Los Angeles — Just kill me now

When Hedon first talked about us driving a truck together, one of my objections was that I didn’t want to drive in the really big cities like New York City, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Hedon cut a bargain and said she’d manage all the big cities. Well, thanks to the wonderful intelligence of the feds and their logbook rules, we haven’t always been able to finagle a way for Hedon to always be driving when we hit a big city. So, after five years out here, I’ve driven in all of them, except New York City. Oh joy.

Still, if I can get out of it, I will, which means the vast majority of the time, it’s Hedon maneuvering us through places like Chicago and Los Angeles. As I write this, we are bobtailing across the “Inland Empire,” as snootily ridiculous a self-dubbed title as anyone could imagine, aka the massive sprawl from Los Angeles. I am not driving, which means I am not in the air ride seat. I cannot express how foul these roads are. I will have lost 50 IQ points due to Shaken Trucker Syndrome by the time we reach the shipper. Just kill me now.

Here’s the thing about the roads in California — they are crumbled and decayed, but the medians and shoulders sure do have pretty landscaping. Their highways are the perfect metaphor for the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle. Think of all those flowering bushes as plastic surgery and botox. The ivy climbing the sound barriers is $500 hairstyles. The palm trees are the overpriced designer wardrobe. And the bushes and ivy and trees all decorate what is ugly, cracked and nearly past repair.

But right now, I don’t much care about all that. We have arrived at the shipper. Thank you, Jebus.