Drawing the Line - 23

Early on July 17^th I had a chance to roll out another segment of my Line Around The World Project. If you have been following the progress of this project you know that it is nearly two miles long now. About a third of a mile of its length was done along the coast of Big Sur earlier this year, but the majority has been done north of my residences in Santa Clara, California.

With this segment I reach a major goal, with is El Camino Real. I don't know about the rest of the US or the world for that matter, but El Camino Real is famous to us Californians. When we are in grade school it is a rite of passage to build a model of a Spanish Mission in order to learn about the Spanish influence on this area. Every school kid learns about the string of missions, forts and other sites which were built by Spain to secure their territory in North America.

A great part of their method was to use missions and their economic structure to convert the natives. There were 21 missions along the length of California from San Diego to the Mission San Francisco Solano up in Sonoma. Here is the Wiki page that explains the mission system much better than I can. These missions were linked together by a road called El Camino Real and part of that route in its modern form is where this segment of the Line ends up.

Anyway, here is the start of roll 79.

Here is the view from the end of roll 79 looking south.

Looking north you can see I had to cross another side street.

Here is the view of the Line after crossing this small street.

Here if the view from the end of roll 80 looking towards the south.

To the left is a house and right where roll 80 ended is a window. As I was attaching roll 81 to the end of roll 80 I was approached by a guy. He seemed to be quite interested in what I was doing. He asked me what in the world I was doing and I replied, “I'm drawing a Line around the world.” This didn't seem to surprise him much, because he asked me where I had started it. Since he was a local I could answer with a street name, “Newhall Street.” He nodded thoughtfully and asked the question I think had been on his mind from the beginning, “Do you have a dollar that you can spare?”

After parting with a dollar I lost my audience. Or so I thought, for once the guy had wandered off the window in the house next to me opened. “What are you doing?,” the guy at the window asked. I think that you can guess my reply. He looked at me like I was out of my mind and I explained that I would be picking up the paper when I was done. “Good Luck,” he said, pulling the drapes closed but leaving the window open. I figured that he was going to check to make sure I cleaned up my mess.

Here is the end of roll 81 looking south.

Looking north you can see that we have almost reached El Camino Real.

And here the Line has reach the crossing. The El Camino Real is like a great mighty river, except for the fact that there is no water and you don't need a bridge or swimming skills to cross it. It is quite wide and a very busy street. Luckily Sunday morning is the best time for a crossing.

Here is the view north. Actually it is to the west, but going north on the road.

And here is the view east or south along El Camino Real. I'm rolling out roll 82 at this point.

Fortunately I had thought to bring along an extra roll of the line, because roll 82 (the fourth roll of the segment) ran out before I reached the other side of this wide road. I sat on the median strip and attached roll 83 to the end of roll 82 and made it across.

The Line turned to the north. We are on the way to San Francisco and El Camino Real can take us all the way there.

Roll 83 didn't quite make it to the other side of Monroe Street, but this is the end of this segment.

That's it for this segment.

Jonathan