Tag Archives: travel

Stealth Police Station

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I’m sitting at a friendly pub, watching London go past. There’s something about this town, something I’m not sure Londoners are comfortable with themselves, but it’s something that is there nonetheless. They have everything here, and everyone.

I’m sitting at the window of the pub, and beyond the glass the fascinating world is doing its stuff. There is a gate across the street, and it took me a while to notice that a lot of police were passing through it. In and out, like bees at the hive’s entrance. I started to suspect that behind that unmarked gate was a police station. A few meters up the road is a mast with four cameras mounted, capturing every detail of all who pass.

This situation bothers me. Through the iron gate police officers pass, wearing ballistic vests but carrying no sidearms. Those men and women, I salute. Those are the good guys, and I’ll fight anyone who says they aren’t. But the police station is unmarked. I expect that the Lebanese bakery on one side and the Oriental health store on the other are happy about that, but to me, it’s a bad idea. The bad guys can figure out where the police station is, anyway. I mean, hell, I figured it out.

WARNING: Profanity ahead

So, rather than hide, I’d put up a sign: Hey! We are the motherfuckin Police and we are here, and WE ARE NOT AFRAID OF YOU! At the very least, someone who needs help would know where to go.

Thanks!

Escape From Oz, part 1: To London!

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I’m sitting at the Prague airport right now, doing what all air travelers do: wait. I will be in London in about three hours (two by the clock), and when I arrive I will have no local currency. This isn’t usually a concern; cash machines are everywhere. Only it just occurred to me that since I just made the maximum daily withdrawal to pay my rent, there will be no love from those machines until tomorrow. Hm. Fortunately Great Britain is much more credit-card-friendly than the Czech Republic, so I should be all right. I’ll find out soon enough — long before I can post this.

At the far end of the waiting area is a fussy child. Anyone want to lay odds on the chances it’s in the seat next to mine?

—-

For those of you who stopped to lay odds on the probability of my being trapped with loud children, fear not; I was several rows away from what turned out to be loud pair of siblings, and boy am I glad I wasn’t closer. At my distance they were only mildly annoying. I arrived, passed through the bureaucratic barriers with no difficulty (although the passport guy said “Czechoslovakia”, something I thought the folks protecting Britain’s borders would be up-to-date on.)

I sit now facing a lovely English breakfast. Excuse me…

Ahh, that hit the spot nicely. A little more tea, and true happiness will be mine. (Actually I just warned the waitress that I would probably be drinking “rather a lot of tea”. There are some phrases that the English do better than anyone else.)

Where was I? Right. Luton Airport, favored destination of the ultra-cheap airlines. It’s a ways outside London, but there are plenty of options available, the cheapest being an express bus. I managed to coax a small amount of the local currency out of a cash machine, then I went to the bus counter and a very helpful woman went to a great deal of trouble looking up just where my hotel was, and the best place to get off the bus. Then she ran down my options for mass transit tickets to get from there to my destination, based on what my plans were for the city for (quite literally) the rest of my life.

The bus trip went without incident (except they made me put my backpack in the luggage area for no reason that I could discern, and I worried about all the valuable things being so far out of my control for the entire trip – I watched closely at stops where people claimed their own stuff) and after a bit of wandering in the Victoria Station area I got myself to Earl’s Court Tube Station, by any indication quite close to my hotel.

I got off the tube and right there was a sign indicating the street I was looking for, with a helpful arrow and everything. This was going to be a piece of cake! The address I sought was 36 Earl’s Court Gardens. I walked up the street, then noticed that the house on my right was numbered 20, the one after that 18. I turned back and identified house number 22. There were no buildings on the other side of the street. Now, with this information one might reasonably conclude that even-numbered buildings were on one side of the street and that 36 lay in the direction I had come from. One might also be incorrect.

It took a phone call to the hotel (itself a bit confusing because my printout with their number omitted the lead zero; it was not until I saw the pay phone’s number that I thought to try that) to resolve the difficulty. The hotel was on the other side of the street, at the other end. The numbers counted (by two’s) down one side of the street then (by 1’s) up the other!

The hotel guy was very friendly, and the hotel took only cash, including a ten-pound key deposit. I didn’t have enough. No problem, however; he took all I had and said I could pay the rest tomorrow. I got settled in, slaked my powerful thirst at the sink, with cupped hands, then headed into the night with only a two-pound coin to my name. My plan was to find a credit-accepting place that was going to be open for a while, but I was tired, had a headache, and when I saw the golden arches I changed my plan. A Quarter-Pounder with Cheese was £1.99 (half the price, incidentally, of my tube ticket to go five stops). I returned to my room with a rather sorry example of the American delicacy, one penny, and still no cup.

My room is nice enough, if spartan, certainly adequate for my purposes. For those out there lulled to sleep by the sound of passing trains, it would be heaven. The underground makes a brief overground appearance right outside my window. My window does not close tightly.

As one falls asleep, there is a phase when thoughts get rather deliciously disconnected, associations get freer, and the absurd is perfectly ordinary. I spent a long time last night dipping into that realm only to be dragged back out of it by a passing train. My thoughts when in that state were consistently about the trains, but because of my repeated rise to a more conscious level, I awoke this morning with actual memories about things like the three talismans that would reduce train noise, but that I needed to make a note in my review of the hotel that the one I had wasn’t working very well. It took a while to sort out truth from fiction.

Now I sit at The Courtfield, a fairly upscale pub, quiet at this time of the morning, watching a very modern double-decker bus go by outside (“We Will We Will Rock You – the musical with Queen and Ben Elton” the banner on its side reads), while people slide mail into the big red Royal Mail box on the sidewalk. I’m on my third cup of tea and feeling quite content. My ambitions for the day are being steadily reduced; just a visit to the Czech embassy will do, right after I sample one of the traditional cask-conditioned ales on offer here.

—-

A final addendum: After striking out completely at the embassy, I wandered the neighborhood around my hotel looking for a place with the following three criteria: 1) traditional ale 2) Wi-Fi 3) accepts credit cards.

And here I am at the Prince of Teck. Life is good.

Thanks!

Just About Ready to Roll

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Tomorrow evening my travels begin. The to-do list was extraordinarily long this time around, and when I get on the plane to London tomorrow evening I think there will still be things un-done. It didn’t help that I picked up a couple of small jobs to earn a little cash, and of course the one that paid the least turns out to be a time-sucking monster. (It’s an interesting time-sucking monster, however.) Still, I said I would do it so I will. It’s not done yet but the client knows that I will finish it when I can.

But all the important things are checked off now (except two, which I will be heading out to do in a few minutes). Tomorrow night I arrive in London; after two nights there I hop a plane for California. Then I have some freedom for a while, but somewhere in there I have to do a bucketload of reading and critiquing the writing of the other workshop participants.

I’ve been a bit of a stress monkey the last few days, especially over the paying gigs, but there comes a time when there’s just nothing left to be done about it anymore except take a deep breath, relax, and get on the plane.

Thanks!

D’oh!

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In case you haven’t heard, I’m coming to the US this summer. All kinds of things are going on, from intensive writing camp to hanging with That Girl. It’s going to be a good summer. But meanwhile, back here in the old world, I have some paperwork to take care of, to affirm my legal presence here. I’m not so good at paperwork and I intend never to be, so I have paid someone to guide me through the legal jungle. With a bit of nagging on my part he has done far better than I would ever manage at assembling all the bits of paper that demonstrate that I can contribute here. So I have a big wad of documents prepared by various czech authorities, and now I can submit an application to be allowed to stay for a while.

The catch is, that one must submit this application from outside the area one wants to stay. This makes London a good place to apply, because the English consider themselves outside of everything. There is a large part of Europe that is now a big passport-free zone, and it is best for me to apply outside of that zone. Happily, the best plane fares to the US are also out of London, and flights from Prague to London are practically free.

So, I talked to my guy, picked an appointment date at the embassy out of a list, and bought plane tickets. Time was running out; if you wait too long fares go way up. I was already worried that I had waited too long, so I picked a date, told Visa Guy, and bought my tickets.

Only, I didn’t get that date. One massive financial commitment later, I now find that I’m spending a day in London without any political benefit. The Czech embassy will not see me that day. Plan B: visit on the way back. In the meantime, it will be nice to be in the British National Museum on my own, free to study the minor bits of the Egyptian collection that strike my fancy, to muse over stone pillows and odd bronze sculptures at my own pace. So, it’s not a total disaster.

Thanks!

Mars! Hell Yeah!

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The following is a script for a video I plan to enter in the Virgle contest to become a crew member on a Mars expedition.

Yeah, I know, the announcement came out in an April first-ish timeframe, and if the boosters were really under construction already I think I would have heard of it, and I don’t think robotics are up to the tasks expected of them in the plan, but you know what? I don’t care about any of that. Why not? Because I’m going to Mars, buddy.

Anyway, here’s the first draft of the script for my application, which will be posted on YouTube:

Mars! Hell yeah! Gas up the boosters and fasten your seatbelts, because we’ve been stuck on this rock way too long already. However, the mission to Mars is doomed without me.

Sure, I know a Higgs boson from a flux capacitor, and I know my way around computers, and I’ve succeeded in leadership positions in the past, but that’s not why Mars needs me. Virgle needs a writer, and I am the man for the job.

Whether on the back roads of America or the twisting cobbled alleys of Prague, I have spent the last several years wandering, exploring the mysteries of our planet and reporting them back to an eager public. It is more than journalism; the words must carry with them the mystery and wonder of forgotten places and the people who inhabit them. Facts are abundant these days, information ubiquitous; what is required of the writer on the Virgle mission is to convey understanding, following the progress of the first pioneers, watching as the true Martian culture develops. That is what I do.

I haven’t timed the above yet; the video is supposed to be 30 seconds. I think mine is a bit too long, and I never even got to my value as a defender of the arts in a culture that will by necessity be run by engineers at first. I never even got to say “I was born to live in lava tubes.” Oh, well; some cutting will be required, and other parts are probably awkward (hard to tell seconds after writing it). Any suggestions are welcome. Meanwhile, wish me luck!

Thanks!

Happy Road Trip Day

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My Road Trip Eve Celebration

It really wasn’t that long ago, as the crow flies, that I wedged as much as I could into the Miata and headed out for “about three weeks” to see a bit of the United States before moving to Prague. Probably two months later as I was tooling through the pacific northwest I thought, “man, if I could get someone to pay me to do this I’d never stop.” I did not find anyone to pay me, and eventually I stopped.

But there remains here at Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas an echo of that desire, the love of the wind and the sun on the open road, the long stretches wondering if there’s enough gas in the tank, or skidding sideways in a hailstorm, or seeing a ruin at the side of the road with “burgers” still legible on its sloping roof. The occasional glimpse of the Great Unknown. The road still holds a certain magic for me, an american in-between nowhereness, the place where all our dreams are stored.

So please join me in this celebration, and if the first words you utter this muddled year are “elevator ocelot rutabaga,” then good fortune will follow you for the next 365.2422 days.

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Thanks!

Spoke Too Soon…

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Not long ago I wrote an episode about making progress toward getting a long-term visa here. Apparently I hadn’t made as much progress as I thought. The documents I signed had to be done again; I signed them incorrectly the first time. Just as in the US, most legal signatures are accompanied by a date. What I didn’t catch onto is that here often just the date is not enough, you also have to write in your location when you signed.

Czech prepositions don’t always match up well with their English counterparts; if you take the translations for the prepositions too literally you can mix yourself up. Thus I was not too concerned that I seemed to be signing something “in the 21st of March”. I’m not sure why the notary didn’t intervene, but there’s always that language barrier, and ultimately she’s just a witness.

On this visit, the notary was much more helpful, watching closely to make sure I got the date format right, spelled Praze correctly (that’s the form of Praha you use when you are saying you are in it). So, the second time’s a charm, I hope, and tomorrow I’ll hand the stuff off to Visa Guy. Once his legwork is done, the formal visa application has to be submitted from outside the country, so Soup Boy and I are planning a field trip to Vienna in April. Some parts of this process aren’t so painful.

Thanks!

Duly Notarized

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Yesterday Soup Boy, Jose, and I all made a field trip to the U.S. Embassy, where in front of an Official Person I promised that I was not a criminal. I’m not sure why making this promise in front of an American is more convincing to the Czechs that it would be if I promised in front of a Czech, but perhaps this way they can’t be accused by the US of knowingly harboring a criminal. Only that doesn’t add up, because technically this document is part of the process to get a business license.

You see, to get a visa you have to come up with some reason why you should have one. “I like it here and want to hang out” is not a sufficient reason*, but if you are doing business in the Czech Republic, that’s pretty compelling. So, to get a visa I first apply for a business license. The catch is that I can’t actually get the business license until I have a visa. This leads to a bureaucratic juggling act where the visa people create a document that says I’ve applied for the visa, which allows the business license people to proceed, and when they’re done the visa people can do their… whatever it is they do… and then in one big flurry of paper I have both permission to stay here and permission to invoice people for my services. I am told that this “visa in progress” document will also smooth out my international travel worries. Probably.

I added my “promise of non-criminalhood” form to my growing portfolio of documentation (it will have to be translated, and the translation certified – or something like that), along with papers that confirm that I live where I do and that the landlord is OK with someone running a business there.

Today I found the notary’s office – exactly where Soup Boy said it was, carefully disguised as a typical residence. Once I knew what to look for, sure enough there was the sign. A few minutes later I was on the streets again, carrying official documents that will allow someone else to do most of the grunt work of applying for a visa. It feels good to be making progress.

———

* I think, left to themselves, “I like it here” would probably be a perfectly adequate reason as far as the Czechs were concerned — as long as the individual in question had a nice. plump bank account. Alas, in this case the Czechs must follow Rules imposed by Foreign Powers (the European Union in this case). The fact that the Czech Republic actually placed itself under the jurisdiction of the foreign powers voluntarily this time doesn’t mean they have to like it.

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Thanks!

A Tough Old Bird

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This morning I heard the rap-tap-tapping, but I did not realize it was at my door. It was a little more tentative than the average door-knock. Then my phone rang. The gang was gathered on my landing, collecting me for our big meeting with the landlord. The purpose of this meeting: getting some paperwork signed that is a step toward solidifying my legal status on the continent.

There is a lot of fear running around the ex-pat community right now, as Europe tightens its immigration rules and steps up enforcement. Neither Soup Boy nor I are particularly worried about that, but we each have our reasons for wanting to be more compliant. I want to cross borders without worry, and he wants to be able to work for bigger clients who are more of a stickler for paperwork. Soup Boy found a guy who helps people in our situation for a very reasonable fee, but he had one sticking point. He needed a business address. Strangely, this was difficult for him to come by, but when he realized that I would soon be in the same boat, we worked out that we could both use my address. The only catch: the building owner has to sign a document. I didn’t anticipate that my landlord, Otakar Ptáček (rhymes with little bird), would have a problem with that.

MaK made the calls and we set up a meeting. It turns out that Otakar has transferred ownership to his daughter, so it is lucky indeed that she is visiting from the Unites States right now. Papers in hand we trooped into the landlord’s home, directly below mine.

Otakar did not get up to greet us. He sat in his favorite chair, a tissue pressed up against his nose. He had a nosebleed. Not just a little thing, but a big ol’ nosebleed that had been going on for two hours. His medication had changed recently, which may or may not have been a contributor. Still, we forged ahead with the meeting, making our way through documents that, while simple, carried just enough ambiguity to cause errors. As with every czech transaction, there must first come a lengthy discussion of the task and it’s reflection on the world as a whole.

Then Otakar started hacking and spitting blood. There was talk of an ambulance and hospital, but Otakar insisted that if he was going to see the doctor he would drive. His coughing subsided and some semblance of normalcy prevailed. We continued to wrestle with the documents.

Finally we were as done as we were going to get (there was a search for an ID number that had Otakar up and moving furniture), and it was time to go. Otakar was back in his chair, looking small, a new tissue over his nose.

I later met with the Visa consultant, and because Soup Boy managed to put together a group, we got a pretty deep discount. Not only that, but much of the haze of confusion about the whole process has been lifted. It almost seems possible, now.

1

Thanks!

A Bit of a Close One

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As I approached the line to check in to my Aer Lingus scoot across the Atlantic, a petite asian woman in a blue uniform asked, rather loudly, “Anyone check bags?” I thought it an odd question, as I was joining a line of people hauling huge suitcases. She gestured in the direction of the express line, and my first thought was that she really meant “Anyone NOT checking bags?” Then I noticed the two small bags sitting untended at the entrance to the express lane. The woman hustled off to notify security.

OK, I knew that the bags were just the property of some doofus who had ignored the constant droning of the “don’t leave your bags unattended” messages, and had left their personal belongings lying around in Los Angeles. Still, as no one arrived to claim the bags, I couldn’t help but worry. Just how big a doofus was this? Did the doofus seriously expect to find his (or her, judging by the pink striped bag) belongings still there after ten minutes and more?

A security guy arrived, circled the bags at a distance like a shark assessing prey, then backed off and talked into his radio. Then nothing happened, followed by more nothing. Finally the guard approached again, closer this time, looking for a name tag on the bags. Then he backed away again, regarding them with some reluctance (“why do these things always happen on my shift?”). More time, another pass by the bags, closer, inspecting them longer.

So, I’m expecting someone to arrive with some sort of steel bin on wheels. In go the bags, and there’s nothing to see here, move along.

Nope. No other security personnel arrive, there is no other response. The security man on the scene went to a nearby information desk and there might have been an announcement over the PA about the luggage. (“Your attention please. mfflmfllffmflllf.”) Still no owner.

Finally, the doofus shows up. The security guy doesn’t even notice him for a time, until doofus stoops to put a name tag on one of the bags. Security guy talks to the doofus for a moment, and the guy is allowed to carry on with his carry-on luggage. Happily, not on my flight.

Note to people considering leaving bombs in airports. At LAX you have about half an hour to get away while the security people are paralyzed, unable to perform the very simple procedures explained over the PA every five minutes.

Finally, it was my turn to check in.

“When are you coming back?” the airline baggage-taking girl asked me, after typing in my passport number.

“I’m not sure,” I answered.

“You don’t have an itinerary or anything that shows when you’re leaving again?”

“Umm… no.”

“Are you staying more than three months?”

“No.” When she asked the question, that answer became the truth, providing I don’t have my visa by then.

She tapped some more keys, but didn’t look optimistic. “I’ll have to check,” she said, and took my passport and disappeared into the mysterious bowels of the Airport Beast. I waited, aware of the people in line behind me and mentally making contingency plans. It was early yet; I could buy a ticket to Croatia or back to the US and then check in. Airline Baggage-Taking Girl returned. “You’re all right,” she said. “But the immigration official might want to see proof that you can afford a return ticket.”

Man, I sure hope she’s right. By the time I’m able to post this I’ll have the answer.

Or not! Free WiFi in LAX! We already knew that Albuquerque was so civilized, but this is a pleasant surprise.

Or not not! RSS feeds work, but not http requests. eMail is right out. By the time you learn about my close call, the situation will be resolved.

***

In Dublin now – the passport guy didn’t run my passport through the computer at all. Maybe they’ll do that in Prague. Meanwhile it’s 10:00 and I’m enjoying a nice pint of Kilkenny. Yum!

Thanks!

Road Food at Don Juan’s

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The first billboard for the McDonald’s in Lordsburg, NM is at least sixty miles to the west, somewhere in the trackless deserts of Southern Arizona. I had had only a light breakfast (a chunk of beef jerky washed down with Mountain Dew) and I was starting to have feeding urges. Another hour’s drive sounded about right.

As I approached, I considered pushing on a little farther to Deming, sixty more miles to the east. A timely gastric rumbling decided me, and I signaled to leave the freeway. McDonalds was right there – easy off, easy on.

But, what a minute… McDonalds? What the heck was I thinking? This is New Mexico. I spotted a little food shack just behind the McD’s. Much better choice. Well, it would have been except that it was out of business. Bummer. Then I noticed that in the competition between chains and local joints was far from over; the Dairy Queen had been stripped of its distinctive signage and instead just read, “Don Juan’s Now Open.” I decided to drop in on Juan.

Don Juan’s is a little place, quite obviously a converted fast food joint. There were about ten different kinds of burritos, all three dollars, all with green chile. There were tacos and stuff as well, but I scored a pair of chile reilleno burritos and a coke. Juan and I chatted about the rainstorms of last night, what a nice day it had turned out to be after all, and then my food was ready. I sat and opened my book, which I think disappointed Don Juan, but I was too busy eating some fine home cookin’ anyway. Soon after a pair of border patrol trucks pulled up, then the state police were represented, then a guy from a construction company showed up with a huge order.

My one regret: not getting an extra side order of the green. The chile he used was good, but if some is good, then more is better.

Had I seen the cops and border patrol cars there when I pulled up, I would have know already that Don Jose was the place to go. Those guys know. As it was I was lucky, had some tasty food that doesn’t happen at chain restaurants, along with friendly service. He does not offer Green Chile Cheeseburgers, however. “I used to cook burgers at the old place,” Don Juan told a Navajo couple who were in for the first time. “I’m tired of them.” Yes indeed, the American Dream right there kids, from flipping burgers to having his own place. Please join me in wishing him all the best.

If you’re down Lordsburg way, do yourself a favor and pay Juan a visit.

Thanks!

Goodbye to That Girl

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I cranked this out with the last gasp of my laptop battery after a cople of beers. Just a few impressions from our last morning. I could make it better, but I’m just going to let it stand — if I started to edit it I’d probably never publish it at all.

Goodbye to That Girl

A morning of lasts
The last embrace
The last kiss
The last goodbye

for now

Green tea, cup, eyes
Stories, a rush,
words unnecessary
to cover words unsaid.

Everything back in place
folded, stowed
ready
One more cup of tea
sips of time
One more kiss goodbye

red hair a flag at the door
as I walk away.

2

Thanks!

Hangin’ With That Girl

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I write this while sitting at John’s XLNT Foods. The waiter just asked me, “You doin’ well, buddy?” which struck me as an odd combination of casual address and unusually correct grammar. I am in a neighborhood called Willow Glen, which has a nice little main strip of shops. Most of the places are trendy and upscale; there are at least five coffee shops — only two are Starbucks — and there are no bars. OK, actually there is an upscale-looking wine bar, and I bet they even serve beer, but it didn’t look like the kind of place to settle in and open up a laptop. So I’m at John’s, and while (as you will see) there is no reason at all for me to order food, I noticed that they had egg salad sandwiches on the menu, and a craving ensued. It was, um… excellent.

Things have been quiet here the last few days. The drive from Arizona to the bay area was routine; I stuck to the big roads and arrived much sooner than I expected to — and earlier than That Girl expected me to, as well. I cooled my heels for a while in a nice little deli, ate a remarkably good sandwich, and read a few chapters. Overall, it was a good way to transition from life on the road to life in an apartment.

When enough time had passed I popped over and was made welcome. There’s something different about the second time you come to visit someone. The first time is an unknown; anything could happen, it’s an adventure undertaken with limited expectations. For the second visit there is history, and it has been recognized by all that there is something going on that is worth developing. Consequently, there is something to lose. It is the visit, to harken back to a previous episode, when you open the mysterious door. (My mysterious doors have proven to have rusty hinges and missing handles. That Girl is patient about that; she figures I’ll manage to pry them open when the time is right.) The second date is the time you regret not mentioning you don’t like mushrooms during the first visit. There’s a lot at stake, and already the misunderstandings are piling up.

We have a good rhythm, That Girl and I. We talk a lot, snuggle often, and when we need to we get out of each other’s way so we can work. That Girl has a square job, so her weekends are valuable for doing what she really loves doing. Yesterday she spent several hours tucked away in her office, working on her own media empire, and I know what it’s like to have other personalities around pushing into your space. We went to our respective work places, enjoyed the quiet, but (at least in my case) it was just a little better knowing in the back of my head that the mental elbow room was a gift happily given by someone close by.

That Girl cooks excellent meals, and I pay her back by making yummy noises as I eat. I feel like this arrangement is one-sided, but one thing I’ve noticed about relationships is that it’s OK for things to be lopsided. There are even times when both parties feel they are getting the better end of the deal, and those times are what we have relationships for.

Weekdays when That Girl is at work I’ve devoted to getting my work done. I have The Screenplay That Refuses to Get Shorter to wrestle with, and last night I submitted “The Short Story that Probably Should Be Longer” to another paying market. It is the third time I’ve submitted the story; the first time it was 1100 words, now it’s up to 2000. At some point the words will be there to allow the reader to see what was in my head. If it gets rejected enough, it will end up an epic. But a good one.

So now I sit at John’s XLNT Foods, sipping Sam Adams, belly full despite the large amount of really tasty leftovers filling the fridge back at That Girl’s place (and cookies! Cookies cookies cookies! And home-made truffles! yum!). Paying John six bucks for a sandwich, however XLNT, is really pretty dumb, but there you have it. I mean, come on! Egg salad!

Thanks!

Mad Dog’s Dog House, Last Observations

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As I released urine back to the wilds (Andy Williams singing “Born Free” in my head throughout), I discovered that I had the opportunity to purchase “the ONLY glow-in-the-dark condom certified to prevent unwanted pregnancy and the transmission of sexually communicated disease”. That quote is, I afraid, only approximate, but the word “prevent” was definitely there. I cringed a bit at that; I suppose it’s already been argued in court just what reduction in statistical probability qualifies as “prevent”. Foe me, prevent is absolute; condoms are not. So somewhere, I imagine, “reduce the probability by 99%” has been legally defined as “prevent”. Meanwhile people in the real world read that word and believe prevent means prevent.

I’m just sayin’, is all. I’m not arguing against condoms, far from it. 99% protection is massive. Maybe it’s better than 99%, but they are imperfect, and lives are at risk. Not a time to be harboring unrealistic expectations.

And… crap. When I started this episode I had the serious thing to discuss and then the light thing. Start serious, go light. Journalistic gold. The light thing has long since wandered off to the sunny meadows where happy thoughts romp, and unfortunately I forgot to put a radio collar on the idea so now my chance of tracking it is negligible. It’s a funny thing (in the not-funny sense of the word); I set out on this episode absolutely confident that there was no possible way I could forget the second point. Whatever is was. It probably wasn’t that good anyway, or I would remember. That’s what mom used to say, but maybe that was before she realized what a rockethead I am.

Cyberpunk theme: You get an idea, and you say “tag that”, and the machine that is part of your brain applies a verbal recall code to your thought. The machine then remembers the idea for you, and you can recall it by invoking the tag. The crisis: most people decide to tag everything, which leads to hopeless clutter, and civilization teeters. The moral: there’s a reason you forget stuff. Most of it is crap anyway. I see a sit-com…

2

Thanks!

Mad Dog’s, Kingman, Arizona

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It’s been a long day, and a quiet haven with decent beer is just the thing. I’m sitting now at Mad Dog’s. It is quiet in here right now, a couple of locals are playing pool, a few more are sitting at the bar, and I’m across the room in one of the booths. There are televisions, but the big ones are turned off due to lack of sports, and the small ones are quiet enough to be avoidable. I am drinking Black Dog Ale, which has a nice balance between hops and malt. It is also quite reasonably priced. There are paper towel dispensers on the tables, an indication that ribs are on the menu. There is a very big Iguana in an enclosure, and he’s territorial. I looked in on him and he immediately began to go into the old head-bobbing, throat-flap-showing, weird-disk-throat-things (ears?) flashing routine. The dude’s got to be five feet long.

Behind the bar is a pitcher to hold donations for Biker Bob. To meet his expenses. I asked, and Bob’s dead now. Pancreatic cancer. The locals lost a bit of color recently. I wonder how long that pitcher will be there. Could you take it down? Will you rate a pitcher?

As I write this, I am pausing periodically to take a deep breath. Air in, stress out. Prolonged adrenaline shock. It all started in Holbrook, where I had planned to stop so I could assault the pass in Flagstaff after the storm passed. That was going to leave a long, long drive tomorrow, and then I heard the weather guy say that things were going to be no better in the morning, and perhaps worse. I decided to forge ahead.

At first things went pretty well. The snow started coming down in big, fat, flakes, but there was enough traffic to keep the slow lane fairly clear. We all just slowed down to 40 mph and trundled on. At the flagstaff exit that leads to the hotels, things were going well enough that I decided to keep going.

The “things going well enough” lasted another mile. There I was in a long line of trucks keeping the slush churning so it wouldn’t freeze, then every damn one of them went south on I-17 toward Phoenix. Road conditions got suddenly, dramatically worse, and they stayed that way. To make matters worse, there was no place to pull over to put on chains. In Donner Pass chains are commonplace, but through Flagstaff no one had them, or, like me, they were unable to find a place to put them on. The next exit was a ways on, and after slipping and sliding down the road I reached the exit to find it unplowed and untracked. I decided not to guess just where the road was, and continued on down the freeway at a nerve-wracking 20 mph.

At one point traffic came to a stop as we worked past an accident. Despite the level ground the back wheels broke free when I tried to start moving again. Finally I put the car in 2nd gear and worked the clutch very, very gently and managed to creep forward again. After a couple of miles of barely moving, my clutch leg was wearing out.

My old ice-driving skills slowly came back to me, and things were going smoother, but there were accidents everywhere. On truck had a trailer folded in a big ‘V’, with boxes strewn about, interspersed with what looked like loaves of bread. There were plenty of solo spinouts as well. Traffic crept on, and in the distance I saw another truck off to the side of the road, next to a structure I couldn’t make out. As I got closer I realized that I was looking at the underside of a horse trailer that had tipped over. Holy crap. As I passed I saw the two horses standing off to the side, but that must have been a pretty traumatic time getting them out of the tipped-over trailer. I hope they weren’t hurt.

Not long after that a truck passed me. It was a flatbed trailer carrying steel, and as it pulled up next to me it hit the brakes. I could just imagine the trailer skidding to the side and swatting me off the road like a fly. I started making emergency contingency plans. Nothing happened. We all continued our creep over the divide and gradually down the other side.

After a while tires started making the splashy hiss of water, but it was a long time before anyone on the road summoned the courage to speed up. The collective trauma of the pass still held us all, and it wasn’t until many miles later that traffic gradually picked up speed again. That was fine with me. Snow turned to rain as darkness fell, Half the traffic sped up while the other half continued to creep along, adding one last threat before I saw the lights of Kingman and said, “No mas.”

The girl at the hotel desk pointed me to Mad Dog’s, an easy walk, and it was the right choice. The juke box is playing now, and the tunes are pretty good (at this moment Jimi Hendrix is playing “The Wind Cries Mary”), and loud enough to be worthwhile.

One more deep breath, one more beer. It’s OK now.

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Thanks!