San Jose to Santa Barbara
09/17/2009 at 22:34 from (34.426109, -119.843613)
After such a warm and relaxing time in San Jose, it was difficult for us to leave, especially so for Marijana. But there were more good times on the horizon, so we had to say goodbye. Sanda had to leave for work before we left, so she and Marijana and Ksenija shared a Croatian group hug and then, not long thereafter, the two of us piled into Ksenija's car and headed to the station. Ksenija had a harder time saying goodbye. Before she started really crying, she gave us both a quick squeeze and then hopped in her car and sped off.
Our hearts a little heavy, we stepped off the platform in San Jose and onto the train to Santa Barbara. The first part of the ride was pretty low key, with the train passing through the Elkhorn Slough. The view alternated between the breathtaking beauty of meandering waterways and the occasional ugliness of a swamp dotted by trash. Throughout, the estuary was filled with brilliant white egrets and a thousand other birds, all seemingly immune to the noise and commotion our train must have caused.
The water and reeds quickly gave way to mile after mile of farmland. Row upon row of neat, green fields flashed under our window. Laborers stood bent over by the thousands, working in clumps under a fierce sun. Every few miles, we would fly by another hastily thrown-together worker settlement, which looked very much like a cross between a company town and a ramshackle trailer park.
Soon enough, the verdant green wilted into a new kind of tended field: oil. We passed thousands of pumps, each making weird, mechanical love to the ground amid a small pool of shimmering black filth. Bleached white pipes and thin, rusty lines snaked around and between the pumps, running along the tracks for miles. Not a soul was in sight, and the only clue to suggest that people ever set foot on this industrial extraction porn set was the sprinkling of trucks and the occasional warning sign.
Thankfully, this scenery was bound to change. We began a steep charge up Paso Robles and, on our way, we passed through dry and barren grassland. Although the place was useless for agriculture, a use was still found for it as the hiding place for some of the less palatable necessities of our modern society: prisons, chemical plants, and people who fancy themselves as ranchers.
As we climbed, the grass became splotchy and sick, eventually losing out to scraggly bushes and thin, woody flowers. And, as we rocketed through corridors cut straight into the hillsides, we saw an improbable cross section. Just inches below the narrow mat of vegetation was a continuous mass of compact sand. In truth, the area through which were were now passing had once been filled with massive, ancient dunes. Now, the remnants of these dunes perched a thousand feet above sea level, many miles from any water, literal mountains of sand.
As the dunes dropped down, we rolled through San Luis Obisbo and into an area that, our conductor informed us, is an ICBM launch and testing site. The sharp lines and crisp paint of bunkers and barbed wire seemed to stand in stark contrast to the gently rolling dunes and foamy surf. But we were, at long last, next to the ocean. We marveled at the waves and imagined catching each one until, right on time, we rolled into Santa Barbara station.
We stepped off of the platform and wandered over to the parking lot, just as Scooter drove in. He was sick, whiney, and pale, but we didn't let that stop us from teasing him all the way back to the house he shares with 3 other guys in Ventura. As we unloaded our bags from the car and settled into the room he so generously lent us, we watched the sun fall through another one of Southern California's renowned scarlet skies, drawing a curtain on, yet again, a wonderful day on the road.
