Day 5: The Land of the Lost

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Driving Cross Country - August 29th to September 6th
From: Albuquerque, NM
To: Dallas, TX

Two States Traveled:
New Mexico
Texas

Total mileage: 697 miles
Total mileage to date: 1,979 miles

We got up late this morning and walked downstairs to grab some breakfast at the hotel. I guess things move slower out here because breakfast took a while to arrive. The entire hotel restaurant is covered in southwestern art. I do not like it. I do not like it, Sam I Am. But the eggs were good. But I"m reading this little pamphlet and gnawing on my arm while waiting for food to arrive when I learn that Sandia means "watermelon." So the Sandia National Laboratory could be a federal watermelon research installation. Sandia (SNL) and Los Alamos (LANL) are two huge national laboratories funded by the Department of Energy and other agencies. SNL is in Albuquerque and LANL is outside Santa Fe. Too bad we don't have time to visit them. I have some ideas on how to enhance the yield of tactical nuclear weapons by wrapping the plutonium core in fruit roll-ups...

After breakfast, we walk into the local gift shop to browse. Bug decides to buy a bracelet for his girlfriend. It's a silver band with a large oval malachite set in the middle. It ain't cheap, but after looking at it for about two seconds, he tosses it onto the counter and says "Add it to my bottled water." The store clerk's jaw drops, she perks up, and starts paying Bug a lot of attention. It takes a few minutes to wrap because she tapes three layers of cotton gauze around it, searches for bubble pack, a box, and a white paper bag. It's really amusing because she's blushing the entire time. Sheesh, you would think she'd never seen hundred dollar bills before. I was really close to breaking out in open laughter and I just had this mental image of Bug sweeping her off her feet and carrying her out to a white horse in the parking lot and riding out of Albuquerque into the desert sunrise. LJ decided to buy some stuff. She wrapped it once and tucked it into a little brown bag. Hmmmm.

As we leave Albuquerque heading southwest to Roswell, the land around us changes from desert scrub to rolling farmland and young forests. But this doesn't last too long. We pull into Roswell a few hours later and go visit the UFO museum. What a bunch of hooey. There's exhibits on the Roswell incident, Area 51, and crop circles. A lot of the photos look touched up and the stories are really fuzzy in key points. So how does a 10 year-old boy recall the exact glyphs on a scrap of i-beam 20 years later? But some of the stuff was hilarious. There's a photo of a shining disc above some trees with a caption citing this spacecraft as a "Gryphon" class UFO. So we have classifications for them? Right.

Leaving the museum, we cross the street to Denny's, that famous culinary institution. The waitress is a "Gryphon" class moron. She's bringing stuff that we didn't order and keeps coming back to check with us on our order. On our way out, she says "Come on back, now, you hear?" Bug replies in a southern twang and she asks Bug if he's from around here. He informs her that we're from Washington, D.C and driving back from the west coast. A long silence ensues as she tilts her head and tries to recall where exactly that is. About five seconds later, her mental gears finish grinding and the little ping pong ball drops into the output tray. "Wow! That's a long way away! How'd you get stuck here?" After we walk out, it is apparent to all of us that we're not stuck in Roswell --- she is.

Now we drive east and cross into Texas. Woo hoo! Now there's small oil rigs pumping away about 100 feet off of the highway. We passed a bunch of roughnecks drilling a new well. And there's locusts the size of small birds drifting across the highway. Bug is driving and LJ is in the front seat. And both of them are flinching and ducking as these sparrow-sized bugs come zooming into the windshield with a sound like hail. Whap. Whap. Whappity-whap. Then a bird flies across the highway and goes ricocheting off into the distance in a spiral as it bounces off of the front grill. Jeez. When we pull over at the next gas station, it takes about five minutes just to wash the windshield. They grow their bugs big down in Texas.

Now it's dark and we're heading past Abilene heading into Dallas-Fort Worth. Damn, this is a big state. We're covering about 600 miles per traveling day, which covered two states on the first day and five on the second. It takes an entire day to cross Texas just through the central portion of the state. But Microsoft MapPoint is coming in really handy on this trip. Since we don't have web access while we're in the car and are not making hotel reservations ahead of time, it helps to have all of the route planning tools and detailed, zoomable maps sitting on a laptop. I had forgotten that I even installed it back in 2002. It's pretty sweet. Now if I only had a GPS receiver it could autoplot our position...

Another good thing about this trip to date is that we're in a huge truck. The gas mileage sucks bit we're not cramped in and surrounded by luggage. There's plenty of space to stretch out. We've driven 2,000 miles so far (Bug has driven an additional 700 miles between Portland, OR and San Fran) and we're about halfway across the country. This country is frickin' huge. If anybody tries to physically invade and conquer the continental United States, good luck to them. They'll run out of gas before they get over the mountains. Or the bugs in Texas will scare them away. Bring it.

So we pull into downtown Dallas at about midnight and check into the Aristocrat Hotel. After lobbing our bags into our rooms, we cruise out to Deep Ellum, the club area about 5 blocks away. After one loop of the area, we walk into the "Coyote Ugly" bar, where the first sight is three women dancing on top of the bar, Texas style. Yee hoo. We hang out there for about an hour listening to this cover band (not bad, really - they're "The Factory" and have a web site [http://www.factoryband.com/]). The entire bar is strung with bras hanging in festive strands all over the place and the floor is rubberized and ready-made for bar fights. I think the bras are strung together like naval signal flags. If I could only figure out what they're signalling. Maybe they communicate using only three four letters, A through D --- there's only one vowel. More research needed. Note to self: must remember to apply for a government grant.

Well, anyway, we get to talking to one of the bartenders while Bug is trying to repel a very large Latino woman who is celebrating her birthday. The barkeep's name is Hilary. She's a stunt woman and ultimate martial artist who's never lived more than 2 years in one place (she does stunts for UPN shows), hates her farmer father, and raised goats, horses, and other livestock as a young farmer. After discussing the various merits of motorcycles, horses, knife fighting techniques, and the art of cooking pad thai, we rolled out of there shaking our heads and went back to our hotel. Texas is a weird state of mind with a pessimistic therapeutic outcome. They need to add Ritellin into the state water supply.

Once we're back at the hotel, we argue about how to set up a wireless internet access point while Bug berates us for using IBM laptops instead of Apple laptops. He curses, we curse back (these laptops are company ones and absolutely free). A good time was had by all. After checking our mail and replying to any important ones from the office, we spend a few minutes mapping out Bug's "Go West" journey that took 20 days and got the Tahoe out to Portland in the first place (thus flying out to drive it back to the East Coast). And now we start snoring... zzz...

 

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