The Not Dayton Trip, Part Two: Arkadelphia, Arkansas to Chapmansville, Kentucky

 This is the second part of this post; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

I made only one sightseeing stop today, at a weird place not far from the courthouse in Brownsville, Tennessee where it would appear Yard Art has gotten rather out of hand. The main feature of the town, as far as the traveller is concerned, is called Billy Tripp's Mindfield. It's a city block long and probably forty yards wide. 

Here's the description of the place from RoadTrippers.com:

“The Mindfield” is the creation and life’s work of Brownsville, Tennessee artist Billy Tripp. The structure was begun in 1989 and will continue to evolve until Billy’s death, at which point it will become the site of his interment.  Included in the network of steel are individual pieces representing various events and periods of Billy’s life, especially the death of his father, Rev. Charles Tripp, in 2002.  The latest addition, a water tower salvaged from a defunct factory in Western Kentucky, was dismantled, transported to Brownsville, and reconstructed single-handedly by the artist.  It now stands as a memorial to Billy’s parents as well as a testimonial to his current life, his belief in the inherent beauty of our world, and the importance of tolerance in our communities and governmental systems.”

That pretty much sums it up. I saw the water tower, a canoe, three and a half fire towers, a couple of derrick cranes, a small airplane and two large boats, along with untold articles I couldn't identify. And I have to admit that I see no relationship between this random assemblage of scrap metal and "the inherent beauty of our world." Eye of the beholder, I suppose.

But is it art?

Other than that, there's really not a lot to report from today's travel. I did get through the remaining Tennessee counties, so have now been to all the counties in 40 states; and I got the first two of the remaining Kentucky counties, so I will finish that tomorrow. (And I got about half a dozen expressions of admiration for the car. Got a few of those yesterday, too, but didn't remember it when I was writing. Anyway, it should go without saying.)

The terrain through western Tennessee was mostly flat and mostly uninteresting, though not unattractive. The first thing I noticed was the kudzu in the unmaintained areas like creek beds. It seems to be kept in check wherever people take an interest in the look of the land.* And I noticed that some prosperous towns have not done a good job in keeping up with traffic. I first noticed that in Silver City, New Mexico, a couple of years ago. When I first visited there in the 1990s (probably) it was a nice, pleasant town catering to agriculture and tourism. Something seems to have taken off there since that day, and it's now choked with traffic on the outskirts where new developments are. This afternoon I saw another such town: Clarksville, Tennessee, which is stop-and-go from one end of the town to the other. I don't know what decisions that town's government has made that have resulted in such a choking of the roads, but it surely must be down to government. Other towns don't suffer the same fate.

 As I got into the unvisited Kentucky counties -- Marion, Taylor and Green -- the terrain gave way to exactly the sort of winding two-lane country highways I love to travel. Fortunately, so far at least, there's been little traffic on those roads, and I hope that as the roads get even better as I approach the Appalachian Mountains tomorrow, the thrill will get even more pronounced.

* I found this interesting video showing how it's done:

https://imgur.com/eKtTDCshttps://imgur.com/eKtTDCshttps://imgur.com/eKtTDCshttps://imgur.com/eKtTDCshttps://imgur.com/eKtTDCs

The Not Dayton Trip, Part One: San Antonio to Arkadelphia, Arkansas

Well this could be the last time
This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I don't know
Oh no, oh no

--Mick Jagger & Keith Richards,

The Last Time

 

There is a museum in Dayton, Ohio, that I went to a few years ago called the British Transportation Museum. I've decided to give them my little English convertible, because I'm getting too old to enjoy it and nobody else in my family wants it -- it is, after all, more than 20 years old now, and a little expensive to maintain in the style it's accustomed to. Just like a trophy wife, come to think of it, and all the members of the next generation of the family are a little too intelligent to want to take on that burden. Plus, it's really not their style. They're more the Back-Country Vacation types than the fading-luxury touring-car crowd. So it'll go to a museum devoted to cars of similar parentage, where it will be appreciated for its lineage and lines: the fine materials used in its construction, the achingly beautiful sweep of the hood, the sexy swells of the wheel arches, the evocative grille, the little Pegasus melting on the dashboard (which the museum will probably remove). 

 This trip started off as a final wander in my beautiful car that would end at Dayton. But it turns out that the group that owns the museum doesn't have its tax affairs in order just now, having suffered the lot common to many small volunteer-run charitable organizations: its tax-deductible status has been suspended until its paperwork is brought up to date.

 

 That was enough of an excuse to prompt me to put off my donation until, oh, next year. But in the meantime, I had already planned the trip to the point of arranging to visit someone in New York -- since I was going to be in the area -- that I had not seen in some years. I was committed. So now the plan is a round trip: San Antonio to New York and back, and as long as I'm going all that way and probably will never be going back, I may as well tick some boxes on my bucket list. To that end, I will, on this trip, go through the last two counties in Tennessee, the last eight counties in Kentucky, and some of the many remaining counties in Georgia (on the way back, if I actually stick to the plan. I have a history of not doing so, but I still make the plans).

 So this morning I headed off for what could well be my last wander in my convertible. A bittersweet thought. I cut across Texas today from San Antonio to Texarkana, and have pulled up for the night in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. This morning I listened to a short (2-hour) audiobook written and performed by the late TV personality Steve Allen, a sort of quickie murder mystery involving the Japanese mafia in Las Vegas. I enjoyed it, and since I was just zipping along highways in broken weather I had the top up all day and could actually hear it all. (Didn't get any rain to speak of despite the forecast.) I met my friend Hank in College Station for an early lunch, and we spent a pleasant hour making plans that may or may not ever come to pass. You know how it is. After lunch I started another audiobook, Every Crooked Nanny, another light-weight murder mystery. And since I'll be on freeways until after Memphis tomorrow, I should be able to finish it before the top goes down and audiobooks become an iffy proposition.

 I'm hoping to get through Little Rock before the rush-hour traffic gets too bad in the morning, and I hope to get through Memphis in the mid-morning lull; though drivers are so bad in Tennessee that I fully expect to hit back-ups and slow-downs caused by accidents before the city limits are behind me. Then, when my audiobook is finished and I'm off the freeway, the top will come down and, I hope, stay down until Westchester. The forecasts are good -- clear skies and moderate temperatures -- and I have more than enough time for a relaxing, laid-back voyage, with lots of winding mountain roads and a smattering of interesting stops noted along the way. And even if I do make it down to Georgia on the way home, I will still have a week or so to decompress before we pile into the Subaru and go off to the Lake for the annual Huntsman Trip.

 Fingers crossed.

The Republican Ticket: Cheeto and The Porch Light

So! The Republican ticket for the 2024 election is set. Their presidential candidate, chosen more or less by acclamation by the reactionaries in attendance at the convention, has annointed the next target for the mob -- a fate that has thus far awaited all his vice-presidents -- Ohio senator J.D. Vance, best known for writing a book about what's wrong with the hicks in Appalachia, and for being super-rich and tied in to the super-rich.

J.D. Vance. Wow.

Who is this guy?

For those of us who don't live in or near Ohio and so don't pay much attention to their politics, Vance is the guy who 

said he would rather vote for his dog or a Democrat than for Trump. [Vance] also then referred to Trump as a “total fraud,” a “moral disaster,” “reprehensible,” an “idiot,” “cultural heroin,” “unfit for our nation’s highest office,” “a cynical as**ole” and “America’s Hitler.” 

Since that time, of course, Vance has apologised to the frothy-mouthed wing of the party and kissed the Don's ring. Don Jr, ever the best judge of character, likes him.

So the Cheeto has chosen as his running mate one of those color-changing LED porch-light bulbs that you get for holiday nights. Fine.

 

 

Grannie Will Love It

Thelma

starring June Squibb

  Fred Hechinger 

  Richard Roundtree

  Parker Posey

  Clark Gregg

  Malcolm McDowell

written and directed by Josh Margolin

 This is a cute little movie about an elderly lady who gets taken in by a scammer, and decides to seek revenge. At some point in the writing of the script, Josh Margolin decided what he had was good enough, and ran with it. Too bad: it could have used another two or three read-throughs for a little punching up. And when he put on his directing hat, it would have been nice if he hadn't been in such a hurry to get the thing done. 

 For example: in one scene Thelma (June Squibb) forgets to engage the handbrake on the scooter she's stolen from Ben (Richard Roundtree). She left it on a sidewalk as the two of them argue. When she turns to go back to it, it's sitting in the roadway, and of course gets hit by a passing car. It's an amusing bit, but I was distracted by the fact that, even if it had really rolled away unattended, it could not have ended up there, as it would have had to go uphill past a deep-ish gutter to its final perch on the crown of the roadway (where any driver not in a movie would have had plenty of room to go around it); and it was oriented in the wrong direction, neatly stopped perpendicular to the curb, as though, upon its improbable arrival on the crown of the road, it executed a sharp ninety-degree turn before coming to a stop. Here it is hours later, and I'm still thinking about that. It would have been so easy to get right in the filming.

 The performances were uniformly okay. Except for Malcolm McDowell as the villain, who delivered at a higher standard, all the capable actors (and the ones that I only assume are capable) were half a beat slow on the dialog. That consistent flaw makes me suspect the editor (who is, probably not coincidentally, also the writer and director), Josh Margolin. 

 If there were such a thing as dollar movies these days, this would have been perfect, As it is, though, I was disappointed at having paid full matinee price to see it. Now, if I hadn't read any of the promotional material for this movie I might have liked it a whole lot more than I did.The promos promised "a clever spin on movies like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE..." That is a promise far beyond this production group's ability to deliver; and a couple of shots of Tom Cruise and a clip from one of the films in that franchise don't take the place of intricate high adventure. 

 The audience, when I saw this movie, consisted of me, one husband-and-wife couple, and about two dozen elderly women, attending in pairs and small groups of up to four. I found the film amusing, if a bit trying of my patience for oft-seen tropes and stereotypes. They, however, hooted and laughed like kids at their first circus. Everything in the movie resonated with every one of these women. 

 So take your grandma to see Thelma. She'll love it.

A Modest Proposal

 The Supreme Court, seemingly determined to force US law back to a time before FDR's court-packing scheme, has decided that the President is not to be accountable for any "official" action taken during his tenure in office, even after he leaves that office. The Court's radical-right majority evidently believes that no one in their right mind would take the sort of actions that the Maga Cheeto is propounding in tweets and speeches; and they're not worried about him, even though he's not in his right mind, because, of course, he only threatens people they don't like anyway.

 Maybe ol' Sleepy Joe should surprise them, by embracing their ruling while he still has a majority in the Senate. Maybe he should order the FBI or whoever one would order to do such things inside the territory of the United States, to shoot the six members of the Court that moved such abominable actions outside the scope of the law's review. He could then quickly nominate six replacements and get them confirmed, and the entire court could then revisit the question. Having taken this action -- this official action -- in furtherance of his obligation to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from the sort of unprincipled interpretation that produced such a ludicrous holding (not to mention a score of other, similarly unprincipled interpretations of the law), the Court would then be able to overrule itself, and return us to the rule of law. Of course, since Biden's official action was performed while immunity was in force, he wouldn't be subject to any accountability for that.

 I'd say that's a win-win. And if he were to take out the big Cheeto too, well, that'd just be the icing on the cake. And I couldn't object if he were to deal with a few of Putin's Senators, too.

/s, with apologies to Jonathan Swift

The Last of LA

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This is the fifth post in a series; sixth if you count the prologue. You really should read them in order, so click on this link for the Prologue or on this link for Part One. And if you want to see all the pictures from this trip, click here. 

Saturday in Los Angeles

 This time we actually made it to the cafe I'd been aiming for the other day, on Wilshire near the Petersen Museum. It's called ... well, now I've forgotten. Cafe Fresco. They've changed their signage but it's the same place I went to last time, on the Stained Glass Trip. Excellent service. Good food, too. I had lox and bagel; it came with huge slices of cucumber and some red onion that made it hard to eat, but well worth the trouble. 

 Since by this point we had pretty much done everything we wanted to do, we decided to take a cruise down toward a part of town we hadn't already seen, and ended up at Venice Beach. Hank's trainer used to work there, at the original Gold's Gym, and had asked Hank to say hello to the manager for him. So we went by there. I dropped Hank off and drove around the block, then found a parking place and just waited until he texted me. The manager wasn't there but Hank got a swag-bag to take back with him. I wonder what's in a gym swag-bag?

 We decided we could just make the 1:30 tour at Paramount Studios, so we drove there. Got there with about 5 minutes to spare. Paid $24 to park but the attendant promised us a refund if we didn't make it to the tour (which was just across the street). Practically ran over there, only to discover that the 1:30 tour was just starting but there were no more spaces available, despite what it says on the web site. "Yeah, I know," said the ticket-office guy, "The web site's wrong." Like it's apparently always wrong. So we got our parking money back and went to the hotel to prepare for the evening's entertainment. Which, considering how tired we'd gotten in three days, was probably a good idea.

delivery robot, Melrose Ave

 The Hollywood Fringe Festival started the day we got to town, and I've kept mentioning to Hank that we should do something. He seemed unexcited by the idea, so I had to insist, and on Saturday night we had dinner at a little Mediterranean place on Melrose, and then walked up to the Actors' Company Other Space for a play. I'd thought it was just around the corner, but I had misremembered the street number, and it was three long blocks away. We still got there in time to see a stageplay called The Altruists, a dark comedy of errors involving people who concern themselves with Causes. We both enjoyed it, and I was happy to have gotten to see something of the Fringe. If I had somebody to go with, I'd come back every year just for that. But I don't.

 We stopped for some gelati before heading back to the hotel, but that was about as much nightlife as the two of us could take.

 Sunday in LA and gone

 We checked out of the hotel and went for breakfast back to the Continental Kitchen, which we'd enjoyed so much the other day; but it doesn't open until 10AM on Sunday, so we went looking for somewhere else. Hank found a place on Google Maps, not too far away, called Lazy Daisy, and despite the unimaginative name, it turned out to be pretty good. Kind of trendy, I guess, but it managed a really good cup of coffee. After relaxing there for a while, we went to Mass at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church on ... Santa Monica? I think so. It was a very diverse congregation, which surprised me. And there were about 300 people in the church, which surprised me even more. Last time I went to a regular mass, there were about 20 old ladies in a gigantic cathedral, and me. That was a long time ago, so I guess the most recent popes have had a positive effect on the Church.

 It was Father's Day (surprised me!) and the homily was all about ... abortion. The priest was agin' it. That did not surprise me.

It's a Jag.

 When mass was over we drove basically across the street and looked for a parking place to go see the Rodeo Drive Concours d'Élégance Car Show (sic). Several blocks of the iconic Beverly Hills shopping street were closed off and loaded down with fancy European sports cars (and a few American products, some old, some just gussied up so they'd seem special) There were a lot that I just didn't bother taking pictures of ... Shelby Cobras, Mustangs, Porches, new Aston Martins, yet another tranche of commonplace Lamborghinis and some of the more ordinary Ferraris, but there were also a lot that I did take pictures of, and I know you're gassed up about the prospect of seeing them; so click on the photo link at the top. Go ahead; I'll wait.

 Having had a nice lunch at a sidewalk cafe nearby (Via Alloro, if you're wondering; Italian, and some of the staff is actually Italian, including one waiter who takes as his model for service the performance of Magenta and Riff Raff in the feast scene of Rocky Horror Picture Show; but otherwise very good), we drove up into the Hollywood Hills to see the ugly new houses. They used to be pretty small places, and kind of ordinary. No longer. They now sprawl across as much land as can be built on, and none that we saw had any architecturally redeeming features. 

 That did it for our guys' weekend in L.A. I drove Hank to the airport, getting there around 4pm, and then took off east for my reserved room in Blythe, on the Arizona state line, and what I'd hoped would be an uneventful drive home. 

 The start of it was inauspicious. First I had to stop in West Covina, just outside LA, for a nap in a shaded spot in a liquor store parking lot, as I found myself almost falling asleep at the wheel. I must have slept for about half an hour, until some guy in a truck that had pulled up next to me unobserved shouted in Spanish to someone else that I was sleeping. That woke me up, and I found myself feeling refreshed. I got to my hotel, a Motel 6, just before 9pm, but there wasn't anyone in the office. Just a sign saying they had "stepped away for a few minutes." I waited a few minutes, then knocked, then tried calling the motel on the local number. It rang for about 5 minutes but nobody ever came. I waited a while longer -- about half an hour all together -- then made a reservation at another motel in the area and left a bad review for the Motel 6. Turns out I'm not the first person that has encountered this eventuality at that motel. If it shows up as a charge on my Master Card bill I'm going to be pissed. I expect to be pissed.

 The Travelodge I moved to wasn't a whole lot better. The new owners had just taken over the day before, a young couple from LA. The first room they gave me was clearly not ready for occupancy, but they found me another one (there were plenty of choices) and in the end I was satisfied with the room, except that somebody in the neighbouring room started slamming doors at 1AM, and the light and fan in the bathroom kept turning itself on. Weird.

 Now, Monday night, I'm in El Paso and have one more day's drive to deal with. My car's "engine coolant low" light has come on again, so I'll top off the reservoir in the morning when it's had time to cool. I know when I open it it's going to be full. It's the sensor; it sticks. If I ignore it the light will go out.

Another Full Day in LA

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This is the fourth post in a series; fifth if you count the prologue. You really should read them in order, so click on this link for the Prologue or on this link for Part One. And if you want to see all the pictures from this trip, click here. 

Friday in Los Angeles

 Friday began with a hunt for an ATM, which really wasn't all that hard to find, it was just hard to get to, because of all the "no left turns" and "no stopping" and "no parking" in the part of town we're in; although since finding one (right down the street about half a mile away) we've passed maybe twenty branches of my bank, and they all have ATMs. Though I've yet to see a drive-up ATM.

 We were looking for a cafe I'd been to a few years ago for breakfast, but we didn't get that far before we spotted a place called Continental Kitchen that looked as good. It actually turned out to be better, and we sat outside on the patio in the marvelous Southern California weather for probably two hours in full-relax mode.

 We had all kinds of things planned for the day, but we never got to them. Instead, the first thing we did took us all day and we haven't finished with it. Or at least I haven't; I'm not sure if Hank has.

The prop horse head from The Godfather

 That was our visit to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Wilshire. The ground floor is just the gift shop, a bar and two restaurants, which took us not much time at all. (An example of the gift shop: I saw a book I thought about buying for $23, but before I did I looked on Amazon and found I could get it for $9. I didn't buy it.) Above the ground floor are three floors of exhibits. I managed to see one of them in the hours before lunch, which we ate at the bar while discussing what we had seen. While Hank had, apparently, zoomed through the second floor without seeing anything, and had gone through the third and fourth floors at his pace, I had spent that same amount of time just on the second floor, where I saw a fascinating exhibit on the Godfather movies; a film called "Image" that presented short exposés on the work of cinematographers, lighting directors, costumers, model-makers and other professions that are involved in the visual realization of a film-maker's ideas; and a film called "Sound" that showed, using the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, how a soundtrack is created. They were fascinating. I also saw an extensive exhibit on costumes, and a presentation about Oscar winners over the years, which included a number of selected acceptance speeches from history.

 After lunch I went on to the third floor, to see an exhibit called "Hollywoodland" about the Jews who mostly came to Los Angeles to escape Thomas Edison's monopoly claims, and ended up starting most of the major studios between 1905 and 1929. It included a film about their background and their understanding of their roles in the film industry, and while I don't necessarily agree with their view as presented, I think I understand their positions a little better.

 There was also an exhibit about the work of Pedro Almodovár, and behind that, a large room on animation in film; then one about science-fiction film, including special effects and alien make-up. I spent the entire afternoon on that floor and never got to the fourth. Henry, meanwhile, went back to the second floor to see all the exhibits he'd missed after I told him about them; and over dinner I told him about all the exhibits on the third floor that he'd missed. 

 We drove out to Griffith Observatory -- or tried to; there was something going on up there and the police wouldn't let us get to it. So instead we went for dinner to Canter's Deli, which is a place Hank had heard of and wanted to go to. It's on Fairfax, near Television City, and when we got there I realized it was a place I'd eaten last time I was here. Certainly didn't mind eating there again. I had something called The Spicy -- I forget now what that was, but I remember it was good -- and for dessert, Russian coffee cake, a sort of apple cake with vanilla ice cream. Excellent.

 After that, we just cruised through Westwood a little and then went back to the hotel, as we were both barely functional by that point. We had a drink at the bar in the lobby but I couldn't finish mine and just went upstairs. Hank came up soon after.

One Full Day

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This is the third post in a series; fourth if you count the prologue. You really should read them in order, so click on this link for the Prologue or on this link for Part One. And if you want to see all the pictures from this trip, click here. 

Thursday in Los Angeles

 I woke up at about 4AM on Friday morning and realized that I suddenly possessed at complete understanding of the craft of computer coding; that any of the little issues I observed in this, Hank and my first travel experience together, could be solved by simply correcting errors in the coding that created us. We are just characters running in some kind of gigantic complex simulation and yada yada yada

 Then I realized that I could scale up this vast knowledge and expertise I had found within myself, to solve greater problems in the world. I seem to recall it had something to do with the Israel-Hamas war -- this is about where I start forgetting dreams -- and Cheeto Jesus and I was in the middle of composing my Nobel acceptance speech when I drifted back to sleep; and when I woke up again to the cold, grey light of day (because it's dawned cloudy here in Los Angeles) I felt the suspicion that I might not, after all, be awarded a prize for ... well, pretty much anything.

 I've known Hank for more than thirty years now, and we've been good friends for basically all that time. Well, you know, it's easier when you live in separate cities and go for months without exchanging so much as a text greeting, and years without seeing each other. I actually have a lot of acquaintances that I could call friends just on the basis of my relationship with Hank, except that in most of the other cases, I don't have the same good feelings about the other people. I like Hank in a way I don't feel drawn to some of the other relationships that fit the same description. And I think he feels much the same way. Or maybe he's a better actor than I give him credit for. Whatever.

 So this is Hank's first time in L.A., and he's been looking forward to this trip for some time. I have to keep reminding myself how important this long weekend is to him, because his desire to experience the area is a little more spare-no-expense than I can muster; I have, I guess, too many years as a practicing pennypincher to just let go without qualms.

 For example, when we were talking about making this trip, Hank said he wanted to stay in an "iconic" hotel. I pictured in my mind the Beverly Hills Hotel or Chateau Marmont, with their five-hundred-dollars a night rooms, and was so relieved when he said he'd reserved a room in the Beverly Hilton, at less than half that imaginary (though very conservative) rate. In fact, I think I'm using Hank's excited desire to do things like this to conceal my own desires in the same regard: I, too, want to have a spare-no-expense guy's weekend in the Big City, but I don't want to say it out loud. 

downtown LA from our balcony

 So: Thursday. Long day. Fun. But since I've already brought up the hotel, let me start by describing that. It is, as Hank particularly wanted, an iconic hotel. Built in 1955 and often updated, it's had glamourous associations with the film and television industry for its whole existence. It is a nice place, though as often happens with upscale things, there's a certain amount of self-doubting silliness mixed in with its confident display of luxury and comfort. The room isn't large; I have to walk sideways to get into bed. But it is very comfortable and quiet. The best feature is the balcony, where I began writing this. It stretches the full width of the room, with space enough for maybe twenty people to watch a Mardi Gras parade, if one could be induced to pass by. The entire outer wall of the room is double paned glass, in four panels, two of which are huge sliding doors. The double-paned part is important, because another building is going up next door. At the moment, I can see 11 heavy construction machines of the sort my niece gets excited about hard at work destroying whatever was in that space before; but if I go inside, I can barely hear anything.

 The bathroom is relatively large; so large, and so lacking in certain amenities, that when I took a shower I had to lay my towel on the edge of the tub, between the two parts of the shower curtain, because there are not enough hooks and towel bars in the room, and none within reach of the tub, but waaaay over there on the far wall, which let's call Thule. When I pushed the curtain back after my shower, it nearly took the towel with it, into the tub. Not good. There's also a bidet handle attached to the toilet, so this will be my chance to figure out how that works, maybe, though I've never seen one like the one here. Just thinking about it puts me in mind of the Clampett family. And in fact, having looked it over more closely and considered the unlikelihood of my being able to levitate in a seated position over the toilet bowl, along with the effect of gravity on water should I stand to use it, I'm not at all sure that it is meant to be used by normal humans. 

 Now, circling back and progressing in a more orderly chronological style, let me tell you about our first day in LA. 

 I found my cheap Lawndale motel a lot less comfortable in every way than the Beverly Hilton, but wasn't dissatisfied with it. I left there early enough to get breakfast -- oatmeal and fresh fruit at a local chain called the Loaded Cafe -- and get to the airport on a schedule I'd constructed without considering the fickleness of Google Maps. It got me to the vicinity of the airport and then told me "Take the ramp on the right." There were three ramps. I managed to control my anxiety level and selected the second ramp, which I thought looked the likeliest; it turned out to be the wrong one. The Google Maps lady said "Turn left," but there was too much traffic in the intervening two lanes to make a left turn forty feet ahead. Eventually, after she rerouted me five or six times, I pulled up to the cellphone waiting lot. Hank called and said he was at Terminal 7; Google Maps said Terminal 7 was either in Chicago or New York, and after some back and forth during which Hank described the signage around him, I went to the arrivals area and found him. I'll gloss over the trivial intervening anxiety-laden moments in between his call and his collection. Suffice it to say we stayed in phone contact until we actually laid eyes on each other, and described a lot of the physical features of LAX to each other.

 I topped off the gas tank at the first station we came to and we went off to start our Guys' Weekend in the Big City. Don't get any dirty ideas; neither of us is that sort of guy. I might've been so inclined when I was younger (much younger), but if Hank has the slightest inclination in that direction I'd be very surprised. Probably only his priest knows for sure, but I'm betting a second cocktail at the office Christmas party is about as wild as Hank ever gets. We may have different motivations -- I'm old and tired, he's content within his own skin I think -- but it comes to the same thing. 

Point Vicente lighthouse

 We drove all the way down the Palos Verdes Peninsula to Point Vicente Lighthouse, where we could look out across the channel to the offshore islands. The houses, the landscaping, the roads: it was all beautiful. Neither of us had seen it before. We watched the pounding surf and waited for the cliffs along the shore to crumble into the sea, but nothing happened for a while so we got back in the car and drove around to the harbor, where I got a quick shot of the USS Iowa (and now I've seen all four the the Iowa-class battleships from World War II, so there's that off my bucket list. My bucket list is a dull thing.) before going across two high new Harbor Bridges toward the Queen Mary. (I'll skip over the confusion caused by GMaps' vague instructions.)

 The Queen Mary was our real destination for the day. As boys, both Hank and I were fascinated by ocean liners, the huge ships that even then were all but extinct, the stegosaurs of transatlantic transportation. I had worked out my boyish giddiness at seeing this ship twenty-five years ago, on my first visit; Hank got his out of the way on this occasion. We spent a pretty good stretch of time on board, including a very nice lunch in the Promenade Cafe. Late in our visit my knee suddenly started hurting, something that hasn't happened in quite a while, despite the walking and hiking I've been putting it through the last few weeks. Not the grinding pain of my arthritis (though I haven't felt that either) but the sharp unpredictable pain of having turned it somehow. It came and went for an hour or two and hasn't recurred since, but it was enough to get me to go wait at the car while Hank checked out the engine room at the tail-end of our visit.

 After that, we drove up to Beverly Hills and checked into our hotel.

 Hank insisted on taking an Uber to the restaurant because of the traffic (40 minutes to go six miles) and his concern about being able to park there. I wanted to argue: it was too expensive a ride, I like to drive, we could see more in the Jag than in an Uber. But because my crystal ball has a big crack in it, I didn't try the two arguments that might have won the point: that I knew more about the landmarks along the way than our LA-native Uber driver, and that if we had our own car there, it wouldn't take us more than an hour just to get a ride back to the hotel in the middle of the night. Well, who knew.

 Dinner was at Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, now the oldest restaurant in the city, and one where somewhat-famous people might be spotted in the wild. (They also haven't changed their menu since 1915, so it may now be the only place in town where you can still get calf brains and lamb kidneys.) I'm pretty certain I saw the guy who played Tim Allen's mentor and business partner on Last Man Standing, but I don't remember his name. And the guy across the aisle from us looked more and more familiar as the evening went on, but again, I don't know his name. He just looked like somebody I'd seen on TV.

 (A little later, Nicole Kidman arrived at the Egyptian Theater for a movie premiere, and I got a picture, but I can't see her in it. Still, you know, it was a little exciting. Or it would have been if we'd known she was in the movie, but we didn't know a thing about it. I only took the photo from across the street because people screeched when she got there; I didn't know who they were screeching at; I thought I heard someone call out the name "Kelly.")

 We continued to haemorrhage cash by buying tickets to see a movie in the iconic Grauman's Chinese Theater's main auditorium. It turned out to be a preview of an animated movie that opened the next day, Inside Out 2. Hank and I took turns waking each other up. But it's a beautiful theater, and he gets to cross one more thing off his bucket list. (I also bought a souvenir sweatshirt because, you know, it gets cold in LA when the sun goes down. And I tried to buy tickets to a Fringe Festival stage play on Saturday, but it appears I set up a profile on their web site in 2016, and now I don't know the password.)

 The evening finally came to an end after a shockingly expensive drink at the Library Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel (the iconic Roosevelt Hotel; that's important to my shredded sense of value, which I hope will not be so further strained on this trip). Hank's phone battery had died, and apparently you now have to have the app to get an Uber. The bartender didn't have a charger for his phone, so I said we could just get the hotel to call us a taxi. Turns out not to be that simple anymore, now that everybody's got technology to screw things up.

 Over the course of the last hour and a half of our evening, the valets at the Roosevelt arranged for our transportation, God bless 'em all, with four cab companies. Two never showed up. One showed up, at the other end of the building despite clear instructions, and left because we weren't there. The head valet also had one of his guys go out onto Hollywood Boulevard and flag down a cab in the old fashioned way, but that guy never found his way around the corner to the valet entrance, where we were waiting. Well, eventually one of the cab companies came through and the ride back to the hotel went off without a hitch after that. (And it only cost about half what the Uber ride had cost.)

LA Trip reprise: Havasu Sentence & Escape to LA!

 Monday & Tuesday

 It hit 122 degrees Tuesday afternoon at the house in Havasu. I think that pretty much says it all. Don't you tell me it's a dry heat.

 The highlights of my time in Havasu are as follows: early morning walks around Carly's Island, followed by breakfast at Peggy's Sunrise Cafe, my favourite place in the city; really the only place I've found for a decent breakfast. And I got an oil change in the Jag. I thought when I left home that I could just do it when I got back, but it was already 1400 miles past-due, and I wasn't even to LA yet. So what the hell. And I learned that, if you're looking for a solid career with growth potential, you should open a drive-through oil-change shop in Lake Havasu City. The first shop I called had an opening for a week from Friday. The second could get me in on Monday. Third time was the charm, but it cost me more than twice what it would have back home.

 I decided not to return to Havasu after LA; I wouldn't be able to get there before 10PM or so, and then all I'd do is wake up and shut up the house before heading home. No point, really: it wasn't worth the savings of one extra night in a motel, especially when you consider the added gas to get there, at $5.59 a gallon (for premium).

 So I made a reservation for that first night of the return trip, in Blythe, California. I also made a reservation for Wednesday night at a motel in a suburb called Lawndale, not far from LAX, so it'd be easy to get there to collect the Hankmeister when he got in. Then I checked my route across the Mojave Desert, and went to bed. 

 And finally, I've had three more people compliment the car since I got to Havasu. That alone is worth the extra expense.Well, maybe not, but it doesn't hurt.

 Wednesday, June 12

 I managed to shut the house up pretty quickly; really the only time-consuming part was making the bed. It's so low to the ground that it's difficult to get down there and tuck the sheets in. I was on the road by 6:30, I think. Stopped for coffee at the Running Man C-store in Parker, then crossed into California. My first stop was a small monument on the side of the road to mark one of the desert training bases used during World War II. On the way there a white lizard at least a foot long ran across the road in front of me. I'm not sure if it was an albino or if there's a species of lizard in the Mojave that's actually bright white. But I know it was more than a foot long because it was on both sides of the double yellow stripe in the road at the same time.

 After that I tried to find a place called the Desert Castle, a private home of unusual architecture, but after a dozen turns, alternating right and left, I was faced with nothing but dirt roads. I was hungry by then, so I blew it off and went for a restaurant in Joshua Tree -- the town, not the park. 

 OMG I had the best breakfast I've ever had between San Antonio and Los Angeles! At a place called JT Country Kitchen, I got excellent coffee, three huge Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Pancakes (the special of the day) and a side of perfectly cooked bacon. I'm sure I gained weight just from the aroma. Then back on the road. I decided to top off the gas tank, so I asked Google Maps for a place, selected one, and set off to find it. GMaps took me down the highway heading west for about four miles, then directed me to make a U-turn. Huh? Okay.... Went back east on the highway and found the gas station, next door to the restuarant where I'd had breakfast. 

 Technology.

 So my next stop was at a place called the Devil's Punchbowl. I followed GMaps west until it took me up into the mountains north of the city. Sixteen miles uphill behind a slow truck. Then GMaps directed me to make a U-turn and directed me sixteen miles back the way I'd come. I kid you not.

 As I said: technology. 

 The road I pointlessly went up into the mountains on is one that passes by a cement plant. That cement plant was built by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water Authority in the 1920s in order to provide concrete for the construction of the famous aqueducts planned by William Mulholland (of Mulholland Drive fame) for the theft of all the water in the Central Valley of California. It's a famous episode replete with corruption and self-dealing, and as it happens I was listening to an audiobook about that very subject the last time I passed that way, on the Stained Glass Trip a few years ago.

 This trip, I'm listening to podcasts (because I'm out of audiobooks). I've been listening to Empire, a series Sherry got us started with on our Condo Trip last month. I've finished all the episodes about India and Pakistan and am now mostly done with the Ottoman Empire. The podcast is presented by two very accomplished historians: a Punjabi woman named Anita something who lives in London and an Englishman named William (his last name is either Drimple or deRimple or Dalrymple, depending on what day it is, I guess) who lives in India and seems to be related to everybody who ever did anything imperial in British history. Anita wants us to believe she's shocked -- shocked, I say -- by all the nonstandard sex around the world, but she can't help raising the question every time there's an opening. And there's always an opening. They both have posh-sounding English accents that are very easy to understand; most of their guest presenters are easy to understand, too, except for one guy who is an authority on Gandhi. He's either Indian or Pakistani, I believe, and it sounded like he was standing in a cave and chewing on licorice while speaking in a heavy South Asian accent. I gave up on that episode.

 But most of the time it's a hoot, listening to erudite scholars talk so enthusiastically about things that I, at best, knew only a bare minimum about. Most of what they discuss, I had no idea about before, so it's fascinating stuff. (I also listened to five episodes out of order about the United States' founding fathers. I did not find those five episodes as interesting, partly because I already knew most of it better than the two of them seemed to, and partly because they seemed to want to focus entirely on sex and slavery, especially where those two subjects intersect.) Anyway, I heartily recommend the podcast series to anyone who's interested in history other than US history.

The Devil's Punchbowl

 I finally reached the Los Angeles County Park called the Devil's Punchbowl. It features an interesting sandstone outcropping lying in a small valley. I started to walk down but I didn't relish the prospect of walking back up in the heat, so I just took some pictures and went to the park office, where they have specimens of some of the local fauna and flora. Nearby is a small altar or a big bench built of rocks, and on the side of it there are two round light-coloured stones. Each one had a bronze lizard on it. At first I thought they were actually bronze lizard statues placed there for decoration, but when I shook my phone to turn on the camera they both took off. I managed to get a picture of one.

 From there I went to check out two musical roads. 

 Here's the story, as I understand it from several sources: Some years ago, Honda wanted to do a car commercial wherein their car drives along and the road noise plays a familiar tune. They hired somebody to cut grooves in a public road in Lancaster, California, and shot their commercial. They left the grooved road behind. It attracted people from all over, excited to drive down this road in a residential area of town and listen to the 30 seconds of familiar music. People who lived there got pissed at all the traffic zipping up and down their road, so the city paved over it. Then other people started complaining because they wanted the experience. So the city contacted somebody who'd been involved in setting up the original musical road for instructions, and hired somebody to put it back in, but in a more remote area of the same road -- way out on the way to the little-used airport.

 Sadly, the person cutting the second set of grooves didn't quite understand the instructions, and as a result, the grooves are not quite correctly spaced. Here's what it sounds like now (the music starts at about 19 seconds in; sorry about that):

 So this musical and technical failure so exorcised a local citizen that he decided to show the City of Lancaster how it's done, and he got permission from the neighbouring city of Palmdale to cut grooves into one of their roadways (though he only did a narrow strip along the road edge; much cheaper that way). It sounds like this (I missed the first few notes, but the music starts at about 8 seconds):

 So there.

 My last stop before braving the permanent rush-hour traffic of Los Angeles was Vasquez Rocks, a famous film shooting site. In the visitor's center there were posters for a number of films that had been shot out there, but I was only interested in the spot used in the Star Trek original-series episode called "Arena," where a busybody race called the Metrons force Captain Kirk to fight the unnamed captain of the Gorn spaceship that the Enterprise has been pursuing through Metron space. It was also the site where Sheldon, Leonard, Raj and Howard were humiliated in The Big Bang Theory while photographing themselves in Star Trek costumes. 

 Turns out the two episodes were shot at a place called The Famous Rocks. How apt.

The Famous Vasquez Rocks

 I drove into LA from there, top down. As I crested the mountain by the Getty Center on Interstate 5 I was hit by a wave of cool air. I just that moment, the outside temperature dropped from about 90 to 75. Sweet.

 So now I'm settled into an inexpensive motel in Lawndale, ready to head out to LAX in the morning.

On Pronouns

I saw this on a weird web site called Imgur that I look at most days. I'm not really sure what it is but people post all kinds of odd stuff.

 

 I've got no problem calling people by the names they choose; personally, I chose "God" but nobody will call me that, except sarcastically. But people, including me, don't get to pick the pronouns I use for them. I go by my own set of rules. Here they are in draft form:

1. Men are "he/him" and women are "she/her".

2. Flaming queens are still "he/him"; dykes are still "she/her".

3. Men who look like women and act like women are "she/her" unless it's just something they did for a Halloween party or a Krewe Ball. Women who look like men and act like men are "he/him" unless it's just a direct-action political protest or something like that.

4. There are no "they/them" individuals. For anyone who insists they're not binary -- whatever the fuck they mean by that (and I suspect they don't really know but just want to shock) -- the only alternative to "he/him" or "she/her" is "it/its". Don't like it? Tough. That's the way the language works. Deal with it.

LA Trip reprise, continued

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This is the second post in a series; third if you count the prologue. You really should read them in order, so click on this link for the Prologue or on this link for Part One. And if you want to see all the pictures from this trip, click here.

 

 Day 3: Sunday, June 9

 I got an early start this morning; I was out of my hotel before sunrise, though it was already light. There was a lot more cloud cover than I was hoping for as I drove to the Point of the Mountain, a viewpoint in the White Mountains south of Springerville. There was a small herd of cattle in the road just as I got there, and I thought they weren't going to let me through, but I crept forward slowly and they finally, after much consultation and a motion to table from one of the two donkeys in the group, they moved aside. 

view from the Point of the Mountain

 I can't say the view from there was worth the twenty-mile drive.

 I had plugged today's entire drive into Google Maps last night. This morning it was gone, so I had to do it again. I remembered all but one of the stops, so it didn't take long to re-do. But it was mad at me for some reason this morning, and she wouldn't talk to me until after lunch. 

 From the Point of the Mountain I drove to Show Low, where I had a not-very-memorable breakfast at a cafe called Monica's or Monique's or something like that. Then it was on to the Mogollon Rim.

 Ever since I started working out a route for the Stained Glass trip a few years ago, I've been curious about this Mogollon Rim. From a number of descriptions of it that I've read and stored in memory then and more recently, I had built it up in my mind into a super-dramatic spot of incredible scenic beauty. Now that I've seen it, I suppose it's inevitable that I feel disappointed.

Mogollon Rim from the Visitors Center

 The Mogollon Rim is the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau, that vast high area of red rock that hosts many of the most incredible scenery we have in this country: the Grand Canyon, Vermilion Cliffs, Black Canyon, Arches, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Natural Bridge, and more. It is the place where all that ends, suddenly, and I expected from the descriptions I'd seen that the transition would be sudden and dramatic. I expected high red cliffs, or something. I don't know.

 It's pretty, but it's not really all that dramatic. There's a road off the highway that runs along the edge of the Rim -- Rim Drive, it's called, for obscure reasons. Along that road are several overlooks. I stopped at two of them: Military Sinkhole, and Woods Canyon. At the first, I took a short nap in the car as I was feeling fatigued and it was plenty cool enough to be comfortable. When I got there I was alone in the small parking lot, but within a few minutes there was a flash mob of motorcyclists and camping trailers milling around. I had better luck at the second stop. It showed as closed on Google Maps (it wasn't) so maybe that's why no one else was stopping. I snapped a few pictures at each location and then went to the Mogollon Rim Visitors Center across the highway, which is very much a spot for small children. So I didn't stay long.

 Next up the highway was Tonto Natural Bridge State Park. It features two waterfalls and one unusual natural bridge. The first waterfall was at the end of a short trail, a tenth of a mile each way, except that it was stairs the entire way, just about; roughly two hundred feet down, two hundred feet back up. I decided to try it anyway. I got to the first turn in the trail, where the steps were so steep I wasn't sure I'd be able to get down them, let alone back up. I stood there for a while thinking about Teotihuacán and the Pyramid of the Sun, but in the end I decided I wouldn't be able to make that climb, down or up. It's a shame, because I saw a picture of the waterfall and it looks gorgeous. (On the other hand, from the top of the trail I could hear the chattering of dozens of children down below, so maybe I wouldn't have found the waterfall all that pleasant.)

 So I moved on to the far end of the park, where there were four viewing platforms constructed on either side of the narrow box canyon. At the top end of it, there's a waterfall, where a spring-fed stream drops two hundred feet into the little creek. The ground under the waterfall is all eroded away, and I thought that was the bridge the park is named for. But at the last viewing platform I went to (Viewpoint Number 1) I found a good view of the bridge. It was pretty stunning. You can't tell how big it is from the pictures I took until you notice the two people by the creek at the bottom. Here's a hint: one of them is wearing a red shirt.

 My day took a turn for the worse after that. My next stop, Fort Verde State Park in Camp Verde, turned out to be crap; the next stop after that, also in Camp Verde -- the World's Largest Kokopelli -- turned out to be just the sign for a strip shopping center and not all that impressive. Google Maps took me past it three times before I noticed it. So I decided to just move on. I went a short distance up Interstate 17 (which was not on the route I had laid out) to a rest area where I looked at what my route included from that point, and I decided to skip the rest of it and just head for Havasu, figuring to arrive around 6pm. Then I decided to take a more scenic route, which would add an hour to the trip but still get me to the Totem house before dark.

 Google Maps took me south on I-17. After a short distance, it had me exit the freeway, then cross over, go through the first roundabout, do a 360 at the second, recross the freeway and get back on, heading in the same direction. Why? Why does it do this? Then, as I drove along my route through the scenic areas of Arizona around Sedona, it made some kind of electronic noise. I looked at my phone, but of course I can't actually read what it says through my tri-focal lenses without picking it up and holding it in front of my face. In trying to do this I apparently consented to the "faster route we found", and the next thing I know I'm getting on Interstate 40. I gave up at that point and just went with it. I did stop for a very late lunch (4pm) at the Roadkill 66 Cafe, where the food is so-so and the staff, though pleasant, is unable to operate their cash register. I got tired of waiting for an itemized receipt and just left. I'm not proud of under-tipping the waitress, but by that point I was pissed that not only do they charge 4% for credit card use, but they charge tax on that 4%. I'd paid cash, but I wanted to see how the amount was calculated because I know they did it wrong; I know how much it should have been and how much my change should have been, and I know how much I got back in change, and that ended up being the waitress's entire tip. I'm sure she wasn't happy with it, so we're even.

 So. Now I'm at the house in Havasu. I will be here tomorrow and Tuesday, and on Wednesday I'll leave for LA so that I can be there early enough to meet the Hankmeister at the airport on Thursday morning. There will be nothing to report between now and then. I plan to make a circuit of Carly's island tomorrow morning and again Tuesday morning before it gets too hot; maybe more than one. And I might go see if my favourite restuarant in town has reopened after the kitchen fire a while back. And maybe I'll get a video or two from the library, so that I'll have something to do here. Maybe Curtis will be able to meet up for lunch, which will involve a trip to either Laughlin or Las Vegas, but I"m not counting on it. And maybe I'll do laundry before I head to the Big City.

LA Trip reprise, sort of

 Day 1: Friday, June 7

 So the trip started not so well. I pulled up the email I'd sent myself of the route to take from San Antonio to Carlsbad and loaded the trip on Google Maps ... and it wouldn't run. I sat in my driveway for like 15 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong, then finally decided to continue my quest over breakfast, as it was already close to 9am. Drove up to my favourite taquería on Hildebrand, and it started just as it should have in my driveway. So problem solved.

 Google Maps had offered me three routes heading out of town. I selected the eco-friendliest route (because it involved the least time of freeways), but by the time I got on I-10 (a distance of maybe 8 blocks) it had reverted to the route that took me up the freeway all the way to Boerne. I took the route I'd planned anyway, through Helotes. Started my first audiobook, a Jeffrey Archer novel from 2019 called Nothing Ventured, and after maybe three minutes I was pretty sure I'd listened to this book before. 

 One of the nice things about me and audiobooks (or regular books, for that matter) is that while I will recognize a book on hearing it, I won't remember what happens in it until it happens. When it comes to fiction, I have the memory of a goldfish. And the nice thing about Jeffrey Archer is that his books are basically long concatenations of small dramatic occurrences, each one as insignificant as the one before, that add up to an entertaining though not very gripping story. This one concerns a top lawyer's son who decides to become a policeman, and how he gets to realize his dreams. By my recollection, there's a happy ending involving some paintings caught up in a divorce and a man wrongly convicted of murder, but who cares? It's just a trivial story to pass the hours and the miles. 

 I had forgotten how beautiful the road is from Vanderpool to Camp Wood. The two-lane highway is carved into the sides of fairly steep hills, with lots of winding 20mph curves and signs warning you about how many motorcyclists have been killed there lately. Fortunately at that point I still had the top down, but by the time I got to about Rocksprings it was hot enough to put it back up. 

 I was on Texas Hwy 55, heading for Rocksprings when I pulled off to raise the top and meanwhile delete the next stop on the Google Maps route (because I'd already gotten that far) but the app was unresponsive. After trying a number of times to continue the navigation, I realized it wasn't responding because I didn't have a signal. So I just closed it. A little while later, in Sonora, I tried to turn it on again, but once again it wouldn't start. Damn it! So I pulled into a DQ for lunch (a single hamburger, water, no fries -- going to try to come home a little lighter than I left) and the app was working perfectly again.

 So my understanding is that Google Maps will only start working when you're at a restaurant. 

 After Sonora it was freeway all the way to Fort Stockton, then arrow-straight highway into Carlsbad, where I am now, in a slightly déclassé Super 8 motel. I went down the road (this town really only has three, like a Mercedes star) for dinner to a place that I couldn't find despite Google Maps insistence that it was right there, on the right, so I went to a different place, one that I could actually see. It wasn't bad. I'm not wild about the seasonings used in Mexican food in New Mexico, so I ordered enchiladas verdes. The chicken in the enchiladas was a little dry and the refritos were infested with the unpleasant seasonings of the local area, but the rice was good and I left reasonably satisfied. The odious practice of adding a charge for credit cards has hit this area, I saw. The charge was about 4% of the bill, which is more than my cashback reward, so I paid cash, confident that I can find an ATM in Arizona and California much easier than I could in North Carolina. I already know where they are.

 There's not a lot to see along the way through New Mexico tomorrow. My first stop is a waterfall, about an hour out of my way, but I have plenty of time. I'm tempted to stop at the Living Desert Zoo here in Carlsbad; Sherry and I went there some years ago, and all I remember about it is that it was small and I petted a raven. But it opens at eight and if I spend an hour there, it'll be ten before I get to the waterfall, and I'd kind of like to see it when it's still cool enough to enjoy. (It was 108 when I checked into my hotel here this afternoon.)

 The route I have laid out for tomorrow is a little over 9 hours of driving, to a place called Springerville, Arizona, and the thing that concerns me about it is that, in the long stretch of highway leading to that town, there's not another motel for like 100 miles. So even though I don't really want to drive that long, there's really no alternative. So I booked a hotel there for tomorrow night.

 I yearn for the old days, when I could just pull into a town and find a decent hotel without a reservation. But there are too many other people out on the roads these days, so I've learned I either have to stop early, like by 6pm, or make a reservation. Why can't these people stay home!

 Two other things worth mentioning. First, after living for half a century and more in Texas, this morning I saw my first diamondback rattlesnake in the wild. It was on the edge of the road, and while I didn't get a great look at it, I could see it was clearly a rattler. So I can check that off my bucket list. (I saw a huge tarantula crossing the road, too, but I'd seen those before.) Second, I got a chip in my windshield this afternoon, right in front of the driver's seat, at eye level. I called to see about getting it fixed right away, because I don't want a crack to form in that part of the windshield. (The other side, who cares? I have a crack there already, caused when the windshield got chipped at the very bottom edge and I couldn't find it, so I thought it wasn't chipped, until the crack started across the bottom of the windshield. Drove my friend Marty crazy.) So the insurance guy tells me that, if it's right in the driver's line of sight I might want to get the windshield replaced instead of repaired, because the repair would still be visible and it will drive me nuts having to see it all the time. So long story short, when I get back to San Antonio I have an appointment to get a new windshield. 

 No pictures today. As pretty as that road is out of Vanderpool, it's not photogenic ... though I came close to stopping for pictures anyway. But no. 

 Day 2: Saturday, June 8

 The first order of business this morning was coffee. Ordinarily I'd have a cup at the hotel before moving on to more promising sources, but last night's overpriced hotel didn't even offer that amenity. Luckily there was an Allsop's convenience store along the early part of my route, and one with surprisingly good coffee. Should've gotten the larger size, but one can never tell, can one?

 And of course Google Maps presented me with issues; several times during the day, in fact. Once again, the restaurant curse held, as did the lack of a signal in a number of places, including one intersection where I literally had no clue which way to go. I should have gotten out the road atlas my nephew gave me for Christmas year before last, but instead I flipped a mental coin and headed off. (The atlas did come out later, when another gap in cell coverage left me in the Google Maps lurch.) 

 Surprisingly, even before Google Maps caused me problems, RoadTrippers failed me. Once again, it does not recognize my premium subscription, and this trip no longer appears on my profile. I emailed the sons of bitches about it, but it's Saturday and I don't expect to get help before Monday. This is a serious enough failing that I am considering abandoning the app altogether. (News break: this evening the trip was back on my profile and everything seems to be working fine.)

 The road to Sitting Bull Falls was paved all the way, except for a single stretch of about fifteen yards in the middle where it looked like the pavement had been taken up and then the resurfacing project forgotten about. I would say that was no big deal, except that one feature of the lacuna was a fairly sharp drop-off at the beginning, which caused some kind of connection in the car to come loose. My dashboard began flashing the message "Check rear lights. Cruise not available." I did check the rear lights -- taillights and turn signals; I have no way to check the brake lights by myself -- and found no problem. The cruise control, I found, didn't work. 

 I rebooted the system by turning it off and turning it back on, and everything was fine, though later the problem recurred. Since I didn't need cruise control I wasn't too concerned, and indeed later another reboot resolved the issue again. Still later I used the cruise control without problem, though the message did return briefly near the end of the day. I don't know if this is really a problem I need to worry about or not. Maybe while I'm in LA I can remember to have Hank take a look at the brake lights for me; that's really all I'm worried about.

Sitting Bull Falls

 Sitting Bull Falls is a very pretty place. It's not a gushing torrent by any means, certainly not at this time of year. It's just a pleasant trickle of water down a long steep cliff, with lush vegetation at the top where water seeps through myriad channels before dropping into a pond, and flowing from there down through a canyon, eventually to join the often-pathetic Pecos River near the Texas state line. It took me nearly an hour to get there, and I spent perhaps fifteen minutes at the falls, which are concealed behind a mesa just a two-minute stroll from the parking area. It's the only thing there is to see in New Mexico other than things I've already seen. But the only place in the state I really want to go back to is White Sands. I saw it in the distance this morning after cresting the Sacramento Mountains at Cloudcroft, and gave some halfway-serious thought to changing my plans and going there. But it was really too late in the day by then. White Sands really cries out to be visited when the sun is low in the sky.

 (Later in the day I drove through the Very Large Array, a bunch of radio-telescope dishes spread across the middle of the state for several miles. I'd been there with my friend Rick, on the Voyage of Discovery Trip many years ago. It was one of the lesser sights we saw on that occasion and is no more impressive now, though it now boasts a Visitor's Center just off the highway. That seems a genuine waste of government resources, as there's nothing about the VLA that couldn't be served by a nice big sign.)

 Because I hadn't been hungry when I left the hotel this morning, I didn't have breakfast before going to the falls. And it was an even longer drive, an hour and a half, from the falls to the first decent restaurant ... which turned out to be a place called Alma's, in Artesia, New Mexico. I ordered a green chili burrito, but it was nowhere near as good as the ones Sherry and I always get at Sierra Blanca, near Raton, on almost every trip to Colorado. 

 By the time breakfast was over it was about 11AM, and the heat was building. But I left the top down because, even though it was in excess of 94 degrees (which is my theoretical breaking point), it was a dry heat, and still reasonably comfortable. Before it got beyond 97, I was climbing up into the Sacramentos, and the temperature started dropping. I hit a rainshower along the way, by which time the temperature had dropped to 61, and I should have been cold (top still down, despite the rain), but I wasn't. By the time I stopped for a bathroom break in Cloudcroft, I was dry again. 

 The top stayed down most of the day, but eventually I gave in. Still later, having climbed into the high plateaus of western New Mexico, it came back down, and it was glorious. I'm going to miss this car.

 I've had two people compliment me on the car so far on this trip. The first, yesterday, was a near-toothless middle-aged woman in a beat-up pickup truck, whose clothing suggested she had never actually seen a Wal-Mart, so I wasn't too impressed by her appreciation of its beauty and grace. The second occurred today, while gassing up at another Allsup's. This time the compliment came from a man of my generation. He asked about the marque's reputation and I told him what I thought of it (without using the standard line, "Prettiest car you'll ever see broken down at the side of the road"). That prompted the information that he was an engineer himself, and so he had to tell me the story of his meeting with the guy who developed Beta video tech for Sony back in whatever decade that happened. I wanted to tell him the story about the airship de-icing mechanism, but it was too hot at that point to stand out in the heat swapping tales. 

 So. Tonight I'm going to actually load my planned journey for tomorrow onto Google Maps de novo, in the hope that it will work correctly without having to go to a restaurant. (I'm in Springerville, Arizona, in an off-brand motel called Travel Inn. Much nicer than last night's Super 8, and much cheaper. And dinner, at a local restaurant called Safire, was a house salad and one cheese enchilada covered with green chili sauce almost as good as at Sierra Blanca. I may go back for breakfast, except they don't open until 7 and I hope to be long gone by then.)

 Oh, and a P.S.: I finished the Jeffrey Archer book, and am reminded of why I don't listen to his stuff anymore. He uses a lot of courtroom scenes, and they are so dismally superficial that I find it more trying that watching an episode of Matlock. The two trials that feature in this particular book were both so ridiculously superficial in presentation (for dramatic effect, but to excess) that it was unbearable for me in the end.

 On the other hand, I've started listening to a book called Unruly, about the kings and queens of England. It's written and performed by an English comedian with an interest in history, so it's very funny (to me, anyway; I love the British wit). Sherry would love it, too. I should tell her. But maybe she'll read it here.