2005 TRIP

(E Type Purchase)

We left beautiful Highland Village, after a very pleasant visit with big (read ‘old’) brother Jim and Christy, at 7:30, with temperatures in the low teens, the coolest it’s been since we arrived a week ago. The warmest, if you care, was 30, with humidity about 80%. Driving west on I 20, I realized that my comments about driving in the Southwest have not been completely accurate in the past. This is the eighth time I’ve driven through the southwest, and when people ask, “What’s it like?” I always answer, “Flat and windy.” Wrong. Or, half right. It is flat. It isn’t windy. In the summer, it’s windy. In the spring, it’s very windy. Right now, it’s bloody windy. In fact, all today, from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, it blew hard enough to blow the dog off the chain. Right out of the north, all the way from Canada, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

The day was Mary’s, up to 4 PM. We drove past miles of wind generators, striding across ridges like an army of brobdinagian pinwheels, daring some Texian Don Quixote to come out and fight. Then past miles of cotton fields, some harvested, some not, stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see, with bales of cotton in the fields, each the size of a semi trailer, ready as dressings in case any of the army of wind generators suffered a wound.

Abiline is nice enough, but NOT the prettiest town I’ve ever seen. On the other hand, you gotta like a town with a sign that says, “Welcome to Abiline. Barbeque and boots and cultural pursuits”. Lunch in Snyder, where Mary ordered chicken fried steak for the first time in her (long) life, and, in a display of Canadian efficiency which would have stunned the other diners had they realized it, simultaneously ordered it for the last time. To Lubbock, which one enters via Buddy Holly Boulevard, past Cricket Square, onto Maria Elena Avenue, turn onto That’ll Be the Day Drive, and, well, you get the idea. And yes, we stopped at the Buddy Holly Centre, where one listens to Buddy’s music, while reading about Buddy, and looking at Buddy memorabilia, including his Cub Scout uniform, and including a picture of Red Robinson and Buddy, both aged 15 or so. Did you know that Red was the first DJ to interview Buddy, and that Vancouver was the first major city to put “That’ll Be the Day” in the top 10? I thought not.

We are now in Plainview, in the only major chain motel in the US without highspeed internet, so this will go to you in the next couple of days. With luck, it won’t be tomorrow, as I’m trying to convince Mary to sleep in the van, but she’s turned into a wimp, and wants to stay in motels. If she gets her way this will be mailed tomorrow.  

“Why are you in Plainview?” you ask. Well, when traveling I usually read the local papers from cover to cover, and in the Dallas paper I found an ad for a Jag E Type, which, the owner informed me, was in Plainview. (Forte theme from The Avengers. Fade to black.) We looked at the Jag. Nice car. I’ve always wanted an E Type.

Wednesday morning. Temperature last night fell to 24 F, or minus 6 C. Arrrgh!! Maybe, just maybe, Mary was right when she said we should stay in a motel. I spent a couple of hours on the internet in the lobby, and I suspect the Jag is a no-deal. What with duty, GST and PST the total taxes are 25% of the purchase price. Add shipping, and that makes the car pretty expensive. Well, off to see if the van will start. It did, and we looked around Plainview, a town of about 10,000. Very nice downtown, about four blocks square, handsome brick buildings built ca 1900 to 1930, and almost deserted. All the businesses have moved out to the secondary highway that used to run past town and is now the main street. My guess is that there wasn’t enough parking downtown (only street parking), and when folks started wanting to drive everywhere, they found it more convenient to shop in places with parking lots. Sidney got it right. Provide parking.

To Amarillo, about the size of Victoria, with just a hint of downtown decay: the largest brick building in town, five or six stories, is empty. Drove through town along Route 66: lots of the original small buildings left, motels and so on, and many empty. As we left we passed a deserted __________ refinery. Second contest: what element used to be extracted from the ground, and refined for sale, but is now produced solely through a manufacturing process?

Across into New Mexico, where of course the scenery changes from deadly dull (“West Texas is boring,” he said flatly) to quite picturesque. But once you’ve seen a deserted pueblo atop a mesa silhouetted in the pink and orange sunset as the clouds race across the sky, well, it’s pretty old. And the wind, by the way, blew all day, but not as strongly as yesterday. Albequerc, Albuquerke, Albikerque, whatever, is big. Driving 66 through it is interesting. The outskirts are quite new, with chain motels, car dealers, and so on. Then there is a stretch of original businesses that are deserted: small motels, restaurants, garages, etc. Built during the glory days of 66, they are now in a poor part of town and are not worth tearing down and rebuilding. Then to the town centre, where many of the old buildings have been replaced, and a few saved, and then the process repeats.

And then to Gallup, where 66 features dozens (hundreds?) of ‘trading posts’ selling Indian items. (Are these people ever backward. They don’t even realize that ‘indian’ is a derogatory term foisted upon them by dead white guys, and that they should find a new name for themselves. They seem quite proud to be Indian.) Mary shopped her heart out, and we set off west and south, and at 5:00, in the mountains, dark coming on, the car went ‘boing’, a light came on saying ‘check gauges’, and the alternator light came on. Followed by various other annoyances. But we made it to Globe, where we checked into a motel (someday I’ll get to sleep in the van, if the van gets fixed tomorrow) and Mary became even more convinced that every motel keeper in the US is East Indian. Personally, I figure there is a bus load of East Indians that races ahead of us and staffs all the motels at which we might possibly stay, just to give Mary that impression.

Hello again. It is now Friday evening, and we are in Mesa, part of the ten thousand square miles that is greater, and I mean greater, Phoenix. We had the van looked at by a mechanic in Globe, who said that the on-board computer showed that the alternator was charging, and should be okay, but he was wrong. We left Globe, through spectacular scenery, and every 20 minutes or so the ‘check gauges’ light came on and the alternator gauge went to zero. I pulled off, turned off the engine, started it again, and the alternator showed full charge. (I think the van was made by Microsoft.) But by the time we got to Phoenix the battery was getting weak, so we found the world’s largest Dodge dealer, left the van, rented a car, found a motel, and went to dinner. We first tried a restaurant from the phone book, which turned out to be located in a shopping mall consisting of 30 restaurants and a 30 screen cinema, all with line-ups. Off to a Mexican restaurant Mary saw on the way, and we were the only English speakers in the place, including the staff.

Waiter: “Habla Espanol?”

Me: “Un poco.”

Waiter: “Gabble gabble gabble.”

Me: “Si. Medi Tinto, per favor.”

Waiter: “Medi?”

Me: “Si. Medi litre.”

Waiter brings me half a glass of wine.

Me: “No, gracias. Medi litre.”

Waiter: “No litre. Glass o bottle.”

Me: “Bottle, gracias.”

Waiter appears with a 1.5 litre bottle of wine. Well you get the idea.  Great dinner, too much to eat, $35 including wine (three glasses). A bargain.

Back to the motel, where we talk to the folks in the next room, who are in town for the Good Guys Car Show. “Gee”, I say, “Have to try to make that.” Next day, off to Taliesin West, quite enjoyable. On the way, we see a sign directing us to the car show. Realizing that some things are meant to be, we go to the show after the tour of Taliesin West, and one of the great moments of the trip occurs, at least for me. We pay, enter the huge tent with all the commercial stuff, look around, go outside, look at all the major exhibits (Ford Racing, Chev Racing, Chryco Racing, Goodyear, and so on). Mary says, “You said there would be cars. All I see are commercial exhibits. Aren’t there any cars?” I steer her over to the edge of the terrace, and we look down on ten acres of grass, covered by 2,500 hot rods and classic cars, all the colours of the rainbow and then some. Mary, for the first time in her life, is speechless. Four hours later, we drag ourselves out, footsore but happy.

From one of your number, (note that I preserve privacy: I’m sure there is some sort of law about it) who lives in the US, and who obviously knows me pretty well, I received this when I opened my mail this morning in Globe: “Thanks for the travelogue. I am surprised that it is only now that you realize that 97.36% of US motels with less than 60 beds are owned by someone named Patel! Perhaps you sleep in the van too much. Just as the original Chinese immigrants all opened laundries, Indians from Gujaret (most of whom are named Patel) have achieved financial independence by providing thin mattresses, tiny bars of soap, blurry 15in. TV's and no internet access to frugal travelers like you.”

Now I know. And he’s right: Patel is the most common name. But they also run Day’s Inns and Travelodges, or at least one of each. And let me point out that in keeping with the tenor of our times, where every group or individual gets to decide what he, she or they will be called, people like me are not cheap, or frugal, or thrifty, we are ‘price conscious’. So watch it, or I’ll have the National Association of Price Conscious People (NAPCP) after you.

Next episode

I am writing this in a motel on Sunset Boulevard, in beautiful downtown Hollywood. Let me pick up where we left off, in Phoenix. Two things you have to do in the Phoenix area. First, go to the Heard Museum. A large building with more Indian art than you'll find anywhere else in the world, barring the Smithsonian and the Royal British. I don't know what the native people in our part of the world did from 1860 to the present, but here they turned out art for the tourist trade.  Textiles, pottery, silver, paintings, baskets, dolls, and on and on. And this place has a very large collection of each and every art form. Then you have to go to Waldo's barbeque, at 4800 East Main Street, in Mesa. The best BBQ I've ever had. Great big room, paper on the tables, paper napkins, food smoked not grilled, and as a matter of course they bring you a Styrofoam box, because there is more food than you could ever eat. Better yet, Sunday is VineDay, with house wine (that's the only kind they have) at $2 a glass. I'm sorry: did someone ask how it was? Give your head a shake. It was TWO DOLLARS A GLASS, that's how it was. It’s a good thing the food and motel were cheap, because the car cost $500 for a new alternator. That’s the worst of being on the road: you have to take what you get if you have car problems. In Victoria, I could have had it fixed for $175, or done it myself for about $100.

We left Phoenix and spent the night in a small motel in Wickenburg, a small town about 100 km to the north-west, where the following dialogue occurred.

Female owner/manager/desk clerk, “Where are you folks going?”

 Me, “Victoria, B.C.”

 FOMDC, “Really. I went to school in Vancouver. I’ll be spending Christmas there.”

 Me, “Which school?”

 FOMDC, “Crofton House.” (An exclusive girls’ private school.)

 Me, “I went to Magee.” (The closest high school to Crofton House.)

 FOMDC, “Did you know Susan Whitlow or Bob Bryant?”

 Me, “Sure. Sue was in a couple of my classes and I played poker at least once a week with Bob.”

 FOMDC, “They’re both my cousins. I’ll be spending a week with each of them at Christmas.” And the best part of all of that was that neither of us said anything that contained the words ‘small world’.

Left Wickenburg and drove west, stopping in Quartzite, where many old hippies have gone to sell fake Indian crafts, and at least one runs a classic barbeque. Do you know that more small barbeques are named “Billy Bob’s” than anything else? True fact. On to Palm Springs, via Joshua Tree National Park. I was hoping to camp in the park, but it turns out that come Thanksgiving, about 50% of the people aged 20 to 25 in the Greater Los Angeles area take a couple of extra days off and go rock climbing in guess where? Right. So we went to Palm Springs, which is a very odd place. It has roughly equal parts of walled, gated communities, each with a golf course or tennis courts and a few hundred condos; and apartments and motels. The latter have never heard of maintenance (I don’t know about the former: the walls looked all right), the owners wait until the apartment or motel is about to fall down, and then they raze it and start again. And they built for the high season, which this is not. The Best Western we stayed in had 200 rooms, and there were eight cars in the parking lot.

And off to HOLLYWOOD! Hooray hooray for HOLLYWOOD. It’s crowded, smoggy, has the worst paving I’ve ever seen, and we passed up the chance to see Harry Potter at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, where a large part of the audience was in full costume. Then up Highway 101, which I have never done, and probably won’t do again. Not as interesting as the coast road, and not as fast as I 5. Now we’re in Seaside, just north of Monterey Bay. If tomorrow is a bit warmer we’ll go to Monterey for breakfast and to look around. But at the moment it’s a bit chilly, at 55 F.  More later. Trust you are all well.

CONTEST RESULTS

To those of you who responded to my second contest, sorry, but no correct answers. Most of you didn’t take me literally when I said ‘element’. The answer is helium, which used to be separated from natural gas, quite easily, in a few areas of Texas, where the gas had a very large concentration of helium. The remainder of the natural gas was simply thrown away. Most of those high-concentration wells are now dry (including those around Amarillo), and helium is extracted with much more difficulty from natural gas in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.