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NOTE: This part of the email is now outdated.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.
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.
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