Back into the Blog

I wasn't really happy with the way my WordPress blog was formatting, so I'm going re-direct the link on my website to this blog.

It's not like I had written anything on the WordPress blog. Just one post I deleted due to my aforementioned dismay with formatting. Hopefully, I'll finds this run smoother here.

Cat On a Hot Omani Roof

Two days ago, we're coming down the stairs with food in our hands for Ellen's going-away party at school. There, on the landing between the second and third floors is a kitten. It's mostly white with a couple orange spots, very short hair and, like most cats around, a bit scraggly and malnourished.

So what else could we do?

It's Like He Knows Exactly How I'm Pretending To Feel

I have this friend on Facebook, a friend from high school, who updates most of the time with lyrics from painfully-emo songs. I kinda want to leave comment about "how 7 years ago" that is. Admittedly, I know nothing of their personal life, but can it real be all that much of an emotional whirlwind as to necessitate these melodramatic outbursts? And to crib the outbursts of others...it's just all so high school. (Not to mention the possibility that these lyrics are written of fictional emotions and events...all I'm saying is, no one's has so many effed up relationships as to fill several albums...and if these are based on true situations, it's become evident that you're the one with the problem, not the other in the relationship - I'm looking at your Dashboard Confessional guy; even Connor Oberst started penning some non-relationship stuff.)

------------

(Completely unrelated; a thought I've had a couple times while living in this apartment:)

"Damn; it touched the floor."

"Well you weren't going to put in your mouth anyways, were you?"

Beardful o' Sheesha Smoke

Matthew's mother is in town (or should I say, in the country) and treated us Moore-ites to dinner at Leisure, a restaurant/sheesha cafe in Al Ain. I got the Mexican shawerma which just wasn't as good as I remember it. And for afters I shared with Miriam and "Leisure Special" sheesha, which is who knows what kind of sheesha...Miriam thinks it's just a little bit of everything, from leftovers of other flavors. But it was the best sheesha I've had there. I could taste it, and I barely coughed. I bought a pack of cloves when we were back in America (before the ban went into affect) with the idea that I didn't get much out of sheesha, so I'd go out and smoke the cloves instead. Well, I haven't gone out for sheesha since coming back, and even if I did, I'm not sure I should smoke the cloves if I did. Cigarettes seem a little taboo here. Maybe not taboo, but just not something some one of my "status" (i.e., Westerner; i.e., someone not a Filipino or Pakistani) should be doing, especially when everyone else is sheesha'ing it up. "What, our sheesha is not good enough for you?"

The India trip is coming together. I have confirmation from one hotel (Agra). I haven't heard back from the Delhi hotel (it said to give them 48 hours). And the Goa hotel wants an advance, either by PayPal or putting money directly in their bank account, which is just weird to me. Obviously, I'll go the PayPal route, which I'll probably need Miriam's help because I haven't done PayPal in forever and a half. Oh, and I requested confirmation from Gulf Air for our flight from Dubai to Delhi, and haven't heard anything from them. I know that we've been charged for the tickets, so that's something, at least.

They're showing "LOTR: The Two Towers" dubbed in Fus'ha Arabic right now. I was thinking about how cool it would be to create a world like Tolkien did. But then, to just try and copy what he did...it's bedoon faida, without result. Why try to copy? I think that's what a lot of fantasy writers set out to do, and that's why I don't see the fantasy genre as being all that great. But is it possible to step out of Tolkien's shadow? Or the C.S. Lewis' in the realm of fantasy for younger readers? I think maybe it's easier to say "fuck that" and just write about the future instead.

A Dream I Had Last Night

I had this dream last night that I amazingly remember quite clearly. Maybe it's due to not waking up to an alarm this morning (afternoon?). Here you go:

I was a black man, in his late 30s or early 40s. I had two sons, one a teenager, the other maybe between 8 and 10. Society had broken down, due to what, I didn’t know. It wasn’t all dreary like “The Road” or “Omega Man”. My sons and I were travelers, and the land was nice and green. It was actually more lush than normal, if where we were wandering was America, which I assumed it we were.

One morning we woke up and my youngest son is missng. Somehow we knew that he’s been abducted by what I best can describe as a cult community. They had taken over a small hillside village, which is more European than anything, but I’m still fairly sure this takes place in America.

My teenage son and I, we infiltrated the community. I don’t know how we were allowed in so easily. I think we just found the same clothing that they all wear and stroll right in, undetected, unassuming.

It’s maybe a day or two later when my eldest son and I were searching and we came to a large, spiral staircase that runs around the inside of a large, bluish-gray cylindrical building. There was a guard at the base of the stairs, but he was very old. He seemed to understand what we were looking for, and that maybe we didn’t really belong there, but he was tired and sympathetic to our plight, so he let us up the stairs. At the top, and through a door, we found a very large, and very green, field. There are several gatherings of people, doing various things, mostly recreational.

I saw my son in a group of children. They were on a small, wooden set of bleachers. They were standing and singing something. I didn’t notice an adult leading them, but you’d think there’d be one.

We stood for a while listening to the children. They were good, the song was good, and in a way I was proud of my son. But then a girl in the back pulled out a long broadsword. It was amazing that she could hold up the thing. More pressing, though, was that the sword was meant for my young son. The other children parted, leaving the girl room to bring down her blade down on my boy. He fell forward, onto the grass, and as the girl began to bring the sword over her head, like a sledgehammer, something clicked in me and with an amazing burst of speed I shot forward and grabbed my son before the sword could fall upon him.

It was time to get out of there.

So we ran. I had my younger son in my arms, with my teenage son running just ahead of me. But the guards were upon us quickly, and they had submachine guns. They were gaining on us, so I put down my young son and put his hand in the teenager’s hand and told the teenager, “Don’t let go.”

And to both of them: “Run. Now. Just run.”

And then I turned back towards the guards and at this point my perspective changed. I was no longer the father, but rather the teenage son, and I saw my father run towards the guards, at full charge, without a sound. I could see the bullets coming out of the guns. They were like little white lines flying all over the place. Somehow my dad was not hit, or maybe he did get hit but was on some sort of adrenaline high and didn’t feel the bullets piercing him. He set upon the guard who didn’t have a gun. I was running now, with my brother, and I looked back, and my father bit the guard’s neck like a vampire, but not to suck, just a long bite, and as my father pulled away the guard’s neck began to swell, like a croaking toad’s, and these dark spots started developing on the guard’s bloated neck, and the skin turned orange, and then it burst, and the guard’s body fell to the ground.

It was clear now: there was a virus that had beset the country and killed millions and millions of people. And what was left were wanderers like my father, brother and I, and odd communities like the one that we were running from. Somehow, my father was carrier. He could inflict it, but it had no affect on him.

If it also protected him from bullets wasn’t clear.

My brother and I ran on, down the hill and towards a grassy path that wound along a cliff. I looked back one more time, as my father set upon the next guard.

****

My Year in Arabic, Part I, Episode II: Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight

It doesn’t help a country when all you’ve known for five weeks is bitter weather and sickness. I had barely seen Fes in the daylight and then I spent the next two days holed up in our basement room, sick with a stomach ailment not quite flu-ish, but too painful and long-lasting to be called an “ache” or simply be chocked up to gas. I did get better, of course, for a week at least, and then a flu/cold bug started making the rounds, working its way through Miriam to me. I missed at least one full day of classes and two eight a.m. classes. I’ve had problems before with traveling and then catching bronchitis and getting an ear infection. I’m not sure I had a full-blown ear infection, but I’m pretty sure I had bronchitis for a while – the phlegm was neon green and substantial enough to convince me of that.

I turned to the Internet to provide home remedies for the earache. I heated (re: nuked) a half cup of salt and put in a sock, then laid down with my ear upon the sock. It half-worked, at least. The pain was gone, but it still felt all plugged-up with fluid. I suppose the salt is supposed to help evaporate that liquid – so maybe just enough was evaporated to help alleviate the pain.

No sooner do I get better than Miriam starts showing the same symptoms. We basically lost two weekends to our combined illnesses. We put off any trips this weekend (our last before preparing to leave) due to rainy weather.

If there’s anything good to take away from this, I guess it’s that I hope that we’ll be stronger against the elements and local bacterium next time we come to Morocco. It seems like a better deal to be sick when in residence in a country, rather than when vacationing in it. Though, it would have been nice to be sick for less time than we were. Also, the whole raining half the time is a giant bummer.

* * * * *

Fes is split up into three parts. There is Fes al Bali (also known as the “medina,” which is just the Arabic word for “city), which is the oldest and most compact part of the city. Then there is Fes al-Jdid, which means “New Fes”, but really only new in comparison to the medina – so still pre-colonial. The third area is known as the Ville Nouvelle, as this is the expansion of the city started during the French occupation.

Our villa, literally right around the corner from the school, is on the northwest edge of the Ville Nouvelle. I have to believe that this somewhat outskirtish location may have tainted our Fes experience. For one, it’s unhealthily close to the McDonald’s. Another annoyance is that, being at the edge of town, we are bounded on one side by a bypass road and a railroad track. We also seem to be in the corner of town where animals are allowed to get away with anything at any time of the day. There’s a rooster that will crow at any given hour of the day, and night (3 a.m is obviously the optimal time to crow). Then there’s the dogs. Before we moved to the second story room, I was convinced that the nightly dog barking was from a wild pack that descended upon the green space behind the villa every night. I had an image in my mind of a tight pack of dogs, moving as one, barking all the way. As it turns out, it’s just a quartet of yappy lap-dogs in the neighboring yard, who happen to get all riled up every evening at the same time. Somewhat disappointed, and learning that definitely made it sound more like yapping than barking, and thus increased its annoyingness.

I’ve been to the medina (Fes al Bali) a couple times, though only once, the first time, did I explore it at any length – the other two times were to go to a ex-pat-owned café which is sort of set up as a comfortable place for foreigners (much cozier and larger than the local cafés). That initial visit was thankfully proceeded by a couple of clear days, because when it rains, or it was rainy the day before, it is not the time to be in the medina. Remember, we’re talking about a desert town, and the medina is the largest urban area devoid of cars – that means the only mode of transport within is by foot or by mule. So, under wet weather conditions, the cobblestone streets are caked in a layer of mud and Lord knows what (well, donkey shit at the least). It makes taking in the ancient city ambience much less enjoyable. Miriam has yet to go, and I hope that we can maybe get a reprieve from the rain and visit a dry medina at the end of the week.

The muddy streets are not confined to the medina, unfortunately. I think that it may just be something we Americans, especially urban- and suburbanites are now used to. But I have the feeling that it’s pretty standard through out the world. Keeping your streets mud-free is not really top priority throughout the world. In the third- and second-world, there’s much more pressing issues.

I do enjoy the abundance of stay cats. They vary from the incredibly straggly to the amazing sleek and clean. Even the villa has a house cat who I think started as a stray kitten. She’s really sweet, and does this thing where she’ll jump up to meet your petting hand, and if you give her a bit of meat, she takes it and shakes it a bit, as if she has just caught it herself and is finishing off the kill. It makes not being around own out cats a little more bearable.

The cuisine of Morocco (at least in Fes) seemed to be centered one dish: the tajine. It seems anything can be put in there: chicken, lamb, beef, veggies, what have you. Friday is couscous day (yes, it’s not really a regular thing, and you can’t even get it in restaurants any other day besides Friday). There are other, smaller dishes, that are usually pre-prepared (think of them as Moroccan fast food). There’s bisara, a mix of beans, olive oil and cumin; hummus, which here is a bowl of whole chick peas, in a bit of a spicy soup; and addis, which is lentils in a reddish soup. You can also get these sandwiches that are baguettes with your choice of fried potatoes, fried eggs and/or meat, either with or without green olives and “har” (hot sauce). The most available foreign food is faux-Italian, with pizzas and paninis available at most restaurants, and hamburgers are also abound. The are other pockets of foreign food around – a sushi restaurant (been twice), a Vietnamese place and a Turkish place. As mentioned before, there’s the McDonald’s which is just down the street from our villa – but, to me, it just doesn’t seem as good as back in the states, which is contradictory to all I’d heard about McDonald’s abroad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice McDonald’s – two story, very clean, with employees who, even with the language barrier, are way friendlier than the sad sacks back in the States. Maybe it’s because my recent McDonald’s experience has been centered around the Southwest Salad, rather than the sandwiches. Anyway, I’m looking forward to being near Dubai and it’s FIVE Johnny Rocket’s.

Morocco has one week left to make things better. Can it come through with some sunny days? Will I ever get a chance to wash my sole jacket? I’m sure anyone sitting around me hopes so.

My Year in Arabic, Part I, Episode I: In the Air & On the Ground (mostly the latter)

In Fes, it’s not that it’s not the coldest place I’ve ever been. It’s that it never warms up. There’s a radiator in our room, and it is somewhat effective, but it doesn’t really heat the room to the point where the towels will be dry when you use them the next morning. It’s also raining most of the time, and you know how dampness affects temperature.
It has us wondering, will we be missing this weather when it’s 100 degrees (F) in Buraimi?
Probably not. As much as I like the cold, I never took into consideration the cold in other countries. Where central heating is not available. Where blankets are one to a person. And where driers are a novelty.

Though I am calling this series of blog posts My Year in Arabic, these first 6 weeks in Morocco will be more of an exercise in remembering any French from my undergrad years. The language on the ground is a hybrid of French and Arabic – which we have dubbed “Frerabic.” It’s another mark against sending business students to Morocco for Arabic immersion – not only does the colloquial Arabic differ greatly from the Gulf Arabic spoke in areas like Dubai, but all the locals you interact with speak French.
Montaz! Très Bon! Take your pick.

The story on how we got here is 2 day journey on an unanticipated path and 12 hours of delays.
The new year provided a foggy morning for San Diego’s Lindbergh Field and led to the cancellation of Terminal 1’s first flight of the day: Frontier’s 6:20 to Denver. Our flight. After getting our check-ins as close as we could to 50 lbs. (to avoid a fee of $125), United re-routed us to Chicago O’Hare and then to Frankfurt. We had a last breakfast of Starbucks/McDonald’s with Miriam’s parents waiting for the new flight and then said goodbye to California for at least a year.
When we heard that we’d be flying to Frankfurt, we held out hopes that the flight would be administered by Lufthansa, and kept hoping until the United plane pulled up to the gate in Chicago. We were apparently bumped up to Economy Plus for our troubles in the morning, so the extra leg room was nice – especially when the plane taxied out, then taxied back in and sat at the gate for 2 and a half hours due to a faulty A/C unit.
Once across the Atlantic, we were glad to have our next flight still available, though less enthused to see it 35 minutes late.
Taking off from Frankfurt, we were pretty much resigned to the fact that we would miss our next flight (to Fes). So we got there, unloaded into a bus that took us to the terminal, and Miriam hit up the restroom. As she came out, a man with a walkie talkie calls out, “Fes?” We look at each other and then respond, “Fes!” And he motions for us and starts running down the terminal, and we follow suit. We might just make our next flight! Of course, we’re in Terminal 2, as we came from an international flight, and we’ve got to get all the way over to Terminal 1 (for domestics). So we’re running and running, and he keeps beckoning us with “Fes, Fes.” We hurry through a security checkpoint (no line) and just as we reach the gate, there’s some chatter over his walkie and then he slumps. “Sorry,” he says. “Gone.”
The walkie man leads us back the way we came (back into Terminal 2) and leads us to a counter for Royal Air Maroc. We stand there, catching our breath, as he makes arrangements for us for the next flight out, at 11 pm – it was currently 5:40. He gives us our tickets and a voucher for a free meal at Baab al Maghreb (Door of Morocco). We now have 5 and 1/2 hours to kill.
We trudged towards the passport check. One bit of good news we received was that there was no charge for a visa. Once our passports were stamped, we headed down some escalators to the baggage claim area. This was a real sight. It seemed to be all locals, returning from who knows where, all with carts and carts of not just baggage, but large sacks of what seemed to be food stuffs – grain, spices, etc. And around the corner, at the exit, whole families were waiting to receive their returning relatives with tears of joy and open arms. You may think I’m painting the scene more dramatic then it was, but, there were police there to make sure people didn’t storm through into the baggage area to embrace the exiting travelers. It was like nothing you’d ever see in the States. Even before 9/11, I don’t think you could get Americans to give you a return reception like that. And as we finally pressed through the crowd, I said to Miriam, “Damn, we need to get some Moroccan friends.”
We found the restaurant and I got my first Coke Light since our Turkey trip. (The voucher we received from Royal Air Maroc was good for a special off-menu chicken, rice and veggies plate.) We hung around the restaurant for a while and then meandered into Terminal 1, through a small security check (Miriam set off the metal detector, but the guard just pointed to her watch and waved her off), and then sat down as the first ones at our gate. We each did a little bit of wandering and had plenty of time for a game of Scrabble. Once again, we were put on a bus to meet the plane out somewhere on the tarmac. The plane was mercifully empty (at least in the back) and Miriam and I were able to put a seat between us (we could have even had our own rows). We ended up leaving late (yes, once again), as the plane waited for a couple more people. But the flight was incredibly short – I’m guessing it was no longer than 45 minutes, like a San Diego/LA flight.
As we exited the plane, twice someone looked at us and said to us inquisitively, “Fes,” like maybe we didn’t realize where we were getting off. But we smiled and nodded, “Oui, Fes.” Our passports were checked again as we entered the small and empty terminal. We waited by the baggage claim, hoping that our delay actually put us in step with our luggage (if we couldn’t make it from Casa flight, no way our luggage could…if it was even on that plane from Frankfurt). There was a bunch of luggage sitting in a corner, and as we perused over it to see if ours was possibly there, we noticed 2 cats just lying on a bag. But I don’t think they went along with the bag – they were just two local strays that found a soft, warm place to sleep. They gave us dirty looks as we passed by (as if to say, “Don’t dare bother us.”). After a couple minutes, the baggage started coming out and there was our silver babies! I heaved them from the carousel and after a cursory check of our larger case, we where ushered to a taxi (an old Mercedes) and driven through the night (we landed around midnight) to the Hotel Olympic.

If you are stolen, call the police at once.

There was a surprise thunderstorm last night. Not even last night, this morning. I think 5 a.m. is officially morning rather than night. It may be dark, and it may not be the ideal hour to be up at when you go to bed at 1 a.m. But nonetheless, I am confident in classifying that hour as morning.
It's worth note here because I was just thinking the other day how in California (at least the coastal regions I've lived in), thunderstorms seem to come in the dead of night. Whereas here, they seemed to occur every hour but the late night/early morning hours. And while I do enjoy being awake enough to sit and watch lightning bolts streak across the sky, there is something to laying in your bed in the dark and having the room lit up by the florescence of lightning - or when it's so near that your eyes are closed and you can see it through you lids. So, after thinking that just the other day, Nature obliged, and I got my sleepy time lightning storm. Though it was accompanied by a downpour which inadvertently makes hell of noise on our window sill. But, on the bright side, it seemed to have heavily damaged the wasp nest that I sprayed last week but noticed that a wasp was returning to.

I've been thinking about a satirical take on global warming/pollution and why some people just don't give a damn. Obviously, in some places, it's about survival. If your only meal comes once a week and it happens to be in styrofoam, well, boo-fucking-hoo, Mother Earth, I gotsta eat. So, yeah, I don't begrudge those people, duh. But let's take a less global focus and look at America. Why can't we just suck it up and switch to clean fuels and power. Why should it be so impossible for cars to run on damn farts. It freaking shouldn't. Of all the leaps and bounds in technology we've made in the past 150 years, and we're just pumping worse and worse shit into the water and air.
One problem is obviously money. No one really wants to fund a project to make a car that runs on farts. Oh, they're all for making it seem like they are. So they put out a TV ad saying they're looking into this and that when really they just have one guy in a small room in the leased office space outside Overland Park, KS, charged with researching the idea but really just googling pictures of celebrity pets.
I guess talking about moving funds with everything going on right now is sort of like bringing up scat fetish terminology over a state dinner.
But what is satirical about the above? Nothing. I sort of got distracted. What I was going to suggest was that the lack of concern over the fucking-up of the planet is really all Galileo's fault. Or, doing a little Wikipedia'ing, it was Copernicus' fault. Either way, it was these jack-offs bright idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Thus, the Earth was relegated over the years to an insignificant dot in the boondocks of a backwater galaxy. Thus, Earth is no big deal. Thus, why not trash it?
Earth is like a hotel room and humans are an 80s hair band.
That's right, Earth, you will never be able to get the smell of cumin out of the drapes.

Weather Where I Go

Somehow I always end up in the dead zones of weather. It seems like the coast of South Carolina is more the place to experience tropical storm/hurricane style weather. Maybe I shouldn't complain about something like that, but jeez I'd like to experience it. But I have been treated to more lightning in the past 3 months in then I've seen in decades in San Diego/Los Angeles.
I get the feeling that while it may be colder than coastal California, the winter temperatures are not that cold. I get the feeling that I won't be getting that Christmas movie feeling here.
It's funny how we get that image of Chrimastime as this snowy winter wonderland/frozen wasteland, when in a large part of the country, that's just not the scene. It's probably a result of a New England/Mid-Atlantic-centric media. And due to every good miserable artist coming out of the Mid-West.
More rain tonight, hopefully.
It's also amazing how much it's cooled down since last month. 30 degrees cooler.
I miss the cool San Diego nights. But I think they're about to hit Cola.
Jackets, yay!

All the Right Things Left

Sure, let's blog. Why not?

I'm going to be contributing to a food blog: eats along the 33rd parallel
If I'm ever in possession of a camera before my meal (because, I'll be damed, I also end up with a camera in my hands some where in the middle of lunch, but never at the beginning).

I've been using Google Chrome since the day it came out. It's basically Firefox, except it hates some things on Facebook. But I think we all do, amiright?

Miriam brought up early that I never finished diarying about Turkey. Nor did I ever start blogging about it. I might be in Morocco before that happens.

Tomorrow we're having a party for the season premier of The Office. Next week my parents visit for two and a half days.

I am super-stoked about Wii Music.

Who'd have thought we'd still be using the word stoked in 2008?

Life is just the stuff that happens between cat-themed viral videos.

A Long-Awaited Reunion With My Kitchen Utensils, or, Oh, Columbia! I can finally feel at home!

Here is how the moving company situation went down:

Thursday, July 10th, Miriam calls Anything Anywhere again, after being told last week that our things had left California on the 2nd, and that we'd get a call two days before the truck would arrive. When Miriam talked to the guy, he was *shocked* she hadn't received a call – they would be there the next day. Also, they would need the rest of the payment…in cash. The rest of the payment? Well, let's just say it's well over what even two people could each pull from an ATM (at least, I think). And, keep in mind, this was a figure that was worked down from a larger one they wanted to charge us – even though they were nearly a week late, in breach of their contract.
So, we had to scramble to get that cash. And this was at 3:30 PM EST. We did have the money – in two places, actually. One is our San Diego credit union account, which poses the ATM problem. Our other account is with Wachovia (which we opened here in Columbia). However, with new accounts, they freeze funds for seven days after deposit for the first six months. Of course, it hadn't been seven days since our last deposit. Of course.
What we worked was this: Miriam's parents would bring cash to a Wachovia (that just opened in San Diego) to deposit in our account. It would thus be immediate (the hold is just on checks), and we could pull it out from our Wachovia branch in the morning. The branch manager in San Diego even went as far as to e-mail the Columbia branch manager and teller manager, as well as the local regional manager, about the situation. So, Wachovia not so bad in our book…except the whole holding our checks up for six months.
We were only given an approximate time when they would be arriving – sometime after 10 am. Miriam decided to go ahead and go to class, and I called into my the job I had just gotten (though I had explained to them that this might come up…and I was really on the schedule yet). Our friend Michelle (her husband, Collin, is in Miriam's class at USC) came over, with her 4-month old daughter, Delilah, to act as a witness of this cash exchange. As the whole thing seemed kind of shady, we made up a de facto receipt (on lined paper) for the driver and me to sign. Though there would end up being a bill of lading to sign, that didn't mean things didn't get shadier.
Around 11, I get a call from the driver's Russian fiancée. They were on Broad River, but couldn't find the entrance to our complex. I told her more details of where it was. 20 minutes later, she calls again to explain that they've found the entrance, but have a long trailer and are waiting to make the left onto Farrington Way. It was probably another 20 minutes when I went out to the side of our building to look down the street and see where they were. Though, you can't see the main road from there. I stood for a while, but it was too hot to stand there for too long. And then, right as I walk back into the apartment, the phone rings again. They've made the left, but now are confused about which building is ours. So I go out to the street again to wave at them. And, holy crap, that is a huge trailer!
So, they pull up and park along the main street of the complex (Farrington Way). The driver, Mike Webb (totally doesn't like a private investigator from a noir film, doesn't it?), introduces himself and comes into the place to skope things out. First off, we (Michelle and I) need to move our cars. He'd also like to move the Volvo from next door, but we find out that they person with the keys is not at home at the moment. Then there was the matter of the payment. Like I said, pulling the money went fine. Everything having to do with the money after that...not so much.
He wanted to make sure that all the bills were not counterfeit. He had a whole speech (that he re-iterated several time) about "nothing against me" and "don't want to go for jail for no one." So he starts going through them, and that's when he spots some that don't have tags in them (the strips that run along the short length of the bill; bar codes, as he called them). Well, they're just old bills, but he goes on about having never seen hundies (my word, not his) without "bar codes" and starts worrying they're fakes, even if they came from Wachovia. So what he wants to do is have me drive him to the Wachovia branch and check with them on these mysterious non-tagged bills. So...what can I do? They guy's got all our stuff, that we've been waiting two weeks for, and which we scrambled to get this cash for. This would be the extra-shadiness I spoke of earlier.
We hop in my car and I drive him down to the Wachovia, which isn't too far, but still a little bit too far for complete comfort. He talks about his fiancée's Russian family -- about how you must be there for birthdays. Simply a call or a card won't do.
Now, this is a Friday, at noon, so you can imagine what the Wachovia was like. Packed. So there's a huge line for the tellers. But that's not gonna cut it for Mike Webb. He heads over to a help desk in the set-up-a-new-account area. After looking around in the offices for anyone, he comes around the other side of the desk, surreptitiously, which he later said was because he was hold a assload (my word) of cash. He asked the lady at the desk about it. I give her a it's-him-not-me look, and she takes the money over behind the teller counter. He follows, in a move that to me, makes it look like he's cutting in line. I sort of stay back, trying to be a observer rather than a participant in this whole situation. And they told him what I suspected: the bills were printed before the tagging system was implemented (1990). They're just old bills.
We returned to the apartment, the cash's validity verified. Now it was time to unload. That all went pretty smoothly. We had a table whose top came off. Mike blamed that on shotty manufacturing, which is probably true, and fixed it anyway with some special glue mixture. The only thing that didn't pan out well was the reconstruction of our bed. Apparently, Mike's helpers couldn't make much of the parts and only put it together to a point. They left a beam out, didn't screw in the slats, and then seemingly hid the rest of the parts, so that when I went to fix the bed later, I went out and bought all new parts (screws & such). I found the original parts a week or so afterwards. So we have extra now.
Miriam came by for a bit, between classes, and I sent Michelle home when Miriam left (she'd already been there long enough, especially with the baby). It took Mike and the guys a couple hours to get everything in. But once they did, and we went over the bill of lading, and they left...our reunion with our stuff was nearly complete.
Now we just had to get it out of the boxes.
That, a month later, is still a work in progress. The downstairs is box-free, and everything is where it should be. The bedroom (upstairs), too, is box-free. It's down to the office/2nd bedroom...again, as in the last apartment. I will have to do something with that stuff, as my parents will be staying in that room for a couple days in the beginning of October. It's just that the rest of the stuff is photo albums, files, loose stationary and miscellaneous crap we've acquired through the years -- just stuff I don't feel an immediate need to unpack. So it'll probably wait to a week before my parents come.

The Arrival, or, Empty Apartments and Evening Flights

     There’s only so much you can tell about a place through Google Earth and Maps. You can see that there are buildings, homes, trees. But what you can’t tell is what sort of condition they’re in. It’s also hard to tell sometime if a parcel of land is just empty, or rather a parking lot in horrible condition.
     So when you look at Broad River Road from satellite view on Google Maps, and when you actually drive down it, it’s a different experience.
     We start at the intersection of St. Andrews and Broad River, which disdains the traditional gas-station-at-three-corners for a drug-stores-at-three-corners model (Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid). Of course, something had to give, and Rite Aid seemed to be the one who stepped back and said, “Whoa. This is a bit too much.”
     Moving south, there’s a Sonic Burger, with its trademark garish LED marquee. Across the street is a place that buys your gold and two porn shops (do you use the gold money to buy sexual supplies?). Further on there are two self-storage facilities, plus the Ole Town Antique Store. I’ve seen “ole” used several times in the area in place of “old.” Maybe it’s a consequence of being near the Mexican border that we use “olde” instead of “ole.” (I also haven’t seen any Horchata or Jamaica Olé! … or Orange Bang!)
     We have come to the entrance to Farrington Apartments, across from the BP station that always has at least one of the numbers missing from the price of gas (regular). This is our stop, but a look down the road will show a string of strip malls, an empty large box store (with no faded clues as to its previous occupant, but an 80s-style van almost always parked at the front doors), various fast-food establishments and some gas stations-turned-loan and cash-checking service stores. Oh, and there’s Cokesbury – which is a Christian bookstore, but obviously of the snooty, English countryside variety.
     The lane up to the Farrington complex is shaped like a backwards question mark, with trees lining the side abutted by a self-storage facility, and duplexes (“Londonberry,” what’s with the British influence around here?). Around the final curve of the question mark, the first buildings of the Farrington appear, one which Google Maps had assured me would be our new home. The addresses posted to the side of the building told me a different story. We turned out to be smack-dab in the middle.
     Leaving community commentary behind, and picking up where I left off on the previous post, we pulled both our cars up to the complex office/clubhouse. The offices were upstairs, with stairs leading down to the “clubhouse,” which seemed nice enough, though it was filled with someone’s stuff (e.g., boxes of clothes, lamps, small furniture). There is also a small laundry room around the back of the building.
     We initialed and signed countless forms (and poor Bobby had to stand for the entire process, as there was a severe lack of chairs in the place), and were finally handed the keys to our new apartment. We were also told that they’d be doing a walk-through to establish any blemishes that were there before we occupied the space. That walk-through never happened, as far as I know. I went back to the office a week later to inquire about it, and was told that they had many still to do, and that we’d be notified a day before it happened.
     That aside, we pulled up into our two designated parking spaces, grabbed a couple things, and stepped onto our new patio. The door to the patio, adjacent to the parking, is officially the “back door.” Though, come on, people – obviously that’s where you’re going to enter your home. Consequently, there’s no light switch to hit as you enter (the backdoor is mostly glass, flanked by two floor-length windows). There’s one large room that acts as the living and dining room. The kitchen is separate, through a doorway. A hall flanked by a half-bath (below the stairs) and the washer and dryer space leads to a coat closet and the “front” door. Across from the front door are the stairs. They lead up to a landing off which is the two bedrooms, a full bath and a skinny linen closet. It’s actually really nice. The only thing was, it was empty.
     And it would mostly stay that way for a week and a half.
     You see, we had our stuff (boxes and furniture and appliances, etc.) sent via a moving service. We were expecting them to hopefully deliver by the day we arrived (June 24), or at latest the next day.
     Well, June 25 came and no call or truck arrived. So Miriam called them. “Them” was at first East Coast Movers, whom we had contacted to move our stuff. They had in turn contacted Anything Anywhere to haul the stuff across country. Miriam was told by the East Coast guy that it was out of his hands and to contact Anything Anywhere. She did, and they said they’d look into it and give us a call back. That call back never came, and the day ended with Miriam and I on the air mattress (thank God for it!) and Bobby on a sleeping bag (I say “on” because it was way too warm to be in it).
     The next day, after the morning passes without a return call, Miriam calls again and is given the news that our things have not even left California yet. Yes, they were picked up on June 7, and then sat for nearly a month in a warehouse somewhere in the L.A. area. Long story short on the movers, there was a lot more back-and-forth about getting our things as soon as possible. The finally left California a week after we arrived in South Carolina, and arrived at our door July 7 – the arrival is another story for another post.
     In the meantime, we went to Walmart and bought some chairs and a TV tray so Miriam could have a faux-desk. We also got a nice office chair, which is incidentally the same chair from my previous job at All-in-One, when we were at the Charleston Costco. And as the one laptop and that’s it between the both of us situation was coming to a head, and the fact that I would need something for when we go abroad, we went out and got my very first laptop (hell, my very first new any-type-of-computer, as everything before was either built by my brother over time, or was Miriam’s computer).
     With the knowledge that our stuff would not be coming any time soon (we joked that the moving company was called Anything Anywhere, but not Anytime), we were both free to bring Bobby down to Charleston to catch his flight back to San Diego (via a stop-over in Atlanta).
     We wanted to check out downtown Charleston, so we came in and stopped at the visitor’s center, to get an idea of where to go (especially for lunch). The visitor center was a bit too far of a walk away from the restaurants for us (especially with the heat), so we got back in the sweetly air-conditioned car and relocated to a more central parking structure. We were going to go for BBQ, but ended up going to a place right across the street from the parking garage, 82 Queen, which kind of reminded Miriam and I of Club 33 (secret/private club/restaurant within Disneyland). We had fried green tomatoes for an appetizer, and I was going to get the shrimp and grits, but couldn’t resist the lure of a turkey and brie sandwich. After lunch we drove across the Arthur Ravenel, Jr. Bridge, which is the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Americas (here’s the Wikipedia page on it), to Mt. Pleasant, on through and over a drawbridge, over to Sullivan’s Island, where would formally complete our trip, from coast to coast. The beach was very much as I picture Atlantic beaches. You can see the pictures on at my Picasa space.
     Then it was over the bridges and to the airport, where Bobby would begin his journey back to San Diego (from Charleston to Atlanta, and then Atlanta to San Diego, though the plane was delayed in Atlanta, and Bobby didn’t back into San Diego until 2 a.m. PST).
     Saying goodbye to Bobby was hard, as he was that last remnant of San Diego that we’d been clinging to. With him there, it was still like a vacation. But once he was gone, we’d have to start getting serious.
     After bidding Bobby bye-bye (couldn’t help but alliterate), Miriam and I headed over to the Costco and stocked up on paper towel and toilet paper (Kirkland: the best!) and the aforementioned office chair. Then it was back to Columbia, and our empty apartment.

The Last Leg (Regular Style or Spicy?)

     The remainder of the trip was less eventful, up until we arrived in South Carolina. We drove a sliver of Iowa (approximately 50 miles of it), and the farmlands-turned-wetlands were telling of the heavy storms that had deluged the state only a week earlier.
     Missouri came up quick. The frontier was behind us. From now on, there'd be a lot more states per day.
     It wasn't more than a few hours since Iowa that we reached the outskirts of Kansas City. We had decided that it was worth a bit of a detour to include the state of Kansas into our trek's state roster. While Miriam had been when she was much younger (Miriam's family had almost relocated to Wichita, KS. Why in the name of God, you may ask? Her father is an aeronautic engineer -- a big industrial among the tall fields of the Sunflower State.), neither Bobby or had been. So instead of following the I-29 straight into the city and onto the I-70 (yes, back to our old friend from Utah and Colorado), we took the auxiliary route I-435, around the two Kasnas Cities, through a bit of Kansas, and then back into Missouri to meet the I-70 to the east of Kansas City, MO. So...I've been to Kansas. Nothing much more to report on that.
     It was just a couple more hours to the other side of Missouri and St. Louis. On the way we passed through our destination: one of the many other Columbia's that dot the American landscape (Alabama, California, Ilinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia). This route brought us through the very northern tip of the Ozarks. I had the stereo on and the windows up, so if there was a faint sound banjo music in the air, I was not aware.
     We approached St. Louis, stopping short of entering the city proper. Instead, we exited at Earth City. Why is it called that? You got me there. Wikipedia offers no explanation. Neither does a cursory glance through a Google search. But I can tell you that it's not an actual city -- that is, it's unicorporated -- and it seems to be mostly office, warehouse and industrial space. But, there's also a Holiday Inn and a Jack in the Box (something we would sorry miss come our arrival in Columbia, SC -- 2 tacos for $1...economical when a half-mile away, not when it's 70 miles away in Rock Hill).
     At the Holiday Inn, it was time for laundry. Bobby sat with his laptop in the laundary room, as we pumped quarters into a drier which didn't dry our clothes even after two cycles. We actually made use of the hotel-provided hangars that night...as well as the backs of the chairs...and the armrests.
     That night, we also partaked in our first Steak 'n Shake meal. Brian, our previous roommate (Linda Vista apartment) and the designer of our wedding CD sleeve (visit his website: Drunken Cat Comics), had worked for a while at a Steak 'n Shake in Columbus, OH. Miriam called him before we went to get his recommendations. We all pretty much got the same thing -- burger, cheese fries and a shake. Wasn't that bad. I was disappointed by the fries. They reminded me of cafeteria fries...the kind that make you wish they had tatter tots that day. And the cheese seemed to just be an American single slice. The shake was good, though. And while we were in there, a huge deluge passed by, but it was only slightly sprinkling when we left.
     The next day was our last full-day on the road. We drove through St. Louis, past the Archway, over the Mississppi River and into Illinois. (Of course, I'm listening to Sufjan Steven's "Illinois" as I write this.) This was my first time in the state, if you don't count being at O'Hare for a stop-over back in May...which I did count up until this point.
     We made our way towards the southern tip of Illinois, and crossed into Kenucky, crossing the wide Ohio River. This part of Kentucky seemed much like southern Illinois -- farmland interspersed with forests. We also caught quick glimpses of Kentucky Lake. Created in 1944 by the Tennessee Valley Authority (the TVA, for the acronymically-inclined), and the largest articifical lake east of the Mississippi (not sure if that's something to be proud of or not).
     The farmlands seemed to dwindle as we moved on into Tennessee. We stopped in Nashville at the Opry Mills, a shopping/entertainment center that had sprung up around the famed Grand Ole Opry. There was a Johnny Rockets (a favorite of Miriam and I) within the mall there. We enjoyed our #12's (cheeseburger with Tillamook cheddar) and cherry and vanilla Cokes and watched as shoppers walked by. There seemed to be a lot more diversity (read: not just white people) than we'd seen through out the Midwest. Bobby was totally digging on the place, and we'd really only been to this one mall. He ended up staying behind to get some pictures of the Grand Ole Opry and surrounding environs (and ended up seeing a highway-side fire that must have started just after Miriam and I passed.
     We made our way through Tennessee's woody hills and mountains, past Oak Ridge (yes, Manhattan Project fans, the Oak Ridge, TN), and on into Knoxville, where we would be staying the night.
     In the hotel parking lot, I heard a strange, somewhat electrical sound, that I figured was coming from the AT&T building across the street. I would later hear the same noise in Columbia, and would eventually come to find out that it is the call of cicada -- though this particular cicada "song" (in the loosest sense of the word) was only heard certain years (I still haven't found out how many years usually pass for this "song" to crop up again, but it seems like there are some that come and go every seven years). It's a truly annoying sound, whose Californian absence I wholly miss.
     In the room, we found a station playing the original (i.e., from Japan) "The Grudge 2." It was just kind of ridiculous. Though I haven't seen either of the American versions, or the first Japanese "Grudge," I sort of had higher expectations for this Japanese version, even it is a sequel. Guess they generally suck over there, too.
     Even though it wasn't necessarily scary, the movie was creepy enough for us not to continue watching, especially as it was getting dark and we were staying in a strange place. So we decided to go see "Get Smart" at the mall that was about two block away.
     We found the mall all right, but finding the theater was another thing. We drove to the far side of the mall, were there was a big sign for the theater, but there was only a general mall entrance, and it was locked as the time was nearly 10 pm. So we decided to drive around and see if we could find the actual theater entrance. On the other side of the mall, there was another brightly-lit sign for the theater, and a parking structure. Once within the parking structure, though, it was a bit convulted as to where the theater entrance was. We finally came to a floor with much more cars than the rest, and this turned out to be the right floor. As we entered the theater, there was a mock-streetscape, with pastel-colored façades. It was très weird. (That was my first time using html to add accents on letters! Did it work? Yay!) And to top it off, there were very few people around, and most of them were theater employees.
     Movie theater popcorn served as our dinner as we watched the movie. It was pretty good. I would rent on DVD, but probably not buy.
     The next day was our last on-the-road day. And it was the shortest, too -- only about four hours, from Knoxville to our final destination, Columbia. But it was probably one of the most beautiful four hours we'd spent on the road. It was woody hills and mountains all the way, and, although we didn't drive into the boundaries of the national park, we passed within veiwing distance of the Great Smoky Mountains.
     We came down slowly, through the eastern leg of North Carolina, past Asheville, where we bid farewell to an old Californian friend, the I-40 (which we had seen start in Barstow), and down into our new home's state, South Carolina (yes, notice the distinction between "home's state" and "home state"). We passed through Spartanburg, past closest Costco to Columbia (about 91 miles away...sigh), and the mileage signs kept ticking up towards our exit, #106, St. Andrews Road.

It's The Good Life, If You Don't Weekend

The morning of the third day saw mostly clear skies, and shook off the rain the pelted Denver the night before. Bobby took the Saturn and Miriam and I were in my car. The fastest way out is a toll-road, which is only $2, so not that big of a deal. We have a bit of a freak-out, as we were paying the toll, when we saw an orange Vue zoom through the FastPass lanes. "That better not be Bobby," Miriam said. It wasn't. The Vue we saw was super-dirty (seriously dry-mud covered), and it turns out that Bobby was well behind us, having turned the wrong way out of the hotel.

The toll road dropped us off at the I-76, which led us through the farmlands of Eastern Colorado, the beginning of the Great Plains, and on into Nebraska, where the I-80 took over freeway duties.

The scenery remained much the same the whole day -- farms and fields and pasture land. But all quite green.

We crossed into Nebraska after a gas stop (where I spotted another California car). While the current state slogan is "Nebraska, Possibilites...Endless," the first slogan is still emblazoned on their welcome sign: "Nebraska ... the good life." We would put that motto to the test for a weekend, and see how well the state that spawned Arbor Day would treat us.

Around Kearney, we passed under the Great Platte River Road Archway, a huge structure, housing a mesuem over the highway. Meanwhile, ominous clouds loomed above and behind.

In Grand Island, we pulled off the freeway for...well, I wanted a DQ Blizzard, dammit. But no Dairy Queens were present on the "Food at Next Exit" signs. So I would settle for a Wendy's Frosty. But, on the way to Wendy's, we noticed a Sonic's, and we thought, "What the hell, seen the commercials, but never eaten there." So we did. I'm not a fan of the Sonic set up. Drive-thru is fine. But the parking and ordering through a poorly-working speaker -- not my thing. Nor was sitting in side and ordering through a poorly-working phone (never got my BBQ sauce!). And then I totally fried-food out, so I wasn't feeling so hot afterwards. And the shake wasn't that great.

Should've just gone to Wendy's.

Back on the road, we passed the state capital, Lincoln. There seemed to be a couple buildings that looked tornado-ified. As we were passing through, a hail storm hit. People were pulling over on the side of the road. I can understand if they were pulling over under bridges -- and some where -- but others were just pulling over. So I thought, Well, they have Nebraska license plates -- they must know better than I how the proper hail-storm conduct. Miriam had the same thought, and we pulled over for a second and jumped on the cell phones to each other. She thought it very unlikely that the hail would break our windows, and we're not under a bridge anyway, so why not just keep going. Which we did...just in time for the hail to stop as we pulled back into traffic.

Omaha was not far from Lincoln, and we passed by PayPal headquarters as we entered the city. We exited the freeway to see a guy getting taken in handcuffs from a house and into a cop car. Welcome to Omaha!

We were going to spending the night and next day with Nick and Jeannie, friends from Berkeley. The last time Miriam and I gone up to the Bay Area was for their wedding -- back in February '06. They rent the first floor of a house a couple blocks from the freeway, and across the main street from a large park. They have a daughter, Willow, who was excited to have visitors. She was just learning a couple words, but was very talkitive anyways, mostly conversing in a quick sort of baby-babble. Also, she seemed to have several meanings for the word "tam."

Nick and Jeannie were graciously letting us stay there for two nights -- their apartment (can you call the first floor of a large house an "apartment"?) was turned into a bed & breakfast for a couple days. We were/are most graciously thankful.

The first night they brought us to a local healthy/vegan restaurant which heaped the veggies high on all their fare. I had a veggie & cheese sandwich, of which the bread became surperfluous, and I ended up just going at the vegetables and cheese with a fork. It was a lot of food, and I think everyone left a lot on their plates.

The next day, N & J showed us around downtown Omaha:

There was the "brick district" Bobby had been told about; the lake-centered park, shadowed by the towers of downtown; a little ice cream treat; and then a little bit out, past the Qwest Center, to Saddle Creek building. For those not familiar with indie rock record companies, Saddle Creek is one of larger/most influential. Their roster includes Azure Ray, Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Faint, and Rilo Kiley. There's actually an "Omaha sound," characterized by a slight country twang, of which Saddle Creek records is a "flagship label" (according to the Wikipedia article). The label is named after a local waterway.

Anyway, Indie Rock 101 aside, we walked around the building, stopping at an unmarked door that we thought to be the Saddle Creek HQ -- so I took of Bobby in front of it. A walk to the next building over proved us wrong. There, written on an intercom next to another seemingly inconspicuous door, was "Saddle Creek - Press 1." Another picture was taken.

From there, it was back to the Choe-Dey B&B, where we waited out a thunderstorm to go on a walk through Hanscom Park. Our feet well trod, it was time again to attend to our stomachs. At this point, we (B, M & I) hadn't had any ethnic food sometime back in San Diego. So we called upon N & J to take us out for some good old fashioned country cooking...just, from someone else's country. So they brought us to Thai restaurant which was pleasantly delicious. The kitchen seemed to (wo)manned solely by an old Thai woman -- so the food took a while to come, but was worth the wait (though Bobby, of course, needed more hot sauce on his).

I think Nick & Jeannie's place needs a bit of description. It's got a retro feel -- but in a good way. Not in a bad, Tarantino film feel. It's like all the cool, cute things of the past are collected there. I love their kitchen. It's huge! There's a shelf above the stove perfect for boxes of tea. And the table is built into this nook area, with a window that would have looked out onto the backyard...had there not been an additional room added back there. It was just so...cozy. The only downside of the place I saw: just one bathroom. We managed just fine, I think. But I felt a little bad about it -- that sole bathroom was in their room. I'm just a 2, 1.5 at least, bathroom kind of person.

There was some nice hand soap in there, though.

Monday morning dawned and it was time to set out on the road again. I think all of six of us were a sad to bid farewell to the other trio. But maybe it was best we left: Jeannie wrote to us that a day or two after we left, a huge storm blew through, and knocked over a tree right where Miriam's car had been parked during our stay.

Of note is Jeannie's mix CDs. Two she had mailed to San Diego before we left. I have since become hooked to Sufjan Stevens (featured on both), re-enamored with the Jenny Lewis solo and She & Him albums, and garned a couple play over-and-over again songs (Fruit Bats' "When U Love Somebody"). When leaving Omaha, she gave us another set of CDs, this time burns of a collection of vignettes from NPR's "This American Life" series. The collection runs the gamut from hilarious to haunting, to downright depressing...but in a good way. You know, a good, story-telling way. That is by no means an endorsement depression or its parent company. There's just a couple of the stories that leave you in awe, thinking, "That is some seriously sad shit. Wow."

Heartbreaking true stories aside, all in all, I don't think Omaha is all that bad. Maybe it helps having friends who have lived there for a couple years, who've had a chance to scout things out and show you the cool places to go.

Back on the interstate, Omaha quickly faded away, the Iowa stateline was crossed, and we began our short trek through the flooded farmland of the Hawkeye State.

Once again, you can see corresponding photos at in my Picasa album, the aptly titled San Diego to South Carolina.

The First Part: Mojave, Moab, Rocky Mountain High

The first day started out with goodbyes. We were departing from Miriam's parent's house (in Clairemont), where we had been living since the moving company took our stuff on June 7. My mother came down from Santa Clarita to see us off, accompanied by my brother (who had just moved back to San Diego). Ellen (Miriam's mother) got us pancakes and bacon from Original Pancake House as our farewell breakfast. We said goodbye to cats first, as they were lounging upstairs, and it was probably best to just let them stay up there and not get all excited about all the goings-on downstairs.

We said our farewells, and not as many tissues were needed as I had thought. Miriam and Bobby started in her Vue, and I went it alone in my Civic. They got a bit of a jump on me when we started out, making a U-turn while I went around the cul-de-sac. The first leg of the trip was nothing new: the I-15 up through North County and down into the Temecula Valley. I decided to take the I-215, since I'd only ever done that once before, and that was during the night. It was no big deal, really. But it did give me the lead over Miriam and Bobby.

For a little while, at least.

Then came Cajon Pass.

My car...not so good with mountains (and this was nothing compared with what was to come). I think my average up the pass was 55 mph -- not too bad. But other people were flying by, and I had to find a place between the fliers and the just slighty slower-than-I semis. As I crested the summit, my car shuttered in joy, and reved it was up to 80. No sooner than that, however, than did a CHP enter the freeway, and it was a foot on the brake and down to the speed limit (70 mph). I think he saw that I had been going fast as he was getting on, though, and he tailed me for a while, but then decided he'd given me enough of a scare and passed me by. As the CHP car moved from my rear view, it revealed Miriam's metallic orange Vue behind me. My slowdown up the pass had allowed them to catch up. They later teased me about the CHP, as they had been watching the whole time.

We were now in the high desert area, the Mojave. We passed Victorville, Barstow, and the factory outlets and desolation in between. At the I-15/I-40 split, another CHP was waiting to catch speeders, and I'm really not sure how fast I was going at that point...but I got away again.

We communicated via cell phones, and decided to stop in Baker for gas and food and...waste extraction. That would be our most expensive gas: $4.56. Plus $0.35 to use our debit card, as it was an Arco. It was still $0.30 cheaper than the other gas stations.

In the same cars we had started out in, back on the road, the Vue was able to pull far ahead of me, due to a series of desert mountain summits. But Las Vegas traffic proved to be the great equalizer, and we met again in gridlock, as the mega-casinos of the Strip loomed to the east. There didn't seem to be any good reason for the traffic (how L.A.-esque), and it was well before I would think should be "rush hour." But we fought our way beyond the glitz and car exhaust and stayed pretty much within each other's view after that point. Nevada took more time than I expected to pass, then came a sliver of Arizona, which included the amazing Virgin River Gorge, the Virgin River and the I-15 winding around each other, overshadowed by giant cliffs. (They actually numbered how many times the river pased below the freeway.)

As quick as it had come, Arizona fell behind, and Utah opened up with its clay-red ridges. And then the desert gave way to sparse forest, and we pulled over again for gas.

Within the Texaco mini-mart, as I was waiting for the restroom, this guy come up, an older man, and asked if I was waiting for the restroom. I said, "Yeah," but then looked down, as he was holding one had with the other, and the held hand was full of blood. The women's room (which was probably exactly the same as the men's) was open, so I said, "Oh my gosh--" (I try to clean up my language around non-city folk) "--I think no one would have a problem with you using the women's room." So he went in and washed up. He came out with a couple paper towels, the wipe up where he had dripped blood on the floor, but only really managed to smear it around, around which time he said, "Don't know how I managed to do this to myself."

It sure was strange, but he seemed the kind of guy that probably did working on his car or RV, so I wasn't totally freaked out...and I don't think I even mentioned it to Miriam and Bobby.

It was only about forty-five minutes more until the town of Beaver. We stayed at a Best Western just off the freeway. It was all that bad. We hemed and hawed about where to go for dinner. Bobby was talking up a "cafe" down the road. The place had two reviews on TripAdvisor: one was favorable, but the other was: "Menu just variations of chicken tenders." We finally decided to go a place which ended up not existing, either anymore or where Google maps said it should be, so we ended up at a local eatery a la Coco's. It wasn't half-bad. The prices were a bit too just-off-the-freeway," but the portions were huge. Of course, we didn't have a place to keep or re-heat leftovers, of we ended up leaving quite a lot on our plates.

The morning of the second day we made breakfast out of some fruit we had bought at Trader Joe's the day before our departure. Back on the road, Bobby helmed the Vue, and Miriam piloted my car, with me as naviagtor. Shortly after leaving Beaver, we bade the I-15 goodbye, and merged onto the I-70, trading north for east and started our great ascent to the Mile High City. We stopped along the way to take pictures at one of those scenic view points, and then another stop at Green River for some $5 footlongs.

As we crossed into Colorado, the Utah desert faded away and the Colorado river wound its way to the south of the freeway. With greenery now replacing the orange and brown of the desert, we made our approach into Grand Junction. Bobby had been cajoled by his co-workers at NBC to visit a former co-worker who was now working at the Grand Jct. affiliate.

Our first stop as a Walmart supercenter, where Bobby needed to pick up a picture uploaded over the Internet to be developed (for the NBC woman). Finding the Walmart was easy enough (though it did take an inordiante amount of left turns. Finding the NBC station was another thing. Miriam and I never actually made it there. Instead, we ended up taking the nickle tour of downtown Grand Jct., and waited out Bobby's visit in a Dairy Queen parking lot.

Once Bobby rejoined us, Miriam went into her car, and Bobby sat shotgun in mine. We left the DQ without any Blizzards. I ended up reading a sign wrong and had to do some turning around before we got back onto the I-70. This was the most scenic part of the trip, I think. We followed the Colorado River through gorges and valleys, my favorite being the gorge after Glenwood Springs, where the freeway splits, the westbound lanes up high, and the eastbound lanes down along the river. Plus: tunnels!

The Colorado River forks north after that, around Dotsero, and the Eagle River takes over as the highway companion. We stopped in Edwards, which is just west of Vail, and for a moment I felt like I was home again: the gas was the most expensive it'd been since Baker, there were huge houses atop the hills, and the Wendy's was completely staffed by Hispanics. The only difference was that the yuppies sipped their espressos within ski chalets instead of country clubs. Oh, and there was an awesome river that had rapids! Sweet!

Once gassed and food-ed, it was back on road. Unfortunately, this was not my car's favorite part of the trip. Cajon Pass (back in San Bernardino) is 4,190 ft. high. Vail Pass is well over 10,000 ft., and the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel is 11,158 ft. above sea level, making it the highest vehicular tunnel in the world. My car was not so impressed. Or, then again, maybe it was. Why else would it going 35 mph up the mountain if not to simply take in those beautiful Rocky Mountain views?
After the tunnel, it is pretty much all downhill from there. In a good way. And in an even better way, as daylight was dwindling, and we approached the Denver metro area, a huge thundercloud presented itself, and gave us a fantastic show (but I was paying attention to the road, of course).

We got into Denver pretty late, due the Grand Junction kerfuffle. The storm hadn't been as welcome a sight to some air travelers, you ended up flooding our hotel as their flights were delayed. They also ended up taking all the good food from the restaurant, so that there were no starches (potatoes, rice) left. No artichoke dip, either. Plus, the hotel was under renovation, so the bar had only the basics (read: Budweiser and vodka). But, there was A/C and TV, so it's not like it was all that bad.

Next post: Oh, Ma...Ha!

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