Tag Archives: travel

Rocky Mountain Low

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21

Location: Starbucks, Los Alamos, NM
Miles: I’ll check later.

Had an episode all typed up, but it sucked. The only good thing was the title, which I kept, even though it doesn’t really match the content anymore. I had even posted it by accident before I was done with it and Amy commented. There was lots of green chile in it, which was good, but other than that it was the same wandering drivel that most blogs seem to specialize in and I find myself falling into more and more these days. I was just telling about my day rather than writing. I’ve had a couple of episodes I’m quite happy with recently, and I don’t want to put up a bunch of boring crap now to break my momentum. My other writing is not going well either. I’m more fiddling around with words than writing.

So. Interesting stories. Hum. tum-te-dum…

I think I know the problem. It’s been more than four days since I had a beer. There are a few in fridge right now, chilling out, waiting for their moment. The threshold of “cold enough” is getting warmer as I type this.

Socially, Los Alamos is the exact opposite of Pacific Beach. There is no student population to speak of here and only one bar. You’re not going to go out on the town and meet someone you don’t know. This is the kind of town you come to after you’ve met your soul mate and settled down. Really settled down. Of course if you’re one of those hiking, biking, kayaking, skiing, going-to-opera-and-not-to-bars kind of wackos, this may be about as close to heaven as you can get.

As I mentioned before there is one bar remaining in this town, and it’s a beaut. This is an affluent town, but apparently all the wealthy alcoholics get plastered in the privacy of their own homes. The Canyon Grill is a dive if ever there was one. It’s a friendly place, however. Last time I was there I ended up staying way too long talking with people who seemed vaguely familiar. (“Your old man is the one who did the magic tricks, right?”) Everyone knew everyone else and I don’t want to know how many beers were bought for me.

I’ll be in there tomorrow afternoon, carefully monitoring my alcohol intake as I write. If you’re in the neighborhood stop by. The first round’s on me.

Thanks!

Ten Thousand Miles

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10

0.0 Location: West of Grants, NM (map)
Miles: 10000.0

Nearly stopped in Gallup after filling the car up, but the cool night felt so good after the heat of the day with the top up and no air conditioning to speak of. We (the pups and I) walked around the truck stop for a little while, chatting with the security guard. Chicks really do dig the boys. I grabbed a Mountain Dew and mounted up. It was about 1:00 a.m., local time.

Out on the road traffic was getting sparse. I learned the language of the truckers, blinking lights to say “go ahead” and “thanks”. I put it to use when a truch started to pull out to pass then saw me coming. I blinked my lights and he pulled on out. After he was done and I passed him, he blinked me. I felt good, like I had passed a test and become a member of the night time road. Until this 14-hour blast across the desert I have driven almost entirely during the day. I want to see. This time I wanted to travel. Travel I did. We gobbled up more than 800 miles.

The first few hours had been, as I mentioned, hot, hot, hot. The dogs were panting and even Spike seemed uncomfortable. I began rubbing water into the fur on the backs of their necks to help keep them cool. (A thought I had: Since dogs don’t sweat much, do they lose electrolytes? I’m guessing not at the same rate as their best friends. That not withstanding, is there some canine version of Gatorade waiting to be marketed?) Finally we felt relief as the sun set and we climbed up from Needles into the Northern Arizona sky.

Now the night was blessedly cool. Windows up at last, I had been propelled for a distance listening to the Chargers crush the Cardinals. That can’t be good for Arizona, getting beaten so badly by a team as bad as San Diego. After a stop in Flagstaff for dinner I had decided to head back out onto the road and see how far I could get.

Now I was rolling, lightly caffeinated with just a hint of carbonation, watching the miles tick past. I was afraid I would get distracted and look down later to discover that I had missed the magic moment. To keep my head in the game I practiced taking pictures of the mileage gauge in the low light. When the time came, I was ready. I didn’t stop; there was no stopping then, I was a cruise missile on cruise control at 75 mph with my target locked and two canine warheads. I just shot the pic at speed and carried on. I haven’t checked, but I don’t think it came out well. I peered through the shimmering blackness for any landmark for the historic occasion. Antares was throbbing in the breast of Scorpio to my left. The Pleades (“Subaru” in Japanese) were more ahead of me.

The car, as oblivious to the significance of that mile as to all the others, rolled on.

Thanks!

Have Dogs, Will Travel

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6

Location: Triska’s and Casey’s house
Miles: 9267.0

I’ve picked up the pups for a trial run in New Mexico. This won’t be a wandering time—It’s to be a straight shot through Arizona to New Mexico. We’ll see if the dogs can fine a place to call home there. If nothing works out I’ll bring them back when I come back for the rest of my luggage. That’s going to be a lot of extra time behind the wheel, but with the pups keeping me company It’ll be cool.

Of course, the real reason I’m criss-crossing the southwest is so I can get green chile cheeseburgers at all the important places.

Thanks!

Pups in Limbo

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pups Triska just had her second kid and is feeling overwhelmed right now. It’s not just the dogs, but they contribute, and finding a place for them until I could take them to the Czech Republic would be really helpful. Otherwise, they may have to put the boys up for adoption.

The biggest problem is that little Spike doesn’t do well with the clumsy love of a child. He’s a good dog, but he’s very small and when the gentle petting becomes enthusiastic patting he feels threatened. He’s probably OK with kids 6 and up, depending on how spastic the kid is.

It would be simplest to find a place here in California, but I can drive the boys pretty much anywhere if necessary. Here’s the lowdown: They are both chihuahuas. They go as a package (Spike needs another dog around). They love to sit on laps and crawl under the covers. They are untested around cats, and have limited experience with other dogs, but recent encounters have been peacful.

Chico (aka Lefty) is the younger and more active of the two; he loves to chase things. His name could be “Magnet”; chicks dig him. He only has one eye, but don’t tell him that. Spike is older and more territorial than Lefty. He is smaller and has a worried-looking expression most of the time. Usually when evil is near he will raise the alarm and Lefty will spring into action. Spike can stand on his hind legs nearly indefinitely.

Sooner or later I will probably be taking the pups to Prague, but it’s important for any potential adopter to understand that “sooner or later” encompasses a very large window.

Please contact me via email or put a comment here if you are interested in looking after the guys. They really are good pups and you will fall in love with them, I promise.

Thanks!

Holed up in an undisclosed location

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Triska had her second kid a couple a days ago, so things are pretty crazy over at her house. I thought I would give her a break by finding a dog-friendly place to bring the Spike and Lefty (aka Chico). We got here yesterday evening, and we’ve been holed up here ever since, having a quiet time of it, sharing a bed while all my crap is piled on the other one.

What a large amount of crap it is, too, and how poorly organized. Packing to travel and packing to relocate are very different, and I did a poor job at both. As the tour has gone on, things have deteriorated further. At the start, for instance, I had a suitcase that contained (among other things) the entire contents of my bathroom. When you’re moving it makes sense to pack all that stuff together, but when you’re touring you wind up with a bunch of crap you don’t need. Honestly, almost four months later, I still have no idea what’s in that suitcase. I’m just glad it didn’t cause trouble in customs when I cam back in from Canada. I seem to recall making sure that I didn’t pack any old prescriptions, but I was in a hurry.

I was hoping while here in San Diego to shed Winnebaggo. It’s a pain in the butt. Alas, I’m taking too much electronic hardware across the Atlantic to do without its cavernous proportions. (I assume it is the maximum allowed on an airplane, since all the huge bags are the same size.) I will instead attempt to shed at least one of the lesser bags. I can’t tell you how many shirts I have with me. Dozens, easily. When I thought the tour was going to be shorter and I was going to be shipping a couple of boxes over, I didn’t worry so much about the mix of items I packed. Two pair of long pants, three pairs of shorts, and dozens of shirts, and my whole bathroom. Friggin’ brilliant. I didn’t even use the bathroom stuff when I had a bathroom. (I look at the bottle of cologne – Grey Flannel. Someone told me once she thought I smelled really good while I was wearing that. Most of the bottle is still there, my antifactorysmellintarianism rearing its ugly head.) There was a giant bottle of vitamin tablets in there, and this morning when I dug out the beard trimmer I discovered the lid had come off. I now have 1000 multivitamins bouncing around in my bag.

The pups are oblivious to all this. They just want to chase things and sleep safe and warm under the covers. (The thermostat in this room is, astonishingly, in C. While I applaud this bold move wholeheartedly, it has taken me a while to arrive at a comfortable temperature.) Occasionally we venture out of the room so that the two of us not toilet-trained can urinate in public.

WARNING: The following paragraph falls under the category “I really didn’t need to know that”. If you don’t want to know what you really didn’t need to know, then skip it. You won’t be sorry.

Spike is constipated. The little guy goes into his poop arch for agonizing minutes, staggering around, only dropping a couple of rock-hard nuggets smaller than rabbit pellets for his effort. At least they’re easy to pick up. I think they metamorphosed in his butt.

So you skipped that, right? Believe me, you didn’t miss anything, unless you’re a geologist.

I have repacked now, devoting my backpack to dirty laundry and in the process discovering two more clean socks, which means I don’t have to clean the laundry until tomorrow. Sweet.

Thanks!

Call me Gilligan: The Final Chapter

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13

I awoke to a quiet Two Harbors morning, trying to judge as I looked out the window directly over my head whether the sky was gray with early dawn or gray with clouds. From the rectangle of sky I could see, squinting through myopia, I could not tell. The rectangle was a uniform color that I could imagine turning to blue, but certainly had not yet. There was no direct light falling on the mast where it punctured the rectangle, soaring over my head. None of the other boats had started their diesels to recharge their batteries, so I knew it was before seven. I closed my eyes again and dozed off.

The next time I opened them the sky had not changed. How much time had passed? It might have been five minutes, it might have been an hour. The sky was unchanged. Overcast, then, most likely. I sat up and prarie-dogged, popping my head up out of the window/hatch to look out over the harbor. The sky was a uniform gray; the air was heavy with moisture. I crawled around and made myself presentable above-decks and made my way aft. On the way I stowed the dishes I had washed the previous evening to make room in the galley for the making of tea, then went topside to turn on the propane.

The deck was wet with dew beneath my bare feet, the water smooth, broken only by the wakes of dinghies ferrying the early risers to shore and to showers. Our dinghy joined the morning rush hour with Carol Anne and Pat aboard, leaving me to enjoy the peace of the morning.

My dish-stowing had awakened Gerald despite my best efforts to keep things quiet. There’s just no stacking plates quietly enough to avoid disturbing someone sleeping in the same room. We each secured tea and bagel and went back up topside to sip and munch and not say much, steam from the tea hovering in a cloud over the rim of my mug, while my pants absorbed the condensation on the seat cushion.

Eventually the harbor patrol (all of whom were very friendly and polite) came by and asked when we were heading out; the mooring was reserved for the next night and the boat could show up any time. Our reverie broken, Gerald and I moved about, stowing things, pulling out the safety equipment, and generally getting ready to sail. The the others returned and it wasn’t long before we were under way.

The trip back across was uneventful; in fact I took a nap for some of the trip. There was some nervousness about docking as that was where Pat had broken his wrist—same boat and same slip. After a bit of trouble at the fuel dock (tidal current and other boats made things tricky), Carol Anne piloted the 38 foot Beneteau into the slip like she had been doing it all her life. A sigh of relief, a nice late lunch, and I was back in the car again, stopping in San Pedro to leave Pat and collect the rest of my luggage from their behemoth and then away, east and south down the coast highway, back to San Diego and the adventure of finding a hotel room, as already documented.

On the way I made a couple of wrong turns, one of which led to a photo op. I used the new camera, which has a slightly less streamlined process for getting the pictures into format for posting here. I’ll try to take care of that this evening, and add pics to the entire Gilligan series.

Thanks!

So very, very tired

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Location: Hampton Inn, Temecula, CA
Miles: 8459.5

What the hell am I doing here? The day seemed so simple. Float back to the mainland. Hop in the car and drive back to San Diego. Crash at Amy’s place. If Amy wasn’t available, find another place. If it got late, get a hotel.

I never hooked up with Amy. It got late, and I didn’t want to call someone to crash at their place after a certain hour. OK, hotel.

Bzzzt! Wrong answer; try again. There are no hotel rooms in San Diego tonight. Comicon is raging, and apparently it’s bigger than ever this year. Escondido has no rooms. At 1:30 a.m. I’m not calling anyone. The only question becomes “how far am I willing to drive and how much will I pay to not sleep in my car?” The answers: A long way and a lot of money.

There’s more, but honestly I’m just too damn tired now. There are other things to write about: Gilligan, the final chapter and ruminations about my pants. Those will have to wait until after my slumber.

I would post this now, but my ethernet cables are all in the car, and that is such a long, long way away.

Thanks!

Call Me Gilligan, Part 4

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Location: Harbor Reef Restaurant, Two Harbors, Catalina (map)

I’m sitting in the only bar in town—if you can call it a town. A wooden lattice casts shade over the wooden deck without blocking the view of the palm trees swaying with the breeze. I put myself back near the building to get better shade so I can see the laptop monitor better. Which means I’m getting less breeze, but that’s a quibble. Good tunes are playing (Nick Cave at the moment). The bar runs along one side of the deck and is reasonably well-stocked. In the harbor nearby, I can see the masts of the boats swaying with the gentle waves.

Niiiice.

The bar has a signature drink, called Buffalo Milk (there are buffalo on the island). The bartender, with a moderate amount of flipping bottles and spinning shakers, puts ice, vodka, creme de cacao, banana booze, and milk into a blender, whipps that up, pours it into a plastic cup, tops with whipped creme, chocolate powder (I think) and dribbles a little Kahlua over the top. I’ll stick to beer.

Note: Since writing the above I have consumed Buffalo Milk, and it’s not bad. The powder in top was nutmeg, not cocoa, but I’m thinking cocoa might be better. Each of the boozes was about a 2-3 second pour, so they are in more or less equal proportions.

Sailor jer The trip over here from Avalon was uneventful, a simple motor over glassy waters with practically no wind. I would have chosen to sail, even if it meant taking a lot longer, but I’m Gilligan, not Skipper, and this isn’t my trip. I’m here out of my host’s kindness, so who am I to complain? I just sat up on my perch and watched the sea, the other boats (none of the others were trying to sail either), and the shoreline of Catalina pass by. It was great. I spent a lot of time thinking about my next novel for November, tentatively titled Worst Enemy. I really should be working harder on The Monster Within, but this trip, the whole tour, in fact, is more suited to the other stories.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the Flying Fish Cruise yet. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve wanted to see flying fish, and now I have. It was cool! We went bombing down the coast in an 80-year-old open boat filled with benches built for exactly this purpose. It has big spotlights on either side and as we blast along the boat scares the bejesus out of the flyers and away they go. Once those suckers get airborne, they have no control over their course, and at 30 mph they’re relying on good fortune to land them someplace safe. None came in the boat on our trip, but one slammed into the side right near me. While they’re flying, when they are about to splash back down into the water, they can dip their tails in and give themselves another kick, flipping their tail at 50 Hz to launch themselves again.

This picture isn’t from today; it’s actually from the first day out, when we were sailing into San Pedro.

I’m not sure, but I think I sunburned my forehead today. *sigh*

Thanks!

Powerless in Avalon

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Location: Luau Larry’s, Avalon (map)

No Internet here, but there is AC power. Power has been a precious commodity lately, as we discovered that the boat’s alternator was broken. No juice. We would start the motor and the high-tech electrical thingie still said we were still draining the batteries. Cause for only minor alarm, as the engine battery still had plenty of life in it, but the battery for running everything else was getting alarmingly low. That meant no computer recharges, no tunes, and (gasp!) no refrigerator. I didn’t come on this trip to be inconvenienced!

After a few calls back to the company that rented us the boat (good thing I had my phone along), we established that no, in fact we were not just doing something stupid, the system was not working. This morning the boat repair man came out on his boat to our boat and took a look. He determined that the alternator was indeed fried. He didn’t have a matching part. Oh, grand. He had a close-enough matching part, it turned out, but it was just damn expensive. More phone calls to home base to authorize the service. Finally it was approved.

When I used to do home improvement projects, I measured success by how many trips to the hardware store it took. The fewer the trips, the better I was doing. This guy came out by boat to look at the alternator, then went back to the shop to see what he had. He couldn’t reach the rental people, so he came back out to our boat (map) to explain what was going on. While he was there we reached Seabreeze and they authorized the repair. He had not brought the new alternator with him, however, so he went back to his shop to get it. Back out he came for the third time, and got everything installed, except he needed to go back to shore for a nut. Finally everything was cool, the alternator was alternating, and he went on his way. A few minutes later another, younger guy shows up in the boat, chasing us down as we are leaving, because the guy had copied the phone number of Seabreeze wrong. (Of course, he had already called them once.) Total: five trips.

He was a real nice guy, though, and knew his stuff.

Rather than wait for the ship to get it’s juices flowing again, I took off to town to find a bar with an outlet. That’s what led me to Luau Larry’s. It’s not a big place, and it isn’t as busy as it has been the provious times I’ve poked my head in, but to be honest the service really sucks. Granted my table is out of the way, towards the back while most of the customers gravitate toward the front, but I have frankly given up trying to get another beer here. I have tried everything short of being an asshole to get someone’s attention, even when the waitress was just two tables away. I thought it was me but I’ve watched others get crappy service as well.

Luau Larrys: Nice look, nice looking help, but the help isn’t really help at all. I’m leaving here sober.

Post Script: Now I’m back in the marlin club, talking to toothless, bearded people and I’m where I belong.

Thanks!

Call Me Gilligan, Part 3

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Location: The Marlin Club, Avalon (map)

I know this is ungrateful to say, but after four nights aboard Alouette I’ve got to bust out. There is a certain friction between my hosts that they are completely used to, having been a family all these years, that has slowly become sandpaper on my nerves. It’s how they work, and for them it does work. They probably don’t even think of it as friction–it’s just how they communicate. I have become attuned to solitude, and being in close quarters with the same people for an extended period just isn’t for me anymore. Perhaps that’s the real reason I couldn’t stay married. I like being alone too much.

Today, sweet blessed solitude for two precious hours. In a bar, at the bar, unusual when I write, but there aren’t any good writing tables in here. There’s a cruise ship in the harbor, and the touristy places with tables and beautiful people are packed to the gills. I should be out hitting on elderly cruisers, I suppose, looking for my sugar mama, but can you imagine me really doing that? Even trying that? Nah.

I’ve found the dark bar, with other patrons with big bushy beards. The locals bar. The bartender is impressing the others with card tricks, and he’s impressing me as well, even though I know how they’re all done. He has obviously worked at his craft and he is much smoother than most. He showed me some of the hand drills he does every single day. I’ve seen pros who don’t have the control this guy does. There are clues anyone could see, but I’m not going to point them out here. Just pay more attention to the man behind the curtain.

Oh, man, this is a great place to be. I just got into a baseball argument (I was right).

Yesterday I was here briefly, to taste the sweet tantalizing nectar of solitude, but just as I was starting to feel at peace I was thrust back into the competitive arena on board Alouette. It’s not as bad as I’ve made it sound, but man I wanted the quiet camaraderie of a locals bar, and it put me in a foul mood that I could not have it longer. On the boat last night, to be honest, I was testy. My taste of solitude left me all the more sensitive to the abrasion on the boat.

On a lark, I checked for wireless networks. There are two from here, both with good signals, thus I am able to post this. What a great bar!

Thanks!

Indigent Wealthy

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Not a Gilligan day, not really, since there was no sailing, although life revolved around the boat. Ah, the boat. skip ahead with me to twilight with the warm pacific sun making its stately way over to burn the crap out of japan, leaving us be for a few hours. (I laugh as it trails away; it has not hurt me this day. I’m on to its little games.)

To the west palm trees stand in silhouette against a turquoise sky. I am alone on the boat; all the others have left to handle some emergency or another. That they are all immersed in emergencies makes my position of peace all the more seductive. I am writing in my head, writing this in fact, and I am reflecting on what the man at the yacht club bar said.

I was pounding away on The Monster Within, filling in one of the holes in the story with a pretty heavy dose of feel-good (I think we all deserve it by then). The Byrnes had given up on me being good company by then and had gone about their boat business. Things were working.

Most of the time when someone interrupts me while I’m writing in a bar it’s “Hey! Hey! Yo! Dude! How do you concentrate in here!?” This time it was different. I was pondering the meaning of life and the effect that life had on everything else when a grey-haired guy in a cap asked me very politely, “What’s driving you?” That’s the kind of question I should be ready for–its the kind of question I ask myself all the time.

Yeah, right. Obviously when I ask myself the question I’m not taking myself seriously, because I still don’t know the answer. My answer to him was “I’m writing a novel.” That wasn’t the answer to his question. That’s like answering the question “What kind of gas are you burning?” with “I drive a convertible.” Nevertheless, he forgave my evasion with enthusiasm. “That’s great! That’s great!”

Some time in the course of the conversation, I told him in the barest terms about the homeless tour, with an emphasis on the freeloading aspcet (for indeed without the freeloading the tour would not be possible) and he pointed at me and said “Faulkner!” Thus it was not for any perceived literary ability that the comparison with a great author was made–no, it was the cheapness of the endeavor that earned me that flattering appellation.

We talked for a few more minutes, he questioning me about my familiarity with existentialism (woefully small) and me talking about the American Road Myth. He was so damn happy to meet someone of “my generation” who was, in his word, “thoughtful”. (He meant thoughtful as in ‘full of thought’, not ‘thinking always of others’. Just ask any of my ex’s about the difference.) He made a comment that the correct word for writing was actually ‘thinking’, and I told him that my best writing was done when I wasn’t writing at all. It was when I was driving across the desert having my head baked by the sun. For him, writing is thinking; for me, thinking is writing. He was a good guy. He gave me his card.

Thanks!

Call Me Gilligan, Part 2

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I delay dragging my sorry ass out of the bunk even while listening to the voices in the main cabin. The refrigerator repair guy was out there and when he finished his work it would be time to go. Experimentally I stood. So far so good. No sign of hangover. No doubt a nap will be welcome later today once we’re running steady. Meanwhile, I paste a smile on my face and emerge for the day.

After I spent some time puttering around the fridge guy was done but rather than head out right away we decide to stroll over to Edie’s for breakfast. Thus fortified, we return to Alouette and make ready to sail. We go over a few more safety things (the seat cushion can be used as a flotation device) and finally we are motoring out to sea, dingy in tow, bouncing over the waves like an eager puppy.

As we get out to the main channel it is time to raise the main sail, and that means it’s time for me to earn my keep. I am here for one reason only – to pull the halyard – the rope that is attached to the top of the sail and pulls it up. I scampered to my halyard-pulling station and when given the signal I hauled the yard right on up. Whoopee! I’m a sailor now!

Tacking out of the harbor was a slow process in the light morning wind (4-6 knots, for those keeping score at home) and when we hit the open sea we flibbered out the jib and monkeyed with the mizzen-mast until we were sliding through the waves with aplomb and grace while porpoises pranced about us. The wind was still on the zephyr side, so we were not moving very quickly, but we were on the sea, by jing, fifteen fathoms of foam beneath our feet, and no one around but the rest of the grumpy crew. (For some reason they stayed up too late last night.)

Nap time. I sack out to the sound of the ocean rushing past the hull and the VHF radio handling emergencies and telling boaters to slow down in the harbors.

I wake to a change in the wind that has caused the boat to lean the other way and the sails are making different noises. Up on deck the wind is coming straight up our butts and is shifting around, making it tricky to find a course and sail trim that works for very long at all. Finally Skipper gets things under control and in the process I tug on a couple more sheets. We’re making good time now, much to Pat’s happiness as it means we we’ll reach San Pedro in time to crash that yacht club’s special dinner. Our skipper has his priorities, no doubt about that.

Pulling into the harbor at San Pedro I had great fun climbing around and pulling on things. Hoo boy! Just call me a salty dog. Overbearded, overburned, I look more like a wayfarer than these Yacht club blue-bloods.

Thanks!

Callahan’s

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10

Location: Callahan’s, San Diego
Miles: ????

I’m back in town now. San Diego, California. My first stop was to play with the dogs. I love those goofy guys. One of my favorite times back in the day was crashing out on the couch and being buried in doggy love. It’s the most honest love there is.

I passed by my former home to pick up what I knew was a large volume of mail, but no one was there.

Now I’m back to where I once belonged.

Thanks!

A Day Of Driving.

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9

Location: Ely (rhymes with mealy), Nevada
Miles: 7237.1

Add Highway 89 from Jackson Wyoming to Logan Utah as another great driving road. I followed the Snake River, dodging rainshowers through pure luck – often the pavement was still very wet from a squall that had just passed by. The road moved gracefully beneath my new tires as I moved through the canyons and over the summits. It was a day for driving, for motion, not for picture-taking, so you’ll have to use your imaginations.

I had awakened that morning feeling refreshed and road-ready. In Bozeman I had shared all of John’s lifestyle except the time of awakening – on his couch sleeping until noon just wasn’t happening. That made “refreshed” difficult to achieve to say the least. (To be fair, John often stayed up later than I did, studying the current political situation. He makes Dr. Pants look like a Bushie. Both John and Pants are very widely-read and support their opinions with facts. Don’t invite them both to the same party; they’ll be the two who never stop taliking about politics all night, their voices getting louder as the conversation gets more animated and they get more drunk. But I digress.)

Along 89 is a string of towns that serve the agricultural communities nestled between the mountain ranges. Driving through I thought more than once, “I could live here.” Small and well-painted, with bars with names like “Dad’s”. In town, the speed limits drop down to 25, allowing me to take a good look.

Farther along, in slightly larger towns, I began to see signs of the creeping rot that is making its way north, eating towns. By the time I reached Garden City, the main street had several empty windows and boarded-up doors. [A little voice in my head said “That would be a good picture”, but I learned long ago not to listen to the little voices in my head. I told myself I would be back again sometime. One of the things that made my Yellowstone photo adventure so fun was that I had seen the opportunities on a previous visit and had a plan in my head how to tackle the place. So maybe I will go back. That shut the little voice up, anyway.]

Logan to Brigham City was a fairly uninteresting stretch of construction and assholes. I joined mighty I-15 and pointed South. This was the same road that had inspired my romantic highway musings on a late-night drive in San Diego a thousand years ago. Sitting in bumper-to bumper traffic from Ogden to Orem did not inspire the same whimsey. I had been trying to decide between a straight shot down 15 to San Diego or taking the scenic route, and by the time Highway 6 West was ahead of me there was no contest. in 99 days I had become a small-road man.

I still had plenty of gas in the tank but I stopped in Elberta to top the machine off and to get a shitload of Gatorade. I was heading out into God’s Country (trespassers will be prosecuted).

The rot has taken hold along Highway 6. The towns not populated only by ghosts will be soon. For sale signs stand faded in front of businesses with no business existing anymore. These towns used to be between places, but they aren’t anymore. Nothing’s moved, but there has been a transformation–not a geographic change but a mathematic one–that has changed these towns from being on the way to being nowhere. The equation that spells death to these towns has several components: Interstates and Airlines being the obvious culprits, but as I drove west, passing the miles between the dying towns, I had two thoughts: 1) If I break down out here, I’m screwed. 2) I’m not going to break down. It’s number 2 that has those little towns in the number 2. The range and reliability of modern cars makes the midpoint stop unnecessary. Point A and point B are practically touching now. There’s no in-between, so in-between is dying.

I’m glad I got to see in-between before it disappeared completely. Those towns fill our legends. Created by accident by careless pioneers, they filled a critical role in America’s love of the automobile and the open road. They were the enablers. They were the safe havens, always nearby, as the American family went out to figure out what America really was. “See America”, they called it, but they were chasing a mystery and at some level they knew it. But when the engine overheated and they were limping along, they would find their oasis in the most improbable place, and there’d be a motel with a neon sign calling across the desert to weary travelers, and there would be a cheer in the car. They were going to be all right. The family would get two rooms at the motel, so the kids could bounce on the bed while the parents quietly expressed their relief and celebrated life.

Drivers now do exactly as I had done, load up on supplies and shoot across the desert, only noticing the occasional human habitation as a reduced speed limit. Along 6, the speed limit does not drop by much when it does at all.

Winding through ranges then shooting across plains, I am chasing the sun to the horizon. It is a race I cannot win; the terminator is behind me and gaining fast. With the light low, I drive past many photographs. The wheels are turning and who am I to tell them to stop?

Ely Nevada is apparently to gliding (sailplaning?) what Albuquerque is to ballooning. Ely is dying. It is a crossroads, which gives it some help but in the end merely prolongs the agony. I rolled into town and on the outskirts there are a couple of modern highway hotels–Motel 6 and the like–and since I’m in Nevada a couple of them boast casinos. I’m not looking for a casino but a bar, and I have seen ads for places in the center of town.

As I approach the “city center” I jump on a cheap motel. What hooked me was the promise of a phone in the room. Sweet blessed connectivity. Non-smoking room, pirated cable, twenty-five bucks. I’m all over it.

The room was less than stellar –the door had been kicked in at least once, the carpet was stained, I parked next to a Camaro with a flat tire on the right front and clothes in the back, reminding me that my moniker “Homeless Tour” has a very different meaning for other people–but it didn’t smell bad and the bed was actually quite comfortable. After loading all my crap into the room and making sure that a passing breeze wouldn’t blow the door open I went out to explore the middle of town.

Historic and newly-renovated buildings were vacant. There were places so recently closed down that all you would have to do is turn on the lights and start business. I was looking for a burger and a beer. At the far end of the main drag was a pub. I sat in there for one beer, and eavesdropped on some sailplaners. The place had just been bought by a husband and wife, who were both very nice and outgoing. The kind of people who should be running our bars. Luckily they didn’t serve food there, so I had a graceful excuse to leave. Talking to the new owners of a doomed business was more than I could handle. I went over to the Hotel Nevada.

Hotel Nevada seems to be one of the two survivors in town. (If you are interested in buying a truly historic hotel, and you have a way to make it an exotic destination rather than a stopping point along the way, Ely has the property for you.) I had a decent meal there, then lingered when I saw that the blackjack tables (both of them) were relatively cheap. Since I am also relatively cheap, that was a good match.

Nikki was the dealer at first, and she was nice to me, so I formed the inevitable bond (in my head). I won’t go into the thousands of little signs I saw that meant she liked me. She was relieved by Melanee, who was nice, but no Nikki. Nikki had actually grown up in Ely, and was really happy that she had a chance to move back there as a dealer. On her days off she does “anything dangerous.” That ruled me out. Mealnee had come to town because of her husband; she had ditched him and was ready to leave the other.

There was also Kurt. The casino probably loves him, because he deals with a ruthless efficiency, but we as a table took it as a victory whe we made him smile. Forget about conversation. Kurt was probably very tired of the phrase “ruthless efficiency” by the time we parted ways. “Ruthless slaying” was probably closer to the front of his mind. What can I say? I was feeling jolly.

When I put my second forty bucks onto the blackjack table, I told Nikki, “It’s your sparkling personality that keeps me here.” It’s funny how easy it is for me to flirt, considering how tough it is for me to ask someone on a date. But that’s for another episode. As soon as I plunked down my money the dealer changed.

Sitting next to me was a wiry, coarse, deeply tanned brunette and beyond her were her coworkers. Hot Shots. Tomorrow they were heading into a wildfire. It took a while before we got to talking but the whole crew was really cool. Take a moment, now, if you’ve read this far, to wish them well out there on the line. The wind was really whipping today. Sitting next to her I understood why women are hot for firemen.

After that, the part where I won some of my money back playing poker seems small. I played some poker. I made some money. Nobody died on the line today.

Thanks!

The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar

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I am surrounded with knurled, knobbled wood. My table is the cross-section of a wizened but very large tree. I like wood. It is a large room, and I’m sitting about equidistant from the front door and the bandstand. No doubt they will be playing both kinds of music here later tonight – Country and Western. Any thought I had about sitting at the bar was quickly extinguished when I saw that the barstools are saddles. I’m sitting some fifteen feet from the bar now, watching the male guests subtly adjusting themselves when they think no one is looking.

It seems like it would be hard to fall off a barstool like that, but I bet the real show is at closing time when drunk tourists try to climb down. I bet when they fall there are lots of jokes like “It threw you, pardner!” Hilarity ensues.

Downtown Jackson so far hasn’t impressed me much. It is faintly reminiscent of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a hell-hole of contrived tourist traps if ever there was one. The comparison became all stronger when I passed the Ripley’s Believe It of Not! Museum. I for one find it difficult to believe that anyone would pay money to go into a place like that. Still, what can you do?

Better get to writing. Or, writin’, considering where I am.

Post script. I am in a bar with no regulars. None that I can identify, anyway, and I think I’m qualified on the subject. No one who has gone to the bar has been comfortable with the saddles. I scanned the tables for any signs of regularhood, but I found none. This is a total tourist bar. The kind of bar the locals deride.

Note to those wondering were the hole is: technically, the town is Jackson, the valley in which it sits is Jackson Hole. Since all the promotion encompasses the surrounding area, Jackson Hole is what they (and you) use.

Thanks!