xtcian

1/25/03 Day XXXV of the

1/25/03

Day XXXV of the HeeeeeeeeeeeeeeHawwwwwwwwww! Road Trip

Center Point, TX to Cut & Shoot, TX

So before any of you start asking any questions about the town I'm actually in, let me just prove it to you right now:

Cut & Shoot is part of Greater Conroe, which in turn is a distant satellite barely revolving around Houston, TX. I sit here tonight in arguably the most earthy down-home environs we're likely to find during this immense Iliad and Odyssey we're on. Off in the distance, packs of hunting dogs are chattering away at each other; the horses are whinnying in the black, and some kids are having a campfire/tent night about 200 yards off in the woods, where no doubt someone is enjoying their first kiss.

We came here to see Nonnie, Tessa's grandmother, who has lately been stricken by a car accident that destroyed her jaw, and might have also had a stroke (although we can't find any evidence that it slowed her down). The nursing home looks rather exciting compared to the dreary environments where they stuck my great-grandma Pearl and my Grandpa Red's mother. Normally, you walk into these places and can smell the desperation and try to ignore the craned necks all hoping that you are their long-lost kids.

three generations: Tessa, Nonnie, Sandy

There was no barf here, though: we walked in and stepped right into a raucous game of dominos played by five old-timers who barely cared we were there. Nonnie herself was in the TV wing bored senseless by "Wheel of Fortune" turned up to 11, and was damned glad to see us. She can barely talk, but after 5 minutes or so, you realize how little diction you need to fully understand pretty complicated phrases.

Since we're going back to the nursing home tomorrow, we cut out pretty quick and went to the Black-Eyed Pea where I got the Chicken Fried Steak Fried Chicken Steak. We got to Cut & Shoot an hour later, greeted by Tessa's Aunt Brenda, along with her kids and their kids too. Brenda herself is the Nicest Human on the Planet and her place is done up with every last rodeo, cowboy, leather and Lone Star artifact ever created. I thought it was a bit much, but then I realized I'd probably do the same thing with North Carolina stuff if Tessa would let me. I have to say, though, I've never actually used soap shaped like Texas before, nor have I slept under leather curtains.

1/24/03 Day 34 of the

1/24/03

Day 34 of the Y'All Come Back Now, Y'Hear Road Trip of Once-Roaring Rivers

Center Point, TX

No trip to the Hill Country is complete without a stop in charming Fredericksburg, Texas, where the quaint jalapeo jellies and weird German Cowboy figurines flow like Americana ambrosia. We checked out the Five & Dime store and found that everything there was considerably more expensive than that. A pair of generic socks for $8.99 here in the middle of nowhere? No thanks, ma'am.

I will say this, though this is the most courteous place we've been to on this trip, and we've been almost everywhere. At the drugstore, the pharmacist answered his phone "thanks for waiting – can I help you?" Presumably he was apologizing for not answering on the first ring.

Even more niceties were to be had at the Ford-Dodge-GMC dealership where Tessa's mom Sandy works; we stopped by to test-drive a bunch of cars just for the American thrill of it. We're particularly interested in the Escape, which will be the first SUV to be manufactured as an electric hybrid. It gets 40mpg in the city, which ain't bad, but we're still pretty sold on the Toyota Prius or the new Focus, both of which get 60(!)mpg slogging around Manhattan.

The Escape was okay, and certainly good enough for what we do, but it had rough edges inside, and you could feel every piece of gravel in the road. The pice de resistance, however, was the bling-bling maxed-out pimp-daddy YUKON that I got to floor at 80mph on the Texas highways for ten minutes or so. After a few minutes in that thing, you start craving red meat and virgins. With a DVD player, a lumbar support balloon, full leather interior, a dashboard that looks like the cockpit to a 747, and enough seating space to carry an orchestra on its way to Mahler's 8th Symphony, it was a study in unshakable excess. And at 14mpg, it's guaranteed to keep us propping up corrupt Middle Eastern governments for at least another decade! Yay!!!

Sandy plays a DVD inside the cavernous Yukon

One thing is great about Tessa's mom, though: tell her what you don't like about a car, and she totally agrees. I bet she engenders so much trust just by being honest. One thing that she and my mom both share is a positive attitude and a fearlessness that should keep them both young into their later years. Sandy manages to be incredibly generous, happy, gregarious - and also utterly uninterested about what anyone might think of her.

With the sun waning into a bitterly cold evening (coldest in these parts in years), I jumped down the river bank just off Sandy's porch to commune with Verde Creek. This is a river that flooded so badly in July that entire houses, lives and animals were swept downstream in one of America's worst floods on record. This very patch of land was hardest-hit; if I were on this guest bed in July, I'd have been two feet under water.

at water's edge note the felled trees along the bank. The trees that survived are all tipped at a 20-degree angle, pointing downstream

Chopin the dog followed me and then belly-flopped into the water, no doubt desperate to get his ya-yas out before we stick him in the car again. He chased sticks into the creek for 45 minutes and then tortured us with his new plastic squeak toy inside the house for another hour after that. I don't know what got into him, unless it's the 4 pounds of ham that Sandy threw off the porch last night.

1/23/03 Day XXXIII of the

1/23/03

Day XXXIII of the Importance of Knowing the Limitations of Every Environment Road Trip of Non-Renewable Resources

Center Point, TX

I went running today along Verde Creek Drive, the L-shaped country highway on which Sandy Blake's house sits, and it was damned cold so cold I wondered how bad it was back at home. Then I saw on the news reports that the Hudson River is actually starting to freeze, that Columbia County is basically the tundra, and there are four inches of snow in Charlotte, NC. Which leads me to believe that there is no milk left on the shelves in North Carolina – curiously, every time severe weather threatens the South, everyone runs to the store and buys all the goddamn milk. Consider that Hurricane Fran (and last month's ice storm) left everyone without power for a week, and you can imagine the gallons of fucked-up milk these doofuses end up with.

We're set to visit Sandy tomorrow at the Ford dealership in Kerrville, as she has implored us to come drive their worst gas guzzlers. It's bad enough we're driving the Land Rover around, because I can't get mad at SUV's without living on an island called Hypocritia. But we are making plans to buy a hybrid car within the next few months (with our tax break) and retire Ol' Bessie up in Columbia County, where she can spend her autumn years looking at... well, autumn.

I'd love to keep driving her around, but I just don't see how any rational human American being that gives a shit about anything could possibly drive an SUV (or any other car that gets less than 20mpg in the city). Exemptions, of course, are for those who actually use their SUV's to haul equipment for work (like us filmmakers) or those who have an inordinate amount of kids. But Americans' King Henry VIII-like hunger for gigantic fucking cars is so mindlessly hubristic and insane that I've felt like running a few Escalades and Navigators off the road. If the New York subways get mustard-gassed by terrorists, I'm going to get cards printed up that say "IT WAS YOUR FAULT" and super-glue them to every SUV I see.

Now Bush is trying to push through tax loopholes so that businesses can deduct the entire cost of their needlessly pimped-up SUV's. Honestly, I think his staff just does shit to make me personally insane with rage.

Anyway, we suggested to Sandy that her Ford dealership sell the new hybrid Ford Escapes. She said, "oh they wouldn't cotton to those around here." Unfortunately, she's right. Yay for Texas!

1/22/03 Day XXXII of the

1/22/03

Day XXXII of the Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso, I Fell in Love With a Hyperintellectual Catholic Girl Who Went to Choate Road Trip

Carlsbad, NM to Center Point, TX

Have to give credit where it is due today: Tessa got up first, straightened out our schlumpy motel room in the 1.5-horse town of Carlsbad, NM, and drove us clear into the Great Bend of Texas before I took the reins. The road itself US Hwy 285 South, for those of you playing at home – has got to be one of the most godforsaken drives in America. I've had my fair share of bleak driving experiences (I-80 through Nebraska, I-5 through California, etc.) but this road is dusty, cold, flat as sheet rock, unable to withstand vegetation, and stretches as far as you can fathom.

Plus, most roads have a definitive stopping point, like an ocean, to keep it from being ludicrous, but you get the feeling you could drive US 285 clear to the Antarctic tip of Chile. Fortunately, we turned east on I-10 and wandered into the driveway of Tessa's mom Sandy just in time to see my beloved Heels get throttled again by Maryland. I'm really sick of losing to those bastards, but at least this time we gave them something to stick in their pipe.

Sandy's home here in the Hill Country was devastated by the floods this July (she saw her neighbor's house floating by on Verde Creek), but most of the repairs have been made, and I lie now in the guest house made 300% better than the original thanks to insurance money. It's still a beautiful landscape, here in the mid-Texas town of Center Point, but it's a beauty that has been viciously rearranged.

1/21/03 Day 31 of the

1/21/03

Day 31 of the Breathing Excitedly in the Thinnest of Air Road Trip of Emotional Salve

Taos, NM to Southern New Mexico

This is the first time I've ever written a blog anywhere other than my own belly in bed, but Tessa and I are sitting at Longevity Caf in Santa Fe, a brilliant place full of Kidney Tonic Pills, Vegan Soup Shavings, and piles of dreadlocked lesbians waxing wiccan about their "psychic bursts" – in short, heaven. Especially since all of this town's coffeshops are supplied by Working Wild, a company dedicated to getting wireless internet all over New Mexico. Santa Fe is pretty great – everyone smiles at you, and the queer population is intense (Tessa said it should be called "Santa Gay," but I offered "Santa Fey," which she liked better).

We had the incredible experience of skiing Taos today, which was abandoned one day after the holiday; we had the slopes to ourselves, and it's a HUUUGE mountain. It felt like there were 15 people there total, allowing me to eat shit without a parade of onlookers. Taos also doesn't allow snowboarding, which raises its average age to about 40, but the slopes are still long and challenging. It's no Mammoth, but after getting our stuff stolen yesterday, it was a needed shot of optimism in the arm.

I had another very trenchant and witty observation to add today, but I've forgotten what it was. This sort of thing used to drive me crazy when I was younger; once, on a road trip in college, I came up with - and then forgot - The Perfect Column Idea for the Daily Tar Heel, and it still burns me now. But age and ego has softened me into believing that something better always bubbles to the surface.

1/20/03 Day 30 of the

1/20/03

Day 30 of the Rape and Violation of My Sacred Belongings Road Trip of Now I Fucking Well Know Better

Santa Fe, NM to Taos, NM

We got a rude awakening from my Uncle Chuck this morning, who banged on our door and alerted us that our cars had all been ransacked during the night. I dashed out into the blindingly red Santa Fe sunrise to find all our car doors open, and stuff strewn about. At first, I didn't think anything was missing, a delusion we held onto until about an hour into our morning procedures, when Tessa came back inside and told me that my guitar had been stolen.

It slowly dawned on me what else was missing: my canvas backpack, which not only contained my sinus medication, but also three pairs of my favorite shoes: some leather Campers, some trs expensive Gel Kayano running shoes, and most heartbreakingly, MY NIKE VINCE CARTER SHOX BASKETBALL SHOES IN CAROLINA BLUE. This last of these was a hard blow because I looked for these shoes for about six months before I found them.

Also in the backpack was a sweater my Dad had just given me, and a fabulous North Carolina sweatshirt with the old fashion interlocking "NC." Combine that with my NC basketball shorts, and you've got a burglar that is now outfitted with some of the best Tar Heel stuff you can get. I can only hope he roots for us on Wednesday, the fucking bastard.

The guitar was a real pity, because it was blue, gorgeous and I found it with Sean in midtown Manhattan. It had an aural brilliance, a way of singing the upper register, that was unlike the 150 other guitars I tried over the months. I can only hope the burglar plays some Joni Mitchell songs for his friends, the fucking bastard.

After talking to the cops, filing a report, and calling our insurance company, we said goodbye to my Aunt Lee (whose car was pillaged too) and drove down the hill to the main street by the river. But a few subconscious seconds later, I was having the feeling that I'd seen some of the trash on the side of the road before. I screeched the car to a halt, and found a pair of my boxers, two T-shirts, and four socks. Down further, I saw one lone Gel Kayano running shoe very out of place in these parts. The hunt was on: Tessa and I scoured the town all the way to the Santa Fe river and found two more pairs of boxers, another shirt, my orange bandana, and most unbelievably, the full pair of Campers and the running shoes!

We were lucky, relatively last night on a whim, I had taken the scanner and the printer inside to archive Uncle Chuck's pictures (see entry below) and also a bunch of electronic stuff I didn't need: the Palm, the XM Satellite Radio, and my cell phone. Still, it is a total violation.

And it would seem worse, except that I've been trying to let go of how much "stuff" means to me. I've noticed so many crosses on the side of the road on this trip, places where people have died in highway accidents. They're all over Interstate 5, Interstate 40, even in downtown areas. I imagine the street cleaners and Adopt-a-Highway folks leave the memorials alone, these crossed iron bars or PVC pipes festooned with plastic flowers and a single name. It's a sort of tacit respect, and a belief that seeing these things make drivers slow down. One sticks with me: on a hillside in Death Valley, I came upon a turn where a big cross was stuck in the ground; beside it, the tiny cross of a small child.

Where the Santa Fe river flows past St. Francis Avenue, no doubt right where a stolen pair of my boxers floated by early this morning, there is another cross, and it served to remind me that although my Carolina basketball shoes are a sentimental attachment, it hardly matters in the scheme of things.

1/19/03 Day XXIX of the

1/19/03

Day XXIX of the 2000 Pounds of TNT Detonated 50,000 Years Ago in the Arizona Desert Road Trip of Don't Forget Winona (Arizona)

Needles, CA to Santa Fe, NM

MAN, it's hard to write these things in the road! Yesterday's blog (below) was delayed all day because the motel in Needles connected me at 1400 BAUD. That, for those of you playing the home game, would have been considered low-speed even in 1993. So slow that the Web wouldn't even come up, and when I tried to check email, Earthlink scoffed at me, beat me up, stole my lunch money and threw my violin case into a tree.

Still, it's a lo-fi kind of place, here in the middle of the desert. I tried to use Wi-Finder to look for a wireless connection in northern Arizona, but alas, there is none. No Starbucks wi-fi, no hotels, nothing. I know that's not why people usually come to the Painted Desert, but I gots business to take care of, yo.

We did some business, however, at the great Meteor Crater outside Flagstaff. Not one to be swayed by many detours whilst on message, Tessa actually needed little convincing to visit Earth's largest intact meteor crater, and a good time was had by all. I learned that 20 consecutive football games could be played on the crater floor, and now you have too.

the wonders of nature! at the Meteor Crater (Stupidest Picture of the Week Award)

We were trying to make it to Santa Fe for the Raiders/Titans game, since my Uncle Chuck is a lifelong Raiders fan, but we pulled with just enough time to see my Aunt Lee and Rosie before they went to bed and a sleepover, respectively. Uncle Chuck is a great guy, full of amazing stories, but totally lacks ostentatiousness. He stayed up well past his bedtime going through old pictures with me, most of them I'll scan later tonight.

Aunt Lee has lost very little of her radical feminist edge, thank god, and it manifests in her daughter Rosie, who remains the Relative I Like the Most Who I See the Least. She's going to be super cool, you can just see it in some people. 16 years old but so full of confidence and a damn good idea about how the world works. I think my sister Michelle and her would get along famously, so I'm going to talk her parents into a New York trip.

me (obscured by weird "night settings" on camera), Tessa, Rosie and Uncle Chuck

Note to travelers: visit the Dairy Queen on the west side of Albequerque, before you get into town. It is staffed by a husband-wife team in their 80s who seem to have a running argument originating in 1937. I would consider Tessa and myself to be very lucky to have such a fate.