Of Spectacular Spectacles, Rush and Roadtrips

Down Highway 5 we zipped rocking out to RUSH (!!), to Hermosa Beach for my nephew's bar mitzvah and a mega-colossal family & friend reunion of---including but not limited--- to Eichlers, Rivases, Geffens, Willses, Oak RIdgers, and Sarah Lawrence graduates. There were meetings and meals, buffets and brunches, tears and triumphs, dancing and dawdling. There wasn't a dry eye or empty stomach when the final breakfasts were eaten and the last airport shuttles departed.

After those activites slowed, Sarah & I zoomed over to Vegas for a few nights, continuing our roadtrip rockfest with a selection from my Uncle's CD collection of early, mid, and late Led Zeppellin (and a smattering of Cat Stevens, Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Steely Dan, U2,and Joan Armatrading) . But inexplicably, Rush is best for the late night driving. Out in the desert I could indulge in the playing of airdrums--particularly fun to Neil Peart!

And Las Vegas?

Well, it's comical at first with the spectacle of neon, behemoth casinoes, drooling drunks, amped gamblers, hungry tourists in line for the bounteous buffets, countless fountains & gargantuan effigies from pop culture and history standing in spectacular desert heat. But then your smile might freeze a bit at the caged lions and tigers in hotels displayed for mildly curious humans or that vague sense of a divorce from reason that comes from the relentless pressure of opportunities to submit to compulsive drives and to suck up resources like money, water, food, and oil as though they were air....well, it's really something to witness and to partake of, and then get the hell away from, aint it?

Our antitdote was a drive home through the Sierras with the most spectacular sunset I have ever seen. The dropping sun turned fushcia and its color spread out across the horizon and tinted all the sinuous mountains, hills, and valleys pinky-gold and the air was cooler --such a relief after the implausible hell-heat of the Mojave. As we headed back up Hwy 5 the Milky Way sent a sparkly benediction upon our vehicle, and that was a whole other kind of spectacle.