wyatt, i am rolling

So it looks like I'm doing this thing. Two mornings ago I embarked on my Great Southern Road Trip Which Also Includes Some Midwest And Some Regular West, or GSRTWAISMASRW for short. This is me embarking with Isaac (my car):

If I don't die in a fiery crash on this trip as I did in the rather ominous dream of a friend who I hope is not a prophet, I'll drive to New Orleans by way of Phoenix and Austin, stay for a month on a writing sabbatical (which I am determined to protect after my experience last year in Italy, where I got no writing done) then hit Destin, Knoxville, and then Fayetteville, North Carolina, my home town, for a couple of weeks. Then New Bern, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Chicago, and Route 66 all the way back to LA by the fall.

After spending the night with my family in Reseda and saying good-bye to my aunt and grandma, I set out east. A few hours later, I took a detour off the 10 (though I think it's only called "the 10" in Los Angeles and the rest of the world calls it "I-10") to see the Salton Sea, which was fascinatingly photographed by my talented roommate Stephanie a few months ago.

The Salton Sea was created in 1905 when the Colorado River flooded and it took authorities two years to get it under control. Now the water is mostly agricultural runoff. Apparently, the tilapia in the water commit mass suicide every few years and wash up onto the "beaches," which would explain the strong smell of death and the very, very sharp fish bone sand that flipped painfully up into my sandals when I got out of the car to take a few pictures.

Where I walked:


Where I stayed:

(Just kidding, Mom.)

What I look like driving around:


I left Salton Sea, probably smelling like dead tilapia, and headed to Phoenix to see my old Taylor friend Pete and his wife Heather. They took me to dinner at a restaurant in Phoenix called Sam's Cafe, where they give you a little piece of white chocolate and pecan candy wrapped in a corn husk for dessert, and we caught up on our lives. They're moving to Durham next month so Pete can go to Duke for business school. And, as it has ever been and ever will be every single time I visit Phoenix, it was a hundred degrees out until the sun went down. That night I stayed in their lovely guest room, of which I am envious, and dreamt that my apartment was full of orange lizards and frogs. In my dream I thought, "Do lizards turn into frogs eventually? I guess they must." It's funny how our dreaming brains are sort of brilliant and sort of mentally handicapped.

The next morning started out well. I had breakfast with the VTs and set out for Tombstone, listening to an audiobook of Kerouac's "On the Road" and feeling grateful for my life. There was more good news - my doctor called to tell me that my heart murmur is nothing to worry about and I probably won't keel over any time soon - but that phone call happened to be timed perfectly to distract me from taking the last exit for fuel for hundreds of miles of Arizona desert.

Here's me waiting for roadside assistance:


For about ten minutes - which was just about 30 seconds after the moment that I realized that I really had better find a gas station soon to about 30 seconds before I actually ran out of gas - I had absolutely no service on my cell phone. I was having fantasies about walking for miles on the side of the road at noon in the desert and I couldn't help but notice that the scrubby desert landscape looked just about right for burying someone you never want to be found. But then, right as Isaac made a kind of clunky jerk and insisted that I pull her over (Isaac is a girl), I got one tiny heaven-sent bar of reception on my phone, and I was able to call for a truck. For the rest of the trip, I am going to be stopping for gas when I get down to three quarters of a tank. Or maybe just anything below F.

I figured I still had time to make it to the mining towns I wanted to see before stopping for the night, so I headed to Bisbee, an old copper mining town that was unexpectedly beautiful. I drove around the windy little streets for a while and then decided to be a true tourist and get a tour into the Queen Mine.

The tour was kind of interesting, because it was fun to ride on the tracks into the mine, but it was about an hour longer than I was interested in it. I think I actually know how to be a miner now. The guide had me hold two sticks of dynamite and a detonator for a demonstration, and told me not to let them touch. It seemed like a valid warning as he wrapped them carefully in separated cloth bags when I gave them back. Was it Milan Kundera who said the fear of heights is not so much the fear of falling as it is the fear that one will suddenly leap? I had an almost overwhelming urge to try to make them explode.

Because of the gas situation and the (inordinately long) tour, I didn't get to Tombstone until after 5, and everything was closing. I was surprised at how uncrowded it seemed... I don't know if it's just not a popular summer destination or if everyone else in the world has been scared off by the gas prices. It was still fun to walk the streets and imagine what it would have been like to have been Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday, or some rustler or a prostitute, just trying to get by and stay alive.