Tucson to Cincinnati: Installment One

Ok. Here we sit in Cincinnati at a bar called Arlins in the "gaslight" district. It's a pretty "fans" area (as K quips), very nice or upscale, if you will. Large sprawling olde buildings with columns and brick and ivy and tall trees. Many professors live in this area I hear. The bar is great! You can smoke, drink a beer, and be on the free wireless internet at once. Here the three of us sit, drinking and working on our computers...welcome to the future! I do beleive M is in a good mood for the first time since we arrived. About the trip blog...

I'm going to publish it in installments. During the day at their new place on Victor 2360 Victor Street Apartment #1, Cincinnati, OH, 45219 (for anyone who wants to send them welcome mail), I've been spending a lot of my day writing the blog. It's not done, but I'll put it up as I have it. I'm working on a slideshow and a little movie too: I'll post it later. For now...

Leaving Arizona:

We left Tucson around 11 or so, a little late, but with Michael and me in the Penske and Kristi and Polly in the bug, we strove forward with a quiet thrust (and a few jerks, as M got accustomed to the movements of the truck). We set up the ipod and situated our gear (snacks, drinks, books, music, smokes, etc.) for the trip. Then we tested our walkie-talkies—affecting trucker-voice to the best of our knowledge; instead of Kristi saying “over and out”—she decided to say “chomp” –to go with the “handle” Michael gave her of “nailbiter”. Yes, that’s how it starts, a little smartassing to spend and then silence out of town. So much anxious energy; we didn’t talk much. It wasn’t until we reached Flagstaff that we began to feel that the road under us was actually going to take us somewhere far away. M & I rolled down the windows and took in deep gulps of wet mountain air…cranked up the music and leaned into the drive. It had just rained and the pines seemed to be releasing bursts of exhilaration in the form of sharp green scented breaths. It was so good to take in and hold. A few miles north of Flagstaff Michael and Kristi switched cars and I drove the Penske with Kris awhile. We rode together in a cheerful mood through the Painted Desert and Hopi reservation. We saw lots of Hogans(traditional Navajo structures new to K and M), both old and some of newer material, and horses and random houses spotting the vastness. The late slanting sun lit up the rock formations and alien planet landscape like a cosmic birthday cake…the varied oranges and reds softer as the purpling shadows lengthened the way. I thought a lot about how much I love Arizona and how familiar I am with the northern part of the state especially. Many childhood memories, in the forms of smells and sensuous contact from the light or from the sun or color or shapes of rocks or trees came pouring through my thoughts, but not just my thoughts. I was feeling memories too. My body remembers Arizona sensorially as much as pictographically. I seemed happy driving through it.

The last stop in Arizona: Page -- the last page. We stopped before sunset to comfort Polly who was less than pleased with her caged ride, and absorb a greasy bite or two at Dennys. Our waiter, who might have been 16 or 17, informed us he was in a lot of pain from football practice. He demonstrated the exact punishing exercises at our table, while squinting and repeating, “I’m really sore today.” It was kind of an awkward moment; what does one say to that? Another waitress-“Kell-Lee” (according to her nam-tag) delivered a bottle of catsup without a word, leaving us confounded by her name. We all laughed until tears came…I don’t remember what about. The fun with words never ends on the road and by this point we had begun to realize the signs were going to be a major source of entertainment– or I should say – all the pun we were going to have reading signs along the way. “Kell-Lee” was early fodder. After we weighed down our guts with the grease and finished guffawing we headed out. We shoved off again in the last light of the day over Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, wielding our cumbersome load into the quickly darkening desert. The stars began to fall into place, close and crisp, and the last leg of road into Utah was long. In an hour or so we all began to think about where we were going to sleep…

Utah’s Backways:

About this time is when I started to have intense cramps. Uhhg, yes, you-know-what hit me at Dennys, and the pain came shortly after. I was feeling queasy and cranky, but also curiously calm about it. It’s hard for a short legged gal to drive that kind of truck; to reach the gas pedal I had to have the seat so close that the steering wheel was in my chest, and then I could barely reach it. No cruz-control on the truck and it has a speed-governing mechanism on it so it can’t go faster than 75 even when floored. M & I were the truck drivers, and K drove the little bug. Altogether, it would be M who’d drive the truck the most. But the first night K & I were together in the truck until we landed (still the first night we left Tucson)— I tried to stay awake and alert to the wandering road, and K’s wandering imagination helped—K hummed to herself as she pondered over the pages of the atlas, and narrated idiosyncrasies of signs and of landscape to me. Michael was the one who could handle Polly’s frantic crying and still keep his head, so he followed behind.

On 89 in the dark we tried to avoid many suicidal mule deer (sounds like the name of a garage band). My hands were gripping the steering wheel too tight for many miles, and my eyes ached from shooting back and forth between both sides of the road hoping to spy the deer before they shot out into the road. Almost killed one that was standing in the road and wouldn’t move though the truck came barreling her way. Finally I honked the horn and the deer moved just before I was about to slam on the breaks. K said, “he just stood there, like a deer in the headlights!” By this hour we were feeling punky and laughed much too hard at anything remotely funny.

Early on we stopped for gas and a girl named Shi told me where to buy beer that had alcohol in it. We didn’t think to buy beer in Arizona because we didn’t realize that in Utah, where all beer is referred to as “near beer” (3.2 percent alcohol content), most everyone who wants beer and can buy beer buys it in Arizona.

I said to Shi “She?” she said, “SHY,” correcting me politely, and then asked me, “what kinda parents would name their little girl She?” I said, “riiiiight,” thinking, what kind of parents would name their daughter shy? So then she, Shi, told me how to get back “over the border” to Arizona to get beer. Arizona is to Utah drinkers as Mexico is to underage American drinkers. Shi said Helen was the owner and Helen was a nice lady and sold “every kinda liquor under the sun.” She said all this while writing down directions for me, and writing down some more directions on how to avoid going through Zion (a real place, not a metaphor). I could go into that, but I won’t.

It seemed crazy, but at this point in the trip we were still willing to go off the beaten trail to sniff out a little adventure (truly, I make it sound more remarkable than it is). We thought if we got settled in a motel early enough later on we might want to have a cold beer and celebrate our first successful day of road tripping together. So we followed Shi’s directions to Helen’s place, and though we gained an hour by traveling a whole three miles and quickly slipping back down into Arizona again, we drove up to Helen’s place just as she was closing. All the lights were off except for over the register, where we could see her counting her drawer while her longhair yellow cat strolled back and forth on the counter’s ledge. No beer until Montana—time to get back to Utah. Would have been nice to meet Helen.

All things considered, in some ways the beginning of Utah is one of my favorite parts of the trip. However unnerving Utah is, especially on the back roads, there is little adventure to be had when traveling by interstate. 89 is not an interstate but a highway (says K)—though I wouldn’t have called it a highway—its more like a two-way paved single-lane road with intermittent spurts of an added passing lane to help keep traffic flowing. I think it’s officially called a “primary road” by the Atlas. These kinds of roads take you through towns, on “scenic routes,” and through lonesome country where most everything closes down by sunset. It’s both spooky and exciting for me to travel through these wayward places; they never seem to enter my thoughts until I’m there.

And why aren’t they in my thoughts? This is what most of the U.S. is after all! Had I forgotten so soon? These remote villages are like the town I grew up in (Prescott Arizona). I know these faces, smells, sounds. I know these looks I’m getting…I’ve gotten them before.

Here, it is claustrophobic and your dirt shows (if it doesn’t, you are hiding something). People speak to you kindly—to each other, nicely— even smile, but every action comes with a creepy caution. Art is impractical—useless—except for attractive crafts (things you use like quilts [reminding me now of Alice Walker’s short story Everyday Use], and clothing and shelving and jelly and umbrella stands and statues of jesus made of beer cans), pictures of people you know, and lets not forget hand carved gun butts. Dreamers are not to be trusted, least of all the day variety. Recreational drugs are aplenty and easy to find, and you know somebody who has a family member who is addicted to the worst kind of drug now wending its way into the local youths’ temporal, tender culture and bodies. Everyone knows someone who lives in a trailer and also a preacher’s kid, and has also gotten “tipsy” with both (not necessarily at the same time). In New York City you can’t get different from everyone else fast enough; in a small town you could be bludgeoned to death for being even a little different. Different is an issue, a big big big issue. I could almost swear that during this road-trip M and I saw a billboard at one point that actually screamed it: don’t be different, different is bad. Maybe I am just thinking of a summary of all the billboards: the collective message (especially poignant in Salt Lake City and around there…whoa.) That’s probably more likely. Whatever the case, in small towns everyone and everything feels unintentionally naked, exposed, underdressed—the paint peeling buildings, the glare of the sun off parked fenders, the signs, the dogs—the sky.

Pretty much, that’s what the entire trip was like. Every place we stopped was much like every other place. I hadn’t realized how empty and vacant most of the country is. I’ve driven across the country a few times now…but this time I got to be a passenger a good part of the time. I got to observe and see the side of the road for myself. I hated to see how much sameness there is between places—every new place a variation of the last. A variation of itself! Long stretches of open space where people are farming, ranching, filling space and taking space and chunks of earth and moving earth and filling the gaps with wire, pipe, steel, rust, junk, junk, junk…and more wire. Where there is nothing, there is always a wire. Wires stretching from one end of the country to the next, dangling, curving, blowing in the harsh Dakota winds…wire everywhere. It is wire that connects these places where hard working people live, work and die.

The first night we went through town after town looking for room at the inn. Alas, each inn we found was closed. Nobody home, lights out. Closed signs turned against the glass. Each inn had lots of cars parked happily in front of each rented room, people sleeping peacefully inside; the pool equipment humming dutifully to the cricketing night. Polly was going nuts and we were so so tired. Everything in town after town was closed. No gas, no food, no inns. There was nothing to do but to keep driving. It was quite late when we reached route 20 West which we knew was our gateway to the interstate. By now, the interstate had become—the glorious secular interstate—where there is something open 24/7 all year round. Inns, food, gas. Inns, food, gas. Inns, food, gas: all you need on the road and pretty much, whenever you need it. Where folks are used to seeing “different” people. When we got to the end of route 20, K and I, delirious, thought we could see the gates of heaven ahead in the dark…we swooned a little, swayed, and then I pressed hard on that gas pedal saying, “lookout dumb deer, we’re headed for heaven!”

Turns out it was just two semis parked lengthwise on either side of the road with all their cargo lights on…two brightly lit red rectangles, like architectural- sentries welcoming us to the federal highway system. It was quite an entry for all of us. We finally finally stopped in Beaver, Utah. I was never so happy to see Beaver in all my life. We lugged our gear and the cat inside and dropped to the beds. We slept like rocks.

Utah (Day Two):