Over the Bay Bridge and east on I 580. As I cross the Coast Range, it strikes me that I have not used the air conditioner yet this year and that some time before I set out on a trip through the desert might have been a good time to have checked to see whether it still worked. To my great relief, it does, and I continue in air-conditioned comfort to Manteca, where I finally get off the freeway and onto the first blue highway, CA 120. And just a few miles east of Manteca, flat out in the middle of the Central Valley, I spot the Olde Towne General Store, which cheerfully admits that it's also a cafe and has a bunch of working vehicles in front of it rather than gleaming imported luxury sedans and SUVs. The dirty Saturn fits right in. I feel just the tiniest bit overdressed in my Dockers and LL. Bean shirt, but I've left the shirttail hanging out to compensate and don't attract that much attention from the locals, most of whom are too engrossed in a really violent session of liar's dice to notice me. The waitress, right out of Central Casting, is separated from perfection only by her failure to call me "Honey." The Ortega Burger with Fries is all that one could reasonably ask - a generous hamburger patty cooked a bit beyond medium-rare; a properly caramelized bun slathered with just the right amount of both mayonnaise and mustard; crisp lettuce; thinly-sliced, pungent onion; a slab of vine-ripened tomato so good that I want to eat it separately but fear impairing the burger's balance; and three limp pickle slices removable with a quick flick of the fork. All this accompanied by fries that must have been blanched and refried, they were so good. Two stars, at least, but I want to be a little stingy at first.

On east through Escalon and Oakdale, where the Central Valley has given way to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and even unirrigated things are beginning to be green. Then on up to Sonora, where I need to start thinking more seriously about how I am going to get over the Sierra. Time for another cafe.

Sonora is definitely a mountain resort town, but it has a homey feel and seems somehow real. Since I missed the turn for CA 49, I find myself at a cafe frequented largely by locals. Luckily, a local on crutches is struggling through the rather too complicated double-doored entryway and my assistance in disentangling him buys me an effective, if over-dramatic, entrance. I join him at the counter and when I inquire about passages over the Sierra am surrounded by an embarrassment of advisors, all focused on the quickest route to the casinos in Carson City. Fortunately, the route they all agree is the least desirable, owing to its narrow twistiness and the elevation of the pass, is also accessible via CA 49, so I am able to leave the impression, as I pull out of the parking lot encumbered by a chocolate milk shake clearly intended to serve a small family, that I am taking their advice.

The milk shake - rich, creamy, and generously endowed with chocolate - lasts nearly all the way to Angel's Camp, where I turn east on CA 4 and at the edge of town stop for gas, only to discover yet another reason to take road trips out of San Francisco: gasoline anywhere else, even way up in the mountains, is cheaper. As I begin the ascent, and as the altitude indicator signs mark increments of 1000 feet, the forest grows thicker and the rocks sharper. And then, somewhere around 2500 feet, I'm startled by a "poink" from within the car, a sound as unmistakable as it is unexpected, a sound I had heard countless times in my kitchen, the sound the safety seal button makes as the jelly cools and the air pressure forces the button down. Turns out the button makes exactly the same noise when insufficient air pressure lets it pop back up. My heart likewise leaps in anticipation, and yes, I'm not disappointed. The remainder of the ascent is accompanied by a jelly jar lid continuo as lid after lid poinks and the trees change.

The change is basically one of species, since redwoods and some deciduous things grow only up to certain elevations, where they are replaced by various firs and pines and cedars and other deciduous things. Of course at any distance at all I can't tell one tree from another, but what I can clearly see is that the forest keeps changing shades of green and that its texture also differs. What I can also see, as I climb through the trees and the road narrows, is patches of blue sky off to the sides. 5000 feet: Air conditioner off.

Then the patches of blue become vistas. I pull out at a couple and am struck by the utter hopelessness of capturing this on film, at least with my camera, so I resolve to just cruise slowly past them, a resolution made easier by the narrowing road and increasing sharpness of the turns. But then appears a sight so spectacular that I just have to pull out even though a vehicle is stopped there: a pickup with a Stanislaus National Forest Fire Patrol logo. Not a good time, I decide, for a cigarette. [Just kidding, folks, I did not smoke at any of these turnouts! I leave the uncontrolled burns to the Park Service.] Two men about my age are standing out on the rock looking at the view of snow-capped Yosemite, and as I gimp up to them I remark on my stiffening joints. They are friendly and I tell them that I'm on a retirement motor tour. Forgetting that I had shed the outer shirt and am sporting an Oracle T-shirt, I'm astonished when one asks if I had worked at Oracle. Seems that he had recently retired from the San Mateo Fire Department, moved to the Stanislaus, and then discovered that they needed experienced fire personnel...

A few miles farther, I stop for my first photo at the Pacific Grade Summit, El. 8050, which I had mistaken for Ebbetts Pass, El. 8730, a few hair-raising miles farther after the road had become barely wide enough for two cars to meet. Between these passes are numerous cerulean mountain lakes set off by the remaining snow banks. And then, the exhilarating descent. On the east side of the pass, the crystalline lakes are even more spectacular and the trees are fewer. The decrease in vegetation also allows me to clearly observe that the drop-offs at the edges of this narrow, twisting little road are often sheer and that the posted speed on the turns is not as ridiculously low as it is in, say, Kansas. I must have wasted an entire gallon of gas engine braking, not entirely soothed by the jelly jar lid continuo as the buttons, or at least some of them, poinked back down.

At Woodfords, I take CA 88 toward Minden, NV. Air conditioner back on. As I descend into Nevada and the trees become scrub and the scrub becomes scrubbier, the awful thought strikes me that spending a couple of weeks poking around in the Sierras might well be a superior adventure. But I'm committed, so I continue to Carson City on US 50.

In Carson City, ignoring the high-rise casino hotels, I stop at a smaller, non-chainy-looking place. A placard in the lobby welcomes the Rainbow Girls, with which the place is packed. Apparently to be a Rainbow Girl, you must be 1) dressed in a flowing pastel gown and 2) fat, if not morbidly obese. And they seem to have taken over the town, so I get referred to a new place out farther east, the Pinyon Plaza Resort, a Best Western Affiliate, with its own sleazy casino and frightening restaurant, through the casino on the right. The folks at the desk, off the casino to the left, seem surprised when I inquire about the town's best restaurant, apparently not a question they are accustomed to fielding. This disturbs me. Somebody has been feeding those Rainbow Girls, but the focus must have been on quantity. I finally settle on the Glen Eagles, a steakhouse across town where I experience a salad of tired mixed greens, durable carrot chunks, and cherry tomatoes; a good filet; green beans and scalloped potatoes that must have been lovingly plunged into boiling water for a half-hour or so before their plastic bags were unsealed and they were ceremoniously plated; a dessert so forgettable that I do so immediately; and utterly inadequate air conditioning - all at San Francisco prices.

Back at the Pinyon Plaza, I take a brief tour through the casino and look closely at the gambling machines, all of which are way too noisy. The only one I can figure out is recognizable as some kind of slot machine, a quarter slot machine. But they've changed in the last twenty years in other ways, too: it now takes three quarters to play a quarter slot machine. I gamble and lose. Not wishing to waste three more quarters, I quit. And so to bed, through the casino and down the hall, on the evening of my first day. I drift off with a feeling that I am much farther from NoeHill, El. 325, than the mere 284 miles on the odometer would indicate.