California, Comin' Home

On the morning of the 15th, I got in my car....loaded to the gills with clothes, kitchen stuff, guitar, rug, vacuum, worship flags, art, more kitchen stuff, miscellaneous more stuff....ready to start my San Francisco "thelma and Louise" car trip.

Punched the cd player on.  The night before I'd dug out an old Joni Mitchell cd...and that morning...the first song to play was "California, Comin' Home."

I laughed. A lot. I sang along.  I loved this whole God adventure musical accompaniment.

During the 6 days on the road, I started each day singing California, Comin' Home.   I honestly felt as if I were leaving home to GO home.

My strategy for lodging was to decide each night how far I wanted to drive the next day.  Figure out what town/city is nearest and go to Trip Advisor to weed out the really ghastly places.  My trigger words were "clean and cheap."   One place wasn't really clean. Another wasn't exactly cheap.  But, in general I stayed in smallish, retro motels in smallish, never-left-retro towns.  Evanston, Wyoming has a lovely little strip motel run by a family.  The mom said "if we ever don't need the motel to make money, I'd like to turn it into housing for single, pregnant teenagers....somebody has to help them out."

This beautiful woman was once a teen mom herself. She married her high school sweetheart (who still runs the motel with her).  Now, she and her ginormous black and white cats welcome tired travelers. You can request "breakfast in a basket"....homemade muffins and coffee.   Her heart is big and open!

Came in on Sunday night and stayed with Becky and Alex in their cute, little house in Pacifica (about 25 minutes south of San Francisco) you can see the ocean from their living room window.  Met their new puppy, Sierra.  Slept like a rock and spent Monday unpacking storage items from the car, playing with Sierra and generally vegging around.

Today, I headed into the city.  My faithful GPS knew what to do, so I wove my way from highway to highway and found my self headed toward Ellis Street.  Counting the blocks.  My heart was beating and I actually said out loud "Almost there!  Almost there."  I thought - this is SO good!!  I can't wait.

Of course, in my mind Joni Mitchell was singing, "California...California, comin' home...gonna see the folks I dig, I'd even kiss a Sunset pig...California, comin' home."

Drove up to the YWAM base. A kid from the Los Angeles "Skaters" Discipleship Training School stood on the sidewalk, holding his skateboard, and talking with some of the neighborhood guys.  The Because Justice Matters women bowled me over with welcome hugs (these are the folks I dig....).  Helped me unload. And unload. And unload. 

Now, pretty much flattened at about 8 pm.  Unpacked, settled, sorted, and organized for about 7 straight hours. I hurt all over and it looks like I gave away my silverware to somebody in Wisconsin....cause it isn't here!

but, here I am.  My room has BEAUTIFUL wood flooring.  I just made a cup of tea in my settled-in little kitchen and hung my "big bag" car top carrier in the shower to get the salt off tomorrow morning.  Everything is good.

I am home.  My heart is home.  My body is chilling and ready to sleep.  Joni Mitchell is singing somewhere in the gerbil wheel of my brain.