Roadtrip: Day 11

8-22-12 VERY SMALL ROCKS
You know that sort of magical moment of finally seeing, in daylight, someplace that you've only known in darkness? The picnic area outside of Loco Hills, NM could've been surrounded by cotton fields. It could've been surrounded by scrubby desert. For all I knew, it could've been surrounded by carefully manicured topiaries.

It was not.

When I poked my head up, at 7am, I saw a field of oil derricks, tanks, and gravel pads, as far as the eye could see in all directions. And directly to my left, across the fence from the picnic table, a sign warning of toxic fumes. Holding my breath, I said my goodbye's to the "Happy Villiage of Loco Hills", and made my way down US-82 towards White Sands National Monument.

The scene I had awakened to didn't end. "Navajo Oilfield Supply" and "Big Chief Energy Services"; I wonder if the "red man" of old would approve of the derricks, like so many drinking birds, sipping rotten-egg odors from 1000 foot straws.

Eventually the thirsty machines gave way to gentle hills, bathed in the drowsy perfume of cedar, pinon, and juniper. Apple orchards and gurgling streams...these hills looked out of place in the supposed "barren and unforgiving desert wasteland" of New Mexico. The terrain changed again, as I began the climb to Cloudcroft, a touristy ski town at 8,650 feet, looking down of the White Sands valley.

A precipitous 6% grade brought me down to Alamogordo, and brought the mercury up a good 40 degrees. White Sands, where we shoot movies and missiles! The national park sits squarely in the middle of the massive White Sands Missile Range, and is closed multiple times a week while the government blows stuff up overhead. It's pretty obvious why directors come to shoot films in the alien landscape of the Park. Dune after dune of gleaming gypsum sand, yielding scarce flora and fauna, extend beyond view. I didn't dare venture out of eye-shot of the parking area, for fear of getting turned around in the featureless dunes, and ending up like the bleached bovine skull I had seen on the way in.

With the hours ticking by and many miles yet to go, I emptied my shoes of the myriad would-be sandy souvenirs and pushed on through the Organ Mountains towards City of Rocks State Park. I had seen the little park on a few lists of "Natural Wonders of New Mexico" and it sat on a length of my route devoid of other attractions. In retrospect, I wish I could've timed it so I could've camped out there for a day or two. It's probably only a couple square miles, but every inch of it is bursting with rock formations, all of which you can scramble up, down, and through. It's like a giant stone playground with stunning views of the surrounding mountains.

As luck would have it, a billowing squall blew over just to the north while I was running around taking pictures. The storm was ferocious, and I stood there among the stones, the wind whipping us while lightning assailed the distant peaks. The grey-blue clouds moved off just enough to let the setting sun bathe the freshly soaked valley in golden light. I kept trying to leave, but the light just got better and better. Finally, when the yellow disk had fully retreated behind the hills, I drove away, quite satisfied.

As it turned out, I had waited exactly long enough to make the 30 mile trek to Silver City, my stop for the night. The fierce storm had just vacated my route, but continued to show itself, ominously, out of my passenger window. When it looked like I was about to drive headlong into the lightning bolts, the road would take a fortuitous turn, ever hugging the outskirts of the storm.

Silver City was dark and foreign, and in desperation I broke my cardinal roadtrip rule and went to McDonalds. Granted, it was just to use their wifi, but still... When no one came in proclaiming free and comfortable lodging for the night, I resigned myself to another night in the car. I opted for a secluded roadside over the harsh light of a Walmart parking lot, and found a good spot a couple miles south of Silver City. Satisfied and moderately comfortable, I curled up and went to sleep.

All of the sudden, it was 2am and I was looking out the window at the fuzzy outline of a flashlight-toting uniform.
"Sir, can we ask you a few questions?" said the uniform.
"Huh?"
"You're from Tennessee?"
"Yeah..."
"That's where you're coming from? Tennessee?"
"Uh...no."
"Where are you coming from, then?"
"Uh..." I stared for what felt like five minutes, trying to formulate an answer.
"Still asleep?" he asked, probably joking.
"Huh? Haha, must be..." All the names of cities and roads from the past two days were swirling in my groggy brain, saying, "Ooh! Ooh! Pick me!"
"Uh...somewhere on I-20." As the words left my mouth I wondered where they had come from, since I hadn't been on it since Fort Worth.
"You mean I-25? There's no I-20 in New Mexico."
"Uh..."
"You mean I-25?"
"Oh!" something clicked, "In Texas!" Also wrong. "Do I need to move or something?"
"No, you're OK, we just saw the car and wanted to check it out. Have a good night, sir."
I managed to sputter a thank you before the headlights turned away, and the crunch of the gravel was the last evidence of the curious fuzzy uniform. I put my head back down and left the incident behind; a strange dream, for all I know.

Roadtrip: Days 9-10

8-20-12 BBQ
Late to rise on Monday, we forsook breakfast and opted for lunch from one of the few remaining open-pit barbecue establishments in DFW, Smokey John's. I'd been craving more BBQ since Longview, and Smokey John's did not disappoint. Fatty brisket, sausage, mac & cheese, collard greens, corn bread, and sweet tea, all lovingly prepared by family hands, according to family recipes. Best meal of the year? Maybe. After we had thoroughly gorged ourselves, we just wandered around, trying to kill the time until rush hour let up. The rest of Monday doesn't really matter, Smokey John's just overshadows everything else.

8-21-12 GO WEST
I tried to get up early so I could hit the road before it got too hot, but what with goodbye's, restocking, and traffic, I didn't escape the clutched of Fort Worth until 11:00. Happy to get off the interstate, I jumped on US 180, a west-bound arrow of a road that would take me straight to New Mexico.

The trip counter rolled over on 2000 miles in Lamesa, TX, a charming town about an hour east of NM. It was near enough dinner time that I asked the gas station attendant where I could find a good home-cooked meal (is that too cheesy?), and she directed me to Jalisco, a Guadalajaran taqueria. Not exactly what I had in mind, but whatever. Pretty standard Mexican fare. I'm sure there's a distinct difference between Guadalajaran enchiladas and Yucatan enchiladas, but I sure couldn't taste one.

Bloated with beans and tortilla chips, I made the final push for the border, and crossed over into Hobbs, NM, where I found respite from the glaring, orange check engine light that had been nagging me for the past 30 miles. The Autozone computer told me it was something to do with the catalytic converter or the oxygen sensor. The same generic diagnosis that stopped me in bumville, Arkansas on last summer's roadtrip. With no noticeable performance issues to worry about, I moved on towards a little picnic table marker I had seen on the map, just outside of Loco Hills, NM.

Highway 529 got really dark, without the moon to lend an eerie glow. I pulled over to rest my eyes, and was immediately engulfed by the night. Eventually the stars started to poke through the black, and then the hazy glow of the Milky Way. The only sounds were the very occasional passing truck, and the spooky, disembodied wail and groan of a nearby oil derrick.

It was starting to get late, so I drove the remaining few miles, hoping the people of Loco Hills were still picnic area patrons. Sure enough, a blue sign pointed me to a barren roadside collection of tables and benches that looked to me as good as a Motel 6 for the night. I curled up and closed my eyes, hoping this wasn't one of the favorite spots of the more loco inhabitants of Loco Hills, New Mexico.

Miles: 452 (Total: 2122)

TOTD: Geographer - Night Winds

Roadtrip: Days 6-8

8-17-12 MAGIC MIRROR
Woke up early on Friday to take Jordan to the airport. He's off to the wedding of one of our friends from our Africa days. The wedding is in Chattanooga, and he back-tracked the steps of my three day journey in about two hours. After dropping him off, I aimlessly wandered around North Dallas for most of the day, seeking free wifi and AC in order to update the blog and pass the time until Cara got off work. She informed me that I would be accompanying her and another friend, Kristin, to a twin-themed party that night. We decided that I would carry around a mirror, and everyone at the party would laud my cleverness. Maybe they did, but I spent most of the party catching up with Kristin (who didn't know anyone there either) and trying to avoid getting wrangled into "Twin Twister" and "Twin Ping-Pong" tournaments.

8-18-12 WHEN IT RAINS
Saturday was rainy and lazy. Pancakes and coffee at Cara's, followed by a movie and a couple hours of sitting around. Well, I sat around while Cara cleaned. Dinner from Torchy's Tacos, a food truck concept from Austin that spread to Dallas and traded wheels for a permanent address. Delicious. I maintain that the taco is one of the world's perfect food items. With the evening slipping away, I decided, on a whim, to drive down to Waco (about 100 miles south of Dallas) to see some college friends who are in studies at Baylor's Truett Seminary. I rapidly began to regret my decision as traffic slowed to one lane on I-35E. When I finally made it out of the jam, the heavens opened up and torrential rain and winds turned the routine drive into a white-knuckle hell-ride. Thankfully I made it in one piece, despite hydroplaning a couple times. Gotta keep things lively! Hit the sack after catching up with the guys over beers.

8-19-12  YUCATAN
Sunday morning was church with the guys, followed by a generic lunch. I had to take my leave of Waco after lunch, since I wanted to take the long way back to Dallas, in hopes of better scenery. What I got was cotton, sorghum, and black dirt, all bisected by Osage hedgerows. The fields were neither the perfect grid of the Midwest, nor the haphazard "anywhere we can" fields of East Tennessee, but a happy medium.

I wandered my way back to the big city, due to pick up Jordan from the massive airport that evening. Having witnessed rush-hour traffic the night before, I decided to camp out at a coffee shop around the corner from the airport to await his call. Amazingly, it only took me two tries to find the right terminal, and we were back on the road in no time, Jordan regaling me with tales of his wedding-weekend shenanigans. With nothing better to do, we drove to Fort Worth and wandered the streets for a while, stopping to marvel at the unattended perilousness of the Fort Worth Water Gardens.

Dinner was some pretty delicious taco/burrito fare from a Yucatan-inspired place down on the college's main drag. A main drag that was more-or-less deserted, but for a mysterious line of students that wound around two blocks. Mumford & Sons concert? Fixie Bike workshop? Free tickets to Brooklyn? We'll never know. The events of the rest of the evening escape me, but we ended up back at Jordan's place, playing video games until the wee hours of the morning.

Roadtrip: Days 4-5

8-15-12 RISTAURANTE

I rolled out of my latest couch/home this morning in Longview, TX, home of LeTourneaux University, where my buddy Ben is a flight instructor. LeTourneaux is a big school for missions aviation, although more and more of their graduates are taking up with commercial airlines.

After breakfast in an empty house, I met up with Ben at the school's aviation center and got an insider tour of their brand new facilities. The pristine offices and classrooms had the smell of a big, “seeker-friendly” church, but the labs were full of greasy engines and retired fuselages, like big mechanical morgues; creepy without the activity of tinkering students. We ran down the road to a local BBQ place that I'd been wanting to revisit since my first taste, two years ago. I won't get into the regional BBQ battle because it's all delicious to me.

I said my goodbyes with Ben and headed back towards I-20 and Dallas, but changed my mind just before the on-ramp and pulled over to find a slightly more out-of-the-way route, since I didn't have to be there till evening. I settled on US 80, which turned out to be a very small step down from the interstate, with 70 MPH limits on most of it, and a smattering of stop lights every 10 miles or so. Regardless, the scenery was better, and should I have wanted to, I could've pulled off on any of the myriad side roads. About an hour in, I began to notice that at least 1 in 3 homes featured a deliberately (maybe) decrepit and shockingly generic produce stand, craft barn, or “old country store”. Not dissimilar to Tennessee's requisite rusted-out 1940's Ford, or burned down double-wide.

Jesus welcomes you, guys!

Guys, Jesus.

Soon enough, I ran out of small towns, and metro D/FW, with its web of ringroads, spurs, and bypasses came looming up. I managed to find my way to a mall bookstore and take refuge in their AC, while I read more of Blue Highways and waited to hear back from the friend I was supposed to be meeting up with. A couple pages later, my phone buzzed, and Jordan wanted me to come hang out at his restaurant until he got off, so I punched the address into my phone and braced myself for another run on the big city asphalt network.

Ferré Ristaurante, in the heart of downtown Fort Worth, is pretty easy to find, but I managed to circle the parking garage four times before I figured out how to get in. 1000 miles of two-lane straight-and-narrow had spoiled me for a supposedly logical grid of one-way numbers and dead presidents. I walked into the quiet restaurant and found Jordan in the kitchen, sampling some sort of asparagus and egg creation with the chef's young daughter, who dismissed the dish as “gross”. After some introductions and a brief tour, he hid me in a corner booth and I passed a couple hours with more Blue Highways, some pilfered bread, and a free beer from the manager.

Heat Moon ends his first chapter 1000 miles into a cross-country trip (and only a stone's throw from the beginning of mine), and the stories he managed to squeeze out of those miles made me self-consciously look back over my last four days. Certainly, times have changed, and I shouldn't compare myself to the middle-aged Native American English teacher divorcee, but that doesn't stop me from hoping my travels begin to resemble his.

About 9:30, Jordan got off, and we ran by the house of some of his home-brewing buddies. I tried a couple of his creations as his friends discussed the pros and cons of a Playboy subscription and rated the US women's soccer team in order of desirability. From there, we headed to a pho place in Arlington, me following him at breakneck speeds through a strange city, although reassured by the pavement-warmed night air and the steady oom-pah-pah of a Hispanic radio station.

Pho 95 (now open till midnight!) was packed when we got there, around 10:30. The authenticity of the place was reinforced by a strong Vietnamese patronage, as well as a real melting pot of other customers. Who doesn't like a big bowl of noodly broth? From Pho 95 it was on to Caves Lounge, an accurately named bar on the somewhat seedy streets of Arlington. The crowd was the same you'd find in any town with a college, that isn't a college town. Can we all agree that the salt of “hipster” has lost its saltiness and move on to some new codifying system? Rapidly losing steam, we called it a night as the bartender said, “last call”, and I groggily set up camp on a new couch in a new town.

Miles: 213 (Total: 1239)

MPG: 34 (that 40mpg must've been beginner's luck)

TOTD: Poliça - Wandering Star

“Besides, being alone on the road makes you ready to meet someone when you stop. You get sociable traveling alone.” - Heat Moon, Blue Highways

8-16-12 NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

Woke up late in a dingy house (sorry Jordan) with a text from Jordan's sister, Cara, telling us to meet her for lunch at Oddfellows, a hip cafe/eatery in one of Dallas's innumerable suburbs. The Bishop Arts District appears to be responding well to a gentrification effort, with a plethora of antiques shops and brunch offerings. 

M'antiques.

Get it? MANtiques. Actually had some pretty neato stuff.

Post-lunch, Jordan and I had six hours to kill until a Fang Island show in Deep Ellum, so he gave me an extensive tour of the rest of Dallas's sprawl, including the theater where Oswald got shot, and a bar where he almost convinced Britney Spears's bodyguards to let her sing karaoke. The hours crawled by, but eventually the doors at Club Dada opened, and we got our faces shredded and then melted back together by Fang Island, and their killer opener, Adebisi Shank. Ears buzzing and endorphins pumping, we headed back to Arlington so Jordan could pack for his early-morning flight to a friend's wedding back in Chattanooga. Day two on the same couch, in the same town.

Miles: 0
TOTD double feature!: 
Fang Island go to kindergarten

Adebisi Shank - Masa

Roadtrip: Days 1-3

[a note: Wouldn't it seem that anytime one of us hits the road, without much concern as to itinerary or destination, we take on the honorary stole of 'Wandering Philosopher'? Poet, soothsayer, minstrel; drunk on asphalt and solitude. Steinbeck, Kerouac, Heat Moon, Miller have all preached the gospel of the road, the absolute truth of white letter on green field. I suppose they set the precedent for this modern meta-character, the Vagabond Sage. All this to say: please excuse me if I attempt to wax eloquent or lend undue gravity to the mundane. I am not immune to the intoxication of the road.]

8-12-12 DAY ONE STUFF
I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to say that no one would call the drive from Knoxville to Pensacola, FL glamorous. Not when you stay predominantly on interstates, at any rate, and I didn't really have the time to explore backroads on my way down. I left town around 11am after coffee with friends and a great send-off. Nine hours later I pulled into my friend Joey's driveway, and there honestly isn't much else to say about it. Hopefully I'm not overly romanticizing the western portions of this trip.
Miles: 480
MPG: 40
Track of the Day: Ludovico Einaudi - Dietro Casa

8-13-12 THE DOLLHOUSE
It's hard not to slip back into old relationships as if we were still in high school. Joey and I went down to P'cola Beach for a few hours, then got dinner at a locally famous Irish pub, McGuire's, where he bought me their signature drink, the Irish Wake. I guess it was about 6 shots of whiskey with orange juice and green food coloring, all mixed together in a big mason jar. Didn't really hit very hard, considering. The house Joey lives in with a handful of other Navy officers looks like a giant dollhouse. Got a little sunburned, all is right in the world.
Miles: 0
TOTD: The Goat Rodeo Sessions - Here and Heaven

Disclaimer: I do not play the guitar.

8-14-12 THE STARS AT NIGHT
If it's raining at the beach,
it'll be worse on the plains.
You'll catch every red light out of
Alabama when all you want is Texas.
Do ten hours of stop-and-go
make up for two years of off-and-on?

Have you ever felt soreness in your eyes? By the time I got to Longview, TX tonight I could barely focus on anything. Dusk driving is the worst. Crossed the Mississippi today, I guess that should probably be a landmark of some sort, but I've hopped over it too many times to give it much pomp anymore. More importantly, I broke 1000 miles today. Just the tip of the iceberg, but still momentous.

Miles: 546 (Total: 1026)
MPG: 33 (red lights + AC)
TOTD: one hour of silence (hey, your ears need a break now and then)

Is that...

Levon!?

Starting to hallucinate

There is a decimal point there.

here come the miles

T minus 12 hours till I hit the road good and hard. Phone charger, toothbrush, towel. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but it doesn't matter.

I went out to the Smokies Friday morning as a little warm-up and so I could get my annual National Parks pass. I waited just past Newfound Gap for the sun to crest the mountains and peek through the heavy clouds, but it never quite made it.

Halfway up to Clingman's Dome I saw a couple other photographers on a narrow pull-off, overlooking the sea of clouds that I had just emerged from. They were a couple of older guys from Seymour, bantering about  f-stops and previous sunrises. One of them told me that this year set the record high for Clingman's Dome at a blistering 73 degrees.

The women in the giftshop of the Sugarlands visitor center had no shortage of advice when they learned what I was buying the annual pass for. "I go to Rocky Mountain National Park every year," said one. "Don't bother with Wall Drug in South Dakota," said the other, "Overrated!"

Duly noted.

2338 pages, 76.75 hours

Roadtrip reading/listening list (with a margin for selection):

Books:
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, Mere Christianity, and Miracles - C.S. Lewis
Travels with Charley in Search of America - John Steinbeck
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Twelve by Twelve - William Powers
Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Audio Books:
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tortilla Flat, The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut