rough it

Okay I'm in Houston and Rebecca is helping me figure out what, exactly, to write here.

Like, I'm a week behind or so, and what should be included?

Rebecca says that I should absolutely include the name of the muffler repair shop in El Centro, CA: Desert Muffler, motto, "No Muff Too Tuff." The man, Freddy, said to go to the restaurant two blocks down and he would call me there. I did, and he did, after I ordered a footlong breakfast burrito (chorizo, cheese, potatoes).

The muffler is fine, everyone, have a little faith. It was rusted from when my uncle owned the car and lived in Boston and the salt splashed up and ate it away.


I walked to the library, didn't update this blog. I think I just enjoyed being on the internet.


The ultimate irony is that El Centro, California, is the center of nothing at all. Not cultural or geographical.

I drove through Imperial Sands something or other, where they filmed the desert scenes of the original Star Wars pictures. This reminded me of Wylie's friend Charlie, who is a big Star Wars fan. We stayed at his house in Georgia, once, and we stayed in the Star Wars room. I have my own memories of Star Wars but Charlie came up. Wondered, Has he ever visited Imperial Sands? He should. Look at where the tall dunes meet the sky and expect C3PO and R2D2 to beep beep over the hills.




I spent the night near some petroglyphs in Arizona. I was supposed to pay $8 but I didn't, and I was paranoid. The wind was so incredibly strong that I couldn't pitch my pathetic childrens' tent. I slept in my car and that was okay, not great. I don't do well sleeping on a hard surface, though I wish I could. This night also marked the first occasion where I misplaced my keys in a serious way.

They were in my bra, in the end. But I was worried. I thought I had an extra, but I tried it out and it was for another car, my parents' Accord. So, shit.

Other times I have misplaced my keys:

-In the desert at White Sands National Monument. I found them on a hill where I attempted a sand-angel.
-In the trash in San Antonio KOA. I accidentally put them with a head of lettuce I was disposing.


You have to understand that this is pretty good for me. I lose things all the time, and I'm in the habit of checking for keys, wallet, phone each time I change locations. But still it's not enough. Well. I do okay. The key to life is just knowing your own limitations. One of mine is this: sometimes I put my keys in my bra for safekeeping and then completely forget about it.

I tried to cook the cactus at the painted rocks. But the wind was so strong that when I poured the gasoline into the cooker, the gasoline flew all over the cactus. Lucky that it didn't spill onto me, I guess. But it ruined my cactus!

There was a bathroom nearby but I tried to rough it behind a rock. I really wanted to. But the only place that provided enough cover from the two other RVs was located adjacent to a hole in the ground that looked like it might house a brown recluse spider. No roughing it.

three is the magic number

I had some plans to, what, go west, take my time, turn around in LA. My new friends convinced me to detour to Bandelier and Taos. I did want to see Taos. Here's us outside our hostel, getting ready. Please note the mural.



Look at the road out of Santa Fe.



So in Bandelier, people used to live in caves high up on the wall. And they use ladders. It's neat, right? But did you know that they were in better shape than modern folks? The trails are easy and the views are sort of astounding. I asked The Brit, who has been traveling the national parks for 9 months, if he was jaded at all by these views. He said he wasn't.





Here is a good sign.



Here is a scene from a Robert Frost poem.



Here's a ladder going up high. We climbed a series of these, and I had to take a break. The air was so thin I couldn't quite catch my breath.



At the top the Brit gives us a historic overview of how the native people lived. He gestures thoughtfully.





I did wear my layers of clothing. And we did have a picnic of bread and croissant-type items stolen from the hostel. I introduced the idea of cream cheese and green olives. Cream cheese is called Philadelphia cheese in Europe.



Nearby is a really strange place called Los Alamos, and I'm not sure what they do there, but it involves: 1) the military 2) secrets 3) nuclear things. Lots of anti-war stuff going on.



We went through the checkpoint. The second checkpoint man gave us directions to the Black Hole Surplus Store.



Here they sell everything you could need if you were building a time machine. Motors, cables, chips, sprockets, nuts, bolts, hard hats, ticker tape machines, hot plates, magnets, tubes, coils, appliances, and filing cabinets. Also a nice basket of cassette tapes, 10 for $12. But the man let me have two tapes (an handmade mix called "Country" and The Cars) for fiddy cents. He also gave me a 60's looking timer that doesn't work. It says "NO GOOD" on the top. If all things had such a label.

One man at the store was cool and showed us a magic trick involving a magnet ball and copper tubing. Another guy told us that we, being English, German, and American, would all at one point have been killed as enemies of the state. It was pretty confusing actually. And a woman there told us to go two hours away to see Tinkertown. No one had heard of the rubber tire house.

Oh let me back up. Taos is famous for a few things. It is near a pueblo, it is near a huge gorge, and it is near a rumored land where the homes are made of tires and cans.

The gorge view was, as the book said it would be, mind boggling.



We sang "Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water." Here the Brit and the German are on the bridge, kicking snow at each other.




The Brit wanted a hotel room to watch the Grand Prix (pronounced Graynd Priks) but we never did see it. And the History channel was showing Pearl Harbor, and the German had never heard Josh Harnett's real voice, so that's how I ended up struggling to defend American culture in a Super 8 in Taos, New Mexico.

This one will be shorter.

Wednesday, March 18

Asheville is a great town. Normal feeling but surrounded by mountains which impose a sense of importance. But then the people are incredibly laid back, so it all combines in an interesting way.

The sun rising over the mountains woke me up. "Hello, Liz," the sun said, "I'm so picturesque it's absurd!"



Felice and I left the animals at home and visited the Folk Art Museum. Surprisingly less dorky than it sounds, though Felice and I were the youngest there by a good 30 years. The featured exhibit was lace-making in progress.



(This is a pic from the internet.) Lace is made by maneuvering strings around different pins. The strings are attached to marked dowels. We were impressed. Then we saw one display that had unmarked dowels. Like, oh, you're so good you don't need marked dowels to make lace? Who do you think you are?

We took a long walk through the hills. It made me wish Asheville was flat and just surrounded by mountains. The walk felt like, I don't know--10 miles? It was probably only 1.5. I wore my converse and only got one small blister--a huge testament to the smartwool socks.

We passed the tiniest, cutest pomeranian puppy in the world. It squeezed through a 4-inch hole in a chain link fence. Felice put it back but it squeezed out again so she had to patch up the hole with a metal grate. I do not have a picture of it.

I made burritos for dinner, including an impromptu batch of I-hope-Chipotle-style rice. I remembered Rebecca's rhyme for successful Chipotle-style rice: "a little more time, a little more lime." Or it might have been "less." Or "more time, less lime." Whatever.