Our road trip to California

Jason, Tessa, Malcolm and I took a road trip, spontaneously, last week's night.  Over dinner at the Owl 'N Thistle, someone said, "How far is California?  Could we go there tonight?"  After a day, nay, a week of adventuring, rock-scrambling, poetry, and imagining, this idea didn't strike us as far-fetched at all.  So we struck out on the road in Tessa's sweet ride around 10:30pm that very night.

Malcolm and Jason missed their flights over the pond. I quit my office job by default, and Tessa transferred to each successive Starbucks as we crawled down the coast.  Malcolm didn't stay long, due to his having a family, but he was an enthusiastic participant in his own time, supplying all the poetry and pipe smoke necessary for a heavily atmospheric road trip.  Jason was our road warrior, boldly forging ahead in true rockstar fashion, him being well-acclimated to life on tour.  He fine-tuned our chariot whenever it even so much as hiccupped, and we were mighty relieved to have a mechanic on hand at all times.  Malcolm and Jason busked on the streets to earn our daily bread and evening beer, engaging all the listeners in a rock and roll trip down memory lane.  Tess and I often acted as back-up singers and, when in the proper spirit, dancers and/or street sweepers.  After Malcolm took off, Jason played Spanish guitar and Tessa danced flamenco, while I clapped and stomped vigorously, passing the hat and marking time.  I acted as our group's thermometer for hunger, cold and fatigue, as I was the first to reach each.  Conversely, accustomed as I was to foregoing showers in times of need, I felt completely comfortable in my own skin long past the others' point of sensory endurance.

Tess's official jaunt lasted 6 months, with continual relapses of adventure for the rest of her life.  Jason returned to his life of Eurasian travel, and in the coming years we all joined him on tour when we could.  My favorite tag-along has remained the annual guitar festival in India.  Our road trip stories became the stuff of legend, and were recounted on stages across the world.  On hiatus from travel, we often met up with Malcolm in the Temple of Peace, where we sank into the smoky reverie of rhymed verse, while watching The Green Man, a forest tree of mythic proportions, grow. The Green Man's girth increased every year in a series of concentric rings.  When that tree died, struck by lightning and ascending to heaven in flame, we chopped down what was left of it, made a wardrobe out if it, and counted all the rings buried in the ground.   The stump itself continued to add rings every year, so it grew large enough for us all to sit on and have a picnic.  While we sat, a shoot sprang up from the center, covering our shoulders with its shade.  We remained friends for generations, and visited each others' graves in the proper seasons, while reciting poetry and high-fiving each other in celebration of fully lived life.