A Day of Madness and Heartbreak in New Mexico

After three nights at the Candlewood I checked out in mid-morning and prepared to leave Albuquerque. Albuquerque is a college town---the home of the University of New Mexico, and I wanted to explore the campus a little, so I scheduled some just to wander around in leisure.

It's one of the pleasures I afford myself on my travels, giving myself tours of university campuses. Each one tends to be distinct and interesting, as are the surrounding commercial areas that cater to students. UNM has one of the more interesting campuses. The buildings had a common southwestern theme that I hadn't seen anywhere else.

As it happens, it was the opening day of the NCAA College Basketball tournament. I don't follow college basketball much, but the hype of "March Madness" is hard to escape in the media. This year UNM had a very good season. They had won the Mountain West and were highly seeded in the bracket. There was much anticipation in the Albuquerque media about the chances for the team this year. The rival team New Mexico State was also in the tournament, although with a lower seed.

It was around noon when I walked through the Student Union. The common area on the ground floor was filled with chairs in front of a big screen television that was turned on. A dozen students were sitting in the chairs already watching a pre-game telecast for the tournament. Nearby were large signs cheering on the team, and a smaller one saying that New Mexico State would be playing at 1:00 PM, and that UNM would be playing at 7:00 PM. I could imagine that the chairs would be quite full by then.  Their opponent for the first game was Harvard, a low seed. The game was considered to be a shoo-in for New Mexico by most in the media.


After a brief and pleasant campus tour I drove out of town, heading Eastward on Central Avenue, which is old Route 66. If there is one stretch along that old highway that preserves the feel of old Roadside America, it is Central Avenue on the east side of Albuquerque. For several miles, the road was lined with old but still functioning motels with interesting unique signs. It felt like driving through a museum.

My destination for the day was Santa Fe. The direct route was on the Interstate northward, but I wanted to take the backroads. I skirted the east side of the Sandia Mountains, along what is known as the "Turquoise Trail," and took a side road detour about a dozen miles into the National Forest to the top of Sandia Peak.

The parking lot at the top was cold and empty, except for one other car---a young Hispanic or Indian couple with an infant. It felt like winter again. The gift shop was still closed for the winter. I stood for several minutes in the wind looking down westward over the city and to the distant mountains.  When I went to my car, I saw the young couple standing outside their vehicle. The woman was holding the bundled infant.

The man asked me if I had a device for unlocking a car. It turns out they had locked their keys inside. It was a heartbreaking moment.  I offered the use of my cell phone, but he had one already. There was little I could do for them.

I told them that on the way down the mountain I would look for a ranger, who might be able to help them. About halfway down, I passed a white truck with the NFS emblem on the side heading up the mountain, but it was moving too quickly for me to flag down. I hoped that it was heading to the top.

In the late afternoon I rolled into the south edge of Santa Fe and checked into the America's Best Value Inn, where I'd made reservations. The front desk seemed to be run by slacker twenty-somethings who were half clueless about what they were doing.

The room itself turned out to be decent, but unfortunately the wi-fi was abysmal. By abysmal, I mean really bad to the point of being unusable. The motel had four different routers, yet it is nearly impossible to connect to any of them. During the first evening I was able to get online for about twenty minutes total. This a real deal-breaker for me. It makes it impossible for me to do my job.

I was reduced to flipping through the channels on television. The tournament was in full swing, with games on four different channels. NMSU had already lost their game and was out of the tournament. The UNM game against Harvard was just starting.

I watched much of the game. UNM fell behind early and trailed throughout the first half. At half time the analysts were puzzled as to why they couldn't put lowly Harvard down. Surely they would surge in the second half.

But they didn't. Harvard kept the lead throughout the entire game. In the first big shock of the tournament, UNM was out.

I imagined the scene back at the Student Union. It was supposed to be their year. Instead it was over after one game. Such is life when you stake your happiness on sports teams over which you have no control. It's forgivable for college students---part of the experience.

My Encounter with an Alburquerque Paramedic

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, one of the purposes of my visit to Albuquerque was to look up my long-lost friend Eric, whom I hadn't seen in many years.

I'd been Facebook friends with him for a couple years, but he is one of those saner souls who rarely posts or interacts with the site. When I was still in Arizona, I sent him a message through the Facebook interface, telling him when I'd be in town and that I hoped to see him, but I wasn't sure how long it would take before he responded.

I got a message back from him about an hour after I checked into the Candlewood Suites on Monday afternoon. He told me that Tuesday night would work for him, since he had to work the other nights I was going to be in town. He left his phone number, and I called him back immediately, leaving an enthusiastic message about getting together.

It turns out he was just heading off to work, so I didn't hear back from him again until the next day. I saw the New Mexico area code in the caller id and immediately answered. I recognized his familiar jovial voice immediately. It was the same old Eric.

He suggested we meet that evening at a Mexican restaurant he knew called Sadie's. He gave me detailed directions, although I didn't really need them.

After spending a productive day working at a nearby Starbucks, I drove up Fourth Street and found the place. I could tell by the size of the parking lot that it was popular, and it turned out to be a local institution of sorts, run by the same family for years.

I sat in the waiting area inside, and the hour of our meeting came and went. I kept scrutinizing everyone who came in. It had been a long time. Would I recognize him?

Finally I saw the person I was sure was Eric. He had put on a few pounds since the old days, so I wasn't one hundred sure. I called out his name and he turned and greeted me with great enthusiasm.

It was a splendid reunion. We spent the meal catching up on our lives---I didn't know that he had been married and divorced. We got into heated but friendly debates about politics and social issues, just like the old days, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing. Personally I'm completely comfortable being friends with anyone, even if I disagree with them on various issues. People see the world differently, all of us imperfectly and partially, and we must defend our views and positions and we see fit. I try to learn something form everyone I cross paths with.

At one point, during a discussion about the history of the banking system, after each of us had drunk about three beers, the waiter overheard us and joined in the discussion. I was somewhat taken aback at first, but took it in stride. I got the impression that he has to overhear a lot of inane conversations, and found ours to be a refreshing change of pace.

We talked about guns quite a bit, as he has quite a collection, although he claimed not to be a big "Second Amendment Guy." He was interested in the weapons training course I had taken in Nevada, as he had seen my Facebook photos about it. It turns out he was a fan of a rival weapons training facility in Texas. He called the founder of Front Sight a "con man" who overcharged for his courses. I told him I was pleased and that I had only paid a hundred bucks for a four-day course. That seemed to catch is attention.

Towards the end of the evening I finally got around to asking him about his job. For the eighteen years, he has been a paramedic for various agencies in central New Mexico. He recently changed from working from Albuquerque Ambulance to having on-site paramedic position in a local hospital.

I was very curious about the nature of his work, and was hungry for interesting anecdotes. He told me that by far the majority of the ambulance calls he had been on were associated with alcohol. Without irony, with a beer in his hand, he told me that it made him think that Prohibition had perhaps been a good idea after all (but he claimed to support marijuana legalization without reservation).

It was an awesome evening, and over way too soon. He excused himself by saying he had to get some sleep for work tomorrow. Despite my interesting in his work, I didn't envy him at all.

We parted with a warm embrace, and photo taken by the restaurant host. "Next time, we'll go out shooting together," he said.

"It would be an honor," I told him.

All Hail the Man Behind the Curtain

The Candlewood Suites in Albuquerque turned out to be an interesting experience. It was my first time on my travels staying at an InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). Their most well-known flag is Holiday Inn. I'd joined their frequent stay club months ago and finally had a chance to accumulate some points.

Upon check-in, the pleasant young woman at the reception asked me if I'd ever stayed at a Candlewood Suites before. The question caught me off guard. I said no. She explained the rules, about reduced housekeeping. They don't come in your room at all, except for once a week. They leave you totally alone. If I needed new towels or linens before then, I'd need to bring the old ones down to the desk and ask for new ones.

That wasn't a big deal, of course. I was going to be there three nights. I was perfectly capable of making my own bed, and conserving my towel usage until then.

Yet there was something about it that made me feel a bit wistful. One of the reasons I enjoy my lifestyle, over say, having an apartment, is that I get to interact with people on a daily basis---the people at the front desk, and housekeeping. Candlewood Suites was the kind of place designed to minimize that interaction. It was actually something I didn't really want to minimize.

The room was nice, of course. The television was a nice large screen model that displayed Bloomberg financial news whenever one turned it on, no matter what channel one had been watching when one turned it off. I wound up leaving it on Bloomberg quite a bit and listening to talking heads explaining why the Cypriot banking crisis wasn't a big deal, and that all was well. Go about your business. Suckers!!!

The television was equiped with a DVD machine. Behind the front desk at reception was bank of shelves with DVDs on them for free rental by guests. I looked over the list one evening but was uninspired by the selection.

It's part of the philosophy of Candlewood Suites to make one feel as if one is staying at an apartment complex for long-term. One can "check out" bar-b-que tools to use the outdoor grill for cooking. In the laundry room (free machines) there is a bulletin board with notices that guests and management post for each other about events. While I stayed there they had a bake sale in the lobby. Too bad I don't eat sweets much anyone.

Another fun thing about the Candlewood was the "pantry" on the ground floor. It was a room that contained a selection of sundries, snacks and microwavable meals on shelves and in a freezer. It was available twenty-four hours a day. Payment was on the honor system, either by depositing cash in the slot or by filling out a form with one's room number on it.

I made a single purchase at the pantry while I was there, a Klondike ice cream bar one evening when I came home late. It was a dollar. I took a bill out of my wallet and pushed it into the slot.

That's one more dollar than they get out of their banks in Cyprus right now.

Bacon and Eggs from Yesteryear in Cuba

I had reserved two nights at the Quality Inn in Farmington, thinking that after a week of constantly changing motels, thinking that I might want to rest for a day. But one look at the town made me realize that despite the presence of a Starbucks allowing me to work, there was really no point in staying there more than overnight. I had momentum I wanted to keep going.

I was so close to the Colorado border. I could almost feel the pull of gravity of home, or what passes for "home" lately. But I wanted to give New Mexico its due as part of this long phase of my journeys. I'd spent only one night in the state, twenty five years ago, and passed through briefly only a couple other times. Moreover there was a friend I was hoping to see in Albuquerque, where I'd already booked three nights at the Candlewood Suites.

So after one pleasant night at the QI (still no TCM since Sedona), and having put in some early morning work, I checked out, gassed up, and took the highway south across the undulating scrub plateau of northwest New Mexico.

After three hours of mid-day drive listening to podcasts on my smartphone, I arrived in the little town of Cuba at the base of the low mountains just to the east. After a standard bacon-and-egg lunch in a little cafe that looked like it hadn't changed since the Great Depression, I was ready to continue on, but I was ahead of schedule and didn't feel like getting to Albuquerque so soon in the day.

According to the map, there was a paved road from Cuba that ran up into the mountains, into the Santa Fe National Forest. I decided a side trip was in order. Twenty minutes drive on switchbacks found me several thousand feet higher, with snow beside the road. I drove onward until the road turned into dirt and gravel. Almost immediately I hit mud patches and decided it was time to turn around.

At the point of my turnaround, a side road into the national forest was covered with snow. I decided some snowshoeing was in order, so I parked, strapped on the MSRs and headed up the road into the woods for about twenty minutes, passing shuttered vacation cottages. It was nice walk, in shorts but with gloves (an odd combination), and I would have kept going, but there were too many already-melted mud patched on the road that made it less than fun. Nevertheless it was a pleasant way to kill forty-five minutes.

And it let me add New Mexico to the list of places where I'd snowshoed. My life seems to be driven partly by these lists that have meaning only to me.

New Mexico Makes 47 for the Bimmer

After Monument Valley I drove back to Kayenta, then headed east on the main U.S. highway across the plateau towards the Four Corners. I got there in late afternoon---it was on my must see list, since I'd never been there.

I gave it as much time as it was worth, considering it was simply a geographical anomaly. Of course I made sure to stand caddy-corner to be in both Arizona and Colorado at once. I grabbed lunch from one of the Navajo Fry Bread stands alongside the parking lot. I bought another mutton-filled one, and it was far inferior to the one in Window Rock for the reason that it contained more mutton bone than mutton meat. Moreover it was more expensive. But that's what I get for buying from a tourist-oriented stand.

Leaving the Four Corners going eastward, I was still in the Navajo Nation but no longer in Arizona. In New Mexico, the speed limit on the same highway was suddenly ten miles per hour slower. The state highway road signs no longer looked like an angular version of Arizona but were a stylized version of the sun symbol on the New Mexico flag.

"47!" I said to myself outloud, once I was over the border. Arizona had been the forty-sixth state I had visited in the BMW since acquiring it in 2007. Now there were only three more to go---Alaska, Hawaii, and Florida. Given the unlikelihood of driving the old vehicle to the first two, it seems 48 will be the highest I'll get. But Florida seems pretty unlikely too at this point.

Going eastward on the highway I passed through the gritty, grimy town of Shiprock,  then exited the Navajo Nation. Almost immediately the pre-fab houses seemed kept up more neatly, in the way that they are across most of rural America. It must be hard to grow up on an Indian reservation.

I spent the night at the Quality Inn in Farmington, where I had reservations. I had decided to switch from Wyndham to Choice Hotels for a night at least, since they were having a promo for the frequent-stay members. That evening I dined at the local Golden Corral, a budget buffet-steakhouse that my late grandfather particularly liked during the last years of his life. He grew up in the Great Depression, I can hardly blame him for liking a place in which you can go back for as many refills on sirloin as you choose.

The table next to me was filled with a long row of at least a dozen Japanese tourists who seemed to appreciate the place in the same manner.

My Own Personal Stagecoach

About an hour and half after leaving Canyon de Chelly, I got to Kayenta, one of the largest towns in the Navajo Nation, around sundown. The strip along the main highway was lined with gas stations and fast food outlets. I decided a bacon cheeseburger at Sonic was in order. Whenever I'm at a Sonic I flash back to being at the one in Wilsonville, Oregon, where I was surprised by a man wearing a tie who poked his head in my window while I was eating outside. He was the manager, making the rounds to see if his customers were happy. I nearly spilled my cherry limeade at the time. Now I'm always on the watch out for roving managers interrupting my meal there. None appeared this time.

He would have been an Indian of course. All the employees of all the businesses in the Navajo Nation are Indians. This was true at the Wetherill Inn, the motel where I stayed that night. Across much of America, the division of labor in motels is that the management is either white or Indian-from-India, and the housekeeping is Hispanic. On the Indian reservation, both the management and housekeeping was Indian, as in Native America. A novelty to see it this way.

The room at the Wetherill was small but decent. In the morning I drove north out of town, up through the rock formations, towards the Utah state line.

My destination for the day was Monument Valley. I've visited plenty of John Wayne oriented sites during my travels, including taking the Quiet Man Tour in Ireland with my friends in Galway. With all the John Wayne imagery I'd see in southeastern Arizona, it seemed like a side trip to Monument Valley, where John Ford shot so many of his westerns featuring Wayne, was an absolute must for this trip.

It was less an hour's drive to entrance to the Navajo Tribal Park that contains the most famous locales. To get into the entrance, I had to detour into Utah for about twenty seconds, the first time I'd been outside Arizona in a month.

The beautiful visitor's center was about a mile back into Arizona. I parked and bought some souvenirs, including a shot glass for Agnes and Thor, who would appreciate the John Ford-themed gesture. A shot glass seemed the appropriate thing in this case.

From the visitor center, one could see eastward towards several of the most famous formations, including the two Mitten Buttes that are probably the most iconic natural images of the southwestern part of the country. Inside the center was a room with a small sporadic collection of posters and plagues commemorating Ford's movie shots in the valley, the first one of which was famously Stagecoach in 1939, the movie that made John Wayne a legitimate star.

One of the plaques mentioned that Ford's movie company brought many temporary jobs for local Navajos, and a boost to the local economy. But in the last sentence it added that the movie company brought many of its own supplies, implying that somehow the economic boost wasn't as big as it could have been.

It almost seems stereotypical now, when I travel the country. Anything historical about the Indians and white settlers has to take great pains to emphasize the point of view that no matter how else you spin things, whites oppressed Indians, plain and simple.

This kind of viewpoint is so much the norm right now, not just on Indian reservations (where it actually seems much less heavy-handed, ironically). The ones outside Indian reservations sometimes seem to be written to say that nothing good came from white settlement.

It really shows you who is in charge of creating such things. The universities are churning outsuch  historians with the "correct" political point of view based on a Marxist version of American history.

I'm convinced that it some future epoch all of this will itself seem outdated, when postmodernity is itself a distant memory. Wow, these people were really ashamed of things that they themselves never did!

The visitor center also had a large room dedicated to the Navajo codetalkers from World War II. I read on the web that there were virtually no commemorations of the codetalkers on the Navajo Nation, but this is clearly outdated. Half the building seemed dedicated to the codetalkers.

Yet I was somewhat disappointed in these exhibits. They dwelled mostly on the personnel, the men who actually served, which is fine of course. But they only briefly mentioned how the Navajo language is unique in a way that made it very hard for the Japanese to break the code. I've always heard this about the Navajo language, and I wanted some examples of just how the language is so different. Yet there were no examples of this to be found. The only thing about the Navajo language I found on the entire reservation were expensive school textbooks in the Hubbel trading post visitor center.

One big negative about the visitor's center: the smashed penny machine required four quarters to operate!  This is the first time I've seen it cost a dollar anywhere in the country. Although I realize that the Navajo, despite (or perhaps because of) the federal subsidies, are not a wealthy tribe, and that fifty extra cents is not a lot to contribute in this case, I must state emphatically that I do not like this precedent!

After going back to the counter to get more quarters and satisfy my collector needs for the penny, I went back outside with the resolve to drive the seventeen mile road that went back into the rock formations, in order to get the full experience, and to see the buttes from the sunlit side during the morning.

The man at the gate had warned me the road was rough, and he was right. It snaked down a long hill from the visitor center to the valley floor, over jagged rocks and ruts. After a couple miles of my car bouncing up and down, and my worrying about low clearance on the rocks, I realized that I was torturing the old Bimmer's suspension way too much, so I pulled over and turned around.


But at least it was far enough to see the Mitten Buttes in fill sunlight, and get a good view of some of the other rock formations further into the valley. I'd have to explore further in some other car, at some other time. But for now it was far enough, I decided, to check it off the list of my John Wayne sites.

Included this short clip of the Duke from The American West of John Ford (1971), which I saw in my hotel room after writing this post:

Through the Window to the Land of the Empty Mind

After lunch, I drove to the nearby Navajo Tribal Park to inspect the actual "Window Rock" that the town is named after. The formation is located in a natural amphitheater. It's easy to see why the tribal capital was placed here. It was obviously the focus of ceremonial activity over the centuries.

Then I drove back west, away from the state line. I spent a half hour at the historic Hubbel Trading Post National Historic Site. I always stop at such places. As I drive into the parking lot, I joke to myself whether there will another big telescope here.

But the joke is on me. In the visitor center I learn that the Hubbel who ran the trading post is from the same family as the famous scientist after whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named.

Inside the trading post is an actual store, run by Indians, selling modern goods, such as snacks and crafts. I buy some Navajo tea as a gift for my parents, since I'm going to see them in a few weeks. I always save gift buying until late in the trip, since I don't want things to break or spoil, or simply take up space for months on end.

West of there I gas up at a convenience store. I go inside to buy a bottle of protein drink to mix with the powdered vitamin supplements that I take. There are no such drinks in the refrigerator case. The shelves are half empty. It's not as bad as the place I saw in the Omaha Indian Reservation in Nebraska, where the shelves were more bare than full, but there are still plenty of empty spaces for goods that aren't stocked. I can't help compare it unfavorably to the general store at the historic site.

In the late afternoon, I reach my main destination for the day---the Canyon de Chelly National Monument. I drive along the rim road along the south side of the canyon, stopping for several views, including the most prominent one at Spider Rock.

It's a nice view, although it can't compare to the Grand Canyon. One could compare it to the innermost gorge of the Grand Canyon---the gorge within a canyon within a canyon.

I had thought about doing some hiking there, but it turns out that since this on Indian land, and considered sacred, that there is no hiking permitted except on organized tours. This is partly to protect the ruins of the Anasazi, the ancient cliff dwellers who had abandoned the site even before the Navajo arrived.

I also consider camping at the private Navajo campground on the canyon rim, since it is the weekend and I don't need the Wi-Fi until Monday, but it the sun is still high in the sky and I am not ready to call it a day.

Besides the campground looks unappealing. Moreover there is a huge bank of storm clouds off to the west. There is a Best Western and a Holiday Inn the town nearby, but I decide to drive onward to take advantage of the extended daylight of Spring.

About a half hour north on the main U.S. highway, a smaller road cuts off to the west, through the mesa country. I follow it. The afternoon sun is golden on the red rock formations on the open range. It is Good Road like I have not had in a while. The only interruption is a heard of cattle that decide to cross in front of me, forcing me to wait for a couple minutes until they are done.

My mind is emptied with each passing mile. That feeling I had when I first came to Arizona a month before, the beautiful high of newness and pristine adventure, is long gone. Like I said, I didn't expect it to last. It never does.

Instead I simply feel a peaceful calm of perfect equilibrium, with no thoughts of the future or the past.  Troubles of all kind seem a million miles away. Maybe this is the real goal of travel, this kind of mind balance.

Navajo Saturday

Escaping from the less-than-ideal motel in Pinetop, the next morning I head north, down out of the wooded foothills along the great mountainous rim that cuts through Arizona. A half hour later I'm in the gritty town of Show Low, then heading east across the flat undulating plateau of northern Arizona, the view interrupted only by sporadic mountains far in the distance.

St. John's is another gritty little town of trailers and chain link fences in front yards. North of there, along the eastern fringe of Arizona, the road is empty and lonely, perfect for a morning drive. The road is always better in the morning, something I've learned from years of road trips. Traffic tends to build up during the day until reaching a peak in the late afternoon.

After another hour, almost two quickly, I reach the great ribbon of civilization called Interstate 40. One sees the trucks from miles away, as if approaching a great city.

I got on the Interstate heading east, towards the nearby state line, but I get off at the very last exit before the border. The road heads north through a picturesque canyon into the sprawling Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the country.

I can tell I'm on an Indian reservation. There is no mistaking the look of the houses, which are often trailers or pre-fab. There are also stray dogs here and there, in a way you wouldn't see elsewhere. And stray horses as well.

I stopped at a roadside rest area. There is no restroom facilities. There are beer bottles and trash everywhere.

A half hour later I reach the little town of Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation. As I come to the main highway crossroads, I see a large outdoor festival in progress. I pull into the gravel parking lot and get out to explore. It turns out to be a Saturday flea market, with tables set up selling various second hand items beside parked trucks and cars. There most organized table seems to be selling bingo cards.

The air is filled with loud music from a band that is playing. I walk over and watch them. They are of young Navajo men playing old rock standards, such as Credence Clearwater Revival. Behind them are a row of small businesses in a plain brick structure, a more permanent version of the kind of impromptu business stalls that one sees everywhere on the reservation.

Most of those structures beside the road cater to tourists, selling trinkets to motorists. But the ones here in Window Rock all serve various versions of Navajo fry bread and stews. Mutton seems to be the most common meat offered.

I go inside one. It's tiny with a few tables. At a small window in the back wall I order a mutton fry bread and pay with as close to exact change as possible, as per the request of the hand-lettered sign. I sit next to an old Navajo man in the next booth, looking out the window at the band outside.

The mutton is as tough as shoe leather. It takes an enormous amount of chewing to finish the small portion. The chiles are hotter than expected. There is no water visible. I tough it out, letting my mouth burn.

Things That Go Bump in Pinetop

I was quite pleased with my stay at the America's Best Value Inn in Springerville. The town itself had an interesting history as the site of the oldest Ford dealership west of the Mississippi, run by an early automotive enthusiast. Because of that it was supposed to be on the first transcontinental highway, but didn't make the cut. Route 66 went to the north and bypassed it.

After checking out I drove down the street to the local coffeeshop restaurant which had a prefect combination of good coffee, great Wi-Fi, and cheap bacon and eggs for breakfast. I put in a few solid hours of work, and then in early afternoon I left town and headed westward up through the foothills of the White Mountains.

The road climbed up a gradual slope into pine forests and beautiful meadows. There was still plenty of snow on the ground. It felt like a bit of Valhalla on the highway. I took a side road into the forest for about a dozen miles to the Sunrise Ski Resort, where I found a big hill with families sledding. I parked my car, took out my snowshoes, and got a good hour's hike in, all while wearing shorts.

In the mid afternoon I arrived in the summer resort town of Pinetop, right on the edge of the mountain forests. I had made reservations at the Super 8 and I checked in right at the stroke of 3pm.

I guess the trip can't be perfect. Nogales seemed to set a theme of surly Indian motel owners, and this was the worst yet. All was OK for most of the afternoon and evening. With the exception of dinner, I stayed indoors and put in a good days work using the passable Wi-Fi.

Then about 11 o'clock, it changed. I started hearing a loud thumping coming up through the floor. I sounded like a laundry machine tub out of whack in the spin cycle. I thought it would go away but a half hour later it was still going strong. I wasn't quite ready to hit the sack yet, but it was approaching bed time. I tried blasting the fan in the room, but when I lay on the bed, I could tell the noise was going to prevent me from any good night's sleep.

I went downstairs to the first floor and found indeed that the laundry room was below mine.

I went to the front desk, which was dark, and pressed the buzzer. The proprietor came out from the back room wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He looked as if I'd woken him up and he didn't seem happy. I told him about the problem.

He didn't seem to believe me about the noise. In fact, he got very defensive. "We don't do laundry at night," he said emphatically.

"Fine," I said. "I don't care. But I can't sleep with the noise."

To his credit, he didn't hesitate to offer me another room. It was less than ideal, given that I had to move all my stuff. But I knew it was the best thing. Nevertheless he seemed reluctant to let me have both keys at once, until I pointed out that I needed them both while moving my things.

When I went back to my room, I could still hear the thumping. It irked me that he had implied that I was imagining the problem. I was still curious about what the hell was going on. So I went back downstairs and put my ear to the door. I could hear the thumping loud and clear.

The proprietor had seen me come downstairs again. He followed me to the laundry and opened the door, showing me the laundry room with the machines still and silent.

"See," he said, as if to prove his point. Yet even as he showed me the quiet machines, the thumping noise was echoing through the room.

"But don't you hear the noise!?" I asked in frustration.

"Yes," he said. "But it's not the laundry. It's coming from in there." He pointed to a side room. "That's the water heater in there."

It was as if he was implying that because it wasn't the laundry machines, then it was OK. It wasn't his fault. In fact, he claimed he didn't know what was making the noise. "It's not the water heater. Maybe it's a fan," he said, as if the whole thing were a non-issue.

I couldn't believe his attitude. It was the kind of thing you see people venting their frustrations about, when they complain in online reviews about bad management. All he would have had to do to placate me was to say, 'Oh yes, that's terrible. It should be fixed." But his attitude was that someone it wasn't his problem, even though it was his motel.

I threw in the towel, realizing there was no point to the whole drama anymore. I went back upstairs and shifted my belongings down the hall. After I did my usual final room sweep of the old room,  I went back downstairs and rang the bell one more time, not caring if I woke him again. I was determined to return the old key before going to bed, lest he claim I had used two rooms. It was the kind of outrageous thing I might have expected that I wanted to avoid.

Thankfully The new room was quiet and I slept well.

I wondered if I was the first person to complain about the noise. Sometimes I just don't get how the world works.

Under the Watchful Eye of John Wayne

During my few hours in Tombstone, I began to notice what would become a theme of this part of my trip through Arizona---there seemed to be images of John Wayne everywhere I looked. In Sierra Vista, I'd even seen a red-white-and-blue bumper sticker on the back of an SUV: "God Bless John Wayne."

Being a fan of the Duke, was born only a few miles from where I was, I didn't have any problem with the sentiment per se, but it somewhat puzzled me. Why so much of him?

That evening, after checking into the Super 8 by I-10 in the little cowtown of Willcox, I went out to dinner at BBQ restaurant inside an old railroad car and saw more images of Wayne on the wall by the cash register. The next day, after heading up through the mining town of Clifton and spending most of the daylight hours navigating the remote mountains through the national forest, I arrived in Springerville, I saw even more pictures of him. That evening in the old steakhouse, where the railing next to my table was covered with actual saddles, there were pictures of him on nearly every wall. The place seemed like a John Wayne shrine.

After a while it began to make sense to me. Many of Wayne's westerns were set in this part of Arizona, during the days of the Indian wars against the Apaches. For example, Springerville was only a few miles from Fort Apache, which is the name of one of Wayne's most famous movies (imdb), in which he plays a U.S. Calvary officer sympathetic to the Indians, but who is forced to betray his honor when ordered to do so by an intolerant and bigoted commander played by Henry Fonda.

It's one of my favorite westerns, partly because of the kind of Greek tragedy situation into which Wayne's character is thrust by this conflict.

But the reason I didn't readily associate Wayne with this area was because although many of these movies, especially the ones directed by John Ford, were set in this area of Arizona, they were actually shot elsewhere, either further north in Monument Valley, or up in Moab, Utah. Those are the places I personally associate with John Wayne.

But that's a bit of movie history not important to the locals in this part of Arizona. It became clear after a few days that Wayne was essentially a white counterpart to the ubiquity of the Native American imagery of this part of Arizona. It gave them someone to rally around, in a cultural sense. Personally I'm fine with that. Most of Wayne's movie characters had the kind of democratic nobility of personal honor that American male heroes were supposed to have back in the mid 20th Century, at least according to Hollywood.

I know people who would be fine wiping out the whole cultural segment of America that still admires Wayne. He is often reviled by liberals as a notorious stereotypical conservative throwback, with the insinuation that he must have been racist because of that. But of course in real life he was one of the most racially tolerant and accepting people of his day. I'm proud to be a fellow native Iowan.

Now I wonder where I can get one of those bumper stickers?

Hypergamy in a Coffin-Themed Town

After touring downtown Nogales, I took off driving north, away from the border, along the back roads that cut through the scrub hills to the northeast. For most of the morning I had "good road," as I like to say---no one behind me and no one ahead of me. I could cruise at whatever speed I wanted, and the day was warm and beautiful.

Within a couple hours, I'd come down from the hills into the valley around Sierra Vista, an Army post town, and then cut straight east through more hills to emerge at my major sightseeing destination for the day, the famous old western tourist town of Tombstone.

It was rustic and western-themed, as one would expect. I parked near the courthouse and walked around downtown, passing actors dressed as gunfighters standing on the way to the main "western" street. There are a couple blocks of interest there, and after buying some postcards and walking the length of the blocks, past a smattering of tourists and passing stagecoaches carrying them on tours, I'd felt I'd already seen most of what there was to see.

But there were some must sees there. At the end of the block I found the Bird Cage Theatre, which purported to be a famous site. I'd never heard of it, but it turned out to be an importance place all in all. It was basically the town performance hall and bordello.

I walked in just as a woman dressed in a period costume was giving a presentation about the history of the place. As a theater, it saw performances from the likes of Eddie Foy and Lillian Russel. The woman also pointed to a huge painting on the wall of the famous stripper Fatima, also known as Little Egypt, who became world famous on her tours after getting her start at the Bird Cage.

As a bordello and saloon it was quite wild. She pointed out many bullet holes in the walls and gave a rundown of the men (and one woman) who were killed at the Bird Cage.

The most famous prostitutes of Tombstones plied their trade at the Bird Cage. The tour guide described the most noteworthy ones, and how they became the mistresses of the gunfighter-gambler-marshalls who came and went, switching their allegiance from one top alpha male to the next one. It was a beautiful lesson in the nature of sexual politics in a world stripped of all morality.

All things being equal, prettiest young women, in the bloom of their youthful beauty, tend to gravitate towards the most brutally dominant of men. It's something our society does not like to admit, but which many young men have to learn with great heartbreak. It seems a matter of instinct, just as men are drawn to youth and beauty almost beyond their ability to resist. Our society seems to acknowledge that men can be prisoners of instinct but we somehow bestow on women a higher reasoning about their choice of mates.

But in a place like Tombstone in its heyday, there was no veneer of pleasant fictions about such things. It was life and death, and all was made manifest. The law of jungle ruled.

The woman said a full tour of the place cost ten bucks. One could see the Black Mariah, the famous gold-plated hearse that carried the cowboys, courtesans, and gamblers up to Boot Hill. I decided to keep my money.

After the Bird Cage, I walked down to the other end of the street and found the OK Corral, the most famous site in Tombstone. Out in front was a coffin with the name "William Harrison Clayton" on it. I paid six bucks to go in the back lot to see the figures of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Claytons facing each other at the moment when the bullets began to fly. At the entrance was another hearse.

Afterwards I sat through the half-hour "Historama" presentation of the town history narrated by Vincent Price. It was definitely worth it, the kind of kooky figurine-based automated show that no one bothers to make anymore, but which is a delight to see (here's a snippet of the end of it). If you go to Tombstone,  and you like this kind of stuff, this is a must see.

Nogales, No Curtain

The lack of chain motels in Nogales had been booking an independent motel via Booking.com, my favorite site for "unflagged" accommodation. I've had pretty good luck overall, providing I stick to places that have great reviews.

I wasn't as lucky in Nogales at the Siesta Inn. The Indian (from India) proprietress greeted me in Spanish then switched to English when she realized I was Anglo. So many of the independent motels are owned by people from India. I have nothing against them, but some of them seem to, well, dislike their clientelle. It comes across as an attitude. I suppose I'd have the same kind of attitude if I ran a motel, but that's one reason I'd never want to be an innkeeper.

The room was decent enough and clean---that plus security (door locks, etc.) are absolute musts. I've had good luck with that so far.

But the Wi-Fi turned out to be awful. I seemed to be able to load only one page every ten minutes and had to keep reconnecting. It was the worst Internet connection I've had in living memory. Given that there was no Starbucks or apparent Internet cafe in town, this was doubly bad and frustrating.

The television reception was lousy as well. Needless to say, no TCM, but even trying to watch NCIS reruns, the sound was fuzzy and crackly.

There was no shower curtain---an incredible oversight by housekeeping. Actually one appeared the next morning after I came back from breakfast. Housekeeping had already decided to start stripping my room even though I had not yet checked out and had a few hours left before checkout time. So much for lying on the bed and meditating before I hit the road, as I like to do.

But like I've said, I've had good luck with motels. Sometimes it doesn't work out perfectly.

And Nogales is the kind of place one would expect luck to bottom out. It really is a shabby little border town. The downtown has that musty flea market feeling like Mexican towns do.

Before I left town I walked down the border, which cuts right through downtown. The border fence goes up the hill and one can see the stark division. On the left, a barren American street with windows border up in sanitary fashion like a fortress. On the right, the shanty-like structures of the Mexican city. It's the view I'd come to see. I'm bizarrely fascinated by such contrasts.

The Boy and His Telescopes

On Tuesday morning I finally was able to pack up and check out of the Super 8. After a morning conference call to New York, I went online and made a reservation that evening for an independent motel about eighty miles south in Nogales, on the Mexican border. I knew I wouldn't feel like going far that day. I'd want an easy day on the road. And I figured I'd go down to the border again for no particular reason at all.

South of Tucson, where I-19 cuts off from I-10, the mile markers turn into kilometer markers, as if preparing one for Mexico. I wonder if they make their signs in miles on the other side, out of reciprocity.


A few miles south of Tucson I make a spontaneous decision, to get off on the highway west throught the desert through the Indian reservation. It's the road out to the Kitt Peak National Observatory. My uncle had suggested I go. It would be an hour's drive each way. I had time. There was no reason not to. It seemed like a shame not to go.

There was a time in my life when observational astronomy was the coolest thing to me. In seventh grade I was fascinated by the study of stars and planets. I looked over catalogues of telescopes and dreamed of building and owning one.

The interest gave way to other things, but survived in some form up through my undergraduate years at Willamette. It helped drive my interest in physics, especially celestial mechanics. But I had become more interested in theory than the gritty work of experiment. One learns these things about oneself.

In fact it was exactly twenty-five years ago this spring, while at Willamette, that I did my most extensive sky observations with a telescope. My physics adviser, who was the department chairman, had told his students that the department owned an 8-inch reflector that students could use with permission. I wanted to use it, so I got permission, which included a semester-long pass signed by campus security. About half a dozen times that spring I went up to the top of Collins Hall on campus and wheeled the telescope out on the roof to look at Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets. I was probably one of the few students who ever asked for the privilege of using it. My professors thought I was an odd duck, I'm sure.

By graduate school, I realized that in the great division of labor that makes science, working in observatories was the task for other people. My old interest in telescopes seemed a quaint relic of boyhood.

In the flatness of desert, the white domes of the observatory were visible on top of the mountain for over twenty miles away. A cutoff road from the main highway winds up along the mountainside---closed at night for obvious reasons of preventing the contamination of headlights.

Four thousand feet above the desert floor, the road makes one last hairpin turn around the giant four meter telescope that crowns the highest summit of the peak. I parked by the visitor's center and walked towards the visitor center. There was a large sign greeting visitors and listing the universities all over the country that participate in funding and operating the facility.

I went inside the visitor's center to pick up a map for a self-guided tour. There were over a dozen telescopes in various buildings on the mountaintop, three of which were open to the public during the day.

There was a flattened penny machine right by the door. It's my little fun habit---the one thing I collect that is purely frivolous---flattened pennies. It's cheap---universally fifty-one cents, including the penny itself.  I cranked the large wheel, turning it to the design I wanted. As I did, a flattened penny that had been left in the machine by the previous user felt into the slot with a clank. It was the first freebie of my collection. My lucky day, no doubt.

I took the walking tour, first heading back to the 4-meter telescope, the largest one of the facility. An elevator takes one up four stories. Then you climb a couple flights of stairs to a gallery that lets you look into the telescope area. The dome was closed and the facility was dark. Of course it was off hours. There were no astronomers present. It was impressive. I lingered letting my eyes run over the contours of the giant device, discerning the function of various parts. There were displays on the wall describing the history and construction in the late 1960s.

Like all scientific experimental facilities, it had a typical spartan industrial feel. Scientific labs in movies and television are always busy and warm. Real ones feel like power plants or factories.

After the 4-meter scope, I walked back to the visitor center and up the small hill to the 2-meter scope. It was the original telescope on the mountain, built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Curiously it went into operation in 1962, the same year as the Titan II missile silo I'd visited (and the same year as that Route 66 episode shot in Tucson). The building had a similar feel to the silo, from a time in history when America was obsessed and excelled with pure functionality. On the way up the stairs I mused about the parallels and anti-parallels between the two facilities, one buried deep in the ground, the other as exposed as possible on top of a mountain.

When I got the top of the stairs, where the gallery lets one see into the scope, my eyes fell upon the enormous metal base and my mind was filled with a sudden disorientation of time and space. Written in large cursive script, within a circle a foot in diameter was the word Willamette.

I put my face up to the glass to a closer look and make out the smaller text: "Willamette Iron and Steel Works, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A." The name is fairly common in Oregon, as it happens, but it's rare to find it elsewhere in the country (I later discovered that the shipyards remained in operation until 1990).

The last stop on the tour was the solar observatory, which is a large diagonal shaft into the mountain that collects sunlight from a rotating mirror. It's perhaps the facility for which Kitt Peak is best known, one of the finest in the world for solar astronomy.

Walking up to the large diagonal structure, I passed a small building with a sign indicating courtesy of quiet, since there might be people sleeping inside during the day. The building looked original from the late 1950s, the kind one sees at many facilities from that era. Nearby was an ancient basketball court, the hoop missing a net, and the pavement cracked. I could picture generations of scientists playing pick up games there. I wondered if anyone still used it. Fifty years ago, in the boom of postwar expansion, scientific work was a young man's game, supervised by old men. I suspect the average age of those working at Kitt Peak has increased over the years.

Unlike the other telescopes, the solar observatory was of course in use during the day. One could look into the long shaft, and also peak into the darkened lab where a row of lights indicated instruments in operation. On the wall were a series of posters indicating the size of the Sun compared to other known stars in the Galaxy, all the way up to VV Cephei, compared to which the Sun is vanishingly small (see this, for example).

There is something so compelling about solar astronomy, and the theory of stellar structure. If I had a chance to study it again, I'd jump at the chance. But I had desire to be of the busy hands operating the telescope. That work of gathering data is left to those with a passion for it.

May the Wind Take Your Troubles Away

Searching for a truer sound...
 (complete lyrics)

The Other Shoe Drops on the Bimmer

By Saturday evening, after the author session on campus and one last dinner with my uncle, I was definitely ready to get back on the road.

It had been an awesome two weeks in Tucson. I'd been able to pack in a tremendous amount of work, and had not only wrapped up a phase of project exactly on the original projected completion date, but had proceeded to tick off a list of other wish list things for the system that the company had entrusted to me. There had been all manner of horrible patches of code that were causing miserable inefficiencies for the growing list of editors and authors using it.

I knew that it meant I'd have plenty of slack going forward in the next few weeks. But my mind simply couldn't slow down. Unable to slow down from the work frenzy, I'd entered into some kind of workaholic mania, jackhammering up sections of the system and refactoring them all in one evening to suit myself, completely under my own direction and authorization, and checking the code into source control. I'd even had time to perform some fine stitching of the using interface, the kind of stylistic garnishing that usually outside my purview, and which no one would possibly expect me to do.

My soul seemed to be crying out for the relief of the road. I wanted nothing more than to pack up and get going.  But there was one problem---I was stuck for the next few days.

On Friday evening, after coming back from dinner, while walking in back of the car, I had noticed that the left rear shock absorber was hanging down beside the muffler. I knew immediately that it was almost certainly a consequence of the incident on Grant Street. I hadn't gotten away as cleanly as I thought.

I crawled under the car to inspect it. It appeared that the shock itself was intact, as was the mount. It appeared that the bolt had simply snapped, perhaps from one of the many potholes in Tucson (there are more than one would think), having been weakened by the accident.

I always like to take some kind of immediate action in these cases, just to get the ball rolling. I Googled Big O Tires, since I'd recently bought a set of radials there and wanted to have them rotated anyway. I called the nearest one and explained the situation. They said they'd be able to take care of it, most likely, but not until Monday when they could get the parts. That meant I'd be stuck in Tucson at least two more days.

Stuck--yes. Two days was nothing, but when it is not by choice, it takes on a different tenor. All day Sunday, between poking on yet more things on the system for work, I paced around my hotel room like a caged cheetah, trying to distract myself with episodes of NCIS that I had already seen three times in the last couple months.

After sunset, I grew apprehensive about the car, wondering if maybe there were more serious issues that I hadn't seen. I questioned myself over having not filed a claim yet. Maybe I should go ahead and do that, in case I needed to shell out more for undiscovered critical repairs.

For a while I contemplated fixing the bolt myself, and even called the local BMW dealership. The parts department reported that the bolt was minimal in cost, but they would have to order it. It would be there on Wednesday at the earliest. They wouldn't or couldn't give me any info on the bolt itself. I could take the other one off to compare, but that might turn into a fiasco. In a desparate pinch, it would have been an option, but with time and money, fixing it myself didn't seem like the thing to do.

So I decided that it would be Big O on Monday, as planned. On Sunday night, expecting perhaps that I might be stuck in Tucson for multiple days while the car was in the shop, I unloaded most of gear from the trunk, dropping it in a heap by the door.

On Monday morning, I drove to the shop with great apprehension driven by uncertainty. How long until I get going again? How much would it cost? Would I have to track down Abdul (the guy who hit me) and shake his girlfriend's insurance info out of him?

The friendly manager at Big O listened to my situation and then put the car up on the lift. I could see that almost immediately the technicians began trying out bolts from their stash in a drawer, to see which one might work. A couple minutes later the manager  came back and told me that it turned out that both rear shocks were leaking and needed replacing. He showed me where the fluid was leaking down.

This was not a consequence of the accident---just routine maintenance that I had somewhat expected, given how much I carry in the trunk while on the road. He gave me a quote--seventy dollars for the pair plus labor. "Go for it," I told him eagerly.

I sat in a nearby donut shop for the forty-five minutes and then came back just as they were finishing. The car was already sitting in the parking lot, its back end riding high from the replacements. The total bill was 145 dollars---pretty much nothing. They charged me eight bucks for the bolt, which they had to special order for immediate delivery. That turned out to be the total cost so far out of pocket for the accident.

Driving away down Alvernon Avenue, I almost felt like taking to the road immediately. It was bright sunny day, perfect for driving. My contact colleague in New York had said he wanted to chat the next day about the next phase of the project. There was hardly anything do until then.

But I'd already paid for another night at the Super 8.  I'd have to think of how I might kill another day in Tucson. My aunt had told me about a favorite diner that her son and daughter-in-law liked, so I went there and ordered my usual of three scrambled eggs and a side of bacon. She also mentioned a favorite local used bookstore chain, so I went there and perused their foreign language section looking for verb books I might not yet own.

Then in the late afternoon, finally able to let go of work for a few hours, I sat down and hammered out five blog entries in a row while reclining on my hotel bed. It's good to be in Tucson. 

Ah heck, I just remembered about the laundry I need to do.

The Wisdom of the Priestesses of the Bestseller List

I had originally planned to stay in a Tucson a week, although I knew in advance that I might stay longer, as I often do, since I have no fixed schedule on my travels.

During the first dinner at my aunt and uncle's house, my aunt had told me about the upcoming Tucson Festival of Books, which she always enjoyed attending each year, but which she knew she would have to miss this time because of her trip to be with her daughter during the birth of the new baby.

She really talked it up, telling me how much I would enjoy it. Although it meant extending my stay at least five more nights, I rather easily began to contemplate the idea of going, based simply on curiosity and the fact that I tend to take up suggestions like this rather easily, out of almost a spiritual sense of being guided by serendipity along my path.

I told my aunt that it was ironic, since I often described my unorthodox lifestyle as being like "an unpublished author on a phantom book tour." She liked that one.

My aunt gave me the extensive guide to the festival from the local paper. I put it in my backpack and didn't take it out until the night before the opening day of the festival, which was a Saturday. By that time my aunt had already left for Wisconsin.

I figured it was time to do a little recon if I was going to see anything at the festival, which was held on the campus of the University of Arizona. When I cracked open the guide, I was surprised to see that there were over a hundred different authors giving lectures and presentations on various themes of writing at locations all over campus. It was much bigger event than I realized.

I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I recognized almost none of the names of authors, outside of a few famous Hollywood actor-authors who were attending. I decided I didn't want to see them, since they would certainly be crowded.

Somewhat randomly I picked out an author from the list---Lisa Genova, who had written a novel that had made the New York Times bestseller list. I'd never heard of her, or her book, but the theme of her 1:00 PM talk, "Mixing Fact and Fiction," somewhat intrigued me.

Around noon on Saturday I drove towards campus and parked in location where I knew I could find a space. When I got to the main mall area, I found it packed and swarming with a huge crowd of people streaming between the many white tents set up outside as temporary book stalls and author-signing booths.  The C-SPAN bookmobile was parked nearby, beside the palm trees in front of the modern languages building where Genova's lecture was to be held.

I had imagined being in a small classroom, but the lecture turned out to be a multi-author panel discussion in a large lecture auditorium. I arrived five minutes beforehand and squeezed into one of the last remaining seats.

Genova was a Ph.D. neurologist from Harvard who had written a previous novel about alzeimer's disease. On the panel she was plugging her latest novel, which was about a boy with autism. The other two authors were both women: Caroline Leavitt, whose book Pictures of You was about a woman who had killed someone in a car accident, and Barbara Shapiro, who latest novel was a young woman painter who is lured into becoming an art forger.

Shapiro's book is based partly on the still-unsolved theft of several famous painters from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. She gave me one of the comments that made an impression on me: It can be hard to write about a crime that hasn't been solved yet, she said. That's something I think about a lot, as it happens.

A couple other mental notes I carried away from the panel discussion. Genova, in responding to a question about how to know when you have done enough research: "You reach a point where you start hearing the same things over and over," she said.

I reminded me of something I'd discovered along the way, that if you're trying to figure out something that happened, say if you're trying to solve a historical crime, you know you're on the right path because the additional facts you pick up start falling into place more easily. Or as I often say, using the language of higher mathematics, the truth converges.

Leavitt emphasized the importance of just plowing through your first draft. That one's fairly universal, and one I'm still working on. I'm running out of excuses.

I got a kick out of Genova talking about her writing habits. She said she has to get out of the house to write---too many distractions there, including laundry and the refrigerator. "I usually write in Starbucks," she said.

"I'm surprised I haven't run into her yet," I thought. But then I haven't been out to Cape Cod lately.

Scooped by a Different Kind of Launch

I thought I'd had a pretty good day, all in all, between the missile museum and the mission. I could hardly wait to tell my aunt and uncle when I saw them at their house for dinner that evening. I knew they'd be pleased that I'd had a chance to visit both places.

When I phoned them from my motel room that afternoon, they immediately told me some important big news. Their daughter, my cousin, had gone into labor, a week ahead of schedule. My aunt, who was already planning on flying to Wisconsin for the birth, had pushed her flight up to the next morning.

On the way over to their house I bought not only a bottle of red wine, which I had brought on the previous two dinners at their house on my visit, but a bottle of champagne.

By the time I got their, they had received updated news: the baby girl had already arrived.  So the dinner was a bit of a celebration.

Visiting them this time in their new house had been very fun. We had talked for hours each time about politics, physics, history, art, and cinema. We had even watched a University of Arizona basketball game on television together.

I had told them about my weird lifestyle, and even about the television show Route 66, and my ideas of how America had changed, and hadn't, since the early 1960s. I told them that my all-time favorite episode, "How Much a Pound for Albatross?" (Season 2, Episode 18), had been set and filmed in Tucson, and featured interesting period cinematography of the city from that era. So my visit was a bit of pilgrimage in a way.*



It was particularly fun to talk to my uncle, who is my dad's younger brother. He's in the age rane between my father and me, and has been an electronics engineer most of his life. He proudly showed off his skills in their backyard at night with a green laser pointer, which could reach the slopes of nearby mountains (green stays coherent over a longer range than red). He even rigged up a contraption to point the laser pointer on a telescope to extend its range, the of makeshift device that my grandfather (his father) was famous for cooking up.

When I left at the end of the third evening, I insisted on taking their picture. They weren't enthusiastic about it, but I told them it was "so your granddaughter can see what her grandparents looked like on the day she was born." They went for that one.

* I just found the opening few minutes of this episode on Youtube. The first shot is of Julie Newmar's character riding a motorcycle past the San Xavier mission---I knew there was a reason I had to go there.

In the Shrine of the Patron Saint of Spies

Having played nuclear missile commander with such fervor, and having been driven to contemplate such weighty matters as the end of life on earth, I decided to follow up my visit to the Titan Missile Museum by visiting the San Xavier Mission on the way back to Tucson.

I took the back roads through the desert, past a huge mine in the mountains and across the Indian reservation until I saw the white structure in the small Indian town beside the Interstate.

I'd read it was the oldest extant Euroepean structure in Arizona. The mission had been founded in 1692 by the Jesuits. The current structure dates from the 1790s. Visiting this kind of historical landmark is always something I make a priority of doing, as my friends David and Betty can testify, when I forced them to take me to the old mission that is the oldest structure in San Francisco.

The parking lot was half full with tourists, including a few buses. Before going in I ate lunch by buying an "Arizona fry bread" from one of the Indian women selling them below the makeshift ramadas alongside the parking lot. The fry breads are basically deep fried tortillas wrapped arond beans, cheese, and meat.

The missile museum had been a palace of science and rationality. It had been overwhelming to absorb the beautiful functionality of all its working parts, all from the age of analog electronics.  Now I was inside a shrine of faith, although which a fun twist.

San Xavier refers to Francis Xavier, the founder of the Jesuit order, which functioned from its beginnings as the foreign intelligence arm of the Vatican. It is not accident that Georgetown University, the pre-eminent Jesuit institution in the United States, is located amidst the heaviest "spook" area of D.C., and is a CIA factory. It also happens to be located on the highest hill overlooking the Capitol and the White House.

In a way the old mission felt like some kind of bizarro counterpart to the missile museum. As I entered a tour was in progress. I sat in the pews and absorbed the ornate interior. The domelike apse was not unlike the "birdcage" structure that housed the command facility of the missile facility.

In Which I Turn the Key To Destroy the World

With all the time I had in Tucson,  I knew I had to see some of the traditional tourist sights. I often get tied up with a work, and the days goes by, just as if I were a local. But if I leave a place without having seen some of the "must see" things, it feels as if I missed the essence of being there.

When looking on the map of the area, I noticed the Titan Missile Museum a few miles south of town on the Interstate. It is basically a preserved nuclear missile silo. The last time I had taught college physics, I had used the history of rocketry as a theme. This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

My uncle, who is an engineer at a well-known electronics manufacturer, readily endorsed the choice, telling me that he had taken my grandfather there, and that "it was like being back in the 1950s."

After having spent most of Sunday working in my hotel room, I allowed myself to take Monday afternoon off. I drove south on the Interstate a few miles to the exit in the small town where the museum was.

The visitor center was small plain building. I paid nine fifty for the entrance. I was just in time for the tour. I took a seat in small room where man was giving a lecture about the history of the facility. Of the two dozen people in the room, I looked to be the youngest by many years.

The Titan II missile program, I learned, had been started in the early 1960s to replace the earlier generation of Titan I and Atlas missiles. That earlier generation had used liquid oxygen as a propellent. Although it functions great as rocket fuel, it is highly unstable, and had to be stored outside the engine, until launch. Loading it required almost an hour---an eternity in a nuclear attack. so the Titan II was designed with a more stable propellant. The missile could be launched in less than a minute.

I learned that the facility was one of 54 Titan II sites spread out over three locations in Arkansas, Kansas, and Arizona, and operated by the Air Force They had been decommissioned in 1982 by the Reagan administration so that the funds could be used for a newer program, the Minuteman III. Hearing about all this brought back memories to high school, when all of this was in the process of happening, especially the MX program that Reagan wanted but which never happened because of lack of funding. My fascination with the Cold War nuclear strategy was one of the reasons I went to Georgetown.

A video tape told us about the security procedures of how the crew checked in for each 24-hour "alert," as they were called. At each stage, one had to pick up and phone and get clearance from the crew inside. It all seemed quaint and old-fashioned by today's security standards--yet it worked. We also learned about the "tipsies," the scoop-like security devices around the silo cover that sent invisible laser beams back and forth, and which alerted the crew to any security breach on the ground.

Afterwards,  the volunteer giving us our briefing told me to put on a blue hard hat, since I was over five foot ten. He led us outside and down a flight of metal stairs past the "Beware of Rattlesnakes" signs. It was an issue out of the desert, he said, especially when no one used the stairs for twenty four hours.

We entered through the thick steel door that guaranteed temporary survival from a nearby hit, and passed the light fixtures suspended from springs, and into the underground control room that turned out to be a suspended within its shell by huge springs to absorb the shock of an attack, in order to allow the crew to launch the missile according to any orders received.

My uncle had been right. It was like a trip back in time. The control room was lined by banks of period electronics, gauges, and dials. The shelves were full of three-ring binders of checklists and manuals.

Our tour guide inside the solo was a woman who had been the first female commander of a Titan II installation, during the last few years of the program in the 1980s. She explained what all the computers were for---guide systems, targets and status monitors. The crew never knew what the target actually was, she said. All they knew was whether the burst would happen in the air above the target or at ground level.

She explained how the launch orders came (or didn't come, as it happened), via a radio alert followed by a long series of letters and numbers that the two crew members had to copy down simultaneously and then compare. Then they went to a safe that had to be unlocked by both of them, to retrieve the correct paper envelope. Inside the envelope was a verification key to be compared with the numbers and letters they received. This would verify that the order to launch had come from the president.

Then each of the two crew members had to turn and hold their keys at the same time. The keyholes were located such that no one person could reach them both at the same time. It was a complicated procedure, in way, yet very simple---the only thing standing between the world and nuclear war.

After explaining how it worked, she asked for a volunteer to play "commander" for a launch simulation. When no one else volunteered, I stepped forward and raised my hand. She told me to sit in the commander's chair in front of the control monitor.

She was to play the deputy. She told me to give a countdown to launch, which I did in crisp military fashion. Then we both turned our keys and held them in position for four seconds. At that point series of lights on the control panel started to go on, indicating that had this been a real scenario, the rocket engines were powering up, and the silo cover was being pulled back. After 58 seconds, like clockwork, the launch light came. At that point, there would have no way in the world to recall or disarm the missile. The fate of the world would have been sealed.

A few minutes later, our guide led us down a long tight science-fictionesque hallway to the silo. Through several small windows. one could see the missile itself,  one of the few remaining in existence from the program. It was enormous and gloriously beautiful in dull metallic silver and black, with the words US AIR FORCE on the side. The Titan II missiles had been adapted for the Gemini space program in 1965-1966, and seeing one of them brought back flashes to memories from early childhood. I always felt privileged to have grown up them, amidst all that incredible optimism and spirit of adventure.

The tour lasted about an hour until we were above ground again. It was definitely one of the highlights of my tour. Such an awesome facility, and needless to say, so much more awesome that it never had to be used for its intended purpose.