SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. | Monday, April 26, 2010 | Guest room, 932 Hampshire St.
We found the pure biodiesel in Berkeley. Not in San Rafael as planned. He'd sold. They'd bought. It was sunny yet again, like almost every day has been on this trip. The place was Bio Oasis, a women-owned cooperative housed in a renovated 1930s gas station, corner of Ashby and Sacramento. They have four pumps, all of it recycled vegetable oil. Solar panels shade the pumps. Chickens for sale inside, peeping in boxes. Books on urban farming. Pretty much all the good karma you could ask for. Pricey, at $3.84 a gallon, versus $3.30 for straight diesel. But again, the idea is that we're comsuming less, so we can afford to pay a little more for something more sustainable, and remembering too, that the prices for gasoline, for soda and corn, are kept artificially low by federal subsidies, lawyering by Monsanto and global war, among other things. The system is rigged. So sometimes we pay someting closer to "people" costs, rather than "market" costs. And maybe market costs might more accurately be called political outcomes, or lobbying gold.
The important part though, we got to my sister Margaret's, in the afternoon. Traffic coming from the East Bay was awful. A giant parking lot most of the way. Plenty of time to photograph the downtown from the Bay Bridge coming over. We made it. Seven thousand and some odd miles. 46 days. Yellow Truck intact. Us too, give or take.
We found a parking space in front of a Latino church, a renovated storefront, a few blocks from the house, outer Mission, getting toward Potrero Hill. The idea was we would hold the parking space, then Margaret would come take it, and she'd give us her driveway space. But she'd already found a space.
Manhattans. Delicious. Out in the back garden. Sitting. Talking. Then the neighbors playing folk music on the other side of the fence, mandolin and fiddle, singing. We were singing too, hooting, standing, stamping up on top of the picnic table. The climate so good here, so agreeable. Lush. Smell of jasmine. It is good to be here. Good good.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
DAY 46: Into the green hills of California
SAN RAFAEL, CALIF. | Saturday, April 24, 2010 | Motel 6, Room 108
We'd hoped to go to Yosemite. To end our trip camping. Camping. Affordable and also beautiful, verging on romantic. El Capitan and all. Bathrooms just a short sprint through other campsites, once you've found the flashlight, then the door to the tent, and then the zipper.
Or, to be clear, we wanted to end Leg Two of the trip camping. There is still one more leg apparently, as Adrienne pointed out yesterday, as we drove along, somewhere, probably along the Sacramento River.
Leg One was from Maine to Florida, largely undocumented expedition at this point. Leg Two apparently was from Florida to San Francisco. Leg Three is time building stair in San Francisco thru to return to Seattle. Three legs, four corners. Leg Two almost complete, to be completed later this afternoon, when we arrive at my sister Margaret's place.
So we wanted to end on a good note yesterday. Nothing more than that. We talked about it as transition, as decompression, like when a deep sea diver comes up for air. There is that brief time in the interstitial space, the wet dripping room, echo chamber, for the lungs and other vital organs to adjust to the change in atmosphere.
We'd planned to go to Yosemite. We'd looked at the maps. But apparently not very closely. Rt 120, the one we wanted, for the craggy arrival, said very clearly, in all caps, CLOSED IN WINTER. There was nothing south of 120, not for miles, not until Death Valley. The next couple roads north, also CLOSED IN WINTER. So yesterday, in the morning, we called a 1-800 number supplied by our cheery host at Redwood Inn, and found that with only a slight detour of maybe 30 miles back north, we could pick up Rt 89 and then Rt 88, and make our way across the rest of the Sierras. I'd called about Rt. 89 the night before, and it had been closed for snow. So it was a small miracle that 89 was open again, saving us a handful of miles. Maybe things were looking good. Maybe we should have felt blessed.
It was sunny yesterday. I remember Adrienne saying that. "At least it's sunny." Which means I was complaining no doubt, despite the strange beautiful birds in the birch trees outside our motel door, black birds with yellow throats that I'd never seen.
It was sunny. A thin layer of snow from the night before on Yellow Truck's cab and camper shell. But not on the hood. Already melted. Still, Yellow was cold. Started then stalled out. Then started again, shuttering to life, slowly catching, slowly finding that I'd pulled the choke out a bit for him, was giving him more air, thinning the mixture of fuel and air, upping the rpms. So he came to, a bit rough. He's been like this in the cold, up in the mountains. But after a minute, all is good, smooth, like a dry marble bouncing around in his cylinders, that diesel sound in miniature, and I back down the choke again and off we go.
We climbed two or three passes, up in the snows. There was the Sage Hen Pass. Monitor Pass. Kit Carson Pass. I don't remember the order really. They were slow affairs, all about 8,000 feet up, with a Modest Mouse soundtrack, a couple of times down into second gear, which means carrying on at about 15 mph, plenty of time to take in the view, the delicious alpine air. At some point we became friendly with an old flat-faced tractor-trailer carrying two sleds of strapped green hay. His truck was just slightly faster than Yellow. We'd first been noticing him just before the turn-off to Lake Tahoe, and then not seen him for awhile, so thought we'd outrun a truck finally, or that he'd turned off. But he hadn't. He started gaining on us. Showing up in the rear view mirror just before we'd turn a corner out of sight. We tried to outrun him, chuckled at the idea of that, as if we had any volition of our own, any options, and we watched him gaining on us in the rear view mirrors. Adrienne had seen some Steven King movie, Full Max Overdrive or something, about trucks like this, very scary and all, bearing down on a poor dear. So he passed us eventually, narrow stretch, dramatic and all, loud engine in our ears, and then he was slower than us on the downhill, having to work his brakes with the load, we wouldn't have thought hay was so heavy, but maybe when so green or that it had to be carried over mountain passes maybe grow it on the same side. While we were mulling these deep things, he managed to get ahead of us, and then he pulled over quick to the side of the road, not sure why. As we came up on him, the driver was already climbing down his ladder, in sunglasses, a tight t-shirt in the breeze, no hat, and he waved to us, big smile. We were friends.
And then gone, around the corner, like with so many of these friends we've made on the road. Very short, sweet relationships. No words necessary. All road code and honor and the company-of-strangers warmth, like Hemingway without the bluster.
Maybe the Sierras on the way down were harder, despite the familiar pain of the slow hike up. All the braking against gravity, flying around corners with just a guardrail, or no guard rail, between us and eternity. We were so happy when we saw grass again, when we were down in the 3,000s and then the flats, where the sun had more of an effect on the terrain again, growing tall leafy trees, gauzy in the hazy light, and all the buildings looked after, cared-for, even the ones that were empty for the time being. The cows were grazing under trees. So luxurious. And then of course, we were in California after all. I'd forgotten how green, how soft and undulating the hills of north central California are. Then the wind farms, all the slowly mechanically spinning props, catching energy. All the vineyards spread over the hills. The hazy light. Central California is magical. I've always felt that, could immediately understand that in the land, its advantage, its health and softness and richness, why it pulls people here, why everything is so expensive, even a tiny flat-roofed house on a cul-de-sac.
We picked up Rt 104 at some point. It was the smallest road on the map, off of Rt 88 by Jackson, south of Sacramento. It ran along the Sacramento River as it turned out. Amazing elevated narrow road above the river, alongside it, and below us on both sides, vineyards, cows, walnut groves. Crossing over the river, banging across metal bridges, Yellow Truck bouncing and recovering, then slower bridges, and then back over the river again and turning ninety degrees to run alongside it some more. Same hazy light. Just flying along with the other cars, at 55 mph, a speed Yellow can do no problem at all. And now, back in the flats, out of the hills, doing much better, stronger, almost detected some momentary zip.
Towards day's end, we figured we were headed for San Rafael. We would be close to San Francisco, but not too close. We could get biodiesel in the morning, more of the B99. Then maybe go to the coast. Maybe go to Pt. Reyes. Then shoot down. We were low on fuel. That created some undue excitement, a minor crisis. That we might run out. And it was strange, to be so close to landing at my sister's, and to be looking at staying in some dumpy anonymous motel. But she is busy. I wanted to respect her working life, to show up when we said we would. It is my autism, or Asbergers, wanting always to be on time. But to stay in Vallejo? By an amusement park? We kept driving, into the sunset along Rt 37 with the people headed home from work. The fuel was low. Then we were tired and hungry. So on and so on. We found straight diesel in San Rafael, left plenty of room for the biodiesel to come next day. We found our way downtown. It was like Christmas, on Fourth Ave, the main street. Every tree strung with yellow lights. Unexpected. Odd. Overly bright. Adrienne didn't want to spend money, wanted to conserve. Maybe we would make peanut butter and jelly. But it was our last night in a way. I wanted to eat something, a burger at least. Places were too expensive or too fluorescent. We were two grumpy bears, whining, nothing quite right, walking up and down another town we didn't know. We'd talked about Indian food for some reason. We hadn't had that in forever. I asked a guy but he only knew of a Thai place, very good, near by, he was just back in town after a long time away, he said, was why he didn't know. But what was the name of the Indian place? We didn't know, just Indian. But finally we did find an Indian place and we went in and it was the same price as a burger and a beer, just no beer, which was fine, and better food, so good, a buffet, North and South Indian both. So we ate. They didn't even charge extra for the basket of nan. It was delicious and quiet in the place and we didn't talk much. We accepted that we would just sleep in the overpriced but still relatively cheap Motel 6 we'd already checked out earlier, and not wanted to accept. We would just sleep and get up and we would be in San Francisco.
Ah, yes, soon! The shades still drawn, but the light bright at the shades' edges. Adrienne still asleep, she stays up late, reading. The dull thrum of cars passing by outside, somewhere, a highway nearby. Somewhere too, the boats, moored, and silent. Only the cars talking now. And Adrienne's breathing, sleeping. Me here, standing, laptop balanced on top of the television, battery down to eighteen percent. Yes, soon, out in the day again. Again, here we go.
We'd hoped to go to Yosemite. To end our trip camping. Camping. Affordable and also beautiful, verging on romantic. El Capitan and all. Bathrooms just a short sprint through other campsites, once you've found the flashlight, then the door to the tent, and then the zipper.
Or, to be clear, we wanted to end Leg Two of the trip camping. There is still one more leg apparently, as Adrienne pointed out yesterday, as we drove along, somewhere, probably along the Sacramento River.
Leg One was from Maine to Florida, largely undocumented expedition at this point. Leg Two apparently was from Florida to San Francisco. Leg Three is time building stair in San Francisco thru to return to Seattle. Three legs, four corners. Leg Two almost complete, to be completed later this afternoon, when we arrive at my sister Margaret's place.
So we wanted to end on a good note yesterday. Nothing more than that. We talked about it as transition, as decompression, like when a deep sea diver comes up for air. There is that brief time in the interstitial space, the wet dripping room, echo chamber, for the lungs and other vital organs to adjust to the change in atmosphere.
We'd planned to go to Yosemite. We'd looked at the maps. But apparently not very closely. Rt 120, the one we wanted, for the craggy arrival, said very clearly, in all caps, CLOSED IN WINTER. There was nothing south of 120, not for miles, not until Death Valley. The next couple roads north, also CLOSED IN WINTER. So yesterday, in the morning, we called a 1-800 number supplied by our cheery host at Redwood Inn, and found that with only a slight detour of maybe 30 miles back north, we could pick up Rt 89 and then Rt 88, and make our way across the rest of the Sierras. I'd called about Rt. 89 the night before, and it had been closed for snow. So it was a small miracle that 89 was open again, saving us a handful of miles. Maybe things were looking good. Maybe we should have felt blessed.
It was sunny yesterday. I remember Adrienne saying that. "At least it's sunny." Which means I was complaining no doubt, despite the strange beautiful birds in the birch trees outside our motel door, black birds with yellow throats that I'd never seen.
It was sunny. A thin layer of snow from the night before on Yellow Truck's cab and camper shell. But not on the hood. Already melted. Still, Yellow was cold. Started then stalled out. Then started again, shuttering to life, slowly catching, slowly finding that I'd pulled the choke out a bit for him, was giving him more air, thinning the mixture of fuel and air, upping the rpms. So he came to, a bit rough. He's been like this in the cold, up in the mountains. But after a minute, all is good, smooth, like a dry marble bouncing around in his cylinders, that diesel sound in miniature, and I back down the choke again and off we go.
We climbed two or three passes, up in the snows. There was the Sage Hen Pass. Monitor Pass. Kit Carson Pass. I don't remember the order really. They were slow affairs, all about 8,000 feet up, with a Modest Mouse soundtrack, a couple of times down into second gear, which means carrying on at about 15 mph, plenty of time to take in the view, the delicious alpine air. At some point we became friendly with an old flat-faced tractor-trailer carrying two sleds of strapped green hay. His truck was just slightly faster than Yellow. We'd first been noticing him just before the turn-off to Lake Tahoe, and then not seen him for awhile, so thought we'd outrun a truck finally, or that he'd turned off. But he hadn't. He started gaining on us. Showing up in the rear view mirror just before we'd turn a corner out of sight. We tried to outrun him, chuckled at the idea of that, as if we had any volition of our own, any options, and we watched him gaining on us in the rear view mirrors. Adrienne had seen some Steven King movie, Full Max Overdrive or something, about trucks like this, very scary and all, bearing down on a poor dear. So he passed us eventually, narrow stretch, dramatic and all, loud engine in our ears, and then he was slower than us on the downhill, having to work his brakes with the load, we wouldn't have thought hay was so heavy, but maybe when so green or that it had to be carried over mountain passes maybe grow it on the same side. While we were mulling these deep things, he managed to get ahead of us, and then he pulled over quick to the side of the road, not sure why. As we came up on him, the driver was already climbing down his ladder, in sunglasses, a tight t-shirt in the breeze, no hat, and he waved to us, big smile. We were friends.
And then gone, around the corner, like with so many of these friends we've made on the road. Very short, sweet relationships. No words necessary. All road code and honor and the company-of-strangers warmth, like Hemingway without the bluster.
Maybe the Sierras on the way down were harder, despite the familiar pain of the slow hike up. All the braking against gravity, flying around corners with just a guardrail, or no guard rail, between us and eternity. We were so happy when we saw grass again, when we were down in the 3,000s and then the flats, where the sun had more of an effect on the terrain again, growing tall leafy trees, gauzy in the hazy light, and all the buildings looked after, cared-for, even the ones that were empty for the time being. The cows were grazing under trees. So luxurious. And then of course, we were in California after all. I'd forgotten how green, how soft and undulating the hills of north central California are. Then the wind farms, all the slowly mechanically spinning props, catching energy. All the vineyards spread over the hills. The hazy light. Central California is magical. I've always felt that, could immediately understand that in the land, its advantage, its health and softness and richness, why it pulls people here, why everything is so expensive, even a tiny flat-roofed house on a cul-de-sac.
We picked up Rt 104 at some point. It was the smallest road on the map, off of Rt 88 by Jackson, south of Sacramento. It ran along the Sacramento River as it turned out. Amazing elevated narrow road above the river, alongside it, and below us on both sides, vineyards, cows, walnut groves. Crossing over the river, banging across metal bridges, Yellow Truck bouncing and recovering, then slower bridges, and then back over the river again and turning ninety degrees to run alongside it some more. Same hazy light. Just flying along with the other cars, at 55 mph, a speed Yellow can do no problem at all. And now, back in the flats, out of the hills, doing much better, stronger, almost detected some momentary zip.
Towards day's end, we figured we were headed for San Rafael. We would be close to San Francisco, but not too close. We could get biodiesel in the morning, more of the B99. Then maybe go to the coast. Maybe go to Pt. Reyes. Then shoot down. We were low on fuel. That created some undue excitement, a minor crisis. That we might run out. And it was strange, to be so close to landing at my sister's, and to be looking at staying in some dumpy anonymous motel. But she is busy. I wanted to respect her working life, to show up when we said we would. It is my autism, or Asbergers, wanting always to be on time. But to stay in Vallejo? By an amusement park? We kept driving, into the sunset along Rt 37 with the people headed home from work. The fuel was low. Then we were tired and hungry. So on and so on. We found straight diesel in San Rafael, left plenty of room for the biodiesel to come next day. We found our way downtown. It was like Christmas, on Fourth Ave, the main street. Every tree strung with yellow lights. Unexpected. Odd. Overly bright. Adrienne didn't want to spend money, wanted to conserve. Maybe we would make peanut butter and jelly. But it was our last night in a way. I wanted to eat something, a burger at least. Places were too expensive or too fluorescent. We were two grumpy bears, whining, nothing quite right, walking up and down another town we didn't know. We'd talked about Indian food for some reason. We hadn't had that in forever. I asked a guy but he only knew of a Thai place, very good, near by, he was just back in town after a long time away, he said, was why he didn't know. But what was the name of the Indian place? We didn't know, just Indian. But finally we did find an Indian place and we went in and it was the same price as a burger and a beer, just no beer, which was fine, and better food, so good, a buffet, North and South Indian both. So we ate. They didn't even charge extra for the basket of nan. It was delicious and quiet in the place and we didn't talk much. We accepted that we would just sleep in the overpriced but still relatively cheap Motel 6 we'd already checked out earlier, and not wanted to accept. We would just sleep and get up and we would be in San Francisco.
Ah, yes, soon! The shades still drawn, but the light bright at the shades' edges. Adrienne still asleep, she stays up late, reading. The dull thrum of cars passing by outside, somewhere, a highway nearby. Somewhere too, the boats, moored, and silent. Only the cars talking now. And Adrienne's breathing, sleeping. Me here, standing, laptop balanced on top of the television, battery down to eighteen percent. Yes, soon, out in the day again. Again, here we go.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
DAY 44: Snowy night, Sierra Nevadas
BRIDGEPORT, CALIF. | Thursday, April 22, 2010 | Hwy. 395, Redwood Inn, Room No. 16
Snow here. Big slow flakes. In trout-fishing, deer processing country. In the parking lots outside the inns and restaurants, snow falling on four-wheel drive pickup trucks.
In Texas, in New Mexico, it was hot. We were wishing we had air conditioning. In Florida, same thing. When we left Seattle, back in early March, it was full-blown spring, forsythia all out, lilacs coming. I'd just tilled the ground for a vegetable garden. We were behind the ball. Needed to get things in the ground. Now, today, we run into snow, roads closed, winds blowing over tractor trailer trucks. Maybe we should have known. It's only late April after all. In Maine for instance, it can snow about now. There can be a blizzard, often is. So it goes here, too, at 7,000 feet, in the Sierra Nevadas. Socked in. All grey, the sun unable to break through its yoke of bright blur. Snow came down all around us in the afternoon. Grey in the distance, dulling, hiding the mountains. Then we climbed up into it, among the thick redwoods above Mono Lake. Not going anywhere tonight. Most of roads to Yosemite closed. Will detour north in the morning, to Route 88.
We eclipsed 7,000 miles today coming south on Rt 376, in Nevada. We'd been driving since late morning, come south off of Route 50, known as Nevada's loneliest road. No coffee. Then 376 south, thinking we'd have coffee by early afternoon. But towns on the map turned out to be intersections only, like Basalt, Nevada, nothing at all, just an intersection and two tractor trailers pulled over. Or Coaldale, Nevada, just a metal building emptied of all its windows.
So when we got to 7,000 miles, cruising south just to the east of the Toiyabe Mountain Range, in a valley of beautiful nothingness between the Toiyabes and the Toquimas, we pulled over and stopped. We got out the gas grill, packed the espresso maker full of coffee and made a pot there on the side of the road. It was delicious. It took forever in the wind. We half-covered the grill with a woven mat, draped that over the grill cover, which was lean-to-d on top of the espresso maker. Delicious. Back going, driving, the coffee in our Dunkin Donut plastic mugs, the Decemberists playing on the ipod plugged into the tape player, flying through the valleys of nothingness as though we had mastered this thing and could manage to never arrive and always be within striking distance of arriving. We are so close at this point.
I am typing standing up in our motel room, back-support belt on, pain pills going, a bit of whiskey and honey, old Cuban recipe for recovery, whiskey substituted for rum, in my plastic motel cup. Back should be okay. Was just a bad spasm. No gurney, no forced respite for now.
We were in Eureka, Nevada last night. The self-proclaimed friendliest town on the loneliest road in Nevada. We caught Idol on a flat screen TV in a modest room, pocket door to the bathroom that didn't open or close, just stayed where it was, open. Very good show. Sort of a good show. More truly, Idol is a ritual, something we can insist on, so that we have a concrete deadline some reason to stop driving before the middle of the night, two nights each week. So, good-bye finally, Tim Urban. You should have taken the bullet for Lily, many weeks ago, for Lily who was canned far too soon.
We drove thru Tonopah, Nevada, today. Sad, beaten down former mining town, built with and stripped bare by East Coast money long ago. The man we stopped on the sidewalk to ask about the disappearance of the Silver Queen Motel, where I once stayed on assignment as a cub newspaper reporter, who was shoveling snow into the street to be run over and melt, told us the motel had been built badly, grown mold, been torn down a few years ago. For lunch, instead of the diner that had been on the motel's ground floor, he suggested McDonalds, Subway or Burger King.
Not one local lunch place left in Tonopah, home, for the school sports teams, of the Tonopah Muckers. No place to eat lunch out other than at two scrubby casinos, both filled with smoke. Except the Mexican place, which our guide, native Nick Bradshaw, good man, fast true talker, man who stayed in the town he was born in, remote and difficult as it was - he didn't mention the Mexican place, but I remembered it. So we went there.
The mines today are in Elko, east and north of here. Huge strip mines, two of the largest anywhere, still pulling out gold in Elko. They use biodiesel there, too, if only because it burns cleaner, and means less money spent on the fans blowing fresh air down through miles of tubes to the men and women working down there. But not in Tonopah. In Tonopah, only historic, tourable mines. Another Cincinnati. Another American city that had its golden era a hundred years ago and has been declining ever since, hanging on and dying. Empty homes boarded up below the hilltop mineshafts, hanging out the historic signs, scraping together memories, knitting together rest stops that tourists, outsiders devour in minutes.
When we went into a hock shop, we said hello. The owner was slumped toward the back at his seat behind a glass counter filled with pocket knives, an unseen TV playing a cartoonish intergalactic movie. His hair was longish. He was a bit of an unshorn mountain. He never answered us. And again, no answer, when we thanked him as we went out, on schedule for fuel, hurrying across the main street, settling into Yellow Truck, picking up Route 6 past the weirdish Clown Motel, headed west and south.
Our roadtrip has transformed us. We have become pros of silence, of shared smiles and nothing said, as we pass by a train of cows in scrub desert, plodding through the high desert on some unknown mission for tastier fodder, we turn and smile, are able to make out each other's thoughts and eyes through sunglasses, say nothing, know what the other has seen.
It is eons since we first filled Yellow Truck with fuel at a nameless gas station in upstate New York.
The trip at some point will end. Has to. Soon it will. Spring sprung. Winter over. Snowmelt. We will return to the apartment that has been there in Seattle, existing all this time. But still it is too early for thoughts like that. We aren't there. We can't know now what we will find when we get there. We are in the end game. The arc is flattening. But it is still too early to say. We should be in San Francisco by late Saturday. By Monday we will be, at minimum, redesigning my sister Margaret's back stair, readying for construction, to break out the tools in Yellow Truck's bed.
Snow here. Big slow flakes. In trout-fishing, deer processing country. In the parking lots outside the inns and restaurants, snow falling on four-wheel drive pickup trucks.
In Texas, in New Mexico, it was hot. We were wishing we had air conditioning. In Florida, same thing. When we left Seattle, back in early March, it was full-blown spring, forsythia all out, lilacs coming. I'd just tilled the ground for a vegetable garden. We were behind the ball. Needed to get things in the ground. Now, today, we run into snow, roads closed, winds blowing over tractor trailer trucks. Maybe we should have known. It's only late April after all. In Maine for instance, it can snow about now. There can be a blizzard, often is. So it goes here, too, at 7,000 feet, in the Sierra Nevadas. Socked in. All grey, the sun unable to break through its yoke of bright blur. Snow came down all around us in the afternoon. Grey in the distance, dulling, hiding the mountains. Then we climbed up into it, among the thick redwoods above Mono Lake. Not going anywhere tonight. Most of roads to Yosemite closed. Will detour north in the morning, to Route 88.
We eclipsed 7,000 miles today coming south on Rt 376, in Nevada. We'd been driving since late morning, come south off of Route 50, known as Nevada's loneliest road. No coffee. Then 376 south, thinking we'd have coffee by early afternoon. But towns on the map turned out to be intersections only, like Basalt, Nevada, nothing at all, just an intersection and two tractor trailers pulled over. Or Coaldale, Nevada, just a metal building emptied of all its windows.
So when we got to 7,000 miles, cruising south just to the east of the Toiyabe Mountain Range, in a valley of beautiful nothingness between the Toiyabes and the Toquimas, we pulled over and stopped. We got out the gas grill, packed the espresso maker full of coffee and made a pot there on the side of the road. It was delicious. It took forever in the wind. We half-covered the grill with a woven mat, draped that over the grill cover, which was lean-to-d on top of the espresso maker. Delicious. Back going, driving, the coffee in our Dunkin Donut plastic mugs, the Decemberists playing on the ipod plugged into the tape player, flying through the valleys of nothingness as though we had mastered this thing and could manage to never arrive and always be within striking distance of arriving. We are so close at this point.
I am typing standing up in our motel room, back-support belt on, pain pills going, a bit of whiskey and honey, old Cuban recipe for recovery, whiskey substituted for rum, in my plastic motel cup. Back should be okay. Was just a bad spasm. No gurney, no forced respite for now.
We were in Eureka, Nevada last night. The self-proclaimed friendliest town on the loneliest road in Nevada. We caught Idol on a flat screen TV in a modest room, pocket door to the bathroom that didn't open or close, just stayed where it was, open. Very good show. Sort of a good show. More truly, Idol is a ritual, something we can insist on, so that we have a concrete deadline some reason to stop driving before the middle of the night, two nights each week. So, good-bye finally, Tim Urban. You should have taken the bullet for Lily, many weeks ago, for Lily who was canned far too soon.
We drove thru Tonopah, Nevada, today. Sad, beaten down former mining town, built with and stripped bare by East Coast money long ago. The man we stopped on the sidewalk to ask about the disappearance of the Silver Queen Motel, where I once stayed on assignment as a cub newspaper reporter, who was shoveling snow into the street to be run over and melt, told us the motel had been built badly, grown mold, been torn down a few years ago. For lunch, instead of the diner that had been on the motel's ground floor, he suggested McDonalds, Subway or Burger King.
Not one local lunch place left in Tonopah, home, for the school sports teams, of the Tonopah Muckers. No place to eat lunch out other than at two scrubby casinos, both filled with smoke. Except the Mexican place, which our guide, native Nick Bradshaw, good man, fast true talker, man who stayed in the town he was born in, remote and difficult as it was - he didn't mention the Mexican place, but I remembered it. So we went there.
The mines today are in Elko, east and north of here. Huge strip mines, two of the largest anywhere, still pulling out gold in Elko. They use biodiesel there, too, if only because it burns cleaner, and means less money spent on the fans blowing fresh air down through miles of tubes to the men and women working down there. But not in Tonopah. In Tonopah, only historic, tourable mines. Another Cincinnati. Another American city that had its golden era a hundred years ago and has been declining ever since, hanging on and dying. Empty homes boarded up below the hilltop mineshafts, hanging out the historic signs, scraping together memories, knitting together rest stops that tourists, outsiders devour in minutes.
When we went into a hock shop, we said hello. The owner was slumped toward the back at his seat behind a glass counter filled with pocket knives, an unseen TV playing a cartoonish intergalactic movie. His hair was longish. He was a bit of an unshorn mountain. He never answered us. And again, no answer, when we thanked him as we went out, on schedule for fuel, hurrying across the main street, settling into Yellow Truck, picking up Route 6 past the weirdish Clown Motel, headed west and south.
Our roadtrip has transformed us. We have become pros of silence, of shared smiles and nothing said, as we pass by a train of cows in scrub desert, plodding through the high desert on some unknown mission for tastier fodder, we turn and smile, are able to make out each other's thoughts and eyes through sunglasses, say nothing, know what the other has seen.
It is eons since we first filled Yellow Truck with fuel at a nameless gas station in upstate New York.
The trip at some point will end. Has to. Soon it will. Spring sprung. Winter over. Snowmelt. We will return to the apartment that has been there in Seattle, existing all this time. But still it is too early for thoughts like that. We aren't there. We can't know now what we will find when we get there. We are in the end game. The arc is flattening. But it is still too early to say. We should be in San Francisco by late Saturday. By Monday we will be, at minimum, redesigning my sister Margaret's back stair, readying for construction, to break out the tools in Yellow Truck's bed.
DAYS 36 thru 42: fotos thru bryce canyon, bonus text
EUREKA, NEVADA | Thursday, April 22, 2010 | Rt. 278, Sundown Lodge, Room 114
Fotos are piling up. This batch spans late breakfast in Comstock, Texas, on Day 36, thru Bryce Canyon, Day 42, including a shot of the notorious, impassable Fairy Tale Hill.
Late breakfast here in Comstock, Texas, along the US-Mexico border, with a group of cyclists on a cross-country trip. US border patrol is not pictured, but across the road. I had the tamale pie - three tamales over fritos, chili and cheese. Adrienne had eggs with side of bacon (came with about 5 pieces. She shared).
*
*
Broken-down roof in Langtry, Texas.
*
*
Creosote in bloom in Langtry. Yellow flowers, cotton fluff, green leaves. The shrub of the desert. Delicious smell after rain.
*
*
Abandoned gas station outside Alpine, Texas.
*
*
Cloud shadows west of Alpine. We take millions of photos like these. They don't really translate completely. But like a biker from back East I met one morning said, every road out West is scenic.
*
*
Adrienne filming street scene in Marfa. We loved Marfa.
*
*
One of Donald Judd's one hundred milled aluminum boxes. The boxes are arrayed in long rows in two adjacent brick buildings that served previously, among other things, as military barracks. Judd bought them back in the 1970s and renovated them to display his and other artists' work.
*
*
Another aluminum box, this one containing an abyss.
*
*
Last box here.
*
*
Stormy. Rain skein.
*
*
Sign: WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT IT IS. Marfa. Many of the buildings bought up and preserved by Judd kept there original facades. The Marfa National Bank building, for example, is not a bank, even if it says it is. Today it is art space.
*
*
Strange unexplained things pass by in the desert. In this case, west of Marfa, a huge blimp. Black dots are cows grazing nearby.
*
*
Stranger still, a Prada shop, Prada Marfa above the awnings, about 10 miles west of Marfa downtown. No entry. Just irony beacon.
*
*
Late light at Van Horn, Texas. Across the street from our motel, the Desert Inn.
*
*
Old auto shop. Liked the truck. And maybe that's an Alamo reference in the building facade. Van Horn, Texas.
*
*
Finally! After more than 5,000 miles, we capture the delicious earth-friendly B99. Pure biodiesel. We load up all we can, about 17 gallons. Anthony, New Mexico.
*
*
Street scene, Hatch, New Mexico.
*
*
Yellow Truck's shadow as we race north, racing the sunset.
*
*
The road to Chaco Canyon.
*
*
Chaco ruins interior. Multi-story buildings from ninth century. Northwestern New Mexico.
*
*
Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, in southwestern Colorado. beauties
*
*
Awesome power lines in desert of Rt 160, headed to Bryce Canyon.
*
*
The dreaded Fairy Tale Hill, on Cottonwood Canyon Road. We couldn't crest it. Had to give up the short cut and take the normal way.
*
*
Bryce Canyon. "Probably the coolest thing on earth." -Adrienne
*
*
Juicy erosion at Bryce.
time to hit the road. more asap. Love, A and J
Fotos are piling up. This batch spans late breakfast in Comstock, Texas, on Day 36, thru Bryce Canyon, Day 42, including a shot of the notorious, impassable Fairy Tale Hill.
Late breakfast here in Comstock, Texas, along the US-Mexico border, with a group of cyclists on a cross-country trip. US border patrol is not pictured, but across the road. I had the tamale pie - three tamales over fritos, chili and cheese. Adrienne had eggs with side of bacon (came with about 5 pieces. She shared).
*
*
Broken-down roof in Langtry, Texas.
*
*
Creosote in bloom in Langtry. Yellow flowers, cotton fluff, green leaves. The shrub of the desert. Delicious smell after rain.
*
*
Abandoned gas station outside Alpine, Texas.
*
*
Cloud shadows west of Alpine. We take millions of photos like these. They don't really translate completely. But like a biker from back East I met one morning said, every road out West is scenic.
*
*
Adrienne filming street scene in Marfa. We loved Marfa.
*
*
One of Donald Judd's one hundred milled aluminum boxes. The boxes are arrayed in long rows in two adjacent brick buildings that served previously, among other things, as military barracks. Judd bought them back in the 1970s and renovated them to display his and other artists' work.
*
*
Another aluminum box, this one containing an abyss.
*
*
Last box here.
*
*
Stormy. Rain skein.
*
*
Sign: WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT IT IS. Marfa. Many of the buildings bought up and preserved by Judd kept there original facades. The Marfa National Bank building, for example, is not a bank, even if it says it is. Today it is art space.
*
*
Strange unexplained things pass by in the desert. In this case, west of Marfa, a huge blimp. Black dots are cows grazing nearby.
*
*
Stranger still, a Prada shop, Prada Marfa above the awnings, about 10 miles west of Marfa downtown. No entry. Just irony beacon.
*
*
Late light at Van Horn, Texas. Across the street from our motel, the Desert Inn.
*
*
Old auto shop. Liked the truck. And maybe that's an Alamo reference in the building facade. Van Horn, Texas.
*
*
Finally! After more than 5,000 miles, we capture the delicious earth-friendly B99. Pure biodiesel. We load up all we can, about 17 gallons. Anthony, New Mexico.
*
*
Street scene, Hatch, New Mexico.
*
*
Yellow Truck's shadow as we race north, racing the sunset.
*
*
The road to Chaco Canyon.
*
*
Chaco ruins interior. Multi-story buildings from ninth century. Northwestern New Mexico.
*
*
Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, in southwestern Colorado. beauties
*
*
Awesome power lines in desert of Rt 160, headed to Bryce Canyon.
*
*
The dreaded Fairy Tale Hill, on Cottonwood Canyon Road. We couldn't crest it. Had to give up the short cut and take the normal way.
*
*
Bryce Canyon. "Probably the coolest thing on earth." -Adrienne
*
*
Juicy erosion at Bryce.
time to hit the road. more asap. Love, A and J
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
DAY 43: Failures, Water
WENDOVER, UTAH | Wednesday, April 21, 2010 | King Regency Inn, Room 121
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Life is too full, too beautiful. Maybe it is only in the West, so colossal. Every mountain, every lone, lit tree, hillside, valley, late-day ridge. Again and again down another stone-still, wind-loud road, down Desolate Road No. 846. Maybe only for someone from the East it is this way. Some newcomer. Some parachuter. Doesn't know the boredom and paralysis of day by day after day. But it isn't as dark as this, living. It is infiniteness. De trop. Leftovers again. I try but cannot document it all, not even some. Cannot keep up with the beauty and pain flowing through.
Getting and spending, we lay waste our days...a poet said that. But it is not that at all. It is more: Breathing and being, we fill infinite seas.
*
From the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, we wanted to head to Bryce Canyon. There were three ways. The longest, 391 miles, the northern route, was the shortest in time. It went by highway, at speeds of 75 mph and higher, looked to pass through the most mountainous zones. The southern route, slightly shorter, at 377 miles, went through Navajo reservations, low desert, next to no towns of any size. And then I found a dirt road through the Paria Valley, 46 miles of dirt road, a shortcut along the southern route, the third way, that could get us to Bryce in 307 miles. We could outsmart all the highway rabbits with this route. The turtle could come through. And besides, dirt road would be more adventurous.
We drove through the morning and into the afternoon along 160 West to get to the dirt road, to Cottonwood Canyon Road. It was that same thing. Photos taken at top speed, hurtling along at 62 mph, through the windshield, through the rear view mirror, out the open side window. We passed a man in street clothes riding a horse bareback on the far side of a wire fence, galloping in parallel with the road. And then one more. And then a housing development over the flat high plains, one hundred houses with roofs of green, red and blue. Then more desert.
And high tension wire towers. Marching across the stubbled valleys, earth a magenta red, carrying the power lines, looking like primitive skeletal representations of human god forms. Every twenty miles or so, the path of the road passing underneath the draped power lines, until it became a diagram of a weave, of a DNA strand, the road and the electricity continually crossing paths, until the towers converged with others from separate hills at a massive factory. The factory had three smokestacks, two of the stacks pulsing white exhaust. We approached the way you do everything large in the desert. You drive for miles, approaching it, but still it recedes, enough to defy total comprehension for awhile longer, you watch until it seems you will never actually reach it, until suddenly, if you are lucky, the road passes at its feet, it soars up, engulfs you and then is gone. Other factories, pushed back from the road, you never know. They slowly revolve, always facing you, always retreating. But this was big. Big power. More than colossal. And after another mile or two, round a bluff and down the hill, the sources were there, the Colorado River and Glen Canyon, and the dam built there. We drank in the deep green, slowly churning, sparkling of the river water from hundreds of feet up, through chain link fence humped over the bridge. We got back in the car and kept going.
At Cottonwood Canyon Road, there was a sign put up by the park service, for the Grand Staircase national park or something, saying fourwheel drive and high clearance recommended. We discussed. I of course said not to worry. Adrienne worried aloud but went along with it. A guy in a big new pickup, sunglasses, tan, came along in another minute. We slowed and I asked him How is it? Fine, he said. Forty-six miles, about two hours. Some washboarding. There's some sketchy parts. But it's fine. You'll be fine.
So we kept going. It was not a bad difficult road. Just a dirt road, hardly separated from the landscape around us. It was beautiful, passing longhorn cattle, right there, chewing, scratching, giant sandstone mesas eroded and flung high and flat and bare above them, stone above green earth and grazing animals, dust billowing in the rear view mirrors. I was gloating. The road was better than the one into Chaco Canyon, very little of the shuttering of the washboarding actually, and more curvy, more humped, and through geological terrain that hid and revealed the path. I said how with Venice, a person wants to arrive by water. It is the way, better than by train or plane or car. So with Bryce Canyon, I said, the way to arrive must be this way, by Cottonwood Canyon Road.
We got about halfway, a little over an hour in. We'd passed mostly trucks, waving, friendly, but there'd been a Lexus all-wheel drive sedan, too, driving too fast, a yahoo, and another nondescript two-door sedan, just cruising along. So it wasn't that bad a road really. But there'd been at least one warning. I'd already had to drop Yellow Truck into first to climb to the top of one hill, as we passed two photographers with tripods, and he'd been boggy, almost running out of reserve steam. It should have given me more pause. But of course I wouldn't have turned round. So about halfway, we came to a particularly picturesque spot where the road dipped down and then shot back up between red rocks and scrabbly juniper trees. The road jumped up so quickly, before veering off to the right, that it looked almost vertical. We stopped. I took a photo. Adrienne got the movie cam going. I remember thinking it was like a fairy tale hill, so picturesque.
We didn't make it. Yellow Truck reared, third, down into second, then desperate, first, nothing, stalled. The road was too steep and sandy, deep and powdery there for some reason I don't know why. Yellow Truck just didn't have the torque to turn his wheels in all the loose soil. We backed down the hill, tried a hard run. Denied. Tried slow from the start. Denied again. Humiliation is the short version. Supremely pissed. Then shaky. Remembering one particularly steep hill we'd come down, ever so gingerly. Possibly we were stuck. Yes, we had everything we needed, as Adrienne said. We could camp there if need be. We sat there in the road, pulled off to the side, next to a parked SUV with no-one inside. I checked the oil, trying to gather my thoughts. We would wait until someone came by. Someone did, in a Subaru Outback or something. They didn't have cell phone reception either. I'm not sure even what our plan was if they did. Then another vehicle eased over and down the hill, a four-door Jeep of some kind, with Australians inside. Once the guy figured out we thought we might be trapped between two hills, he smiled, said good luck, and put it in drive. Gone. Alone again in the picturesque gulley. Ridiculous.
Well, we turned around. We got back to the other steep hill, the one we'd come down. I'd remembered it as being full of soft holes, as awful as the one we'd not been able to get up. The switchback scared Adrienne. What if we couldn't get up it, had to back down. How would we get around the corner. I was scared and mad, biting my tongue said don't worry we're going to get up it. And the ground was hard packed mostly, still steep, at the switchback I dropped into first and punched it and Yellow Truck whined high revving, spitting, spinning the tires over the hard dirt, bounced us up to the crest and over not too too bad at all, free to return all the rest of the way we had come, back past the longhorns still grazing the same place, the same beautiful valley, tack on another 97 miles, the shortcut of 307 blown out, out to 404, transfigured into a route about 13 miles longer than the northern highway route we'd been so clever were going to circumvent. It was one thing, I said finally, to be slow. That I could live with. But if you can't complete the task. Then what. Then what. I could see, I was furious, I could see Yellow Truck and I parting ways. And Adrienne defended the truck, which was good of her, but didn't help me much, so I shut up and dug deeper and darker and more foul.
Eventually we made Hatch, Utah, pretty much according to plan, just quite a bit later, after nightfall, and in silence. For awhile, I'd been joking about it, trying to find the redeeming metaphor in Yellow Truck's failure at Fairy Tale Hill. But after awhile, I couldn't. And I soured. Adrienne turned silent and stoic. And I hated this moment, wanting to rise above it. But I couldn't accept the limitations this time. Lack of speed, fine. Unable to complete task, unacceptable. So what if we had a bed full of tools and everything else. A little pickup, any pickup worth its name, should have made it up that hill on that day in those conditions, even if the sand was deep and fluffy.
Anyway, next day, after changing the oil around seven am, another three thousand miles behind us, while packing up, ready to head into Bryce Canyon, while packing the bags I threw out my back.
A twist, a slight searing dull pain at the small of my back. Immediate significant loss of strength, ability to move. Fear. Then shift into a rage. Shouted a few regrettable things. Stalking off. Going for a walk, I said. Only now, walking like an old man. Slow. Dinky uncertain shuffling steps. So unacceptably slow and without strength. And like in illness, now suddenly in this weakened state, time and schedule slipped away. I was alone on this residential rural side street in some foolish town, blue sky, cold morning, in sneakers for the first time in weeks, high desert mountain town, elevation 8,000 feet, my fingers still cold, still glistening from the oil. Alone. Eaten up. Everything suddenly on hold, and who knew, in an hour or two, would I be on my back, unable to move.
*
Together, a few hours and several pain pills later, driving with one fist jambed into the seat and an elbow on the door handle to ease up the weight, after a few quick stops to let me limp around parking lots while Adrienne went inside stores to find food for camp, we made our way down into Bryce Canyon. Amazing. In winter. Never seen it this way. This sandstone canyon like no other. Walking down from the canyon rim among all the terracotta hoodoos, in the hot alpine sun, the breeze cold from blowing over all the melting snow, greeting all the French and German tourists, them smiling and talking loud in spite of themselves, the place so utterly unearthly unlike anything.
When we go running, it is me beside Adrienne, taking my time, pacing her. Now she was pacing me. We took photos of ourselves. I took a photo for a trio. They took a photo of us. Down we went into the canyon. My back warm as pie with pain, but not bad at all. And I took a million pictures and Adrienne waited each time. She somehow is able to take just a few pictures. And even though she loved the place. She said so. We were there, making our way among all the crumbling beauties, they've been crumbling for thousands of years. We bent down by a small terracotta creek of snowmelt and pulzerized sandstone, little more than a foot wide, but busy loud, collapsing its own banks with intermittent splashes. I lowered myself, down into a sitting position. We touched the water. Held our hands in it, let it wash over, set in. Adrienne and then me. It's so cold, she said, content, filled with it. Cold. Cold, good. Water. I wiped my wet hands on my forehead, under my eyes.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Life is too full, too beautiful. Maybe it is only in the West, so colossal. Every mountain, every lone, lit tree, hillside, valley, late-day ridge. Again and again down another stone-still, wind-loud road, down Desolate Road No. 846. Maybe only for someone from the East it is this way. Some newcomer. Some parachuter. Doesn't know the boredom and paralysis of day by day after day. But it isn't as dark as this, living. It is infiniteness. De trop. Leftovers again. I try but cannot document it all, not even some. Cannot keep up with the beauty and pain flowing through.
Getting and spending, we lay waste our days...a poet said that. But it is not that at all. It is more: Breathing and being, we fill infinite seas.
*
From the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, we wanted to head to Bryce Canyon. There were three ways. The longest, 391 miles, the northern route, was the shortest in time. It went by highway, at speeds of 75 mph and higher, looked to pass through the most mountainous zones. The southern route, slightly shorter, at 377 miles, went through Navajo reservations, low desert, next to no towns of any size. And then I found a dirt road through the Paria Valley, 46 miles of dirt road, a shortcut along the southern route, the third way, that could get us to Bryce in 307 miles. We could outsmart all the highway rabbits with this route. The turtle could come through. And besides, dirt road would be more adventurous.
We drove through the morning and into the afternoon along 160 West to get to the dirt road, to Cottonwood Canyon Road. It was that same thing. Photos taken at top speed, hurtling along at 62 mph, through the windshield, through the rear view mirror, out the open side window. We passed a man in street clothes riding a horse bareback on the far side of a wire fence, galloping in parallel with the road. And then one more. And then a housing development over the flat high plains, one hundred houses with roofs of green, red and blue. Then more desert.
And high tension wire towers. Marching across the stubbled valleys, earth a magenta red, carrying the power lines, looking like primitive skeletal representations of human god forms. Every twenty miles or so, the path of the road passing underneath the draped power lines, until it became a diagram of a weave, of a DNA strand, the road and the electricity continually crossing paths, until the towers converged with others from separate hills at a massive factory. The factory had three smokestacks, two of the stacks pulsing white exhaust. We approached the way you do everything large in the desert. You drive for miles, approaching it, but still it recedes, enough to defy total comprehension for awhile longer, you watch until it seems you will never actually reach it, until suddenly, if you are lucky, the road passes at its feet, it soars up, engulfs you and then is gone. Other factories, pushed back from the road, you never know. They slowly revolve, always facing you, always retreating. But this was big. Big power. More than colossal. And after another mile or two, round a bluff and down the hill, the sources were there, the Colorado River and Glen Canyon, and the dam built there. We drank in the deep green, slowly churning, sparkling of the river water from hundreds of feet up, through chain link fence humped over the bridge. We got back in the car and kept going.
At Cottonwood Canyon Road, there was a sign put up by the park service, for the Grand Staircase national park or something, saying fourwheel drive and high clearance recommended. We discussed. I of course said not to worry. Adrienne worried aloud but went along with it. A guy in a big new pickup, sunglasses, tan, came along in another minute. We slowed and I asked him How is it? Fine, he said. Forty-six miles, about two hours. Some washboarding. There's some sketchy parts. But it's fine. You'll be fine.
So we kept going. It was not a bad difficult road. Just a dirt road, hardly separated from the landscape around us. It was beautiful, passing longhorn cattle, right there, chewing, scratching, giant sandstone mesas eroded and flung high and flat and bare above them, stone above green earth and grazing animals, dust billowing in the rear view mirrors. I was gloating. The road was better than the one into Chaco Canyon, very little of the shuttering of the washboarding actually, and more curvy, more humped, and through geological terrain that hid and revealed the path. I said how with Venice, a person wants to arrive by water. It is the way, better than by train or plane or car. So with Bryce Canyon, I said, the way to arrive must be this way, by Cottonwood Canyon Road.
We got about halfway, a little over an hour in. We'd passed mostly trucks, waving, friendly, but there'd been a Lexus all-wheel drive sedan, too, driving too fast, a yahoo, and another nondescript two-door sedan, just cruising along. So it wasn't that bad a road really. But there'd been at least one warning. I'd already had to drop Yellow Truck into first to climb to the top of one hill, as we passed two photographers with tripods, and he'd been boggy, almost running out of reserve steam. It should have given me more pause. But of course I wouldn't have turned round. So about halfway, we came to a particularly picturesque spot where the road dipped down and then shot back up between red rocks and scrabbly juniper trees. The road jumped up so quickly, before veering off to the right, that it looked almost vertical. We stopped. I took a photo. Adrienne got the movie cam going. I remember thinking it was like a fairy tale hill, so picturesque.
We didn't make it. Yellow Truck reared, third, down into second, then desperate, first, nothing, stalled. The road was too steep and sandy, deep and powdery there for some reason I don't know why. Yellow Truck just didn't have the torque to turn his wheels in all the loose soil. We backed down the hill, tried a hard run. Denied. Tried slow from the start. Denied again. Humiliation is the short version. Supremely pissed. Then shaky. Remembering one particularly steep hill we'd come down, ever so gingerly. Possibly we were stuck. Yes, we had everything we needed, as Adrienne said. We could camp there if need be. We sat there in the road, pulled off to the side, next to a parked SUV with no-one inside. I checked the oil, trying to gather my thoughts. We would wait until someone came by. Someone did, in a Subaru Outback or something. They didn't have cell phone reception either. I'm not sure even what our plan was if they did. Then another vehicle eased over and down the hill, a four-door Jeep of some kind, with Australians inside. Once the guy figured out we thought we might be trapped between two hills, he smiled, said good luck, and put it in drive. Gone. Alone again in the picturesque gulley. Ridiculous.
Well, we turned around. We got back to the other steep hill, the one we'd come down. I'd remembered it as being full of soft holes, as awful as the one we'd not been able to get up. The switchback scared Adrienne. What if we couldn't get up it, had to back down. How would we get around the corner. I was scared and mad, biting my tongue said don't worry we're going to get up it. And the ground was hard packed mostly, still steep, at the switchback I dropped into first and punched it and Yellow Truck whined high revving, spitting, spinning the tires over the hard dirt, bounced us up to the crest and over not too too bad at all, free to return all the rest of the way we had come, back past the longhorns still grazing the same place, the same beautiful valley, tack on another 97 miles, the shortcut of 307 blown out, out to 404, transfigured into a route about 13 miles longer than the northern highway route we'd been so clever were going to circumvent. It was one thing, I said finally, to be slow. That I could live with. But if you can't complete the task. Then what. Then what. I could see, I was furious, I could see Yellow Truck and I parting ways. And Adrienne defended the truck, which was good of her, but didn't help me much, so I shut up and dug deeper and darker and more foul.
Eventually we made Hatch, Utah, pretty much according to plan, just quite a bit later, after nightfall, and in silence. For awhile, I'd been joking about it, trying to find the redeeming metaphor in Yellow Truck's failure at Fairy Tale Hill. But after awhile, I couldn't. And I soured. Adrienne turned silent and stoic. And I hated this moment, wanting to rise above it. But I couldn't accept the limitations this time. Lack of speed, fine. Unable to complete task, unacceptable. So what if we had a bed full of tools and everything else. A little pickup, any pickup worth its name, should have made it up that hill on that day in those conditions, even if the sand was deep and fluffy.
Anyway, next day, after changing the oil around seven am, another three thousand miles behind us, while packing up, ready to head into Bryce Canyon, while packing the bags I threw out my back.
A twist, a slight searing dull pain at the small of my back. Immediate significant loss of strength, ability to move. Fear. Then shift into a rage. Shouted a few regrettable things. Stalking off. Going for a walk, I said. Only now, walking like an old man. Slow. Dinky uncertain shuffling steps. So unacceptably slow and without strength. And like in illness, now suddenly in this weakened state, time and schedule slipped away. I was alone on this residential rural side street in some foolish town, blue sky, cold morning, in sneakers for the first time in weeks, high desert mountain town, elevation 8,000 feet, my fingers still cold, still glistening from the oil. Alone. Eaten up. Everything suddenly on hold, and who knew, in an hour or two, would I be on my back, unable to move.
*
Together, a few hours and several pain pills later, driving with one fist jambed into the seat and an elbow on the door handle to ease up the weight, after a few quick stops to let me limp around parking lots while Adrienne went inside stores to find food for camp, we made our way down into Bryce Canyon. Amazing. In winter. Never seen it this way. This sandstone canyon like no other. Walking down from the canyon rim among all the terracotta hoodoos, in the hot alpine sun, the breeze cold from blowing over all the melting snow, greeting all the French and German tourists, them smiling and talking loud in spite of themselves, the place so utterly unearthly unlike anything.
When we go running, it is me beside Adrienne, taking my time, pacing her. Now she was pacing me. We took photos of ourselves. I took a photo for a trio. They took a photo of us. Down we went into the canyon. My back warm as pie with pain, but not bad at all. And I took a million pictures and Adrienne waited each time. She somehow is able to take just a few pictures. And even though she loved the place. She said so. We were there, making our way among all the crumbling beauties, they've been crumbling for thousands of years. We bent down by a small terracotta creek of snowmelt and pulzerized sandstone, little more than a foot wide, but busy loud, collapsing its own banks with intermittent splashes. I lowered myself, down into a sitting position. We touched the water. Held our hands in it, let it wash over, set in. Adrienne and then me. It's so cold, she said, content, filled with it. Cold. Cold, good. Water. I wiped my wet hands on my forehead, under my eyes.
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