Love Matches in Williams

From Kingman, whistling Nelson Riddle theme song of Route 66, I bypassed the Interstate and headed east away from the afternoon sun into the desert, over the two-lane stretch of asphalt that was yet a remnant of the once-great "America's Highway."

About a hour before sundown I reached Williams, where snow and a chill temperature awaited me in the foothills of the mountains. There I checked into the Super 8 on the east edge of town for two nights. I didn't have anything particular to do in Williams, but I felt like making gradual movements.

That evening I found myself explaining my "gradual movements" in an email to a woman I had met via on an online dating site. I had made the profile over a year ago, when I was a thousand miles away from where I was, and had since left it dormant, keeping my location underaltered. So the website kept sending me matches from that location, even though I hadn't been there in quite some time.

For some reason I'd felt like responding to one of the matches, and had quickly gotten addicted again to the high of correspondence with strangers of the opposite sex. But of course I found it necessary to explain why I couldn't meet up with them, at least for the next couple months.

Like Kingman, Williams was bestride the old route of U.S. 66, and many of the businesses in town took advantage of the marketing. In fact it was even more intense than in Kingman, since Williams turned out to be the very last town bypassed by the Interstate, and thus lays claim to being the last holdout along "America's Highway" before it was decommissioned.

I spent a couple days of working there, using a local coffeeshop in lieu of Starbucks, and watched movies on TCM in the evenings while fielding more messages from the dating website. I felt as if I were truly in the vibe of the road. It was a zenlike feeling of everything in balance, everything functioned, a well-humming engine.

The only thing I had to complain about was that the steakhouse  I wanted to eat at, a local institution called Rod's, was closed the first night, forcing me to eat at the one at the Holiday Inn. But Rod's opened the second night and I enjoyed the rustic dining experience appropriate to the road on which I was traveling.

I even got a follow-up call from my great-uncle in Reno, whom I'd recently visited. His last name is Williams, and I greeted him with "Hey, I'm in your town." He told me stories from the war about flight school in Kingman. He hated Kingman, he told me.

"My sister came out from Los Angeles to visit me and we tried to eat at a local diner. The manager said I wasn't welcome there---because of my uniform."

His sister was my late grandmother. I loved hearing these long-lost family stories.

"Williams is much better," I told him.

In Search of Buz and Tod on Route 66

Driving down the main street of Kingman, Arizona, it was impossible not to notice a theme: almost every other business in town had a sign that was based on theme of the former highway U.S. 66, which once ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, and became emblematic of the westward migration of Americans to California in the 1930's and afterward.

Of course the reason was that the street through town was once part of the highway before it was decommissioned, having been largely replaced along its route by various parts of the Interstate system. 

But from Kingman eastward to Williams, a stretch of the old route remained, renamed as Arizona State Highway 66 officially, but adorned conspicuously with "U.S. 66" signs, with the added monicker "historic" at the top of the sign. 

At the Route 66 museum in Kingman, where I rested for a half hour, the nostalgia was on full display in the gift shop: key chains, t-shirts, posters, and other paraphernalia adorned with the famous highway sign, as well as other icons of the Great American Road. 

It was about more than road itself, of course. It was about a feeling of freedom of movement and travel, without guilt or worry, and the endless ribbon of asphalt that always brought newness, and allowed one to reinvent oneself over and over.

Seeing all of this gave me a warm feeling, but not so much about the road itself. Rather I thought immediately of my all-time favorite television show, Route 66, which aired on CBS from 1960 to 1964.

Up until three years ago, I had not seen one single episode of the show. But I had heard my friends Agnes and Thor talking about it. They had seen episodes of it, and always had wanted to see more.

So in fall 2009, after returning to Fort Collins from a year-long trip to the East Coast, I proposed to them that we begin watching the series from its beginnings, episode-by-episode (this kind of thoroughness appeals to Thor especially). 

Thus we began a series of weekly dates at their house. The routine was always the same: I would bring over the Netflix disk with the next episodes in sequence, as well as a bottle or two of wine of my choosing. Agnes would cook dinner. Thor would load up the disk in the machine and take car of the viewing experience.

As I said, I knew nothing about the series itself. For example, I thought it was a half-hour situation comedy! To my surprise, as we watched the first episode (which aired in September 1960), I discovered it was an hour-long drama.

In the weeks and months that followed, as we worked out way through season one (1960-1961) and then into season two (1961-1962), I quickly came up to speed as an expert on the series. 

In case you've never seen it, the premise of Route 66 is this: two young men, both from New York City, travel the country together in the late model Corvette convertible owned by one of them. The owner of the Corvette is Tod Styles (Martin Milner), a straight-laced clean-cut blond Yale-educated rich kid who was left with only the car as his inheritance after his father passed away, right as the family business failed.  

His partner is Buz Murdock (George Maharis), a swarthy rough-hewn ethnic-of-some-kind streetwise orphan who grew up on the tough streets of Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan. They are the only two regular characters* in the series (after the mid third season, for reasons that are still controversial, Buz was replaced by Linc Case by played by Glen Corbett).

Together the two of them travel rather aimlessly around the country, their bags tied to the back of the car. In each week's episode, they arrive (or have arrived) in a new location. Somehow they get involved in some kind of drama involving the locals (often played by various guest stars), one that is resolved somehow by their participation. At times they are the main characters in the week's story. At times they are peripheral, almost like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet.

That the show debuted in 1960 is no accident of timing. Something about the show seems to utterly capture the New Frontier of the Kennedy era, and the way that Sixties themselves were so revolutionary. In various episodes, one can see almost the birth of the Sixties itself, and of the hippie movement, and the counterculture. Even the name of the show doubles up on the concept of the Sixties, as if to reinforce the theme.

I once remarked to Agnes and Thor that seeing the Corvette roll into a town at the beginning of an episode (with the iconic Nelson Riddle theme playing) felt like seeing a spaceship landing on a new alien planet (as in Star Trek), as if Buz and Tod were bringing the ultra-modern Space Age Sixties with them wherever they went in America.

And of course there is the freedom implied in the main characters' movements---no matter how deep the drama of an any particular episode, it will of course be resolved at the end of the hour, and the  Buz and Tod will take to the road again, and the air rushing through the convertible will sweep it all behind them into the past. Their future is reinvented each week. It is the epitome of the freedom of the road, over and over each week. 

From a television history standpoint, perhaps the most wonderfully revolutionary aspect of the show was the use of shooting locales. The creator of the show, Stirling Silliphant,  had previously broken new artistic ground with the television version of The Naked City (1958-1963), which featured crime-driven stories about New York City shot entirely on location in Gotham, using real streets and gritty neighborhoods, instead of back lots and sound stages.

For Route 66, Silliphant continued the use of real locales, but took the idea out of New York City into the country at large.  Settings for the episodes range from Alabama, Texas, California, Oregon, Ohio, Massachusetts, Montana Utah, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Buz and Tod seem to get around all over the country.

The episode location---be it Cleveland, or Austin, or Butte, Montana, Oregon City, Oregon---is the actual real place it is supposed to be.  The production was "on the road" during much of the year in a way that no television series before had ever been. Thus many episodes capture amazing black-and-white cinematography of American towns and cities from the early 1960's, under direction of some of the great directors of that era, who took their turns at the helm of the most cutting-edge series of its day.

Yet one of the great ironies of the show is that it has almost nothing to do with the actual highway U.S. 66! Only three episodes of the series take place at locales along the road, and the highway is mentioned explicitly only once in the series. Instead the name "Route 66" is used as a more general reference, a state-of-mind that includes freedom of travel on the highway system as-a-whole, and the unique Americanness of it all, especially at that instant in our history.

But you wouldn't know that from the iconography in Kingman, and  along the old route as it threads across the Mojave in northern Arizona. Although explicit references to the series and the characters are rare, pictures of red Corvettes seem to be everywhere along the way.  Somehow the car from the series has embedded itself into the mythology of that once-great road.

Yet as anyone who is a deep fan of television series knows, the actual Corvette wasn't red.  For one thing, the car was different every season, as Chevrolet (a sponsor of the show) donated a new Corvette with each new model year. According to George Maharis, the car they drove was actually green or blue.

But who cares, really. That's like saying Norma Jeane Baker was really a natural brunette (plenty of images of her along the road as well). Sometimes the image is better than the reality.

*One might propose that Vicki, played by Julie Newmar, was a recurring character. By "one," I mean yours truly. But that's caused me enough problems already...

Doesn't Anybody Know How to Pray?

On my fifth and last afternoon in Las Vegas, having just come down from a day of snowshoeing on Mt. Charleston, I was feeling quite good about being. "I sorta like this place," I thought to myself.

Within a few hours, however, all of that good feeling had vanished. Somehow I had I hit my "Las Vegas Wall," probably due to a combination of the horrendous traffic near the strip (which forced me to cancel out going to another show), and the long lines at the restaurants.

The thin veneer of my compassion for my fellow man had burned away and I began to look at everyone on the sidewalk with the jaundiced eye of what do you want from me? I knew I was getting out of there just in time.

So on Sunday morning, under the bright warm sun, I packed up my car joyfully and checked out of the Super 8. Scuttling any remaining plans about giving myself architectural tours of casinos, I beat it up Las Vegas Boulevard, then turned on Fremont Street and headed southeast on the Boulder Highway. Forgoing the quick escape of the Interstate was my last concession to exploration of Las Vegas for now. Thankfully the stop lights were merciful in letting me roll down the wide thoroughfare past (one of) the famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" signs and towards the suburb of Henderson.

It was a beautiful day, not just in the bright blue sky and the perfect bathwater temperature, but in how I felt in my soul. Everything seemed perfect. The car was moving down the road with the deep warming rumbling that felt like an airplane engine, and the wind was coming gently through the open window.

I had a growing feeling of overwhelming contentment, one that I rarely have lately. It reminded me so much of the unbridled and undiluted happiness I felt years ago while embarking on one of the great road trips of my youth. I had flashbacks to Austin, driving with my then-girlfriend on weekend trips to the Texas backcountry or across the South.

I felt as if I were twenty-four years old again, as young as freedom itself. Gone was all of the ennui of so many miles under my tires, and so many wrong turns and disappointments about what was at the end of the road. Restored was a feeling throughout my entire being---my shoulders, legs, and arms---that all was new again, and all was possible.

I knew how rare and fleeting this feeling was, one that Lord in His mercy grants to us poor sinners only from time to time. I knew not to expect this state to last even the day. It wasn't the natural state of being, to stay this way.

Thus I consciously tried to savord every second of feeling this way. As if to preserve the fragility of it, I glided gently to a stop at each stoplight, and then just as gently came up to speed again as the asphalt rolled underneath me like a magic carpet made just for my enjoyment.

Within an hour, I had piloted the BMW over the stark hills southwest of Las Vegas and through downtown Boulder City, the one-time encampment of the workers who built Hoover Dam in the 1930s.

As I approached Hoover Dam, I knew I should stop and take the tour, but in truth the last thing I wanted to do was interrupt the magic carpet ride I was on.

Thus when I pulled off the exit for the dam and discovered a several-mile-long line of cars waiting to clear the "security checkpoint," I quickly made an executive decision to forgo the dam tour for now. The last thing I needed to do on that day was wait for an hour letting my car overheat just to endorse the Cosmodemonic Police State of Amerikkka.

So I wheeled my car around on the narrow road (how it turns so tightly) and within a minute I was back on the highway, crossing the gorge of the Colorado River on the Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. The desert hills of Nevada receded in my rearview mirror.

There was nothing left on the day's agenda except to drive until I reached my motel. All was in perfect equilibrium. I was in zenlike bliss of the road on the ample four lane highway that ran straight as arrow SSE across the Mojave Desert.

The traffic moved fast and soon we were all going almost 85 mph. The BMW's tachometer was at almost 3000 in fifth gear, something I rarely see. But that engine warms up like nothing else, and it was purring as if at half the rpm.

When I reached Kingman after an hour, the sun was still well high in the sky. I pulled the car over to rest for a few minutes, and give the car a cool down before going onward.

As I sat behind the wheel, I picked up my smartphone and send a quick text to my friend in California whom I keep abreast about my whereabouts, especially whenever I cross a state line.

I like to use obscure musical references, ones that I know he will get, to inform him of my whereabouts. My text read:

She believes in Robin Hood and brotherhood and colors of green and gray

Within a minute, the phone made the telltale sound of an incoming text message. I picked up and read his reply:

And all you can do is laugh at her

I smiled, knowing that he had got the reference and understood the meaning of my text.

Crazy Girls @ the Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas

Well, you didn't think I would leave Las Vegas without seeing a show, now did you?

Actually the thought of going to one of the many shows hadn't occurred to me during my first couple days there, but by third day, having walked by so many half-price ticket brokers, and having seen so many posters for the dozens of choices available, I realized that to really have gone to Las Vegas, I had to see at least one show.

But which one to see? So many looked appealing, including the half dozen or more incarnations of Cirque de Soleil. I was tempted for a while to splurge for the Donny and Marie Osmond show at the Flamingo, considering it was the closest to the classic entertainer venues of Yestervegas, but it didn't seem right.

Then on the last night at the Elara, I was watching television and happened to land on an old rerun of the 1970's television show, Charlie's Angels. It was the episode "Angels in Vegas," in which the angels have to go undergo at the Tropicana casino to solve a series of murders. One of the angels (Jaclyn Smith) had to audition and become a dancer in the house show, which was a classic showgirl line-up in shepherdess costumes from the Folies Bergère.

That's what I want to see! I thought to myself. "a classic showgirl line-up."

Of course I knew it wasn't going to be the same as back then. We live in a much cruder time. There are no more shepherdess costumes, at least not in any wholesome way.

The next morning I found myself standing in line at a ticket broker, and when I got to front, having perused the listings on the television screen mounted from the ceiling as I waited, I bypassed all the higher priced offerings and laid out twenty-six bucks for a ticket to see Crazy Girls at the Riviera Hotel and Casino on the Strip. The poster showed a line of nude women from the rear.

Of course I knew it was a topless show. The thought of it didn't really excite me very much, but I figured it was the most Vegasy show to see in Vegas.

By the time the show rolled around that evening, I barely wanted to go at all. But I figured it was part of the whole experience of being in Las Vegas, so I forced myself out of my room at the Super 8 and walked down Las Vegas Boulevard all the way to the Riviera.

The Riviera is one of the the "classic" casinos from Rat Pack days of Las Vegas, and although it has been renovated, as all the remaining ones have, it nevertheless retains a simpler more unrefined feeling than its more glamorous and newer siblings further down the Strip.

But that was somehow just what I wanted. I killed time before the show putting quarters not into a slot machine but one of the vintage pinball machines near the casino floor, the kind seemed old when I was a kid.

But when I got in line outside the theater, I began to feel a bit icky. What the hell am I doing? I asked myself. Thank god it wasn't all men in line, I thought. About a third of the people waiting were female.

When I got inside the tiny theater I felt even ickier. The dark empty stage had two stripper poles on it, and the VIP section was circular booths. This is just a strip club, I thought. And I hate strip clubs. I detest the pointless titillation of it all.

The usher had seated us all right next to each other in the first rows of general admission, leaving all the empty rows behind us. I wound up next to a guy from Cleveland holding two beers, one in each hand. He chatted me up for a while. He was in town for a seminar on construction techniques. "This is the kind of show I couldn't see if my wife were with me," he said, in somewhat of an innocent tone.

He didn't quite understand when I explained my own lifestyle and job. But soon enough our conversation was over when the usher offered him a seat in the VIP section, because of the beers he had bought.

As showtime approached, I told myself that if I didn't like the show, I'd leave after the second number.  But when the show began I found myself enjoying it much more than I imagined.

First off, it started with a male emcee in the form who did a crude, old-time stand-up comedy routine to warm up the audience. It felt like Old Vegas in spades.  He announced that the show was celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary this year---the longest running topless show in Las Vegas. That made me glad I had come.

Then the dancers all came out and filled up the stage, and then came out into the audience for the initial "Crazy Girls" number.  One of them was standing only a foot away from me, but it would have been weird to turn and watch her.

I was amazed at how all the dancers looked almost the same---all of them rather slender with the same build and height, and all wearing blonde wigs for the opening numbers. I noted that they all seemed "natural" in the figures---no apparent implants, at least not egregious ones. Thor would approve.

For the most of the rest of the numbers, the dancers were either solo, or in pairs, threes or fours. In a few of them, they lip-synched to classic musical numbers, or simply danced with various costumes and props.

So it wasn't a strip club after all. It was a real show. The stripper poles were part of the set, but the numbers were real dance numbers. The age of the show (and the theater) was apparent, especially when compared to the newer elaborate show. The dancers were good and well-rehearsed, but they couldn't compare to Cirque de Soleil. This was definitely a holdover show from an earlier bygone era of Las Vegas. When the show finally closes, it will be the end of an era.

As far as the nudity part, I found myself enjoying the show when I forgot about the topless aspect, although some of the numbers, such as "You Gotta Have Boobs" forced one's attention on the subject. But I would have enjoyed most of the numbers more without the nudity, I thought. I say this not as some kind of "White Knight Male Feminist" (God knows I am not that), but simply as an observation of what I enjoy personally, and what I find erotic.

I kept thinking back to those wonderful shepherdess costumes in "Angels in Vegas." It reminded me again of what a crude time we live in, and what a shame it is that in order to get attention, a show has to put the nudity front and center. It is the plight of women of our time, that to get attention (and love), one must "give it away" in the most forward way. All this is the fruit of "liberation."

Yet, as I said, I was able to overcome the topless part and enjoy the numbers. I had great respect for the dancers at the end. It was clear they earned they paycheck with the show.

When it was clear that the last number had arrived, I was actually a bit disappointed. I actually wanted more. Crazy, indeed!

After the show, I realized that seeing shows was what Las Vegas was about. The next time I come, if that happens, I'm planning on splurging on as many as possible. Why else come?

Wedding Bells in Vegas

After the intense experience of shooting a Glock at human-figure targets for four days in the desert, I decided that a change of pace was in order. So on my last day in Pahrump, I went onlne and booked three nights at the Hilton Grand Vacations Elara, a high-rise hotel on the Las Vegas strip.

It was a short drive over the mountains into Vegas. On the way I detoured off into Red Rock canyon, a park just west of the city, which turns out to be good for hiking. Just to give myself an extra reason for relaxation, I spent much of the afternoon climbing a steep trail a couple thousand feet up to the top of Turtle Mountain, which looks down over the city. From there the hotels of the Strip were visible, a thin line of buildings in the metropolis.

After all these travels, I'd never really been to Las Vegas, except passing through a couple times. As I drove into town, I remembered many years ago when I was in Eastern Europe, before the fall of Communism. After a couple brutal weeks in Romania, I was finally crossing the Bulgarian border. For reasons too long to explain here, I was extremely eager to get out of Romania, and I was all by myself in the train compartment.

The young Bulgarian passport control officer came into my compartment. He was very amused to find an American---a novelty back then. A couple other officers came in with him to look on while he asked me questions. He was very friendly, thankfully, and just wanted to know about my life.

"Have you ever been to...Las Vegas?" he asked me, in a thick accent. Regretfully I had to say no. "Have you ever been to...Grand Canyon?" Again I said no. I felt like I'd let him down.

So finally I was fulfilling that ambitions of that Bulgarian passport officer.

The hotel turned out to be a dream. As the Thai-born man at the front desk told me while I checked in, it was one of the few hotels on the Strip without a casino. "Just fine by me," I told him.  He also wanted to know why I wasn't staying at the Trump Tower instead. "Maybe next time," I told him.

He noticed I was wearing outdoor gear and proceeded to keep me fifteen minutes at the front desk with stories about his outdoor adventures as a young man in Thailand. He asked me if I wanted to climb the Himalayas. "You should do that while you're young," he told me. That was amusing since he didn't seem much older than me.

After hunting in the computer, he gave me a corner two-room suite on the 27th Floor. The elevator zipped me right up. The room was first-rate, with a view out over the Strip towards the "Eiffel Tower" of the Paris casino nearby. On the wall was a print of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. I was really in the heart of Las Vegas, no doubt this time.

From a Vegas perspective, there was only one thing wrong with the room---it was so nice that I didn't want to leave. Actually that was quite good for me, since I needed to catch up on my work. Moreover I didn't have the least interest in gambling, and any the fun Vegas stuff I might have enjoyed with companions was little interest to me on my own. But I did get out a few times to explore the Strip and to people watch.  And just for fun, at the moment that the giant asteroid was making its closest approach to earth, I went out and stood right in front of the "Statue of Liberty" by the New York, New York casino. Just for old time's sake.

It was all fun, to be sure, but there was definitely something about it that was creepy to me. First off, the room, and the Strip itself, kept giving me flashbacks to my corporate apartment in Canary Wharf in 2000 when I worked for the Big British Bank. There was something so Londonish about the Strip, and not in a good way. I kept trying to place my finger on what irked me about it so much, but without success.

What was it about London and Las Vegas that was so off-putting to me? Part of it was not just not the ads for prostitutes and escorts, but the feeling that everyone there was in some sense a prostitute. But most of all it was a sense of the fake exclusivity, one that creates a class system of privilege of access to things, just so you can charge people more money. People pay for things just because other people can't afford it. It's phony somehow.

I was thankful to be happy with my usual pursuit of turning the city into an open-air architectural museum, all for free. In that sense, Las Vegas was certainly amusing (I can hear my neo-urbanist architect friend in Fort Collins throwing up as I write this).

After three nights at the Elara, I decided it was time to move on. But I didn't want to leave Las Vegas yet. So for the weekend (when hotel rates went up) I decided to slum it by seeing the "other side" of Vegas. So I booked two nights at the Super 8 on Las Vegas Boulevard just on the edge of downtown.

As a budget hotel, it wasn't so bad---although it was quite a transition from the Elara. The room was a standard Super 8 room (although at first they checked me into a room that was not made up). But the clientelle was quite different from the Strip. And instead of a view down on super-modern hotels reminiscent of Times Square, my window looked out on a grimy parking lot.

But the fun part was that the Super 8 turned out to be smack in the middle of the Las Vegas wedding chapel belt. There were at least half a dozen on the same block, and the hotel shared a parking lot directly with the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel. I personally saw at least eight weddings in progress during my short say (perhaps more than usual because it was the weekend after Valentine's Day).

Moreover, there was one huge advantage that the Super 8 had that the Elara lacked---Turner Classic Movies!

My extended stay in Las Vegas also afforded me the pleasure of a Saturday of snowshoeing on the trails on nearby Mount Charleston. I gave my MSRs a workout over a five-mile trail.

After all, who goes to Las Vegas without doing a little snowshoeing?

So if I've done nothing else on this voyage, at least I've fulfilled the ambitions of a young Bulgarian passport officer from 1985. One guess as to where I'm heading now...

My Four Days at Front Sight Nevada

copied over from a photo essay on my Facebook page

Last week I had the pleasure of taking a 4-day defensive handgun course outside Pahrump, NV at Front Sight, the largest private weapons training school in the nation. It was a very intense and rewarding experience, one that I would recommend to anyone.

The object of the course is straightforward: to learn to stop bad guys with a semi-automatic handgun. More specifically, one is trained to present from a concealed holster and fire a controlled pair (two rounds) to the thoracic cavity of the attacker in less than two seconds. If that doesn't stop the bad guy, one is trained to fire a single round to the cranio-ocular cavity of the attackers's head, which if done correctly will always put an immediate end to it.

For the course, I rented a Glock 17 and all necessary accessories from the Front Sight pro shop. Here I am out on the range with my weapon holstered on my hip. Unfortunately, presenting it for the camera behind the line would have been against the range rules.

During the course run, we got a couple menacing winter storms rolling in from Death Valley that left a dusting of snow on the nearby mountains. Out on the range we had to stay bundled up most of the time. The free hot coffee was quite welcome when we got indoors. The instructors joked that the adverse weather "came at no extra charge."

The Front Sight instructors were amazingly skilled at providing training without a "drill instructor attitude," as they say. They were extremely patient with all of us, including yours truly, all the while getting us as close as possible to "perfect" in the techniques. These included safe weapons handling, "after action drills", tactical reloading, and how to clear various weapons malfunctions in the middle of a gunfight. I'll certainly never forget "brass low!!...look, move, check, lock, strip, rack-rack-rack, insert, rack, point in to the target!"

I got extremely lucky in my draw of a range partner, a guy named Chuck who turned out to be a police chaplain for the San Diego PD. He was much more skilled than I was, and was able to coach me with many excellent pointers in weapons handling and marksmanship beyond what the instructors were providing.

In addition to the range work, we attended several classroom lectures on such things as the ethics and legalities of using deadly force to stop an attack, how to determine one's personal "line in the sand," and even what to say to the police after an incident. The basic message: even if you survive unscathed and victorious, nothing good is going to happen to you after a gunfight. Even if you are declared a "hero," you still might go to prison, or get sued to oblivion, or lose your livelihood from public opprobrium. The best you can hope for is that someday you might get your normal life back.

Overall I was quite proud of myself in how much progress I made over the four days of the course. Although I didn't make the stringent cut for "distinguished graduate" (very few people do on their first time through the course), I still delivered the majority of my shots correctly on the final proficiency test, only missing at the farthest distance, and didn't screw up too badly on the malfunction clearing part.

At the end of the course, I was more than a little exhausted and sore. Upon first registering, I had purchased their standard student package of 650 9mm cartridges. After the last day, I found a single round in my back pocket, and would have put that in my magazine too if I had known it was there.

Although I only occasionally make it out to this part of the country, I am definitely looking forward to returning to Front Sight in the near future to take another course, perhaps to repeat the 4-day handgun course, or maybe to take their tactical rifle or tactical shotgun course. In the meantime, I'm treating myself to three days of (working) relaxation in a suite on the Las Vegas strip!

Through the Wilderness to Tonopah

After saying good-bye to my friends in the Carson Valley, I headed southeast on U.S. 95 across Nevada, through some of the most isolated valleys of the state. At sunset I reached the mining town of Tonopah (supposedly one of the best places in the U.S. to stargaze because of its location) and checked into the Jim Butler Inn and Suites, where I'd made a reservation.

The next day I continued my isolated journey and by late afternoon had reached Pahrump, a sprawling town of casinos along the highway just on the other side of the mountains from Death Valley, where I had been only a few weeks ago. There I checked into the Saddle West Casino Hotel for the next five nights, as I had planned. They gave me the course discount, just as they said they would.

The next morning I had to be up early. I set my alarm for 4:00 A.M. and was already awake when it went off, giving me plenty of time for my morning routine. When the breakfast buffet of the casino opened at 5 A.M., I was one of the first ones in there, and loaded up on the scrambled eggs and bacon.  

The email I had received said I had to be checked in at 6:30. I certainly wasn't going to be late. There were to be no excuses.

So here it is, I said to myself as I headed south on the highway in the darkness. For the next four days I was going to be out in the middle of the Nevada desert shooting a Glock 17 semi-automatic handgun into a target.

Interview with a Waist Gunner in Reno

Perhaps the best part of my recent return to Reno was yet another reunion with someone I hadn't seen in decades---my 87-year-old great-uncle Dick, the brother of my grandmother, whom I had last seen in the mid 1970s.

I had been coming through Reno since the the summer of 1988, when I wound up there during an impromptu motorcycle trip, and each time I had thought to myself "I should look up Uncle Dick." But I never had his contact info, and his name is a very common one.

Finally I decided enough was enough. I might not ever get the chance again, given his advanced age. So after emailing everyone around the family, and finally getting to speak to his sister in Nebraska, I got his phone number and address. His sister, my great-aunt, warned me that he didn't like surprises, however.

I called his cellphone number and said: "Uncle Dick?" and started to explain who I was, thinking he might not remember me. After thirty seconds I realized the phone was dead. So I called back again, and when he answered, I started talking again, only to realize the phone was dead again.

I concluded that he had hung up on me, and that maybe he didn't remember me, or want to talk to anyone. It made me quite sad for the next couple days.

On Friday I went into Reno to work from a coffee shop there, which was only a few blocks from his house. I had bought a card at Raley's and during a break in work I wrote out a friendly message in the card explaining who I was and leaving my phone number.

After finishing work I drove by his house. I parked in front and could see someone inside. I walked up and dropped the card in his mailbox and quickly drove off.

Before I even left Reno, my cell phone rang. I pulled over and answered it. It was Uncle Dick---he was very enthusiastic and happy to hear from me. Evidently the exchange on the phone had been because his phone battery was dead.

We arranged to meet early the next week before I left town. When I came back to his house, I received a very warm welcome. He was as exactly as fun and full-of-life as I remembered him from decades before. His wits were still very sharp.

We spent a marvelous afternoon together, talking about present times and old ones. Among other things he has done in his life, he was waist gunner in a B-17 in Italy during World War II, and flew 35 missions over the alps to Germany and Austria. He said that it was just like in Catch-22, where they kept upping the number you needed to fly before you got to go home.

He has lived in Reno since the mid 1950s, working most as a successful court reporter. He still reviews legal documents in his spare time for local judges, to keep my mind sharp. He told me some fun stories about his experiences from the days when Reno was the marriage and divorce capital of the U.S, and the courthouse in which he worked was one of the most famous buildings in the world.

I had once seen Reno featured in an old TravelTalks from the 1940s, called "Romantic Nevada," which showed recently divorced women kissing the pillar of the courthouse and throwing their wedding rings into the Truckee River. He said he never saw them kiss the courthouse, but that the ring-throwing actually did happen on a regular basis.

He also said he once got to meet Marilyn Monroe, when she was in town with Clark Gable making The Misfits (1960). They were shooting on the courthouse steps and he accidentally walked through the doors right onto the set without realizing it. Later he saw her waving from a hotel window.

It was such a short visit with him and over quickly. It made me wish I had been resolute in finding him years ago. But better late than too late, as they say. Gives me another reason to come back to Reno soon.

Bonanza in the Carson Valley

My recent return trip to the Reno area, for the third time in the last year and half, was a bit out of my way but was undertaken with enthusiasm.

The purpose was a week-long housesitting assignment in the small town of Gardnerville, about twenty miles south of Carson City in one of the few green valleys in the entire state.

My hosts were my old college friend Randy J. and wife Gail and their teenage son Eric. I had met-up with Randy again after nearly thirty years over Christmas, when they were down in Thousand Oaks. I had spent the holidays as a dinner guest at Gail's parents' house. It had been a marvelous reunion.

Randy had called me a week after that, asking me if I'd stay in their place while they were on vacation in Oahu. "Hawaii?" I laughter. Ironically I had been planning on going there myself. The housesitting assignment would be a pleasant consolation prize, and  I would also get to spend more time with my old friend, with whom I was having some very nice conversations about spirituality and life in general.

After they left for Hawaii, I was left by myself in the house with their dog Shasta, who instantly became my best friend. With no television in the house, I got much undistracted time to concentrate on work during the day and evenings, which turned out to be a good thing, since it was a hectic week "at the office" due to a chain of bug fixes I needed to make for the software update that I had just uploaded.

The only glitch in the television-free week was the airing of the Super Bowl on the second weekend I was there. After scouting around for possible places to watch, I settled on a  local fancy casino. But when I went there just before game time, I realized that a casino is a terrible place to watch a sporting event, since although they have many large televisions, they keep the sound turned down so as not to distract anyone from gambling as much as possible.

After trying a second casino and finding out this rule, I wound up at a local strip mall bar called Hamdogs on U.S. 395, somewhat seedy with lots of pennants of sports teams on the wall. I took a seat at the bar and put my hat on top of the video poker machine screening in front of me.

Going to Hamdog's turned out to be a good decision. I was befriended by multiple people there, and a had a good time watching the game. Part of the reason was that I didn't care who won, in contrast to everyone else in the bar, who were not only 49ers fans but were rooting for their hometown University of Nevada-Reno starting quarterback, whom everyone just called by his nickname"Kap".

Despite my disinterest in the outcome, I decided to adopt the "local" team, at least for outward purposes, and clapped and cheered when the 49ers scored. In the last minute of the game, when all of my fellow barmates had lost hope of a miracle comeback, I was the one cheering and yelling with never-say-die vigor, "ONE MORE PLAY!! THEY CAN DO IT!!".

All the people I met there seemed to think I'd be back the next day. They really took a shine to me. But to be honest, part of the reason was that I kept winning the free raffle of prizes that the bar was handing out during commercial breaks. Although I didn't wind up with the bar-b-que grill or the snowboard (neither of which I could have taken in my car at this point), I did snag the following: four matching beer glasses (two of which I decided I had to give away), a foam Jack Daniels #1 finger, a DonQ t-shirt with a picture of Don Quixote on it, and a cup holder.

But the biggest snag was when I won the halftime special prize---a full size bottle of Bushmills Black Bush whiskey. I was told I couldn't open it in the bar, so I just kept it front of me during the game. Its presence made me very popular and I kept getting repeated offers for a trade, all of which I politely declined.

Ironically I don't really drink---at least not by myself. The five beers I had during the telecast (one purchased per quarter, plus an extra one purchased for me by the drunk guy next to me who claimed to be dating an ex-Raiderette) were the most alcohol I'd imbibed in many months. The next day was a bit slow.

As I type this, the whiskey is still buried deep in my trunk shrouded by camping gear. I told a playwright friend in Oregon, who is a drinker and had recently sold me raffle tickets for his Catholic school, that I owed all my luck to him and that we would split it, providing the bottle made it to Oregon intact.

Snowshoe Upgrade: From Zero to Tahoe

Today I had the great fortune of breaking in a new pair of snowshoes.

I got hooked on snowshoeing last year, after my sister bought me a pair for my birthday. I managed to get up into the Colorado high country about half a dozen times.

The pair she got me was an inexpensive brand from Costco---not bad, but rather bulky and suited more for floatation than for climbing, which is what I wanted them for.

So I used the experience with this starter pair to plan to buy a more advanced pair this year.  I decided definitely on the MSR Lightning Ascent 30".

But my wandering sojourn in California kept me far away from snow until just recently, when I started driving up the Eastern Sierra.

In Bishop I scoped out all the outdoor stores---there are quite a few---and found a very small selection. I knew I was heading towards Reno, but the website said the kind I wanted was sold out and unavailable in the store.

On a whim, while driving up 395 from Bishop,  on a sunny day when the snow-capped Sierra was shining like some heavenly ultra reality, I stopped int he resort town of Mammoth Lakes and ducked into Kittredge Sports on Main Street.

Like most places I'd checked in California, the snowshoe selection was meager. I mentioned to the guy there what I was looking for, and he directed me across the street to Mammoth Mountaineering.

I picked my way across the snow lined highway and found myself in a dark and serious gear store, completely stuffed with all sorts of gear handing from the ceiling like a cave.

The sole female employee was off in the ski section fitting a customer for boots,s o I picked my way through the maze like array of goods, looking for the snowshoes, expecting to be disappointed again.

To my delight I found the snowshoe section was quite ample. And all at once, right in front of my eyes, was exactly the pair I was looking for. I had to look them over to make sure they were what I wanted exactly.

Then I checked the price. I was expecting some big markup, which would give me an excuse not to buy them, but they were the same price as at REI and most online outlets.

All excuses were going. I acted instantly. I grabbed the pair and took them up to the counter. It took few minutes for the woman in the back to see me there.

I think she was a bit surprised at the quickness of the whole thing.

"These are great snowshoes," she said

I told her how I'd resolved to buy only these pair, and how I'd found myself in snow country unexpectedly. She understood why I'd snatched them up.

On the way out of the store, and driving up 395, I had all sorts of panic thoughts, like "if I don't like them, or if they are defective, I can't return them, like I could if I bought them at an REI, since I'll be hundreds of miles away by nightfall."

But that was absurd of course. I wasn't going to return them, and if there was something wrong, they could be fixed.

Yesterday here in Nevada I completed my new set-up with a brand new set of waterproof Salomon boots on sale at the REI in Reno. The woman there said they were lucky to have my size, this late in the season.

Last night, on my first day of housesitting here in Nevada, I decided that I just had to break them in. No excuses. So I laid everything out, and cleaned out the trunk of my car and put the snowshoes in there.

Of course this morning the inertia of my torpid soul made me sleep in. The clouds were low and snow flurries erupted just after I made coffee. I looked to be a bad day for an outing.

But the thought of not going began to make me said. I knew how good I'd feel if I used my new snowshoes right away. I wouldn't care anymore about how much they and the boots cost, if I used them.

Then right as I was leaving, my host's niece dropped by to pick up an article of clothing, and I had to chat with her for a half hour. Then leaving in the car, I forgot my gloves and had to go back.

It was just one of those days to forge ahead no matter what. Finally a little past noon, having driven up the pass to Lake Tahoe, I was parked beside snow-lined Highway 50 at Spooner Summit in the mountains above Carson City.

I put on my snowshoes and walked past a family sledding at the trailhead. I chose the steepest path and headed up into the trees, trying to wear myself out.

A half hour later I was on a sunny mountaintop looking down at the supernatural blueness of Lake Tahoe and the snowy Sierra beyond.

The huffing and puffing was enough to get to taste the ketosis in my mouth. My standard reward after coming home that evening was two pieces of dark chocolate from hosts' pantry. They had told me to help myself after all. I'm genuinely surprised at my will power.

My California Trip Summarized

Being a Triple-A member, I like to use their free maps. I have an U.S.A. map that I've used to chart my travels over the last year. This is the California portion of the map, for the last 20 weeks. I've looped back on my route several times and just filled in the part through Death Valley to connect to my original route along the eastern Sierra.

One can see my original entry across Nevada, with the jaunt up to Burning Man. Also apparent is the extent to which I used Fresno as a base. Also visible are my trip to Pismo Beach and the Sequoias, my two trips to the Bay Area, my trip up the north coast to Eureka, and my extended sweep down the coast to the Mexican border and back north. That loop one sees around the Salton Sea is because when I got to Palm Springs I discovered I had left my computer power adapter in El Centro. It was nice excuse to drive along both sides of the lake.

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Still in California---for Now

So now it's 2013 and the sweet holidays have come and gone. My Long Trip to California, record-breaking in length for me, is still in progress. Here's what has happened since I last posted from L.A.:

• My stay in L.A (somehow this post never made it online) went better than I thought. I spent the entire three days within the confines of the San Fernando Valley, on purpose I managed to explore its many communities---including Van Nuys, Northridge, Encino, Sherman Oaks, and Tarzana---and spent a very productive afternoon working in downtown Burbank. Back when I was kid, Johnny Carson used to say "beautiful downtown Burbank" in a way that made me think it was an awful place. Turns out it's quite nice.
• The highlight of my Valley stay was getting to spend a very nice afternoon (on the Mayan Apocalypse) having tea in Studio City with an old friend, Lisa C., whom I hadn't seen in almost thirty years. She went to a rival high school of mine and is an actually an old theater colleague, being that she played the lead in the only stage theater production yours truly ever directed (this, improbably). She's now a history professor at a local liberal arts college.
• For Christmas I decamped to nearby Thousand Oaks, where I stayed at the very nice Best Western there. I spent the holidays as the repeated dinner guest at the in-laws of another old friend whom I hadn't seen almost thirty years, Randy J., who was one of my best friends at Willamette U. in Salem.  He lives in Nevada but was in the L.A. area with his family for Christmas. It was an awesome reunion and a nice way to have pleasant company over Christmas.
• After Christmas, I headed down to the coast Malibu as I planned and along the coast on a very sunny day. I decided to visit as many places as possible that are mentioned in the Beach Boys' classic hit Surfin' U.S.A,, starting with "Ventura County Line." Inspired by a friend who is a Beach Boys musicologist, I then doubled down on the theme by detouring into the L.A. community of Hawthorne to visit the site of the house where the famous Wilson brothers of that band grew up, and had lunch at the nearby Foster Freeze that was the inspiration for the "hamburger stand" in Fun, Fun. Fun. A magazine article at the stand directed me to further local Beach Boys sites, which I tracked down, all the while texting updates and photos to my friend.
• Over New Years, I spent a relaxing week in downtown San Diego at the Motel 6, which is an actually a refurbished older hotel with the same kind of "all new rooms" that the one in Santa Barbara had (alas no Turner Classic Movies). It was close to the major attractions of downtown which allowed me lots of nice walking trips, including a pleasant afternoon in Balboa Park highlighted by the Model Train museum there. I also decided finally to renew my passport at the local Passport office, and got my picture taken in a funky ancient little studio in downtown. The woman at the passport office did not at all like my attitude.  I was applying for five-day expedited service, yet had no pending travel plans, as most people do who apply in person. "I might go to Mexico, or Southeast Asia," I told her, whimsically. She didn't seem to want to understand the kind of freedom of movement I have. I was sure I'd gotten on some kind of blacklist.
• After a week in downtown San Diego, I wasn't quite ready to leave the area, so I drove down the beach through Coronado Island and checked into the Days Inn in Chula Vista, which is just a few miles north of the Mexican border. The place had very good reviews online, and it turned out to have TCM, so I wound up spending ten days there working from Starbucks and waiting for my passport to arrive via general delivery (I was relieved when it finally did). The highlight of the stay was a Saturday trip down to Border Fields State Park, which is on the ocean right on the border. One can walk down to the foaming ocean and then along the beach right to the fence, where the Mexican citizens of Tijuana are looking back at you. I'd finally reached the southernmost point of California itself, and of the west coast of the United States. The only downside of the whole time I spent there was that it was abnormally chilly, with a few frost warnings. I'd come to Southern California in search of "endless summer" and found something almost resembling winter instead.
• Finally it was time to leave the ocean for now and head inland. I headed into the mountains along the highway that skirts to the border and dropped down into the Imperial Valley, where I spent a nice in El Centro at the nice Vacation Inn. The next morning I headed up towards the Salton Sea, which I'd always wanted to visit, and spent a couple hours walking around Slab City, "the last free place on Earth," which felt like a permanent sparsely settled version of Burning Man in a few ways.
• The rest of that afternoon I drove up to Palm Springs which I had reserved five nights at the Days Inn on E. Palm Canyon Boulevard. It was a very nice stay (TCM!). Palm Springs was beautiful but was COLD. In the first morning there, going to work at Starbucks across from the giant statue of Marilyn Monroe, I actually slipped on ice on the sidewalk.
• At the tail end of my Palm Springs stay, I had a pleasant meet-up with yet another old friend whom I hadn't seen in nearly thirty years, Stacy J., a former high school pal who now holds the prestigious title of CEO and President of the Living Desert Museum in Palm Desert. He treated me to a private tour of his zoo in a golf cart. I spent the whole time asking him questions about what being a zookeeper is like.
• After the zoo, I immediately drove up into the mountains and spent a very chilly weekend camping at Joshua Tree National Park, my first ever visit there. The abnormally cold winter of Southern California had thwarted my attempts to try out the new REI tent I'd bought in Fresno, but I decided I simply had to spend a couple nights under the stars in the high desert. As it turns out, it was the high season and the campgrounds were packed.  During the day I managed to get some good hiking in---a long venture into the area known as the "Wonderland of Rocks," and another hike up Mount Ryan. Ironically it was a resolution, almost exactly a year ago, to visit Joshua Tree sometime in the coming year that was partly the inspiration for the entire California trip. It was worth the effort and the wait.
• After two days in Joshua Tree, I left the park and spent a night in the Marine base town of Twentynine Palms. The next morning I headed up across the Mojave Desert, through tiny hamlets on the backroads, doing some day hiking along the way. I spent a night in the only motel in Shoshone, then the next morning I headed down into Death Valley for the first time.
• Death Valley was marvelous. I'm still sort of reeling from it, even though I only spent one night camping there, at Furnace Creek. I spent the first afternoon hiking a couple miles up a deserted canyon near Mormon Point. The solitude and silence was overwhelming. Thankfully it was warmer than Joshua Tree. The barrenness was stunning. 
• Now here I am in the town of Bishop, on the east side of the Sierra, a place where I spent five days last September. I returned to the Mountain View Motel which is a nice place that I know has TCM. The mountains that loom above the valley are now strewn with beautiful sinews of snow, yet the temperature here in town are mild. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

So there it is---my wrap up of California. 143 Days and counting here. Tomorrow morning I'm checking out of the Mountain View Motel and heading north on 395. Sometime in mid afternoon, if things go according to plan, I'll cross the Nevada border, only a few miles where I entered Cali on the north side of Lake Tahoe in early September.  The "Long Trip to California" will be over, even as my wacky journeys go on.

Los Angeles, Occupied

As a general rule I avoid driving after dark. My general policy while on the road is to be in my motel room or in camp by nightfall. I break this rule only when necessity demands it.

After my day in Oxnard, I had thought of staying there, but the ineffable signs seemed to indicate that I should go ahead with my plans.

So after about a half hour on 101 in the dark, I came down into the expanse of the San Fernando Valley on the edge of the contiguous metropolis of Los Angeles.

I had booked two nights at the Motel 6 in Canoga Park, a neighborhood "town" of L.A. that was about as far out in the Valley as one could get.

The motel was at the corner of DeSoto and Sherman and had good review online.

But a wrong turn just after the exit sent me in the wrong direction several miles down Ventura Avenue through Woodland Park. Then even after finding my error, I couldn't find the motel.

This was entirely due to my bad habit of not double checking the directions and exact location of my destination, and instead relying on the vague map in my memory from when I first made the reservation.

Thus it took me almost an hour of navigating the grid like thoroughfares of the west end of the Valley to find my lodgings.

But I didn't mind very much. It was still early in the evening, and it gave me a nice introduction to the Valley.

The Motel 6 in Canoga Park turned out to be a decent place, but nothing like its marvelous corporate cousin in Santa Barbara, which had all new rooms and a flat screen t.v.

I could tell the one in Canoga Park had not been a Motel 6 originally, but had been reflagged, probably from a Days Inn or a Super 8, or something similar.

I wound up parking right next to a mid-Sixties era Volkswagen bus.

After checking in and schlepping my stuff up to the room, I was ready for dinner. I decided to forgo the Indian restaurant next door that was probably owned and operated by the same family running the motel.

Instead I wandered up and down Sherman Boulevard looking for some cheap fare.

It was a disheartening experience. At the corner of DeSoto was the busiest and brightest establishment in the entire district---a 99 cents store crammed with shoppers. Out front were small crowds of teenagers in gangster-like hoodies and poses waiting for the bus, and along the front windows were a row of homeless people sleeping with blankets heaped on them. My smartphone told me there was a frost warning for the Valley that night.

Down a few of the side streets I could see clumps of tents set up right on the sidewalk, forcing any pedestrians to walk out into the street.

I guess Occupy Los Angeles is still going on, I thought to myself, remembering my experience with the Occupy camp in Boulder last New Year's Eve, and how it had simply become a homeless camp.

All I could find were fast food, pizza delivery places, and many small Mexican restaurants, crammed amidst other businesses with signs that were mostly in Spanish.

I decided to try the Mexican places, but each time I went inside one, I was repulsed by the pungent greasy smell, and quickly retreated outside.

Finally I wound up ordering tamales at the A-frame Der Weinerschnitzel, where I was surprised to find other Anglo people waiting in line in front of me.

I texted a friend of mine that L.A. felt like "a combination of Tijuana and Blade Runner."

But how I could complain after those two weeks in Santa Barbara?

After all, I did want to experience the variety of the Golden State, after all, didn't I?

I slept well that night. The room was comfortable and clean, and well heated.

The temperature reached thirty three degrees, almost to freezing. I was grateful to be indoors, and moreover to have the means to know that I would be indoors the next night, and the one after, and so on.

It doesn't take much to feel rich in L.A., it seems.

Breakdown in Oxnard

During these last couple months, I cannot say that I haven't experienced a wide variety of what California has to offer. I keep bouncing from one time of extreme, intense experience to another.

Leaving Santa Barbara on Thursday, on a beautiful sunny morning, I headed down the coast on 101 through Ventura again. 

I got off the freeway in Oxnard with the intention of making my way down Highway 1 along the coast towards Malibu.

All was going well until about the third or fourth stoplight in Oxnard when I noticed the car was behaving strangely at idle, as if it were having electrical problems.

I revved the engine and it was sputtering noticeably. Something was wrong.

So I looked for a convenient place to pull over and park, next to a gas station on a side street. 

I turned off the engine, then immediately tried to start it again. The  engine didn't turn over at all.

A bunch of thoughts went through my mind. Since I'd just bought a brand new battery in Santa Barbara, it was obvious something was more seriously wrong.

I walked around the surrounding blocks looking for a prospective mechanic. It was about noon. I might be able to squeeze something in today. 

Thankfully it wasn't a Friday, as it was in New Jersey when my radiator failed.

I realized the best thing to do was to break down and call AAA. The representative in Colorado put me through to the Southern California chapter and within a few minutes I was receiving text updates telling me a service vehicle had been dispatched for me.

The responder, Manuel, hooked up probes to the battery in the trunk and found the charging system was shot. I would need a new alternator.

He suggested a mechanic he knew. He called them and they said they could probably get it done today, for a price that was less than I expected. I gave him the green light.

It was with a little bit of wistfulness that I watched him hook his tow truck up my car. For the first time in almost five years of owning this vehicle, and having driven it over seventy thousand miles through forty-five states, I was having it towed.

Up until now, I had always been able to get it to a mechanic under its own power, even when I thought it was done for. The perfect record was shot.

During the short trip Manuel asked me what I was doing in Oxnard. I tried to explain to him my lifestyle, that I travel around working from the road, doing what I please.

He could barely wrap his mind around it. 

"What are you, a scientist?" he asked me.

"Well, actually I am a scientist, or I used to be," I said, "but that's not how I earn my living right now."

I went on to explain to him the kind of technical work I do, in a matter-of-fact way. It was as if I'd opened up a whole new world to him. I felt like an evangelist for the new American Dream.

The garage was in a line of similar independent auto shops only about a half mile away. I thanked Manuel. He asked me to give him a good evaluation in the AAA questionnaire that I would receive later. I said I certainly would.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in a nearby Starbucks doing some work, and then waiting in the garage as the mechanic finished up the repair work.

The new alternator turned out to be the easy part, but at their recommendation I also authorized them to replace the belts, as I knew they were old.

But finding the right size belts turned out to be a challenge. The mechanic kept having to send for new belts from a nearby auto parts store. Each time he flirted a bit with the delivery girl who arrived with the new belt.

The sun went down and after dark it started to get cold. I waited in the garage at the crowded messy office desk listening to Christian music in Spanish. The mechanic flamboyantly sang "Noche de Paz" at the top of his voice as he tried to get the last belt in place.

Finally I was getting nervous that I might have to cancel my hotel reservation. I started hovering around him, eager to get back on the road.

I turned out the sticking point was the air conditioning belt. I laughed because my air conditioning has never worked in the whole time I've owned the car. It's not that it's broken---it's just that I never bothered to charge it up. 

When I told him as much, he finally gave up and reinstalled the old belt, which was in decent condition. I paid the bill and was back on the road again.

It was too late for Malibu, so I got back on 101 and plowed south in the dark, very happy to be one set of headlights in a long procession of commuter pilgrims that snaked up into the hills towards Los Angeles.

Let There Be Dolphins

My visit to Santa Barbara was extraordinary. As was the case in Ventura, I had planned to stay only one night, but the excellent of the motel, in price, quality, and location, caused me to extend my visit to a week and half.

As if to reward me, yesterday afternoon was perfectly clear over the ocean.

I walked down the beach about a mile and sat on some rocks, watching dolphins play in the waves in front of me until the orb of the sun went down.

From where I sat, a lone sailboat was positioned on the edge of the horizon in front of the solar disk as it touched the waterline.

In the last light of the sun, the brilliance of the sun completely surrounded the hull of the sailboat, making glow orange as it were magically on fire without being consumed.

Outside of the time I've spent with friends, new and old, the image of the boat, and the waves and dolphins will remain in my mind as one of the quintessential experiences during this "long trip" to California.

Well, that and the General Sherman Tree, and the Sierra over Bishop, and view from hot tub in Berkeley and...

Born Free in Volkswagens

This interesting VW specimen was parked on the side street next to my motel all the time I was in Ventura. Seeing it each morning as I walked for coffee always brought a smile to my face. 

Sunday found me attempting to take a full day of complete rest, but with the on-and-off-again rains having returned to the coast around Santa Barbara, I found myself straying into work activity, with the excuse that I could get a jump on the week ahead.

As I usually do this time of year, I let the NFL games play on the television as I worked.

But the bylaws of broadcast contracts dictated that the local CBS affiliate had to forgo airing the competitive match-up that most of the nation was watching.

Instead it had to air the game between the pathetic Oakland Raiders and the even-more-pathetic Kansas City Chiefs.

After a quarter and half, when the score was 6-0, I couldn't take anymore of it even as background noise.

So I flipped over to TCM just in time to catch the beginning of Born Free (1966), a movie that came out back when a game between the Raiders and the Chiefs was actually worth watching.

Born Free is also one of the movies, the mention of which, brings me immediately back to the glowing twilight of my early childhood memories

Back then it was an extremely popular movie. Everyone seemingly knew the melody of the theme song and could sing along to parts of it.

If I recall, the first and last time I saw the movie was when I clipped out a discount coupon from the local daily newspaper as part of the summer kid's matinee series.

Watching it this afternoon I got a big smile from one of the early scenes. In the background of one of the shots was a Volkswagen bus from that era, looking all shiny and brand new in the dusty golden landscape of east Africa.

One reason for my smile was because I practically grew up in Volkswagen buses. When I was a kid, My dad was a VW enthusiast, for the primary reason (as he himself told me) that they were cheap and that he could actually work on them by himself.

Found this photo of '66 model with CA plates on the Internet.

We went through a series of such vehicles from about the time I was four until I was in high school. I remember shivering in them in the Iowa winters due to the lack of traditional heaters in them. In 1978 we emigrated out to Colorado in one.

That bus was the first car I ever drove after I got my learner's permit. My dad taught me how to use the stick shift on a gravel road outside Fort Collins.

More than a few times over the last couple years, when I've expressed to friends my ongoing desire for an RV, they have suggested that I purchase a VW camper van.

For most people in my life situation, it would be a splendid idea, but for me it would feel as I were covering the same ground that my father did.

Besides, there is no shortage of other folks willing to keep these machines on the road.

As anyone who has ever been to this area knows, the southern California coast is more or less VW heaven.

One can hardly walk down the street around here, especially in Ventura, without seeing a VW bus from one of the years during the long epoch during which they were manufactured.

Although some show their age, most of the ones I've seen are in quite nice condition, well-kept in appearance and moving through traffic easily in the flow of the late model hybrids and SUVs around them.

Some have been modded up into interesting configurations, but there are others that look like they just rolled off the assembly line at the factory.

Just yesterday I saw a baby blue one in almost mint-looking condition that for all the world could have time traveled right from the scene in Born Free.

I wish my dad could come out here and see them. He'd get a kick out of it. But he's never been much of the travel-for-travel's-sake type, unlike his parents and his son.

I guess that kind of wanderlust skips generations in our family.

Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'Cause you're born free

Santa Barbara Claus Comes to Town

Having wrapped up such an intense phase of work on Friday afternoon, Saturday found me almost disoriented by the fact that I could put the project behind me and out of my mind. I could actually devote my time to other things, for the first time in nearly a week.

It was a brilliant sunny day. The chilly rain from yesterday evening had cleared up completely. I mused that I might actually just have fun and relax today, but then I remembered that it was long past the time to do laundry. I had been down to my last clean t-shirt, and had just spilled sesame seed oil over the front while rinsing my gums that morning. Laundry went straight to the top of my agenda.

My smartphone mapping app told me that there was a coin laundry just up Milpas Street from the waterfront. I pumped coffee into my leftover fast food cup in the lobby (where the television was still showing reports from the massacre). Then wearing a brand new pair of Columbia pants from REI, and the well wrinkled white dress shirt that Okki had given me at Burning Man, I stuffed my very full laundry sack into the trunk of my car and headed up Milpas in my car.

On the other side of 101, I saw up ahead that the street was blocked off. From the way that the barricades were set up, I inferred that it was either a street festival or a parade. It turned out to be the latter. For the second time this year on my travels, I have found up driving right into a parade (the first was last July in Minot, North Dakota, where I nearly became an entrant into the parade for the North Dakota State Fair).

The detour was forcing all the traffic onto side streets. Santa Barbara is a nightmare to navigate under normal circumstances, but now it was three times as bad. As I seem to do every time I venture out it, I wound up going down a dead end street that was blocked by the serpentine 101 that cuts the street grid in awkward unpredictable ways.

After a couple forced turns, I had lost track of where I needed to, to reach the laundromat on Milpas. I pulled over next to park to check my smartphone map. I was still about five blocks away.

When I turned the key to crank the engine, the battery was dead. I wasn't really surprised. The battery was old, and it had failed as I left Burning Man (what a story that was). It had conked out completely in Bakersfield in September when I left the lights on overnight at the Super 8. The AAA responder had verified that my alternator was OK, and that I simply needed a new battery. I had put it off, and now the day of reckoning had arrived.

Fortunately I was parked in a convenient location. Google maps told me there was an AutoZone only siz blocks away.

I decided to tackle laundry first. I schlepped my large laundry bag out of the trunk and started toting it across the park towards the direction of the laundromat. It was heavy and the string from the bag cut into my hand.

It was a relief to finally reach Milpas. I passed by the area where the various parade participants were waiting for their turn. A Santa Barbara trolley was parked along the side street, the open windows filled with children with balloons.

With my bag over my shoulder, I thought I must have looked like a  homeless person, but that is not how the children saw me.

I had forgotten that it was December. When they saw me pass by, they started yelling "It's Santa Claus!" If only they had seen me before I lost twenty pounds, shaved off my beard, and cleared up my rosacea!

The laundry was on the far side of the street. I crossed during a break in the parade. After putting my clothes in the washers and feeding in thirteen quarters for each load, I went back out to the street to watch the parade, sitting on a concrete ledge next to a line of newspaper racks. Around my feet were scattered folios of free community newspapers. From one of them, I learned that I was watching the Milpas Holiday Parade. The theme for 2012 was "A better, brighter youth."

As I sat watching the parade, a woman approached the racks and looked briefly at them before moving on, muttering, "I just can't stand to look at the news today."

As it happened, I was just in time to catch the very end, which was a Santa Barbara Fire Department engine loaded with children and with Santa Claus, the real deal this time, wearing sunglasses and waving right back at me.

After my laundry was dried, I walked back to the car, hurriedly with the load on my shoulder. By this time the battery had recovered a little charge and the car started. A lucky break. I hadn't been looking forward to toting the old battery to the AutoZone. 

By this time the side streets were mercifully clear. I drove to the AutoZone, where I swapped it out for a brand new one, for a mere one hundred and forty bucks.

Well that's why I work, isn't it? So I pay for these little expenses of life without batting an eye.

Santa Barbara, Heaven and Hell

I wake up in paradise, a view of the ocean and palm trees from my room. The sky and the scenery speak of summer, but the air is chilly. It was a cold night.

In the lobby getting coffee, I see a television screen with a news report about twenty murdered children.

This is a place that brings out the opposites, or contrasts perhaps that are never opposites, not just the good and bad, but every kind of juxtaposition.

Steep mountains rise right next to the sea. Wide flowing freeways exit onto to tangled impossible-to-navigate downtown streets. Along the row of luxury beach hotels, homeless men shuffle the sidewalk with shopping carts and dirty bedrolls. Fancy restaurants line State Street in downtown, but one has to drive ten miles to find a Walgreens.

I spend the entire day holed up my room working, finally finishing a project that had taken me three weeks when I thought it would take three days. I can see my New York-based coworkers are on Skype all day, but I don't from anyone. It's a day of silence there.

For dinner I fantasize about a big thick steak meal, at one of the fancy restaurants on State Street. Like almost every time, I slum it and go to I-Hop for steak and eggs. The I-Hop is large and sprawling, and for once at an I-Hop, I am not shunted into one of the tiny one-person tables. Inside around me is mostly a Mexican clientele and Mexican staff.

As I cut into my dinner with my knife, a homeless woman approaches my table and asks me, "Did they ask you if you had to pay for your meal in advance?" She asks this at several tables. "It's illegal!" she says over and over to staff.

I feel like J.P. Morgan, brushing her off. Had she asked to share my meal, I would have given it to her. But she didn't ask that. Instead she is yelling something about the "District Attorney" and refusing to leave.

On the way home in the rain I get caught up in a DUI checkpoint. A young female Santa Barbara cop asks for my driver's license and  if I have had any alcohol. I am rude to her. "No," is all I say, with an attitude of "kiss my ass" and she waves me through.

I watch several old movies on TCM, but halfway through The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg, which I've seen before, I realize I don't to see the sad ending again. I normally relish silent movies, but this time I leave at the midpoint, when the lovers are happy, and walk out into the darkness of the night, carrying postcards for my nieces, looking for a mailbox in which to drop them.

I walk past the Fess Parker, where there is a large party celebrating around the outdoor patio fires. In solitude I walk out to the end of the long pier, past the sea food restaurants, which are mostly closed for the night, including the Moby Dick, a New England reference on the California coast.

The Christmas decorations on the pier are beautiful on the rooftops of the wooden buildings of the pier. A Christmas tree stands tall above the distant dark outline of the mountains along the coast. Out on the pitch dark ocean, the oil drilling platforms are it up like sailing ships at a festival.

Past midnight I come back to my room. The silent movie is over and TCM is showing vampire movies. I watch one, about a girl terrorized by a female vampire of a vampire cult, while reading articles about dental health on my laptop.

I can't read any news sites today. Tomorrow maybe things will begin to smooth out.