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.

Second Attempt: the trip to Los Angeles; Prologue

 The last time I was in Los Angeles was in August 2021. Was the pandemic still going on then? I don't remember. Anyway, I had gone to see a museum exhibit on stained glass, and to get there I had plotted out a route that would get me all the way to Los Angeles from San Antonio with only two hours of freeway driving, the unavoidable passage through the West Texas wasteland from Sonora to Fort Stockton. 

 Well. If you've read the blog posts from that trip, you may remember that, while it was a good trip overall, certain things prevented me from taking my intended route; three things, in particular. (You probably didn't read them, and if you did you probably don't remember. That's OK; I really only write for myself.) First, I had no cell service in the area west of San Antonio, so I couldn't access the route-plan on my phone; and I had also neglected to bring along paper maps. I couldn't remember the route I'd laid out several weeks before, so ended up getting to the freeway in Junction, Texas -- normally a two-hour trip from San Antonio -- in just about four hours. And that was just the first hurdle.

 Second, the roof-raising mechanism on my convertible broke in the middle of nowhere, at that time located in west-central New Mexico, near the Arizona state line. That eventuality meant I had to abandon the middle portion of my planned route, and instead go into Phoenix for repairs...which proved to be unavailable. But the shop there at least got the back windows up and deactivated them. So the top stayed up from that point on, until I got the repairs done after returning home. (It's just now, as I'm writing this, that it occurs to me: would the top have gone down without the back windows going down first? I don't know; I never tried.) Anyway, having the top up for the entire trip kind of negated the whole point of having a de luxe touring convertible.

 Third, Google Maps stopped talking to me. I had not realized this until I found myself on a freeway entrance somewhere in Los Angeles County. That was when I realized I wasn't on the route I'd so carefully planned out. Now, I have had many issues with Google Maps, despite it still being (far as I can see) the best navigational aid available. It used to tell me the names of streets to turn on, and the names and numbers of freeway exits. Then it lapsed unbidden into Brit-speak, and would say things like "take the slip-road on the left." Then it stopped speaking altogether, as during my last trip to LA. 

 We're on speaking terms again, Google Maps and I, but it's of a strained and limited variety: now it'll just say, "In two miles, take the interchange on the right." Usually that's adequate, but when, as occasionally happens, there are two possible turning points in very close proximity, I never know which to take. It has never worked out well.  At the worst point, it not only stopped speaking altogether, it stopped moving the map to show my position. Ask me about Dayton. Thank goodness that didn't last long! (I noticed that, when we were using my sister in law's version of Google Maps in North Carolina last month, street names abounded.)

 In the case of the Stained Glass Trip, I ended up trying to wing it; I got off the accidental freeway, selected a destination that I knew was along the intended route, and asked for directions. It gave me what I wanted, but it wouldn't say anything. I would have to look at the phone to see if I was going the right way. If I missed a turn, I got a little electronic noise, but as someone who wears trifocals, I can't actually see my phone in the car unless I hold it in front of my face. You will agree that this is not the best way to drive, especiallly in an unfamiliar area.

 Since that trip, I've figured out that if the phone is connected to the car radio by bluetooth, Google Maps won't say anything unless the radio is on. As long as I remember to turn it on, I should get some instructions from the program, even if I still don't get the names of streets. I've also made sure to have a paper map in the car this time, and I've highlighted the route through the Hill Country. I've also laid out the route on Google Maps on my computer and sent it to my phone. Twice. I hope at least one of these things works. Because I'm leaving again for Los Angeles soon, and I'm going to try basically the same route, with a few changes: adding a waterfall in New Mexico, dropping a couple of places in New Mexico and Arizona that, I've since learned, are just fire watchtowers in the national forests. (From their descriptions on RoadTrippers, they sounded like scenic viewpoints.) And since I left off the places along the old route that I actually went to on that trip, I could change the route enough to (a) stop over in Havasu, where we have a house I can stay in, and (2) add a whole bunch of potential places I probably won't go to and a few I probably will (like the out-of-tune singing road in Lancaster, California).

 So fingers crossed! Will the car function within acceptable parameters? Will the weather cooperate? Will any of the sites I've picked out on my route prove at all worth seeing? Will I be attacked by a bear, or a mountain lion, or a MAGA Republican? 

 I'm meeting my friend the Hankmeister in LA; he flies in on the Thursday after I leave for LA, so I have six days to get from here to there. Since San Antonio-to-Los Angeles is normally a long two-day trip or an easy three-day trip, I have the luxury of no real constraints on my wandering. (I suspect this is proving a little irritating to my sister-in-law, who has to deal with the caretaker of the house in Havasu; but she's being flexible.) That is the best way to wander, the way I always try to plan, but seldom actually get to do. May this time be different!

 When the Hankmeister flies home on Sunday, I'll go back to Havasu that night. At least, that's the plan. It's a 5-hour drive and he doesn't have to be at the airport until about 4:30 in the afternoon, so I may be driving late into the night. I don't like that thought, but one does what one must.

Just Wondering...

media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads

I've seen a number of reports yesterday and today that nine of the witnesses who testified for ex-President Trump in his criminal trial in New York got major financial rewards from him, his campaign, or his company. I don't know that this is true, though it's being reported as factual; the information apparantly was contained in some report prepared by someone and released after the trial concluded. 

 I just have to wonder, if it is true, why did the prosecution not bring these facts out when these people testified? Seems like Law School 101 to me.

 Just a thought. I could be wrong.

Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 5

 

 This is the fifth part of the posts about this year's condo trip. 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 year's trip.

All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions.

Part Five: Condo Week (cont'd)

Thursday, May 23

  Our Thursday began with a bang as Sherry returned from her morning run and announced that she had encountered a bear and was not going to run here any more.

 She had been heading downhill toward the golf course when she saw a black bear loping uphill towards her in the grass beside the street. She stopped and slowly side-stepped her way to the far curb and kept a close eye on the critter until it was well past her and out of sight. She says she thought about heading back to the condo right then, but since the bear had gone in that direction, she decided to continue her run and hope that, by the time she came back, the bear would be gone. (And if it wasn't, she'd call for a ride.) Luckily, she didn't see the bear again and got home intact. 

 She was sure that what she saw actually was a bear, and not just a large beaver.

The Blue Ridge (photo by Sherry)

I decided I don't care if the dog's a slob.

 Once the excitement had died down -- it took a while; we had to have the whole thing explained to us several times before we could truly grasp it -- we got ourselves together to do some more exploring, this time along the Blue Ridge Parkway, a Depression-era government boondoggle that has left this nation with one of the great roads of the modern world; the kind of boondoggle that maybe we could use more of. We headed a short distance west on Interstate 40 -- a much more expensive and practical expenditure of government funds -- and picked up the Parkway, very close to the Southern Highland Craft Guild Folk Art Center that we'd visited the other day. I stopped in to buy the small blue oval bowl by Amanda Taylor that I'd noticed on that first visit, and ended up buying both it and a companion piece, a slightly taller, equally beautiful round bowl with the same pattern. 

the peak by the road

 From there, we drove a few miles -- maybe fifteen? -- north on the Parkway to a place called Craggy Gardens Visitor's Center. We weren't sure what this place was supposed to be; I'd assumed it was another craft display centered on botanical pursuits. It wasn't. It's just a visitor's center with the usual tourist paraphernalia: magnets, t-shirts, toys, games, souvenirs, and an attendant who cheerfully offered to answer any question we might have, but was immediately stumped by a question from Nancy about the geography of the region, and just as cheerfully admitted that she only supervised the Parkway shops in the area and was new to North Carolina. 

 The local attractions are two hiking paths, one that goes about a mile and a half to a picnic area we'd just passed, the other that goes about a mile and a quarter to the top of a peak next to the parkway. They have elevation gains of 400 and 500 feet, respectively, so we were not in a frame of mind or physical will to hike either. Well, Sherry might've been; she lives for that kind of exertion. But it would have meant being on her own in bear country. She was not of a mind to do that. We contented ourselves with a few photos of the area, and a bear-themed postcard for Sherry, who still maintains it was not a large beaver she had seen.

 Nancy suggested lunch at Mount Mitchell State Park, which she'd found referenced at the Craggy Gardens Visitor's Center; it was just a few miles farther on, and was supposed to have a nice view of the mountains. It sho-'nuff did. This was North Carolina's first state park, formed around 1915 to preserve the spruce forest that was, at the time, being clear-cut across the state. The restaurant there looks out across the ridges to the west, and the view was especially pretty as the fog rose and fell. The food at the restaurant wasn't at all bad either. I got a reuben and Sherry got an "adult grilled cheese" sandwich and we swapped halves. I couldn't really say which was the better meal. They were served with home-made potato chips, which were interesting but not really all that good. The service was excellent and the prices were pretty good, too, and how could you improve on the ambience of a large native-wood room with floor-to-ceiling windows showing you the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains? Can't be done. The only peculiar thing was the way you place your order with the hostess at the entrance, then find a table, and they bring you your food. Odd; but it seems to work for them.

'40 Buick Century

 From there, we headed back towards Asheville on the Parkway, then turned off just at the northern edge of the town to go to a place called Grovewood Village, a collection of artsy-craftsy things derived from Biltmore Industries, which was a textile company back in the day. Now the old buildings have been turned to other purposes. The one I was interested in is now a car museum, in which I spent the entire time of our visit, looking over their small collection, about 15 cars (mostly GM; the building was a Cadillac dealership in one incarnation) while the others explored, oh, the sculpture garden, the museum of textile crafts, and a mountain-crafts shop. I'd've gone to look at those things but it started raining as I came out of the car museum, so I have to rely on Sherry's pictures. I would have liked to have seen the sculptures, at least.

The Flowering Bridge

 Our last planned stop was the North Carolina Arboretum, on the far side of Asheville. By the time we got there through rush-hour traffic, it was raining pretty steadily, and we decided that we did not in fact wish to wander around in the forest in the rain. So we drove back to our condo, listening to a very interesting podcast called Empire, which so far has been about the history of India since the Moghul Empire's collapse against the East India Company. Once home, we decided to go out for dinner, and after reviewing all the restaurants in the area, we settled on the River Watch, a bar & grill that has live music on certain evenings. (On the way, we stopped at the Flowering Bridge and I took two mediocre pictures, just for this blog.) At the River Watch we got to hear a guy named Dave Irvine, who played a lot of stuff we like: Bob Seeger, Tom Petty, the theme song from Gilligan's Island... All the classics. Unfortunately, we got to the River Watch a little late (mostly because Jeff had gambled that we wouldn't be going back out, and had ... um ... gotten comfortable); the place closes at 8pm every night, because, according to the bartender, by 8:30pm everyone in the area is at home and only the bears are out, rummaging for trash cans. Sherry had a very small house salad, while I had a bacon cheeseburger, which I enjoyed very much. We all appreciated the staff very much, as we were there well past closing time.

 We closed out the evening with a game of hearts at the condo, as our Duraflame log burned in the fireplace. We had all forgotten that Jeff's oxygen machine can't be used around open flame, so he had to take it off and move it away until the game was over. He then went to bed while the rest of us sat watching the fire burn and listening to music on Sherry's phone. I gave up after about half an hour and went to bed myself.

Friday, May 24

 Our only plan for the day was to attend the opening night of the White Squirrel Weekend in Brevard in the evening. We had the whole day until then to just do whatever. We managed to fill the day exploring Rutherford County, and it ended up being a very diverting exploration.

 As you might expect, there is nothing of great interest in a remote backwater area like Rutherford County, North Carolina. There is some pretty scenery, which we have been enjoying all week, and there was some tangential involvement in both the Revolutionary War (revolutionaries hanging their Tory neighbours, and vice-versa) and the Civil War (right at the end, after Lee had surrendered), but nothing of any wider importance occurred. Still, we had nothing else to do, and we had a brochure showing where all these trivial historical markers were. And Sherry found something on line called the Cherry Bounce Tour, which led travellers to the place where locals bought booze during prohibition. The tour seemed to wander at random around the central part of the county, and ended in the middle of nowhere, and it didn't give any particulars about anything we might see along the way, but we weren't really choosy. We threw that into the mix.

 First we went looking for a place to recycle glass and plastic. It was supposedly located at the Bill's Creek Convenience Center, on Bill's Creek Road. That turned out to be an old, dilapidated gas station slowly crumbling away by the side of the road. There was no recycling there. I found a sign directing us to the Bill's Creek Community Center, so we went there thinking maybe we could find someone to direct us to the recycling center. What we found was two suspicious old locals at a dog park. One tried to direct us to some place miles and miles away to the north; the other said there was a place, but it was "only for Bill's Creek residents," and that she would have to call Cindy, whoever that is. We thanked them and left. (In the end, we made a random stop much later in the day at a port-a-potty at the trail head for a hike to the house Carl Sandberg lived in when he was in the area, and there was a recycling bin there. So, Yay!)

The Get-Up Bell Tower

 So we drove first to the county seat, Rutherfordton (pronounced, believe it or not, "RULF-tin") where we stopped for lunch at Maples on Main, a nice little cafe and bakery. From there I walked down to a drug store to use the ATM (after first walking several blocks in the wrong direction), while Sherry found a printed map of the Cherry Bounce Tour at the local newspaper office across the street. It was pretty hard to use. We spent a pleasant afternoon trying to locate roads and historical markers without GPS. Some instructions gave road names, others gave highway numbers, but precious little corresponded to information available on the ground. It became a sort of trial-and-error tour, but we managed to find most of the historical markers: places like the Biggerstaff Hanging Tree (no longer there); Brittain Presbyterian Church; Fort Hampton (no longer there), from the Revolution, where it appears nothing happened at all; Fort McFadden (no longer there), which gave refuge to settlers during attacks by the Cherokee whose land all this area was; and various markers relating to  General Stoneman's Civil War raid. Although we never found the spot where they sold the booze, nor did we ever find out why it's called Cherry Bounce. (I don't know if this is relevant, but there is a locally-produced cherry-flavoured soft drink called Cheerwine....)

 But really the only marker of innate interest was the one for the Get Up Bell, in Cliffside; because it was the only one (other than the perfectly unremarkable Brittain Presbyterian Church) that had some physical evidence of the thing being commemorated. We enjoyed driving more or less aimlessly around the county, but the Get-Up Bell was a genuinely interesting idiosyncracy. It was a large bell, resting alone in a grassy field next to an apparently unrelated memorial tower, that would ring every morning at 5:30 to let the good people of Cliffside, a mill town, know that it was time to get up. An hour later, it'd ring again to tell people to get to the mill; twenty minutes after that was a ten-minute warning, because you didn't want to be late to work. It'd ring again at noon to announce lunch, and again at 12:50 to warn that lunch was nearly over; and then at 6pm when the working day was done. Whatever thoughts you might have about such a régime, we have already thought on your behalf.

the White Squirrel Weekend stage

 By the time we'd made our way to the Get-Up Bell, it was getting kind of late, so we got back on the highway and headed west for the White Squirrel Weekend in Brevard, south of Asheville. The origin of this festival has to do with some albino squirrels that got loose from a circus some time ago. They are, the town claims, all over the place now, though we didn't see any. Doesn't matter; it's really just an excuse for a street fair. They close off a few blocks of Main Street, the vendors come out and musicians perform and everybody comes out to visit with friends and neighbours and eat and drink. It's a very pleasant time. It had poured rain a little before the festival started, but by the time we got there the weather was perfect for being outside. We had a little something unremarkable to eat, and walked up and down the street, and sat and visited with a local woman with a really friendly dog named Astra -- such soft fur! -- and listened to a couple of bands play, and then we drove back to our condo. It was great. 

Coda: The Drive Home

 The drive home was about as uneventful as expected, with three exceptions.

 First, we finished listening to The Ink Black Heart. It ended up lasting us almost to the Texas state line. We both decided who done it before we were out of Alabama, and every new bit of information after that only added to our conviction. As we passed Pumpkin Center, where the old family farms were, one of the minor characters named our suspect as the murderer. That's never a good sign in a murder mystery, but still, it was obvious to both of us that the character was right. The book's detectives had dismissed our suspect -- hell, they never even considered him enough to actually dismiss him -- and no reason for this omission was given, that either of us recalls. In the end, when it turned out not to be our guy, no loose ends were tidied up. He was never explained; none of the many things that made us suspect him was explained. There were no moments of "Oh, I'd forgotten about that" to make us feel sheepish for having suspected him. The upshot is, we still think he done it, and the author got it wrong. 

 Second, I fell asleep at the wheel. This happened once before, crossing the Mojave Desert on Interstate 10 in California. That time the little ruts in the edge of the freeway woke me up after maybe a second or less, and I vowed at that point that I would never drive when I felt that kind of fatigue. Unfortunately, on that occasion, I had been looking for a place to pull off the freeway for many miles, and even after the event it was many miles before there was any safe place to get off. On this occasion I was only a little bit fatigued; it was nowhere near the level that heretofore had concerned me. I was driving in the inside lane, about to pass a semi-trailer. I blinked my eyes or something and in the next moment I had one tire in the truck's lane of travel and the corner of the trailer was less than a yard from the front of my car. Sherry jumped and gasped, and maybe that woke me up, but I really think I was already awake again before she did that. My first thought was not to oversteer in response, because I've seen too many times (on Top Gear and in movies, not in real life) what happens when you do that: you spin out, and end up at the bottom of a cliff on the Pacific Coast Highway (if it's a movie) or turning circles on the tarmac (if it's Top Gear), and in my case I knew immediately that if I moved the wheel too suddenly I'd lose control of the car. So I quickly but smoothly moved back into my lane; the car responded beautifully. And you can bet that at the very first opportunity I got off the freeway and took a nap. 

 This occurrence, quite unreasonably, confirms me in a decision I've made (in consultation with Sherry, whether she knows it or not) that I'm going to give my pretty little Jaguar to a car museum. I had a particular one in mind, but have now changed to another, more appropriate one, and I'm making plans to take it to that museum later this year, after my upcoming trip to Los Angeles. If my calculations are correct, I'll be able to deliver it to its new, hopefully permanent home, before I go to Colorado at the end of July. (That trip will be in the Subaru anyway, for logistical reasons.)

 I say "unreasonably" because, obviously, what I'm driving -- whether it's the Jaguar convertible or the Subaru Forester or any old thing on wheels -- has nothing to do with the event. It only confirms my decision because I think this car, this little XK-8, is just too beautiful to waste. 

 The third thing is, I saw my first real-live Tesla Cybertruck. On the TV commercials it looked silly. In real life it is hideous. It is grotesque. It is minimalist technocrap. It is the opposite of my little convertible. There are no words to describe just how ugly this piece of machinery is. Ugh.