tuscon and Phoenix and then north to "towns in Arizona I'd passed in 1947 ... Wickenburg, Salome, Quartzite" stopping along the way for refreshment and to look at the amazing cacti that we could see all around us. Then on to Palm Springs and Palm Desert, where we spent two nights. Yesterday we spent a day in Joshua Tree National Park, and it was really good to have some down-time after three very full days on the road.


Today was the last leg of our journey, from Palm Desert to San Francisco. Unlike Kerouac, we didn't labour in snowy passes toward the town of Mojave, "the entry way to the great Tehachapi Pass" - no snow to be seen, only sunshine and blue skies, giving us warm temperatures.

"Up ahead we saw Tehachapi Pass starting up. Dean took the wheel and carried us clear to the top of the world. We passed a great shroudy cement factory in the canyon. Then we started down. Dean cut off the gas, threw in the clutch ... In this way we floated and flapped down to the San Joaquin Valley. It lay spread a mile below, virtually the floor of California, green and wondrous from our aeriel shelf." - On the Road.


At Bakersfield we picked up the 99 and from there it was straight up through Tulare, Selma "where I had lived and loved and worked in the spectral past" and Madera, on up to Manteca where we cut across to Oakland as late afternoon in time turned to evening, "which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in."

"...we staggered out of the car on O'Farrell Street ..."

The Valley of the World

"He [Dean] took the wheel and flew the rest of the way across the state of Texas, about five hundred miles, clear to El Paso, arriving at dusk and not stopping except once when he took all his clothes off, near Ozona, and ran yipping and leaping naked in the sage." - On the Road.

This picture was taken today somewhere near Ozona when we stopped for a bite of lunch by the road en route from Austin to El Paso, where we arrived a little after dusk this evening. However, we did keep our clothes on and didn't run "yipping and leaping in the sage."

Once again a very full day, and a very long day as we drove from new friends Misty & Brian, and their sons Robert & Ewan, in Austin where we arrived after midnight last night, to El Paso this evening. We arrived so late in Austin partly because we stayed in New Orleans to partake in the delights of "King Cake" seen below, bought direct from the bakers Angelo in Metairie, New Orleans.

We set off north along Highway 61 retracing the route Jack & Neal would have taken in 1949 - not the main interstate and therefore not the quickest route, but one that allowed us to drive right by the bayou, what Kerouac called "these evil swamps," and witness the rich wildlife of birds, turtles and Sean even saw an alligator sunning itself on a log - not what we're used to seeing by the side of the road! At Baton Rouge we headed west on route 190, crossing the Mississippi River at Port Allen and then on heading for Beaumont, Texas and beyond that Houston before making our way with the assistance of our new companion "Jane" to Austin.

Today has been a very long drive - 938km - right across the state of Texas, mainly across the desert, and it is hard to convey the majesty of the terrain through which we have been travelling. We stopped numerous times and took many pictures, but somehow whatever filled the frame only tells a fraction of the story in terms of the visual assault upon our eyes of the vastness of this land. Notwithstanding that, here is a sample of our snapshots along the road:



































We thought maybe a way of showing something of the experience in terms of all that surrounded us as we moved along might be through a short video clip. So as an experiment, let's see how this works:



"I woke up just as we were rolling down the tremendous Rio Grande Valley through Clint and Ysleta to El Paso.... To our left across the vast Rio Grande spaces were the moorish-red mounts of the Mexican border, the land of the Tarahumare; soft dusk played on the peaks. Straight ahead lay the distant lights of El Paso and Juarez, sown in a tremendous valley so big that you could see several railroads puffing at the same time in every direction, as though it was the Valley of the World. We descended into it." - On the Road.

The Burroughs House

"We bounced the car up on the Algiers ferry and found ourselves crossing the Mississippi River by boat. 'Now we must all get out and dig the river and the people and smell the world,' said Dean, bustling with his sunglasses and cigarettes and leaping out of the car like a jack-in-the-box. We followed." - On the Road.

"On the rails we leaned and looked at the great brown father of waters rolling down from mid-America like the torrent of broken souls..." - On the Road.

What a day! Warm sunshine in New Orleans, and we made it at last to William Burrough's house in Algiers, just across the river from New Orleans, where Kerouac and Cassady along with Luanne and Al Hinkle arrived at the end of their marathon drive from New York in January 1949 - admittedly they didn't go via Toronto (twice).


It took a little bit of finding as we couldn't find the address on the internet (fount of all knowledge); in the end Diana phoned the William Faulkner Society and they knew exactly where Burrough's house was located - I guess all these literary types stick together. So Diana and Wesley kindly took us to the Algiers Ferry across the brown father of waters, the mighty Mississippi and together we made our way to 509 Wagner Street, where we were greeted by a very excited dog that barked and barked, and a quiet lame dog who just stood and stared. Owners no where in sight, and we weren't about to knock on the door. They must be used to people stopping by to take photos - after all they do have that huge plaque in front of the house.

It was a great moment to be here, especially after all the trials and road-going to get here, we just beamed.

We exulted in reading aloud passages from On the Road right there outside the house where it all happened.

Then off to the French Quarter for seafood and to "dig the Mississippi River" and all New Orleans.

Southern Graces

"We got out of the car for air and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to realize that in the darkness all around us was fragrant green grass and the smell of fresh manure warm waters. 'We're in the South! We've left the winter!' Faint daybreak illuminated green shoots by the side of the road. I took a deep breath; a locomotive howled across the darkness, Mobile-bound. So were we." - On The Road.

Well, it's taken a bit of a while, but we made it here at last to New Orleans, and in the car we were supposed to be in all along. I've not updated the blog for a few days, so you may have been wondering what happened to us and whether we'd disappeared off the face of the earth, which given the content of these past few days would have been perfectly possible. Part of the reason for being incommunicado is that we have been holed up in a monastery in Kentucky and then because I was on the road almost constantly for 60 hours straight driving to Toronto and back to get the car, and then on down to New Orleans.

But to back up before all that, our second day in Memphis we spent once more with Elvis, first at Graceland and then down in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he was born. Two more places of pilgrimage where people come from all over the world to connect in some way - stand where he stood, see what he saw, breath the air he breathed - in this case Elvis, but it's the same with Jack Kerouac in Lowell etc., Billie Holiday in Baltimore, Thomas Merton in Gethsemani and even Barak Obama in Washington. Connecting with human experience, bringing life to words and stories.

From Memphis we headed back up to Kentucky on Monday where we were booked in for a three-day retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani where Thomas Merton was a monk. On the first evening, the Guestmaster, Father Damian, said that that we might think we were there because we had chosen to go there but that was not the case. We were there, he said, because God wanted us there in this unique place, and because he had a purpose in calling us there. Each of us had been given a special grace by God to be in this place at this time. That's the sort of thing such people probably say in every monastery and retreat centre in the world - you're there because God wants you there and because he wants to speak to you, do something in your life etc. And it's all well and good, but I was sitting there thinking I guess that means if I have to drive to Toronto, God doesn't want me here at this time, but instead he wants me on the road, and he has special grace for me there also. And so it proved.

The next morning, while I was languishing in pools of uncertainty, wondering when I was going to hear about the car in Toronto, and whether I going to have make the drive from here, or whether we'd get all the way to San Francisco before having to drive across the country again to return the rental car and pick up my car in Toronto - while I was going through all the possibilities and permutations, best case/worst case scenarios and all scenarios in between, my cellphone rang (which was not even supposed to be turned on in the monastery) and I was given the happy news that my Ford Escape had been safely delivered off the train in Toronto and was ready for pick-up. Alleluia! Finally. So I hastily made plans to leave Tuesday night after supper and drive through the night, sleeping if necessary at rest stops along the way, arrive early in the morning, pick-up the car, turn around and make the return trip arriving back at the monastery on Wednesday evening for a good night's sleep before heading off for New Orleans on Thursday morning.

That would have all been fine except for one thing: the biggest ice-storm and snow storm was brewing to hit mid-eastern States and Canada that very night. Little did I know. Special grace.


Had I known I probably would have set off straight away and then I would not have got to play with the micro-photography feature on my new camera and I would not have got to see Merton's hermitage again.





So I left as planned a little before 7pm on Tuesday evening. We agreed that I would make this trip solo as Sean had not been to Gethsemani before, and it was a major reason for him even making this trip. Almost straightaway the flavour of the night became apparent in the form of a tree that had come down across the road just a couple of miles from the monastery. All afternoon it had been raining and the water had been instantly freezing, coating trees, cars, everything with a thickening layer of ice. Great opportunities for micro-photography but all afternoon, as we walked in the monastery grounds, we saw and heard limbs of trees crashing to the ground with the weight of excess water they had accumulated. So a tree across the road was not really unexpected. I turned around and took a detour, another tree across the road; this time they were well on the way to dismembering it with chainsaws, and after 10 minutes I was on my way again. Took nearly two hours just to get to Louisville (about 50 miles away). It was going to be a long night. Already I'd seen cars that had spun-off the highway into the snow (it had begun snowing as the temperature dropped further) at the side of the road and in the central reservation.

On up to Cinncinati, heading north through Ohio and Michigan, retracing our journey of last Friday night, to cross the border at Detroit into Windsor, Ontario and up the 401 to Toronto. The weather and the road conditions grew worse, as did the driving of some individuals, many of whom paid for it with skids, rollovers and serious crashes that I passed maybe just moments after they'd happened. Skidded once myself for no apparent reason but kept the power on and pulled through; another time I was enveloped by water from passing trucks on both sides so that I could not see where I was going - very scary to be moving along a highway with trucks on either side and not being able to see, and not wanting to touch the brakes in case of triggering a skid.... I was acutely aware of the danger now, in a way that I wasn't when I set out, but I determined to carry on with extreme caution, which of course meant low speed, which meant a longer journey. Accompanied along the way with music from Miles Davis and Duke Ellington amongst others and I listened to the entire audiobook of Jack Kerouac's Wake-Up! A Life of the Buddha - though I must confess that attention to the road meant that I didn't listen as closely as I'd have liked, but instead drifted in and out.

Got to Detroit at about 5am on Wednesday morning but then got sent on some unnecessary detour, missed my turning for Canada, and ended up getting stuck in rush hour traffic further delaying me for a couple of hours, before finally crossing the border and getting onto the 401 bound for Toronto (see left).

As I approached the metropolis the traffic got heavier and the driving got worse, especially amongst the trucker community - I saw the aftermath of numerous altercations between trucks and cars, and at one point everything ground to a halt as an articulated tractor-trailer had "jack-knifed" and lay blocking about four out of five lanes. Finally, got to Toronto airport at about 3pm to drop off the rental vehicle which by now was completely shrink-wrapped in ice (see below).

Then picked-up my car, gassed-up and headed out on the highway again into the rush hour traffic heading south from Toronto on the QEW for Niagara Falls, determined (like the wise men) to take a different route home - slightly longer but would get me south quicker and therefore I hoped (and as it proved) into better weather and road conditions. Crossed from Canada once more into New York State and headed west along the southern shore of Lake Erie into Pennsylvania and then dropping straight down on the I-79 all the way to Charlston, West Virginia, then west to Lexington, Kentucky arriving back at Gethsemani just after 10:30am on Thursday morning - 2317 km (nearly 1500 miles) in 40 hours.
The return journey to Kentucky was long but straightforward and pleasant listening to local Country stations along the way, stopping a couple of times to sleep for an hour before being woken up by the cold and thus being able to continue on my journey.


Time for a shave and a shower, pack, have lunch with Brother Paul who'd arranged our visit to Gethsemani, then out on the highway again heading at last for New Orleans - a most pleasant journey, not least because Sean drove almost all the way (pictured left). I took over the wheel for an hour but really couldn't stay awake so Sean took over again and I went right out.

Only problem with setting off late, of course, is arriving late... 1281km from Gethsemani to New Orleans, leaving at 1:30pm we didn't get there until about 2am this morning (Friday), then had to find the address - without aid of access to the internet or GPS. Predictably, we got lost and ended up in a dark and unknown neighbourhood in central New Orleans whereas we should have been in the suburb of Metairie. Only thing to to do was call our hosts - who we'd agreed to call anyway before entering their house - and Diana so graciously and patiently and expertly talked me through the route to get to her and Wesley's house, staying on the phone till we pulled into their driveway exhuberantly happy and full of emotional joy to be at last home in our long-lost New Orleans - as the song says, "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?" Now that we found it, we most certainly do.

Walking in Memphis

Now maybe this is the type of car we should have gone for on this trip - a Cadillac seen parked today outside the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee - rather than messing around with shipping a vehicle from the West Coast (how ridiculous!) or a series (yes, series) of car rentals ... Oh, how I wish!

So here we are in Memphis, obviously, but I better back up and just fill you in on the latest of our sorry saga with "The Car" - it's a bit boring, I have to confess, so I'll try to be brief so as not to bore you before I get to the interesting stuff. Turns out it was a BIG mistake to return to Toronto just because we were informed the car had arrived and was awaiting off-loading, but we were told that the car should be available within 72 hours of arrival - that would have been yesterday (Friday) - so, after spending much of Thursday in a coffee shop on Queen Street East (The Second Cup - great place BTW), reading and sleeping, and after a fantastic meal of Atlantic salmon and red wine with Wade & Susan (Olivia was ill in bed), and up-dating my iTunes, we woke on Friday with much anticipation - having been told the day before that the car was on a "list" to be off-loaded and would be available for us Friday between 9-11am. By 10:15am I could stand the wait no longer and decided that we'd head over to the airport anyway, phoning beforehand to see what the latest was. They were still waiting to hear a definite time, and suggested we go straight to the rail yard to impress upon CN Rail the urgency of the situation. It was en route to the rail yard that we got the "bad news" that not only was the car still on the train, the train had not even pulled into the unloading bay yet and nothing would be moving before Monday at the earliest.... So that's where we were up to: in Toronto (still) - and no disrespect to a great city - without our car.

There's no way we were going to stay put any longer, so back to the car rental place to rent another vehicle - the cruise control on the Avenger wasn't working, and we needed something bigger so we could sort out all our "stuff" that so far has remained packed in the bags we'd separately flown in with. Result: brand new burgandy (of course) Jeep Cherokee with only 1946km on the clock. Not without some tension on the part of Sean and myself, separately and between us, we headed out west from Toronto down the 401 bound for Memphis, driving pretty much in silence, brooding on our own thoughts as far as Detroit, crossing the border once more at about 5pm. I was conscious of two families who I know who each lost loved ones to cancer within the past few days, thinking of their loss and how this week must seem to them made my own frustrations with the car seem trivial and pathetic in comparison.

After stopping at Denny's south of Detroit for Meatloaf, vegetables and mashed potatoes, all washed down with copious amounts of coffee, we headed south into the darkness following the signs for Cincinnati passing through Toledo on the way; then Louisville (where we shall return on Monday to go to Gethsemani), Nashville name shining in the night and onto Memphis, over 1500km, listening along the way to Elvis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Madeline Peyroux, Dylan and the entire reading of On the Road (abridged) by David Carradine, stopping a couple of times to grab some sleep and arriving at dawn in time for breakfast at the Arcade - Memphis' oldest restaurant, where I'd began my visit here with breakfast back in 1991 arriving on the night train from Chicago, but that's another story...

Then on to the main business of the day - Sun Studio - standing once more on hallowed ground and trying to hear the faint echo still reverberate from those blessed walls, seeing the three X's taped to the floor which according to Sam Phillips marked the spot for where Elvis, Scotty and Bill stood when they recorded "That's Alright, Mama," and listening to DJ Dewey Phillips introduce the new record on his show that very night. An emotional moment for both Sean and I: hearing those first bars of "That's Alright" played in the studio and almost feeling brushed by the three ghosts standing right there on the three taped X's; emotion earlier too when we heard the first demo recording "My Happiness" sung right here by an eighteen year old Elvis in 1953 who had no clue of where it would all lead, good and bad - but of course, "nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old" (On the Road).

And here is, for me, the picture of the day - life-dreams reflected in chrome:

Back in Toronto

Yes, that's right - we're back here in Toronto, staying with Susan, Wade and Olivia who have graciously once again provided hospitality, this time for both Sean and myself. Having heard that my car is now in Toronto (as of yesterday), we decided to drive up over night so as to pick it up as soon as possible, planning to drive back south today to resume the onward journey.... So Sean and I left Brunswick, Maryland last night at 1:30am heading for Niagara Falls which we reached by about 9:30am this morning - taking turns to drive and sleep.

Turns out that although the car is indeed in Toronto, it is still on the train, and CN Rail have not been able to give any clear information as to when the car will be off-loaded. It may be available tomorrow, or we may have to wait until Friday. This means we are not going to be able to complete the section of Kerouac's journey from Washington to Rocky Mount, North Carolina and then on to New Orleans which is a great disappointment. Instead we are planning to rearrange the order and timing of our mini-retreat at Gethsemani (Thomas Merton's monastery in Kentucky), and visits to Memphis and New Orleans.

Still determined not to let such distractions and diversions get me down - as far as I am concerned this all part of the "on the road" experience as a parable of life. Instead perhaps it's a chance for a rest after a very full few days ... especially yesterday in Washington D.C. - still can't quite believe that was only yesterday, and we were there! Much to process and reflect upon.