I-5 fever

By John Murphy

Tuesday at 3 a.m. I awoke at my brother’s house in Burlingame. Reluctantly, I began my long trek back to the Inland Empire from Northern California and the state football title game I recently covered.

My GPS smartly took me across the San Mateo Bridge to the 580 to Interstate 5, the colossus of freeways. I swilled the hot coffee my brother brewed and nibbled on the pumpkin bread he made.

Springsteen poured out of my car speakers … “Thunder Road” and “Promised Land” and “Wreck on the Highway.” I hoped not to experience the latter.

While attending San Francisco State, a journalism student from Los Angeles wrote a column for the school paper about traversing Interstate 5. He described all of the intoxicants he thought it required and it was mildly amusing. But I don’t roll that way and a river of coffee was all I needed.

By the time I reached Little Panoche Road in Firebaugh, I needed a pitstop. There’s a McDonald’s there and I ordered a large coffee and the two-Sausage-and-Egg-McMuffins- for-$4.50 deal.

“That’ll be $11.50, sir,” the counter person said. “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s $7.50.”

“You had me scared,” I said. “I thought I was going to have to sell a kidney.”

Avenal, Kettleman City, Buttonwillow, Lebec – the names of small cities dotting the I-5 are familiar to anyone who’s traveled this route. Soon I was back in SoCal and the rain beat down. Visibility was bad, the traffic worse. But eventually I made it home. It felt good.