Over and Out from Beverly Hills (Almost)

In a different life, these hands might have belonged to a cartographer. On any flight, I only suffer when I get a window seat in exchange for a cloudy day. On my recent trip to Los Angeles for the second annual ACO Congress (sorry for the work-speak), the winds favored my flights. Leaving Nashville, I got the plane's last window seat, and ended up in a particularly chatty row with two other businessmen. Talk ranged from brewing beer to why they loved living in Williamson County (I was noticeably silent in that exchange). Aside from my mention of standing behind Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) in the BNA security line  and finding him much shorter than I expected(true story), I doubt much of what I said resonated.

But that was fine, because the window held wonders. With almost 4 hours to Las Vegas, I has hours to burn on the geometry below. Despite despising the term "flyover country," flying over the bulk of the U.S. spoke to how the land shaped us and the people we kicked off that land.

Photos this bad from great heights don't do it justice either.

The skies cleared for nearly the entire route, highlighting the vivid squares, circles and crescents of the Plains. Rivers curled and blossomed into reservoirs among the green that faded as we reached the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. After a patch of desert emerged the snow-capped Rockies in New Mexico and the southwest's signature red buttes and steep canyons.

Finally, the Grand Canyon appeared, looking almost small next to the high-desert plain it occupied. Almost. The brilliant bands of rock could not be escaped. I anticipated a sighting from Oklahoma, and it did not disappoint.

A two-hour layover stood between me and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, McCarran International feels like a man refusing to accept that his waistline has grown two sizes and won't buy new pants. Between the slot machines, the oxygen bars and lack of seating, the concourse almost got claustrophobic.

Everything possible delayed our departure, and the Strip was fully lit by the time we ascended above its gambling palaces. A Las Vegas firefighter sat next to me, and we chatted through the 40-minute jump over the desert and mountains to L.A. Fighting fires was small part of the work these days, and most calls were drug or health related. He was heading home to El Paso. We got talking about places out west, and I asked about leaving Vegas. The hardest thing, he said, was remembering that Las Vegas is a 24-hour town and most others aren't. If you need milk at 11 p.m., you might have to wait till morning. Not so in Vegas.  We talked at length and admitted the rich sunset burning down beneath the mountain ridges.

Once we escaped the clouds, downtown L.A. shimmered. I said goodbye to the friendly firefighter and soon enough LAX spat me onto the curb. My cab driver took immediate interest when I told him I came west for a healthcare conference. In a cab on the 405, my Russian-born cab driver went deep into his health insurance woes -- $800 a month with a $9,000 deductible. He left his homeland at the end of the Soviet era, and conceded that not everything socialist turned out badly (i.e. healthcare).When we reached Century City, on the edge of Beverly Hills, I could hardly believe my eyes. The Halloween fog lifted enough to reveal a pretty glamorous hotel. The room was modern and comfortable, the balcony a nice flourish after so many hours cooped up on a 737. With an open-air mall across the street, it wasn't long before I was fed, watered, and ready to crash on Pacific time.

Purple light of the Century City sunrise.

At the actual conference, I spent three days as a stenographer, jotting down everything I could from top-level health executives. It was rare to get such people in one room. Some nice folks from a few health plans sat near me, which helped during the down moments.

I did kick off a little early on the second day, when no late-afternoon panels were of interest to my coworkers. I took a three-mile walk, talked to my mother while navigating the streets and stopped at Wally's Wines for a glance at its wares and to hunt some Russian River Brewing Company ales. I think I saw Beck, but it makes me kinda nervous to say so (bah-dum-dum). It seemed logical - he's a California native, that stretch of  Santa Monica Boulevard was the Los Angeles answer to Music Row, except the L.A. version had a lot more palm trees and luxury sedans.

Returning to the room, I found my laptop had picked up a nasty virus through its portable wireless card. Thank goodness all my conference notes went into the notebook they provided. I had a bit of laptop envy when I saw almost everyone sporting iPads at the conference. The only advantage I had was I could savagely beat anyone who laughed at my antique technology.  After the virus meltdown, it was little more than a paperweight. The last night had a silver lining. My old traveling buddy Alicia drove straight from her reporting job in Riverside to meet me for dinner and some beers. We talked life on the little balcony of my room and downed a few Fuller ESBs and Lost Coast Great Whites. Soon enough, the morning session would pass, I would pack and huddle up at LAX again.

Long Beach. Alicia used to live close to the pier.

The skies were just as clear on the way home. The 737 rocketed out above the Pacific (all the recent whale activity left me hopeful for a sighting, but ultimately disappointed). A cluster of small clouds draped Palo Verses as it jutted into the Pacific next to San Pedro, home of Anna Draper in Mad Men. The skyline of Long Beach, its port and oil-producing islands came next. Alicia once lived a few blocks from the pier, shoreline and bluffs that were a perfect perch Sunday morning lounging. Long Beach zipped away as the jet turned back above L.A.'s infinite grid anchored to the cluster of skyscrapers to the north.

Joshua Tree at 38,000 feet

For its size, L.A. vanished briskly into the brown and khaki desert beyond Irvine and Indio. My map skill from seven miles high improved dramatically. A massive field of wind turbines spun, and a faint road cruised up a narrow canyon to the high desert of Joshua Tree National Park. While not visible here, I remembered enough of our route to plot where it should lie. Sure enough, I spotted the access road leading to an overlook. From this altitude, the piles of weathered rocks were no more than grains of sand. 


 There was no second act from the Grand Canyon, although the plane's right-side passenger glimpsed Phoenix. We got the desert, the red rocks of Sedona and a healthy forest fire coughing up smoke to its north. Tracing Interstate 40 subtly snaking across northern Arizona, I glimpsed the badlands of Petrified Forest National Park before the first thatch of clouds moved in.

Possibly Sedona, definitely a forest fire.

Without land to map, I dozed till sunset. Before the vibrant hues cut to black, I employed those mad mapping skills again, this time finding Amarillo plotted out on the dusty Texas panhandle. I glimpsed the somewhat amazing depths of  nearby Palo Duro Canyon as the clouds took over, beating twilight to the punch.