Sing, Muse, of State Route 80

Tomorrow, I will get up at 4am, get in my parents' Volkswagen Passat, and head up the 5 towards San Francisco. We'll head up through Gorman in the Tejon Pass, where we will switch drivers, and then cut off the interstate somewhere in the Central Valley - maybe the 46 down into Paso Robles, maybe the 198 through Coalinga to the 25, winding through the San Benito Valley...

Just writing that intro makes me feel like I'm chanting the beginning of some ancient epic. I can almost hear the drumming and the crackle of the campfire.

Nearly every story my dad tells about his youth begins like this.

"We loaded up the '59 Ford wagon and left before dawn. Headed out route 80 through Descanso, and Pine Valley, and had breakfast at the Space Age Lodge in Gila Bend" - my dad remembers things like where he had breakfast on a certain day in 1962 - "crossed into New Mexico, then over the Rio Grande at midnight..."

I'm sure that back in Germany, hundreds of years ago, there was some Keller telling his kids about loading up the old wagon, hitching the mule, and heading down towards Stuttgart. And hundreds of years from now, some Keller will be talking about loading up the old flying car...