We had already adopted the axiom that, when it comes to this virus, there's no such thing as over-reacting when we flew down to L.A. a week ago Wednesday, March 11th, for a long-planned dinner we co-host with friends every year (this year's theme: Cru Beaujolais).
We naively thought we could stay safe enough, however the numerous exposures of travel on the trip down was unnerving: hotel personnel where we parked our car at this end shaking our hands, TSA, airport lounge, airplane (I was in Seat 1C, and the guy in 2C had a cough), crowds at LAX, standing room only with a stranger's child in my lap on the car rental shuttle, the rental car itself--who'd been in it last, were they healthy?, hotel car valet, hotel registration desk, bellman and other strangers handling our luggage, the elevators, the hotel room itself, an Uber ride, dinner in a great restaurant with friends, multiple servers leaning over our table to take orders and instruct us on each dish, the guy in the bathroom line who wanted to know if we got the shortrib before it ran out, the Uber ride back. It felt like people had their hands all over us all day, and my little wad of barely-better-than-nothing Cottonelles and wimpy food demonstrator gloves was obviously going to run out fast.
The risks were overwhelming, so the next day we cancelled our lunch plans with another friend and headed for our co-host's home. I’d forgotten to pack antihistimines so we stopped at a Costco in Burbank where the crowds were so bad the checkout lines went all the way back to the frozen food section in the rear of the store. And it was pouring rain. I mean total white-out rain. You never see that in California. Traffic was ridiculous, all those people out trying to panic-buy slowed down by a monsoon. What would have been a one-hour trip in a straight shot took five.
Next day: Annabelle and I braved multiple stores in order to accumulate the groceries needed for our dinner. That’s normal, but the abnormal conditions in the markets meant we had to go to multiple places just because we couldn’t get enough of even the most normal items, like chicken and mushrooms, at one place. If I got the virus I’d blame it on the impatient turkey-necked lady who jumped the chicken line at Whole Foods. If Annabelle got the virus, she would surely blame it on the woman who tried to beat her to the mushrooms at Gelson’s.
Our menu: appetizers of fresh farmer radishes with cultured Vermont butter on brown bread, plus these tasty little cigar-shaped pastries of spicy ground turkey and shallots rolled in phyllo, champagnes. First course: warm mushroom salad. Second course: seared scallop and white bean 'lasagna'. Third course: oven roasted chicken thigh with leek-tarragon sauce and peas on a crouton of grilled bread garnished with gin-fried sugar snap peas. Wines in three flights of 4-5 with each course. Dessert: orange bundt cake topped with fresh orange segments and mint.
Nobody hugged but all the guests were in fairly close quarters, and we jokingly bumped body parts.
John and Annabelle's TV, set to CNN, was on all day every day and we were all glued to it. Bob and I were supposed to stay in town thru Wednesday the 18th, but by Saturday morning we got spooked enough to move our flight home up two days to Monday. Hated to do that as it meant missing a dinner party somewhat in our honor at the home of Ines and Kirk Nyby but we knew Ines would understand as she was as unnerved by all this as I'd become. Ines doesn't post here often these days but she's a great and true friend, and most notably someone I met here on this very forum about 20 years ago. It was we who started this tasting group and it now includes Bob Henry, who I also met on this forum a million years ago (and was known as 'Hucko').
On Sunday Mayor Garcetti closed all the restaurants and bars in Los Angeles, and overnight the number of infections in the county had doubled. So, over coffee, I informed Bob of my new plan: “We’re driving home.” We already had a rental car, but that one had to go back to LAX. We booked another from a different agency, hugged our friends goodbye and took off for LAX and a black Nissan Pathfinder we dubbed 'The Hearse'.
We blasted out of LAX a few hours later in the 6th straight day of rain, and one about as torrentially bad as it had been the day we arrived so progress was painfully slow once underway. It was especially bad going over the Grapevine (a 4000 ft mountain pass on Interstate 5 that divides L.A. and Kern Counties)—cars hydroplaned out of control right and left and earlier wrecks littered the shoulders. An hour after we cleared it, we heard on the radio that the rain had turned to snow and CalDot had closed the ‘vine. Whew, just made it.
We got as far as the agricultural town of Stockton when we decided to stop for car food—a Trader Joe’s for raw nuts, dried fruit and the ultimate in personal, single-serving fresh car fruit: bananas. But alas, as the song goes yes had no bananas. We’d stopped at several convenience stores already hoping to find some, but there were none anywhere. I don't know what about a pandemic causes bananas to absof---inglutely disappear from the planet, but it seemed they had. And maybe, we joked, all those farmers wouldn't be panic-buying yet so we could load up on other cool stuff to take home. Fat chance! We did get the last packages of raw walnuts and dried apricots, but the shelves were otherwise pretty empty. Hilariously their frozen food aisle was completely empty but for four lone boxes of my least favorite appetizer in the world, bacon-wrapped dates. Those farmers know a thing or two after all!
We then walked into the Safeway next door for a cleaning product to use in the hotel room I had booked from my cell phone as we arrived in town. The cleaning product aisle was all but empty but for about three things: some Windex Without Ammonia (No ammonia? WTF—that’s the good part!), Clorox toilet bowl cleaner and Method granite cleaner. Didn't score on bananas either.
Our hotel was about a mile away, a Best Western Plus. I negotiated a great rate of $89 including breakfast while Bob waited in the car. This hotel turned out to be an older place originally built as a conference center, and from the registration desk I could hear a large and loud group of men conferencing away. There were hooting and clapping, singing and chanting. I peeked in and found a scene straight out of the Twilight Zone: a whole roomful of a Homer Simpsons, every one an Amway dealer, celebrating their ability to disinfect America. After ensuring that they didn't have any samples with them, I let them be and found my way to room 219.
I swabbed the room with granite cleaner while Bob hauled up the luggage. The halls smelled of pot, and the elevator garrumphed and lurched like it was 20 years overdue for its next service call. I did not like this place one bit. We watched the news, ate our Trader Joe’s food, and finally got ready for bed.
Bed, where we found that the sheets had the unmistakable rumpledness of already used. How do I know? I stay in a lot of hotels! I know what commercially laundered fresh sheets look like! And I know what fresh sheets look like at home, and how they look after we've slept on them for a few days. These sheets looked a week old. Horrific as that was, at least this old place had an air conditioner/heater that processed fresh air from outside and we weren't on the shared air supply of a newer hotel. Meaning, the horrors within were marginally preferable to the horrors without so we stayed, sleeping fully dressed, and come morning skipped the hot breakfast queue in favor of lifting an entire bunch of bananas off the buffet and bolting out the door like bank robbers.
The rain continued. By the time we got to Redding it was sleeting and by Lake Shasta it was snowing. 75 miles later we crept over fogbound Siskyou Pass in visibility of about 100 feet. The whole trip had been hard and just got harder. It was war in the trenches, fighting for every inch. But shockingly, about five miles later, we had dipped into Oregon's Rogue River Valley and crystal clear sunshine. Which also happens to be the location of the last In N Out Burger on I-5. Ahhhhh--every darned bit as good as we remembered them.
We were making great time and notified our cat sitter we'd be home that night. But by the time we got somewhere just south of Olympia around 10 p.m., we were groggy. Too weirded out from the night before to take a hotel, so we pulled into a rest area to bag a few Z's. The car lot (there are separate car and truck areas) at this particular rest area had all the cars in a center lane, diagonal spaces that faced each other like a herring bone pattern. One area had a big tree that shaded about six or eight spaces from the generous overhead lighting, so we pulled in there. Within minutes, our end of the rest area was full.
It was 31F outside and we didn't have pillows or blankets. Now anyone who knows me in real life will know how absolutely amazing it was that I actually had a jacket with me. Even in winter, this isn't a given as I'm that person who's never cold. I'm literally a human torch. But true to my nature I had no protection at the other pole--open-toed shoes only, no socks. Popsicle toes. So I was shivering when, about 1 a.m., I woke up and informed Bob that I needed to pee. He agreed to come with me and opened the door.
HOO-ah, HOO-ah, HOO-ah! All hell broke loose, all noise and flashing lights as the car alarm which Bob had somehow set from the fob with us inside tried to ward off evil-doers. Lights came on in the cars all around us, and angry voices yelled expletives. In a panic and yelling “Sorry! Sorry!", it took what felt like forever to find the fob and kill the alarm. But finally we did, and everyone calmed back down.
Once back in the car we tried to get more sleep, but as we laid there it slowly dawned on us that it was close to the same 31F inside the car as it was outside. At 3 a.m. I returned my seat to the full upright position and informed Bob that we would have to start the engine and get some heat. He agreed, and started the engine. Which, holy shit, turned on the radio and lit up the white Mercedes Sprinter van opposite us like a drive-in movie. Apparently when we'd turned off the car, we hadn't (who does?) turned the lights off first. Heck, it was a rental, we didn't even know where the switch was, they'd come on by themselves when it got dark. More angry neighbors and more expletives as we groped unsuccessfully for the remedy and turned on everything else instead—wipers and all.
"Just back out, they’ll think we’re leaving!," I screamed. So we backed out of our space and drove to the well-lit end of the lot. There, we figured out the lights, turned them off and snuck The Hearse back into our original space. Engine running and blood pressure back to normal, we slept until 5 a.m.
Now we needed coffee. But where Starbucks had been okie-dokie on Monday, by the wee hours of Wednesday after 40 hours straight CNN virus coverage, we'd been Sanjay Gupta'd into thinking we shouldn't allow potentially infected strangers to handle our coffee cups so we forewent our triple grande non-fat cappuccinos for an inferior cup of crap at a convenience store where at least we could serve ourselves.
By 9:30 we'd reclaimed our Audi at one airport, dropped the Pathfinder at another, and we were home. We unloaded everything to the garage, shed our clothes as we walked into the showers, and slept until 5 p.m.
The whole trip was surreal. We were refugees, fleeing an invisible enemy in a mine field. From inside that car with only CNN for company, even the smallest of decisions took on life or death implications.
I've never appreciated home so much.
