Palace Flophouse

Hark the most recent in a strange sequence of events - last night I was arrested by the mexican police and spent some time in a jail cell. My offence, as worded by the police officers, was "pissing on the street". Admittedly I was pissing on the street but it struck me as humorous that it was explained so unofficially. It was clear from the beginning I would be squeezed for pessos, or dollars. After searching our wallets, in between every note, perhaps memorising the amount so as to be able to extort as much money from me as possible, the feds put us into the back of a white pick up truck and we cruised around town. This was so much fun! "Savour the kudos!" said John as the wind whipped our hair and we smiled. Amusingly we could have simply jumped out at any stop sign or traffic light, but I wanted to see how it would fold out. We had already made an agreement to avoid paying bribes at all costs.

We got to the station which was had a small office with three guys inside. One of the guys was chatting on msn and watching porn on a computer. We gave our names and occupations (John was a new homes advisor, I was in "research") which was jotted down on a piece of blank paper, almost certainly later to be tossed in the bin. It was unclear at this point who exactly was being arrested. We started chatting about football with the policemen to butter them up, they were a bit cagey but I think it helped. Soon enough I was put in a cell which was dark with a concrete floor. Two of the guys had left and there was just one policeman now, chatting on the phone, msn and looking at porn simultaneously. John came to chat with me through the bars and we realised the door was only bolted shut - he could open it if he wanted and we could make a bolt for it. It was all a bit of a joke.

John was shooed away and I investigated the dark end of the cell which had a bed - a raised oblong of concrete - which, when I ran my hand across it to ascertain the softness of my new mattress, I found to be covered in piss. Plaintive requests to use the sink I could see through the bars to wash my hands of the piss were met with a silencing raised finger. John returned with a burger and strolled up to the cell to pass it through the bars which I solemnly accepted, indulging in my spurious martydom. "I've told you ten times wait outside!" said the guard from his seat. The lax-ness of the situation was very comical.I was told someone was coming to get me in 20 minutes and take me to a bigger police station, but, of course, "you could always pay the fine...". Instead I sat there and after half an hour I was let out in a shady manner by my captor, him pretending I had asked for directions or something so his supervisor wouldn't suspect anything.

We have decided recent events form the strangest consecutive 3 days of the trip so far, and refer to it as the fishermen-orphanage-prison sequence. In an orphanage handing out sweets one day, peering out from behind the bars of a cell the next.I'm a crazy guy, me.

´chard.

How we took on the Guatemalan drug cartels and won

Hello there. We're in Mexico now, and still alive by all accounts. We haven't yet needed to fend off gangsters, drug dealers or even run-of-the-mill murderers.

John and I found ourselves lodged in the crevice between the USA and Mexico that is San Diego for a week and a bit. We stayed at a pleasant hostel where we mingled well with the tattooed and pierced patrons, making some good friends. Realising we were spending quite a bit of cash we slept there without paying for a night, causing me to suffer disturbing nightmares in which I partook of the free pancake breakfast only to be confronted by an angry member of staff and kicked out. So then we slept in the car. Around the same time both our accounts were frozen due to a supposed Vegas spending spree carried out by a pickpocket. Cue much furtive leaning on payphones, repetitive feeding of obstinate quarters and navigation of offshore bank account audio mazes.

On our second to last day in San Diego we were invited by some friends to watch them go on a trapeze. Ponty took us there - he's still chugging along in the ever-increasing heat. Every few hundred miles a new noise develops. Some surf wax I left behind the back seats was melted by the magnified californian sun rays and every evening freezes hard onto the cloth shelf. The next day it melts and then freezes again ad infinitum. Needless to say it is nigh on irremovable and has probably lowered the sell-on price of the car by about $6. Add this to the damage dealt by John and a drunken irish girl dancing on the roof and we are about $20 down. The trapeze session was one in a long line of bizarre and unexpected events. We acted chauffeur for Molly and Amber, two Jamison swigging Seattleites we shared a room with, driving out to the countryside where we were told to watch out for rattlesnakes and poison oak. Here was a whole circus training ground with pieces of equipment scattered about the woods. For $10 one could be flung from a tiny platform high into the air (safety net provided) and perform a few oscillations before attempting a backflip, which we did.

Afterwards we returned to the hostel, where we had stopped paying but continued to take showers and get given beers in the evenings. There was a bonfire on the beach which was alright before it started attracting all the local drug taking/evangelical/loud beach bums and weirdos, who are fun at first but grating after a while. We made friends with a 16 year old street kid from New York called joey who wanted us to take him to Mexico with us. We sort of entertained the idea before realising it would probably be amongst the most irresponsible things we have ever done. After the fire we went to a bar where we saw Ryan, a guy we met in a surf shop, and played pool with him. At closing time he invited us to sleep on his couches. He had two big puppies, one of which was called Hulk and who I enjoyed hugging. They were brothers and very cute.

After waking up and having our pockets stuffed full with satsumas by Ryan and his girlfriend Nicole we set off for Tijuana, land of the world's biggest potholes. SRSLY, some of these potholes are nearly the width of the entire road, and as deep as the eye can see (bearing in mind one's vision is somewhat impaired by the 1mm layer of terracotta dust covering the windscreen). Instead of being stopped by the Federalis and having to give bribes to avoid a night in a dank cell before being carjacked by Guatemalan drug peddlers the only interaction we experienced with a fellow motorist was being alerted that a giant pothole had eaten one of our hubcaps. Our lasting memory of Tijuana was the smell of a large river of sewage which runs along side one of the main roads. Welcome to Mekisko!

Soon we were in Ensenada, a city one step away from the touristy trashiness of Tijuana, and on the coast. In the centre of town is the largest and highest-flying flag (mexican) I have ever clapped eyes on. We met our host family, the Salgados, with whom John had organised for us to stay using couchsurfing. Luis and Carmen and their daughter Nancy were very welcoming, giving us our own room, feeding us with burritos and offering to wash our clothes. Luis, a ringmaker, showed me his workshop and gave me a tour of his garden, telling me the names of the flowers in spanish, before showering me with gifts such as beautifully polished metallic shells and a battered book on the battle of the pacific. It was the only book in English in the house and Luis thought it only right that I should have it. As Orwell said of the spaniards in Homage to Catalonia after some young soldiers pressed all their remaining tobacco into his hands and walked away before he could respond, the generosity was wonderful but almost embarassing. Other residents of the house were Polly, an authentic Mexican chihuahua, and a small turtle who slept in a sock on the microwave.

We visited the beach, on our way Nancy pointing out a gangster, or "Cholo", which appeared to be a man with flowing curly black locks and reflective aviators riding a bmx. On the beach we experienced being referred to as Gringoes for the first time. Apparently Gringo isn't a derogatory term for white people as I previously thought. Luis explained it is a simple substitute for "American" and dates back to the Mexican-American war (those particularly interested can refer here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo#Mexican-American_War). Later we were shown a geyser which shot seawater far into the air and onto an excited and whooping crowd. On sunday the family went to church. John tells me that 93% of Mexicans count themselves as catholics. This probably includes scores of cholos, with their tattoos of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Nancy took us on a wine tasting tour where we bought gifts for Luis and Carmen, and at the end found a baby bird who had fallen from the nest. Nancy took him home so he could be amigos with the little turtle. Any preconception of Mexican machismo was turned on its head at the sight of Luis cradling the tiny bird and feeding it flour and water with a toothpick.

So we began our drive towards la paz, the port from which we will get the ferry to the mainland. As we went inland the temperature increased making the car pretty hot and sweaty, and increasing my grumpy levels. We passed a sign with a picture of a petrol pump and "314km" which I assumed I had misread. In any case if we turned back and filled up we would gain about 5km worth of petrol, so we continued. We were in the desert now, surrounded by strange leaning cacti, some stupendously large. As darkness came and with a quarter of a tank left we stopped in a small town with what looked like petrol pumps. Closer inspection revealed the things to be rusting and hollow with wires holding the pumps in place. That night we spent in the car ranks among my most uncomfortable nights ever. The air in the car became so hot we were dripping with sweat. I, after diligently eliminating a dozen or so flies, was reluctant to let john open the window for fear of a cloud of mosquitoes coming to devour us. Eventually we gave in, opened the windows and fell asleep. Later in the night it became very cold so we covered ourselves in towels. In the morning we asked around and managed to find an opportunistic old man who sold us 3 gallons of gas from the back of his truck at an extortionate price. Off we went into the desert.

Heading back towards the pacific coast of the peninsula we met an off road section and I foolishly raced about across the stones and bumps, cackling madly. Before we reached the playa we were waylaid by Mexican fisherman who tried to sell us some clams. One of them, Federico, seemed very drunk which was strange it being 12.30pm. He asked us for beer and I gave him a bottle of the fruity 4.5% wine we bought in bulk from the winery. John then had to politely decline a libre double fistful of dripping clams thrust through the passenger window. As we moved our car we saw that it was haemorrhaging oil from underneath, a result of my feckless rally driving. The fishermen offered to help us out and we followed them to the next small dusty town full of falling down buildings and stray dogs. We followed the truck very slowly as it meandered around the town. At one point the empty wine bottle was tossed in a high arc from the cabin which made us laugh. We stopped at a shop where I was ordered to buy oil and a 6 pack of beers for Federico and his chums. Cue more wild goose-chasing around. We eventually stopped at what transpired to be one of the fishermen's cousin's house. Thankfully the guy could dry-weld the hole in our oil tank shut. Federico and friends were fed more wine and tequila by us which I think helped in lowering the price to a modest $30.

That evening we completed our drive across Baja and stopped at Santa Rosalia, a nice town overlooking the sea of cortez. We got chatting to some gringos who turned out to be evangelical christians. After failing to convert us they gave us free ice-cream and offered to let us stay in their half-finished apartment. One of them, Diane, was very nice and runs an orphanage for kids whose parents are addicted to meth which is a problem here. They claimed all the fishermen use it - it being a stimulant which would help with their physical work -, although I found this hard to believe. In the morning we visited the orphanage and dispensed candies. They were understaffed and looking for volunteers. I would like to go back there to work after this trip. The next night we pitched our recently purchased mexican tent on the beach. Amusingly it was too small for us to lie down in so john ripped a hole in the groundsheet so our feet could poke out. A buffet for the mosquitoes.

Since then not much has happened apart from a lot of driving through desert. We are yet to be pulled over by the Federalis (police) contrary to what a lot of people said. Even the soldiers at the military checkpoints, employed to battle the drug cartels, have been polite to us.

We are in la paz now. I hope you are all well,

x

Toaster malfunction #18

Dear friends,

I will begin this by addressing the anonymous malefactor who scrawled across my makeshift phonebook (actually the useless paper wallet for my EBT {foodstamps} card): "you are a mooch and a leech and a slacker". OK, I accept the charges of mooch and slacker, but leech?! Am I nothing more than a parasite, a wet slippery gnawing unloveable parasite?? Frankly I am hurt. Even sponge would have been better. Why not throw in a good sponge?I noticed this offence after deciding to call some people having realised I've used only emails since the beginning of the trip. If I have been uncommunicative I apologise. We are now in San Diego. Quite a lot has happened since the last email and I am afraid information has been seeping from my tiny brain. Let me first clear things up with a

- Car Update -

I remember leaving you on a cliffhanger about the car overheating and exploding. Well, we left ponty with a nice mechanic overnight in san francisco. John took out his wordly goods and stowed them in a sleeping bag which he slung over his shoulder. Despite this new distinctly vagabondy look we were still approached by hobo after hobo and asked for change or just garbled at. This seems to be part of the deal with San Fran and you get used to it, although I think it would be get quite depressing after a while. In the morning I called the mechanic and was told that the thermometer was malfunctioning and the engine is fine! After mentally prepared ourselves for the iminent abandonment of our car this news made us so happy. When we went to collect ponty the mechanic was helpful, giving us some coolant and a big bottle of water for the radiator should it come to the worst. Ramming the steering wheel up and down and lifting the top of the dashboard completely away the mechanic delivered a diagnostic of: 'Everything in this car is broken!' much to our mirth. Still runs though, YUP.

NOTE: This part of the email is now outdated. Please see later passages for details of further car malfunctions.

***

The first place we stopped off at after San Francisco was Monterey, home of Stienbeck's cannery row. Cannery row itself has turned into something of a tourist trap - predictable I suppose but still disappointing. Monterey itself was very calm and relaxed after San Fran and the beaches were peaceful. That night we went out and sang Kareoke, then met two German guys called Toby and ........ also doing a road trip, ALSO in a pontiac, although theirs was white and shiny new. Before bed we offered them food from the boot of our car and they reached in under the folds of sleeping bags and crumpled t-shirts, giggling as they pulled out an assortment of strange expired biscuits. After a ticking off from a policeman about our 3 in the morning picnic we parked up next to each other and slept. I was woken by a car park attendant rapping his knuckles smartly on the glass right next to my face - another crappy nights sleep in the car...

Our next stop was to camp at a place called San Luis Obispo. At a mexican restaurant we began talking with a curious couple named Michael and Gingus who were road tripping from Eureka to LA in their camper van. Michael was a slight fellow in his twenties, excitable and witty, almost manic, but one to make you feel instantly at ease. Gingus was an older lady in hippie regalia complete with dreadlocks, tie-dye attire, etc. They invited us to a gig Los Angeles on friday night where their friend was playing. Michael spent some time trying to convince me not to work in the cannery; claiming I will be in one of the most beautiful places in the world but unable to see it on account of being forever enclosed in a sterile flourescently lit room, scrutinising a never ending parade of cat food cans for tiny offending hairs. His sermon was funny though, and I enjoyed it. I'm still going to Alaska. We followed their VW van to the campsite and I spent my first night sleeping out in the open. Many jumpers were worn and it was quite comfortable.

In the morning we bidded farewell to Michael and Gingus and carried on southwards, not before John picked up breakfast at a 7/11. This was our first contact with a "chilli dog": actual chilli con carne poured on top of a hot dog. The chilli was dispensed from the nozzle of a square box at the touch of a button, causing John to exclaim: "I didn't know you could get this, this is incredible! God bless America!!" Personally, the churning excretion of processed meat/s from such a dubious apparatus was one of the trips more disturbing sights so far.

After much driving we neared Los Angeles, a city so huge driving around it is a complete nightmare. At one point we narrowly avoided colliding with several cars at an intersection (cue beeping and honking), through no fault of our own of course. I don't know quite what to say about LA. It is the land of tiny dogs' heads protruding from designer handbags carried by sauntering girls, their faces covered by equally designer sunglasses.

Our couchsurfing hosts (organised via www.couchsurfing.com) were lovely, and especially helpful in installing new breakpads in our car. Onto Vegas. I won't be able to depict Las vegas any better than a few pictures will for you. In short, it is utterly tasteless, garish and grotesque. Hence I found it hard to explain my childish glee as we cantered the streets, bathed in neon and drinking beer from brown paper bags. In a pharmacy John was confronted with what he described as "the most depressing thing I have ever seen" - a solitary lady robotically feeding coins into a slot machine. Let me clarify - this pharmacy had a row of slot machines installed in the corner. Two days in Vegas is enough.

Unable to make it to the grand canyon in time we stopped off for the night in a smallish town named Flagstaff, booked into a hostel and wandered around town. We met two girls called Katie and Marie who took it upon themselves to give us a tour of Flagstaff which culminated in us sitting astride a disused caboose and drinking Jim Beam from the bottle. It was freezing at this point. Soon a very drunk looking native american fellow identifying himself as Sean, not satisfied with the windfall of a cigarette and can of Pabst, voiced his desire to also scale the caboose - no mean feat even for those among us complete with the levels of alcohol dehydrogenases necessary to properly break down ingested alcohol -, which he managed, to our surprise. It got too cold so we descended and walked back to the hostel. After finding out Sean had nowhere to sleep we decided to let him take our place, as we could sleep on Katie's sofa. I helped him up onto the bunk and tucked him in, not before stuffing his pockets with Nutrigrain bars.

Baffling desert driving syrup incident!

On our drive from Vegas to flagstaff one strange incident deserves to be described in detail. Allow me to set the scene - traveling at a fair old whip along a deserted Arizona freeway, John at the wheel and me in a more recumbent pose next to him, maybe resting my head on the cushion donated by Gingus, reading a magazine or nibbling on a Payday! bar. Suddenly there was a pronounced thumping noise and the windscreen was instantly splattered with clear gel-like splotches of liquid which when carressed by the windscreen wipers smudged across the entire screen causing quite a drop in visibility. John put forward that the only possible explanation was our car had collided with a sui generis airborne bubble of tree sap. My hypothesis was more along the lines of nearby exploding cactus. After stopping to inspect the car we found the front end covered in wasp carcasses! Apparently we had driven through a hovering colony of wasps, causing a massacre. My prayers go out to them.

* * *

In the morning we hired a cowboy mechanic to install a new serpentine belt in Ponty as per the advice given by our friend in LA, Jared. We were pleased with the price of $60, and so was he as the money obviously went straight in his wallet.

The Grand Canyon was beautiful as expected, but rife with tourists, gift shops, installed telescopes etc etc. It would have been great to hike it but we came ill equipped - the canyon destroyed our flip flops within a few hours. Admittedly they were bought in vegas for $2.99 a pair, so I won't grumble. At sunset we put some trainers on and climbed a big rock.

I volunteered to do a large chunk of the mammoth drive to San Diego. After about 6 hours we found ourselves on a creepy road in the middle of the desert, having seen no cars in for about an hour and unable to see any lights or signs of civilisation in any direction. The petrol tank was running low. We went over a series of mini bridges - about 20 in total - which were identical, and given that the road was so straight and featureless this gave me a strange sensation of deja vu. After this we hit a sequence of tiny towns, one of which I remember being called Essex. These towns had a max of four buildings each, and some seemed run down and deserted. Spooky! Just as the petrol tank hit rock bottom we pulled into a slightly larger town called Amboy. Here was an old fashioned looking petrol station which was closed so we decided to sleep the night there in the car. It wasn't that easy to get to sleep however. First off I found it slightly unsettling to realise we had parked next to a land rover which had been completely trashed, the windscreen broken and all sides dented. Then there was a rumbling in the distance and a line of lights approached. "It's a biker gang!" I squealed in fright, "turn off the lights!" Luckily it was a passing train, and John scoffed at me. We laughed and joked about how scary it would have been if it really was a biker gang, and they started to drive in circles around the car. We tried to sleep but were disturbed by strange activity at "Roy's Motel" and Amboy School behind us; people walking around, talking and shining torches.

In the morning we filled up on petrol and I talked with the attendant, apparently Amboy isn't a real town but it used as a film set! The previous night had been the last night of shooting for a new horror film (or something). They shot the remake of the hills have eyes there! Onwards!

Driving along at high speeds I noticed something crazy was going on with the steering, for instance, I couldn't really turn the wheel, and when I tried there was a bogus grinding noise. To cut this one short we spent the afternoon at a military base town called 29 palms where we had to fork out $179 to get the power steering fixed. Turns out the very relaxed and unprofessional mechanic in Flagstaff had put the belt in wrong, who'da thunk it?! Consequently we are running very low on cash. So into Mexico it is.

Richard.

San Fran Pan Handle

Hey, we have spent enough time in san francisco now to produce what should be a mildly amusing blog entry.

note - I have realised that since these are old emails the dates will be all wrong. Oh well.

First a small note on the local library. It is very large, marble clad, architecurally impressive, and almost 100% filled with homeless people. The toilets seem to be a hygiene maintainence centre for the san fran homeless community. People walk their dogs and have full-blown arguments in the library.

The car has held up this far (obviously), despite a worrying development - the temperature gauge has crept into the red and not left for 5 days. Internet research revealed that this was indeed BAD. One of the days we spent a few hours fretfully driving around downtown san francisco - itself normally a harrowing experience for me, the honking and beeping, impatient drivers, crazy pedestrians, etc. - and searching for a garage, expecting at any minute great clouds of steam to begin issuing generously from the bonnet. An extra pinch of stress was provided by the occasion of 'Greek Independence Day', a festival which closed off the whole of market street, the main street which runs through the centre of town, and caused us to sit steaming in the car for a good half an hour. At one point John noticed we were at the bottleneck of all the traffic being re-routed away from the the festival area. Had the radiator given out then, Ponty would have surely sent downtown san fran into complete chaos. Quite a boast I suppose.

Today we dropped the car off at a garage. Apparently the fan isn't working properly.

Nutri-log grain journal

Increased temperatures leave nutrigrain bars damp in their wrappers; perhaps the first signs of decomposition. This nevertheless lends the bars a moist consistency normally associated with labor-intensive ultra-gourmet snack cakes. A curious shift has left me more desirous of the Apple and Cinnamon bars over the previously dominant Strawberry. It is unclear whether or not the weather conditions are to do with this. Recent excavations conducted deep in the rear left corner of the snack bar box unearthed Payday! and Fig Newton bars. More to follow.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

We stayed at quite a nice hostel for a couple of nights. In the mornings there was unlimited pancake batter to be had. I hadn't flipped one of those for a while, the poor americans being deprived of pancake day. After making some friends and deciding the hostel was a little too pricey - $25 a night - we opted to sleep on people's floors and hope we weren't exposed as freeloaders. Unfortunately I was collared by an empassioned member of staff and ejected at 6 in the morning. I wandered the streets for 3 hours searching for the car in vain. Ending up in chinatown I bought Dim Sum for breakfast and a large bar of choc using my food stamps card to console myself, then trudged back to the hostel and dozed on and off perching next to a flowerbed in the sun.

Last night John and I went to possibly the best restaurant I've ever been to. It was Tunisian food. Maybre I have ranked it unfairly in my mind because I was on no sleep extremely hungry, but it was very tasty. Afterwards we slept in the car. This time it was ok for me, although I woke with the sun hitting me squarely in the face, something I'm pretty sure hasn't happened before. We will choose another hostel tonight and then head off southwards tomorrow. I luckily found a copy of Stienbeck's cannery row in a second hand book shop and will try and quickly read it before we get to Moneterey which is on route and probably our next stop. I'm hoping the book will also prepare me mentally for the fish canning job in alaska I will begin in June. Thanks to everyone for the messages!

choos. Richard. xo

Instructions on buying a piece of fruit

This blog will begin as a rehash of previous emails sent to my friends about my travels, and will continue as a potentially dull self centred splurging of information.

Hello all, I have realised this will be the quickest and easiest way to contact y'all and keep you updated on my travels. I first intended for the list to be quite small but as I continued adding people it became huge. I have even included a few people I don't really like anymore, for example Pickles*. I will be sending out personalised emails too, so don't worry mum, if I narrowly escape being murdered by Mexican drug dealers you will be informed. If I am killed the email or phone call will come from someone else, obviously.

John and I are leaving Portland today. Earlier on we bought a small tape player so we can listen to good music (by good music I mean the best tapes Portland Goodwill could offer, which happily included the Beat Street soundtrack). The Pontiac has two CD players, neither of which work. In fact, there are many small problems with the car. I will list them:

- The Cd players dont work
- When left to it's own devices it veers to the right (if only gradually)
- When you slam the driver's side door the window winder flies off inside the car. This is always comical and endearing.
- The horn doesn't work
- The brakes are 'spongy' and, according to a mechanic, in 3-5,000 miles will be 'metal on metal'. Worrying.
- The clock is an hour and 20 minutes fast and seemingly impossible to adjust. It's surprising how quickly your brain can adjust to this however.
- There are only two settings for the windscreen wipers: fast and extremely fast. When you tell them to stop they stop dead wherever they happen to be.
- The steering wheel feels loose and is at it's lowest setting so that it rubs your legs. If you try and adjust it upwards it becomes alarmingly loose.

I will stop there, it's not that interesting. Today we are going to get on the Interstate freeway 101 which will take us south along the Oregon coast, a reportedly very pretty stretch. The gigantic box of cereal bars in the boot is holding up well. It transpires they are nearly all nutrigrain bars. It is mildly amusing to analyse the slight adjustments in wrapper design, font etc., between dates '05-'09, yet it is only a matter of time before the mere sight of a nutrigrain bar sends a wave of nausea to my very core. A tent and sleeping bags were also acquired in Portland (thanks to Madeline/Goodwill) and so we have all we really need. I hope to write these emails fairly regularly, unless nothing really interesting happens. Feel free to email back, or send these straight to your junk folder. I will never know.

tschuss, Richard.