More Adventures

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Some observations from the road so far, again in bullet form, in no particular order…

– When confronted by the previously mentioned duo of Havelinas in the Davis Mountains State Park, I did the very manly thing by shouting, “whoa, bigpig bigpig bigpig bigdamnpig,” thereby waking up the entire campground with my manliness. Yeah, I’m cool like that.

– When I was leaving town I pulled into Wendy’s to get some much needed sustenance. At the pay window the cashier as me if I’d like to make a donation to a children’s diabetes fund ( keep in mind I’m paying for a fried-chicken sandwich here) and receive a coupon for four free frosty’s. It’s so ironic you almost have to admire the marketing genius behind it.

– Trelingua is what happens when the hippies take over. It’s not a bad thing, but you can’t help but chuckle at the existence of Trelingua and then Trelingua Ghost town 2 miles down the road, with various organic grocers, and funky diners in between. Urban planners everywhere are inexplicably twitching.

– I rode the rim trail in Cloudcroft today, one of the countries top ten singletracks ( I read that somewhere, don’t ask me where). Awesome trail, beautiful views, wicked fast down hills, gut busting climbs – I would like thank the US forest service for this trail. What I will not be extending them gratitude for is the maps of said trail which suck suck suck suck suck. Wow. I had no idea where the hell I was for about the last 1/3 of the ride. Thanks Ranger Bob.

– Thank you Texas DPS Patrolman DelaCruz for just slapping me with a warning. I drove 80, in the right lane the rest of the way (until I got to New Mexico at least).

– Riding a bike at 9000 feet is interesting because apparently there’s no damn air up here. Makes simple things like shifting, braking and not dying a tad bit more challenging.

– The Hotel Subaru has many fine accommodations, but electricity is not one of them. I seem to be doing fine without, but I’m at this idyllic campground outside Cloudcroft, and yet it sounds like I’m in the pit at NASCAR, with all these people running their generators. What are they doing in those trailers that this could possibly be necessary? I’ll be dishing out some payback tomorrow morning when I fire up my campstove, which has the same decibel lever (and heat output) of a solid-fuel rocket off the space shuttle.

– When I hiked the south rim in Big Bend nine years, we had a great view for about 10 minutes, and then a massive cold front blew in, effectively making it like hiking in cloud. This time the front was already there when I showed up, yet again making it kind of like hiking in a cloud. At least god’s sense of humor is consistent.

– It may be a sign that it’s been just you and the bike for too long on this trip, when you strap the hydration pack to the back of the drivers seat, and forgo meals in favor of a shot of gu. That’s some hard core driving.

More photos are up at the flickr 2007 roadtrip set.

Road Trip – Texas

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I’m catapulting through parabolic curves of limestone, down a strip of asphalt that some madmen, still a bit full of themselves after defeating the Axis powers, had the audacity punch out through west Texas. Most interstates are a full-frontal, sensory assault, gobbling up the landscape, demanding your attention. Not this one. Four lanes of traffic are no match for the giant blue dome of sky overhead, views to the horizons in all directions and hundreds of miles without significant human settlement always wins. And as I rocket down the road (literally making Millennium Falcon noises when I pass people, wishing one of my friends was there so I could shout ‘punch it chewie’ and get the appropriate wookie response), watching the landscape kick the highways ass – life is alright.

Basin
Now I’m sitting on rock, still warm form the heat of the day, in the middle of the Chisos Basin, looking down the window trail out into Mexico, writing. In a few, I’ll shut this down go crawl into my sleeping bag and tear into the new Harry Potter.

Davis Mountains
The Davis Mountains are cool, and the state park by the same name is quite beautiful. I’m sitting here, the big dipper rising on my left, watching my little fire merrily vents British-thermal-units into space, as the desert does regularly scheduled evening temperature nosedive. I’d actually be glad for the fire even if it was blazing hot, because this evening as I’ve been cooking dinner and writing, I’ve run into two skunks, and a pissed off looking duo of havleinas. Fortunately for some reason, I decided to bring my bike light, which spits out enough photons to make Enterprise’s ordnance of choice look like a sparkler, and is also useful in scarring off angry pigs (I swear to god one of them almost charged me. Scary). For those kinds of trips if you’ve never tried bike seat amazon, here https://www.amazon.com/Bikeroo-Oversized-Comfort-Comfortable-Replacement/dp/B07B646ZZY/ are four advantages of leather bike saddles.

Today I did kind of a random driving tour of the Big Bend – Trelignua ( with a short, but pretty ride), Alpine, Marfa and finally Ft. Davis. This part of the state is a time warp to what the America of the late 40’s- early 50’d must’ve been. Stretches of two-lane highway, plunge across great swathes of open country, interspersed by highway rest-stops and funky diners and hotels. Then came McDonald’s and the interstates. How sad is that.

Send off

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In typical fashion the night before I leave for a two-week road trip I haven’t packed a goddamn thing. And on cue, there is some hive-mind decision that we need to go out. Normally I would defer, but we had large chunk of folks participating and similar to the Beatles being awesome, but bombing on solo careers, when this group reaches critical mass, good times tend to ensue (we still had some crucial folks missing). A few tidbits, in bullet form –

– Heather got girls to come talk to us simply by asking them – ‘ hey do you want to get in our zombie plan ?’ (more on that later)

– Rob Points out loudly that one dude, in a group we are quasi-associated with has on ‘Sal mahn – colored pants.’ One of his friends, who could snap all-off us in half with his pinky, while using his other arm to do curls with my station wagon, calmly turns to us and says – ‘ I believe it’s pronounced sa-mon.’ As rob observed- this ones got rains and brawn

– The laws of physics dictate, that one somebody manages to pull off looking good in plaid pants, shorts, or any other type of lower sub equatorial garment they are probably a certifiable badass. To prove this theory we spent half the evening, trying to get our waitress ( who was pretty close to basass status, regarding the whole plaid thing) to punch rob in the back of the head. Why ? I’m not sure, but I think it would have proven her badass status undeniably. And it was funny.

– There was a post-last-call run to taco cabana. Taco cabana at 3 a.m. is a different thing from taco cabana the rest of the day. Essentially you get whatever they have handy at the moment, no matter what you ordered, and by-god you’re going to be happy about it because you’re getting cheap Mexican food at an ungodly hour of the morning. So who cares if you ordered tacos, and got 17 sides of guacaomle, after waiting in line for twenty minutes – as 90% of the clientele is drunk at this point, they can get away with it.

– Transformers – As we slowly roll into action the morning after, Uncle Rob suggests that we go see transformers. Heather who is an un-disclosable number of years younger than us, says, ‘ok, but I really don’t understand what a transformer is’

Rob who, actually named one of his computers Unicron, looks like he’s suffered a stroke, massive internal bleeding and a wisdom teeth removal simultaneously.

Suddenly, we are Old.

Starbucks, Again

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There’s a certain coffee shop mythos that not everyone gets. It’s a combination of a small, dusty space, warn-out sofas, roasted-coffee smell and barristas that have a slightly superior, sometimes even mildly pissy attitude. This mythos is something that the folks at starbucks have ceased to comprehend as they became the obese corporate behemoth that they are today. Case in point –

So one day I go in to the same Starbucks where I order the SAME THING at the SAME TIME every day, 365 days a year, and the girl, who knows what I want, asks me what I want.

Me: Large coffee please.
Girl: You mean Venti.
Me: Whatever.
Girl: I’m not making it until you you say it right.
Me.: Are you kidding?
Girl: No, seriously, it’s called a venti. We don’t even have large.
Me. Well, you obviously know what I want.
Girl: Still, I can’t give it to you unless you order it right.
Me: You can’t, or you won’t?
Girl: I can’t. It’s a new policy.
(Read the rest…thanks brian for the link)

Real barrista’s are snotty and cranky, and will definitely cop superior tones while discussing the differences between a REAL macchiato and a stabucks macchiato but for the most part they’re not corporate-brainwashed morons as related in the story above. The sheer insanity and ego, of trying to sinlge-handledly alter the American system of small, medium and large (particularly on New Yorkers who haven’t had their daily dose of caffeine) is mind-blowing.

Maybe we should just start driving on the left side of the road and using the metric system while we’re at it.

Meet Your Fellow Americans

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Of course, we need to execute some of these people,” I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. “A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralize the country,” she says. “Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that’s what you’ll get.” She squints at the sun and smiles. ” Then things’ll change.”

A brave sole over at AlterNet goes undercover on a neo-conservative pleasure cruise.

Quix

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Every good place I’ve ever lived has a 24-hour convenience store within walking distance. It provides valuable sustainables to the world, namely Doritos, peanut butter cookies and lonestar beer at odd hours of the day. These places should be like hospitals – a service to the community mandated by law. Anyhow the Quix in my ‘hood has the added feature of random murals on the front of the store. The one above has always reminded me of Katharine Hepburn running away with a sixer natty-light.

Non-Morning Person

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Running sucks, but running at 6 a.m. sucks exponentially worse. Think black-hole vs dustbuster. I don’t really even remember driving down to the trail, just sort of edging into semi-consciousness at the two-mile marker. Thankfully, I was dressed. I was right-ready to be thoroughly pissed at this turn of events that had placed me at this particular junction of the space-time continuum but then remembered it was me that had agreed suggested it in the first place. If back-to-the-future taught us anything it’s that we control our own destiny. And that 88 mph is how fast you need to go in order to travel through time. Thanks to Doc Brown both these things are now common knowledge. Point being I’ve only myself to blame for finding myself jogging on semi-dark trail at some ungodly hour.

Anyway, we’ve taken to doing the morning run thing because the flooding has shut down the rowing dock (a much more relaxing and easier sport to handle at dawn). Three unhappy miles later, at home, I park the car and find myself unmotivated to remove myself from the vehicle, for several reasons. The stairs aren’t looking too fun right now. It’s only one flight, but man it seems like a ways. I’ve also done a poor job parking (swinging in to close to the wall) and actually wiggling out of the driver’s seat is going to require a Reed-Richards-Fantastic-Four maneuver that I really don’t feel like executing at the moment. Then there’s the next steps of my day that wait me – the whole getting ready and going too work thing that requires me to reverse all the steps just described.

Normally these aren’t such perceivably herculean tasks, but cast in the light of the morning I find it easier just to take a quick nap. Yup – after running three miles I essentially hit the snooze button one more time before tackling the rest of the day. If there was an award for non-morning-person behavior I think that should get it.

The Greats

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I’m an NPR junkie, a Google news reader. BBC, NY Times and Reuters all take top billing on my sites visited. i have deep-seated need to be in touch, to know what’s going on in the world. To be an active citizen of this wacky global metropolis.

Or I did. Lately though it’s been too much. I turn off Carl Castle in favor of my ipod, because the news is just too fucking depressing.

Put it another way – thanks to the beauty of Netflix I can watch documentaries pretty much when ever I want. It’s basically a PBS orgy on my TV all the time. Last night it was American Experience – MacArthur. This guy was a hawkish, self-righteous, conservative, egotistical mad-man. A general with a part-time gig as a one-man PR firm for which he was the sole client. Not the type of guy I’d go do a bike ride with on a free Saturday, given a choice. But for all his faults he was one of those great men of that era. Maybe they didn’t always do exactly the right thing but they saw with conviction and purpose the way forward. Leaders, i think is what they call them.

In contrast today, Scooter Libby got his sentence commuted.

The country our grandfathers thought they were fighting for is slowly and quietly dying, while we watch Paris Hilton get carted off to jail (hell, Bush should’ve just done a two-fer and let her off the hook as well – judicial precedent stacks up about the same). Where are the leaders ? Where are those magnificent bastards who we could love and hate with a passion. Or have we raised a generation so neutered and scared of offending the person next to them that we’ll just be washed into the sea by great waves of mediocrity as extremists of all varietals tell us to put our heads in the sand and be afraid?

We’re busy watching TV while the city burns.