LESLIE'S JOURNAL

I knew it was going to be a good day when I saw that Huw was on the case, mending the devilish html code that so distressed us yesterday.

I can't believe its only been a week since we started out from Adams Street and Lake Shore Drive. Seems like months. Going from snow and wool sweaters in Chicago to shorts, shades and palm trees in LA may have something to do with this impression. More than that, though, this week has been one of the fullest I've lived. Watching the landscape changing mile by mile and meeting new people with every stop gives you the feeling that you have been traveling for ages. I never had this sensation so strongly when I traveled by plane. Driving down Santa Monica Blvd. to the Ocean, I felt I had really earned something worth having and I got the feeling that Rich and Wrinkle and Bob and Mildred and Vera and Dixie were with us as we drove the victory lap.

The last bit of driving I did was out onto the creaky wooden Santa Monica pier, where Helen and I celebrated reaching the Pacific by taking a ride on the ferris wheel at the end of the pier and looking way out over the ocean.

This was, no doubt, a great moment, though I have to confess that my favourite part of the day was earlier this afternoon just before driving the final stretch when we pulled over and had a picnic on the original road. The pavement was cracked and there were sunflowers and bushes and even trees growing up through the asphalt and lying there on my back in the sunshine I could feel the past solidly beneath me. I imagined the Joad family on their final approach into California, after leaving the dustbowl of Oklahoma behind in search of a better life. And I thought of Mildred, who also left dustbowl Oklahoma for a better future and ended up in the high country of Arizona. And I thought of my own family, who never travelled that road, but stuck it out in Oklahoma all those miles behind us. And then I thought about how different its all going to look going in the other direction.

At the end of the trip from east to west, I am 29 yrs old. When we start from west to east next week I will be 30.