That's Teh-HATCH-a-pee.

Nope, not staying in Bakersfield. Honeys, I just couldn't do it. Anyplace someone I like refers to as An Armpit, and then a name like "Bakersfield"? I couldn't give it the chance it deserved. Oh, sure: the room would have been $49, which is a really great rate, right? But the real reason--I swear this is true--that I booked a room in Bakersfield in the first place is so that The Ever-Gorgeous Earl could walk the streets.

If this means nothing to you, never mind. You're not a fan of country music, and that's perfectly OK with me. (I just won't tell my husband.) You probably better remember Dwight Yokum from Sling Blade, and I don't need to tell you the degree of delight his role provided in our household. At least among the small contingent of us (that would be 1 person) who actually recognized him.

So we didn't stay there. We came on to Tehachapi, about 45 miles farther down the road. It's quite gorgeous, in a very almost-to-the-desert sort of way, the La Quinta being about 3 miles out of town and kind of creepy, if you came upon it on a moonless night, what with the abandoned and weed-infested restaurant out front and not much else anywhere nearby. I, of course, love the creepiness, although it did serve to much lower my expectations for the room. That and the sign posted on the fence around the pool, saying that the pool was closed by the State of California due to 1) inadequate fencing and (!) 2) unsanitary conditions. That would have forced me to forge on across the desert by moonlight except for the fact that there was no cancellation (smart move on their part) and no LQ for the next 300 miles.

The desk guy was From Elsewhere, hard to understand, suspicious of me, and odoriferous. Imagine my delight to find that the "suite" I had sprung for (for which, but with a word like "sprung," who's really noticing?) was quite delightful. Clean (except for the long black hairs that mysteriously appeared in the bathtub this morning, never mind that The EGE had patrolled for them when we checked in, as he considers this a real challenge (also dicking with the lock on the bathroom door, which is stuck and which will, I'm willing to bet, be fixed before he leaves today). Anyway, anyway: really nice room--big, clean, quiet, comfortable. I avoid the whole Pool Area, needless to say. One can only imagine the "unsanitary conditions," esp. if one was once a counselor at YMCA summer camp and had a child (who went on to become valedictorian of his high school class and a college football stud) who regularly crapped in the pool (and also in the bathroom after lunch, whereupon he smeared it on himself and indulged in what he apparently considered "dessert," and you WONDER why I have issues? Please.)

So: giving wide, wide berth to The Pool Area.

But first, we stopped in Bakersfield to try to find some vegetables. We travel with wine, cheeses, bread, crackers, and an assortment of almonds (some of which we bought fresh from a store next door to the winery where we stopped for a wonderful hour yesterday, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. Madera, I think), so we don't have to worry about food. But every once in a while we need vegetables. So we tried to find some. I, having neglected to google groceries in Bakersfield, had no clue. We drove up and down a likely-looking street, and we stopped at a little bakery where the proprietors spoke very, very little English--no way we could have asked them, since we could barely understand the price of the baguette (it's where I come to appreciate that the majority of the people in Midland speak Spanish, or Spanglish, which I can understand enough to at least buy stuff). And as The EGE walked across the parking lot, so he could at least claim to have walked BESIDE the streets of Bakersfield, if not actually on them, we came to realize that perhaps the song had a different, secret meaning. At least as it might relate to the part of town where we found ourselves. The first woman in a tiny tight dress standing on the corner talking to the men in the truck might well have been someone from the neighborhood, on her way to the bakery for a loaf of bread of indeterminate price, wearing a cool summer-y frock and stopping to chat with friends.

And the other woman in the parking lot, wearing a tiny skirt and what appeared to be the top of a bathing thong and talking to men in a car? Well, she could have been giving directions to tourists, right? But after a while it became obvious even to us that this was less about neighborhood friendliness than it was about age-old commerce, and we decided we did not need vegetables so much after all and could wait to get ice until we got to Tehachapi.

I chose Tehachapi not only because it was, well, really my only La Quinta choice (and, man, am I racking up the points for free nights) but because I once had a student whose grandmother had lived in Tehachapi and had written an essay about it, about how hot and dry it was, and who had pronounced it for me in that way students do when they know something you don't and get to catch you in a mistake. So, of course, I've never forgotten.

Huh. Maybe that's the key: make a mistake and have someone point it out to you in a gleeful manner, and you'll remember it forever. If only I could get someone to ridicule me while explaining quantum physics, I might be in line for a whole new career.

So yesterday wasn't very eventful. Wonderfully nice people at the winery, as usual: winery people (both those who work there and those who stop there) are almost always extraordinarily cheerful and friendly. We met a grouchy one once, in Solvang, on our last California road trip. That's saying a lot, given how many wineries/tasting rooms we've visited over the years, and given how we are somehow given to provoking reactions, of one sort or another, in people, as you might imagine.

And here let me confess: I've been having Map Woes. I think I told you that I like Rand McNally maps. They have exit numbers on them, and I love those. For some reason, the only California road map I have is not Rand McNally, but is, instead, from some evil rat bastards at "Thomas Bros. Maps." I hate these people. They are truly, insidiously evil. They are the kind of people who would put their grandmother on an ice floe with a can of tuna and no can opener and tell people she'd gone to Florida to visit her sister.

This map is, without a doubt, the worst map I've ever tried to work with. And I have TONS of maps. There are places on this map where roads are not labelled--no name, no number, nothing. And then yesterday I discovered that it's off-kilter: I was comparing its sorry ass to the California map in the atlas, and I noticed that things were a little off. Both maps purport to be aligned so that the top of the page is due north, as everything in Life should be, but they're tilted in different directions. The atlas has the border with Oregon running straight east and west, which, while not really accurate, is MUCH better than this Rat Bastard Map, which has that same border at a 135-degree angle (if you think of the atlas as having it at a 90-degree angle, and do NOT whinge at me about angles and shit, 'coz I don't know from geometry, OK? Believe it or not (and nobody ever does), I never had a geometry class, ever. I have Math Issues, and I've explained those before: I had an excellent math background and excelled through elementary school and was put into a special math curriculum in junior high that, had we not moved, would have let me graduate from high school with the equivalent of a BA in mathematics. Then we moved to California, where there was no accelerated program in math and where I had the same textbook I'd had the year before, and something happened, and after that year, I could no longer Do Math and have had Math Issues ever since. But it all turned out OK, so it's all cool. As long as no one makes fun of my trying to explain angles. Otherwise? I might snap, begin screaming about the Pythagorean theorem and run amok through the streets with a particularly sharp protractor and a slide rule, doing unimaginable damage with the latter.)

Anyway. My point: the map is wrong. Our taking wrong turns and having trouble for the last three days is Not My Fault. Not at all.

So when we missed a turn and stopped for gas at an Arco station in Lathrop, I went in to get a new map. First, though, I needed to pee. The women were very nice, calling me "sweetie" in a very non-California-more-like-Texas kind of automatic-but-still-endearing way and digging around behind the counter to find the key. Finding the key: this is always a Very Bad Sign, almost as bad as when they send you outside around the back of the building. Which they did. I was leery, but who knew when I would have a chance to pee again? So I took the key, which was scarily tied to a huge, stained plastic drink cup, the Big Gulp size, as if they were afraid someone was going to try to abscond with the key to the bathroom.

Bathroom. That would be singular. Now, I hate to dis men, because you know I love them and I hate it when women talk bad about them. But goodlordalmighty. Is there anything nastier on this planet than a men's restroom at a gas station off the highway? Oh, no, there is not. And a unisex restroom is an abomination unto the lord. If my husband can leave any bathroom cleaner than it was when he entered it, and if he can go for lo! these past 32 years without EVER getting pee anywhere but IN THE TOILET, which--hello, dudes!--is where it fucking BELONGS, then what the hell is up with the rest of them? Tell me, because I don't understand, and their amazing nastiness just seems the tiniest bit hostile to me, like they're all saying, "Here, take this, and this," as they spray and dribble and drip and shake themselves. I don't know what they think about this, maybe thinking it's a sign of freedom and power that they can leave piss wherever they want, but the truth is that it's just nasty and lazy and akin to grown-ups picking their noses and wiping boogers on the pages of library books: it's hostile and filthy and has no other purpose than saying, "Take that. I hate you" to everyone else.

Whoa. Where did that come from? Oh: Lathrop. The Arco station.

I could smell the odor of urine before I opened the door. Why did I go ahead and open the door? Just so I could do what I did next: I let the door slam without ever setting foot inside, and I walked back around the building and into the station and set the cup on the counter and said, "We have driven 1500 miles [I was way off: it was over 2600 at that point, but who knew?] and that restroom is without a doubt the nastiest thing I've seen so far."

And do you know what one of them said, unbelievably? "Oh, well, I'm not saying you could eat off the floor, but it's not that bad."

Amazing.

I said, "Oh, yeah, it is." And left before I went into Full Rant Mode, wherein I would have said, "Oh, honeys, pleasepleaseplease tell me you have your very own clean and sanitized private restroom somewhere on this property. Because if you don't, the idea of your working an 8-hour shift in here, peeing in that horrible pit of filth and then coming back in here to serve up those greasy hot dogs to travelers who have no idea--no idea!--where your hands have been? It will make me die, right here."

So I just left. But remember that: it's the Arco off 205 in Lathrop. Nastiest restroom on the planet. Germs for miles. Wear a mask and keep your windows rolled up when you speed past. You'll thank me later.

And now we're off to Flagstaff. There was a little wine bar downtown with the cutest little rack of miniature glasses for tastings, and I'm going to find out if it's still there.

XO