Life is a Highway
By Guilliean Pacheco
Marcel Proust once wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” If you were to examine the multitude of trips that I have made over the past 16 years, the common denominator is California. I spent the first 21 years of my life residing in the sleepy Central Valley town of Modesto. It was in that two-story dwelling on Chesapeake Avenue that I voraciously consumed literature about the myth of my birthplace with its sun-soaked beaches, Tupac, and a celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County.
Road trips were a cheap means to freedom from the emotional prison of my lonely childhood. You get lost in the shuffle when you’re the fourth of five kids, and known as “the quiet one.” Feeling the concrete rolling beneath me encouraged a deeper examination of the self as I hugged the road to feel its heartbeat. Whenever we went on overnight road trips, we went as a family, and it was always for weddings or funerals. It didn’t matter to me where we were going.
Pulling your suitcase from the closet and selecting outfits weeks before your departure. Going back into the suitcase to pull out your preselected outfits because you needed them for school. The wind whistling a tuneless melody outside your window. The sparse landscape of Interstate 5 whipping by as the speedometer climbed. Taking a nap as your head bumped against the seatbelt. These are memories that can never be replaced. Who doesn’t enjoy eating gas station snacks as you wing your way to your destination, anticipating the thrill of consuming diner food from a questionable restaurant you spied near a highway exit as your evening meal?
Our family road trips were a savory treat because Mom pulled you out of school to go on them. We rarely went out of state. When we drove somewhere, Dad would pore over his maps and select the best route for us to take before Google Maps and standalone GPS systems. But, really, after 30+ years in California, you know where to go without outside assistance. We stayed in the chain hotels that Mom chose. We listened voraciously to local radio stations for the next traffic report to make sure we arrived at our destinations in one piece. My hand-me-down Sony Discman helped calm the voices in my head. I lined the pockets of Duracell’s C-suite for all the batteries I bought to power the damn thing.
As I came of age, I realized that I could travel without my family. It was a novel concept as I became the main character of my story. The first piece of advice I received when I began traveling was that I should go with other people, preferably big, burly fellas. The implication was that there was safety in numbers. I was a young woman without a male significant other, a stasis that would remain throughout my twenties and my early thirties. I was okay with that old-fashioned thought process because travel is about making memories, and you’re supposed to make memories with other human beings.
Or, so I thought. Making worthwhile friends as you get older feels like a practice in repeated defeat. High school pals, college friends, and work colleagues weren’t ideal because not everyone shared my nerdy interests. Something had to change. I could continue to wallow in my sadness at being cooped up in my daily doldrums, or I could feed my wanderlust.
I chose to wine and dine it.
My first solo trip was to Disneyland Resort. I always went with family or friends during my childhood. I had a rough idea of what to expect as a solo road tripper. There’s a simple satisfaction in actualizing that I was accountable to no one. I stopped at gas stations to load up on junk food at my leisure. I knew what rest areas to stop at to stretch my legs and use the bathroom safely. I went to the Disney Parks when I wanted and left when I wanted. I became close, personal friends with the Single Rider options. I ate park food, a strict no-no on previous family trips because of our limited budget.
Disneyland brings me joy even as an adult. I’ve studied the history of Disney for years and I know it’s not real. I’m not a fool, but I can be foolish. I’ll be damned if I don’t genuinely believe that I “leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy” whenever I lay eyes on the Resort. I’m absolutely aware that they maintain a consistent guest experience by any means necessary.
Sometimes, I would plan my Disney trips around events such as the Newport Beach Film Festival, where I met the cast of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and screened the movie with them. I saw Captain America: Winter Soldier for the first time at the AMC in Downtown Disney (RIP). Visiting the parks during the D23 Expo was something that I’ll never forget. But it never occurred to me that I could visit other places in Southern California. It always was and always will be Disneyland.
The carte blanche approach to travel became prayerful meditation to find substance in my meaningless life. I was in a financial space where I could finally do everything that I wanted to do, and I didn’t have to share it with anyone. I could selfishly think of myself. You develop moxie when you’re not under the thumb of overbearing parental units. The eternal question of what I was doing with my life came to the surface on these trips. I found a greater significance in my existential thought process simply by frolicking in a fantastical world. Do you know how it felt to eat a turkey leg for the first time in your twenties? Let me tell you: it’s an experience.
If I wasn’t planning a trip to Disneyland, I was going home to Northern California. I started flying to the Bay Area to visit the places that I was never allowed to go to before. It was also an excuse to see my childhood friends on their turf. We went to the Winchester Mystery House, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, the historic Gold Rush town of Columbia, Monterey Bay Aquarium, among many more locations. These are all on different trips, mind you. Doing them all in one go will drain any dyed-in-the-wool introvert like me. I know my limits. It was absurd to come to grips with the idea that to enjoy the amenities of being a California resident, I had to relinquish my residency.
Traveling is about remembrance even if you’re going at it alone. The ability to be a tourist where you were born is great fun. I’m slowly making my way through the missions. I made it as far south as Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad and will continue my exploration once the pandemic is over. I have memories of driving across the Bay Bridge to get to the East Bay after visiting the City for fresh siopao in the pink boxes. That’s where my extended paternal and maternal families lived. But the simple delight at walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, feeling the ice-cold ocean breeze scrape across your bare cheeks in the middle of summer, is a memory that I’ll never forget.
No trip is ever perfect but I have it down to a science. I developed and fine-tuned my ideal itineraries with each trip, committing every minute detail to memory, writing down what I needed to remember, photographing what I couldn’t commit to paper. It brought me comfort to know that I knew what was going to happen because I had already been there before. COVID-19 has put a temporary pause on the joy of planning another road trip for the foreseeable future. But nothing will stop me from dreaming of the day I can breathe in the open road again.
My mother once told me, “I don’t understand how you can go on these alone.”
I shrugged and said, “Either I go alone, or I don’t go at all.”
Not going at all is no longer an option. I found myself on the road, and I like her.
Photo/Guilliean Pacheco.
Guilliean Pacheco is a writer, editor, and host of the Raconteuse Radio podcast. She has an M.F.A. in Writing from the University of San Francisco. She’s a misplaced California girl who lives in Las Vegas normally if one could call living there normal. Tag along with her adventures at gpacheco.org or follow her on Twitter @writeropolis.
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