This trip the window seat is mine.
It is most difficult to be in the middle seat with a window passenger on one side and an aisle passenger on the other. Invariably those seat passengers are overweight, have to use the lavatory, don’t speak your language or want to talk about their kids. The window seat is good because you can look out a spyglass porthole window, see the wing shaking and try to guess what state or country is below you. If you grow weary you can lean your head against the plane’s thin skin and feel it vibrate until it puts you to sleep.
For most of this flight I don’t even see Earth.
When you see a break in the clouds you get to look at water, fields, cities, freeways, runways. Occasionally a fantasy pops between my ears about landing the plane on clouds and taking a hike, but that whim goes quickly as it comes.
Only angels walk on clouds.
In the air is the most boring and least risky period of any trip.
In the air your only concern is landing safely.
On land, your concerns multiply exponentially.
Sunday morning the Albuquerque, New Mexico International Sun port is a grocery cart rolling down a hill.
Jets jockey to gates as ticket agents fire up their computers, troubleshoot, load passengers and baggage. This time through security there is a change that makes me wonder whether security has to be all or nothing to make the country secure, or whether exceptions make security Swiss cheese – dangerous and full of gaping holes.
I am given a TSA Precheck, randomly chosen.
This allows me to walk through a separate screening station where I don’t have to take off my belt or shoes. I still have to put my carry on bag, computer and pocket’s contents into gray plastic tubs on a conveyor belt that rolls them through inspection, then walk myself through an x ray tunnel extending my arms above me and clinching my hands above my head.
I don’t argue with security officers and proceed quickly through the gauntlet to have pre-flight coffee, check e mails, check my passport and connecting flights, and slip into yet another travel itinerary.
Exceptions to rules make us less secure, but gives us our humanity back.
I am, despite my hate of security inspections, working on my fourth travel ring for the forefinger of my right hand. This will be another Scotttrek’s journey outside the U.S. where it is still easier to enter illegally than leave legally.
There aren’t many rides on this Midway but those that are here give kids a thrill.
Precious children are flung through space, turned upside down, and hold on screaming for dear life.
This circus has an old time Ferris Wheel. There is the Hammer and the Swinger, the Fun Slide, Mad Hatter Tea Cups, a Spinning Wheel, and a Fun House. Families buy ride coupons at small booths and hand them to scruffy men or tall lean teenagers wearing John Deere ball caps. They wait in lines for a ride to finish and then are loaded into seats, baskets, or capsules like bullets into a chamber.
The amusement area at the Punkin Chunkin Festival is a maze of pipes, high voltage electric cables, gears, pulleys, wheels, wire cages and seats, sounds of straining engines, lights, chain link fences to keep people going the correct direction. Machinery is always looking to grab hands in the wrong places.
Parents take pictures of their offspring spinning through the air, rushing down a long slide sitting on burlap bags, spinning in tea cups, or locked inside a metal cage that keeps them from falling when they are upside down twenty feet in the air twisting like a dust devil.
In old days the circus had elephants, animal acts, bearded ladies, carnie games, clowns and dancing girls. The circus has shrunk, almost vanished.
You don’t need a tattooed lady when women in the crowd have tattoos of their own inked in public and private places.
Video games have become our new Ferris Wheel.
1990 was one of the last years Toyota made these mini-motor homes.
This little baby has a 6 cylinder 3.0 EFI engine, gets sixteen miles per gallon depending on terrain and weather and road conditions. She has air conditioning, a refrigerator that runs on electric or propane, propane heat, a small bathroom and shower, a kitchen sink and counter, microwave, a dining room table and a couch. You sleep in an overhead bed over the truck engine and there is cabinet space for the few things you take with you.
Research shows Gypsies have long been in America and the gypsy soul is a part of our American experience. There is an entire culture of retired middle class couples who move back and forth across the United States living in two hundred thousand dollar diesel pushers staying in National Parks and State campgrounds. There are disabled vets and singles who live in recreational vehicles and park at a different Wal-Mart each evening to stay one step ahead of homelessness.
Living life as a RV snail has advantages because you can drive away from your problems with a turn of an ignition key.
A gypsy soul is hard to get rid of when you were born with it.
Cars go until they don’t go. They are traded when they start to cost more than they are worth.
My Prius, an experiment in high tech, is gone.
When electronic systems start to malfunction you have to step back and decide how much you like the idea of forty five miles per gallon in town. Adding the cost of maintenance and repairs, it makes sense to step down to an old fashioned gas engine that gets thirty miles a gallon but can be repaired and maintained by most mechanics with wrenches and good diagnostic instruments.
My Yaris has a fancy name but it is just an inexpensive compact car. Loosely named after a Greek Goddess of grace, Charis, this little transportation car is more down to Earth than it’s name implies. With its modest price, it is never going to be mistaken for luxury. A four banger with automatic transmission, it has good styling, a big trunk, a cracked windshield that is part of an” as is ” sale, four doors and a mediocre sound system.
Our car relationships can be tenuous.
Not marrying or sleeping with our cars gives them a very short shelf life.
People tolerate performance issues with spouses much longer than their vehicles.
Me and my Yaris are doing okay thus far.
If cars could trade us in I would really start to worry.
This dark blue Ford Ranger has seen better days.
Once, it was new on the lot and a salesman kicked its tires, opened its doors and sweet talked clients into the driver’s seat to take a whiff of its new car smell. Windows opened and closed, air conditioning cooled and the heater warmed. The engine purred.
Now, doors are banged and there is rust where its skin has been punctured, windows are rolled down and have cracks that look like road maps. You aren’t going to see Cadillac’s or Volvo’s or Mercedes in a McDonald’s lot. You see old cars, used cars, cars that have things wrong but still get people to work if they are lucky enough to have a job.
On this vehicle the message is the same from every direction – Jesus Saves.
If someone driving this beat up pickup feels saved, I want to pick up their Bible and see what they have highlighted in yellow.
Automobiles can be terminal.
They are speeding metal coffins containing mortal bodies that crumple when hit, collapse when rolled over, compress and crush what is inside them when physics takes charge and momentum meets momentum.
Along New Mexico highways there are small Memorials built by roadsides to say good bye to loved ones who have become traffic statistics. The crash sites have been cleaned up, bodies interred, obituaries written, tears drained. All that is left is small remembrances by friends and family planted at the point where a spirit left this Earth and moved into the next world.
These heart felt and simple Memorials are often just simple white crosses with a name and date on them.
Some are elaborate with photos, dates of birth and death, artifacts from a person’s life like a high school graduation tassel or a string of prayer beads or a quote from the Bible written in indelible black ink on a cardboard sign.
i seldom stop but Memorials add up. I pass one at a time, but they have a cumulative effect, cause me to look at my speed, pay closer attention to the road, drink more coffee to stay awake.
The vast expanses of New Mexico reach away from the highways and it is hard to figure how two vehicles collide when there is so much space to avoid it?
Still, cars are machines operated by humans and human error is unavoidable..
A roadside Memorial is evidence of great pain and great love.
One wishes every death had such a Memorial to go with it.
The Sandia Peak Tram has been with us fifty years.
According to our tram operator there are 600,000 patrons each year and the only time the tram shuts down is when the wind blows over fifty miles per hour or threatening lightning storms are close.
The tram has been stuck in the middle of its run a few times when electric went out or a fuse blew, but the operator doesn’t say anything about an incident years ago that had people lowered by ropes from the tram car to the desert floor. In the summer, the ride makes mountain views and hiking easily accessible. In the winter, skiers can go directly to Sandia mountain ski lifts without having to drive the back side of the mountain up winding narrow snow packed mountain roads.
The idea for the tram came from a man named Robert Nordstrum, and his friend Ben Abruzzo. Mr. Nordstrum went to Europe and decided to bring a tram to Albuquerque. There were technical challenges but the tram has become a part of our community. Abruzzo started the Albuquerque Balloon Festival that maintains a world reputation and brings thousands to the city each fall.
This afternoon Robert, a friend, looks over the edge of the cliff. We are going to hike the trail that goes from the Tram to the top of Sandia Crest.
From up here, looking out, like ancient man, – my issues don’t look as important as I thought they were.
This is what this road trip looks like from behind the wheel.
Ahead, there is a long rolling strip of Interstate split into two lanes with shoulders and entrances and exits. There are road signs, overpasses, and vehicles. Always there is sky and empty land stretching away from the road as you eat up miles and look for a good rational talk radio station coming to you from an underground bunker somewhere in Kansas where cows, corn, and missile silos peacefully co-exist.
Clouds hover like cartoons waiting for words.
I-40 is a main path connecting east and west and I am somewhere between Gallup and Flagstaff. This is Indian country, one of the highest concentrations of Native Americans in the country. Along the freeway you whiz past billboards promoting blackjack, cheap meals, entertainment, and hotel rooms. The casino parking lots have big rigs silent as drivers catch sleep and divert themselves from tedium.
Travel is what happens between your starting point and arrival point. It is often boring enough that I count cars, fence posts, telephone poles.
There is nothing happening here that anyone with an imagination would want to write about.
Back in Albuquerque two months, the travel itch started at my right big toe and is working its way up to my right kneecap.
Life since Matzatlan has meandered and it isn’t until a brother’s invitation is offered that I have a chance to scratch my latest travel itch.
On the road at four in the morning, I can’t yet make out shapes of road cuts as I weave my way along the freeway between them. There are road signs waving at me to slow down and I see hints of sunlight struggling to break through the darkness that envelopes me. The instrument panel on my little chariot reminds me it is time to stop for gas and food.
Just outside of Tucumcari, New Mexico, following the old Route 66,I know there are several truck stops waiting for me to pull in..
They both offer travelers gas, a restaurant, a place to stock up on snacks..Though they cater to truckers, their doors are open to everyone, and, in a pinch, a tired traveler can catch a nap in the parking lot with a coat thrown over his head to hide light from huge signs that advertise to those whizzing by, going both directions across our country.
There is no reason to stick around Tucumcari when Albuquerque or Amarillo is only a short hop, skip, and jump away. You don’t need to drive through a whole town when all you need is a piece of it for a bite to eat, a bathroom break or a place to walk your poodle. Freeways created drive by towns and moved us into a different sense of time and space where the country is something to be traversed as quickly as possible, not something to be relished like a sweet piece of hard candy.
After several months home in Albuquerque, my brother’s invitation to visit comes as a welcome relief.
I never want moss growing between my toes.
Recent Comments