Take Off Your Hobo Shoes, Part II

Gila Bend. You’ve heard of the Gila Monster?

Yeah, he’s from here: the western Arizona desert. And maybe, to the Gila Monster, the Space Age Lodge– a 1963, pre-moonwalk vision of the future with a flying saucer on top (click the link, please, I beg you) -- still seems futuristic. Too far removed from Route 66 to be pleasingly kitschy and too thin-walled to be pleasantly sleep-inducing, the best I can say for my experience there is that I was, at least, off the road for a few hours.

Sunday morning, in the room, I wrote the first draft of Part I of this story. Uploading pictures and links, I was working online when my connection – and the post – was lost. Leaving no time to start writing again before check-out, it was a bad beginning to what was, fortunately, the last day of the journey. There were only 283 miles to go.

With the difficulty finding a place to stay, the number of disturbances that kept me from sleeping, and the morning inter-net-ruption, I came to the conclusion that Murphy (he of the law) is from Arizona. The rest of the day confirmed it.

By this time I’d learned that in the western desert, you take ANY opportunity presented to you for a restroom, gas, or food, but I failed to notice the Outer Limits Coffee Shop attached to the hotel until it was in the rearview. I found myself searching for something to nibble on the wilds of I-8 when I came upon a rest area with vending machines. My eye landed on pretzels and I fed the machine my dollar in quarters, watched the spiral mechanism turn, and gaped as the pretzels hung, unreleased, in the machine.

If you haven’t traveled in a while, or if you have but avoided rest area vending machines as a rule, then you might not know that these things are locked and bolted down behind bars. There’s no jostling your item loose. So I did the only other logical thing: I put another dollar in quarters in the machine, hoping the second bag would push the first forward to drop. I might get one bag or two, but I would have my pretzels.

Or not.

If you happen to be driving by a rest stop in western Arizona off I-8, there are two bags of pretzels hanging there, waiting for you.

In time, I stumbled upon Dateland and the Dateland Palms Restaurant, home of “world famous” date shakes. Dateland is where they grow dates, eat dates, and love dates. Murphy must have taken a lunch break, too, because I really enjoyed this stop. I bellied up to the lunch counter, where I found another Ben Goode book waiting to be thumbed, and ordered a regular old burger, fries, and a Diet Coke. On the way out, I ordered a date shake to go. Well, it IS world famous, after all. And, oh my GOD, was it good!

After lunch, I was thankful to have only a few hours left to the drive. The extent of my human interaction in the three days I’d been on the road had been limited to “do you have a room?” and “I’m ready for the check,” and though I was happy to be making the trip alone, by mid Arizona I was dying for conversation.

A funny thing happens to the radio somewhere around New Mexico. There are fewer and fewer stations to tune to and as you continue west more and more of those have Spanish programming. There is no talk radio to be found. Sports talk, money talk, right wing nut job talk… nothing. (The latter is particularly surprising as it seems that the farther west you go, the more right wing nut jobs you find). And I don’t care how great the music you packed with you is, after almost 30 hours of it, your ears need a break. I was thrilled, briefly, to catch the last 15 minutes of Car Talk on a fading NPR station, but when The Thistle and Shamrock was scheduled next, I measured my desperation against Celtic warbling and silence won.

On the stretch between Gila Bend and the California border I noticed an inordinate number of bumper stickers on cars and trailers that read “Got Sand?” Upon crossing the border, I knew why: the Imperial Sand Dunes. I stopped to take a picture, but Murphy ate my camera batteries. (I knew he'd stopped for lunch!) As it turns out, though, you don’t need the picture. If you’ve seen the Star Wars movies, you’ve seen the dunes.

For the bulk of the drive from Nashville, I played a driving point of reference game with myself. In Tennessee, I know Interstate 24 exits like the back of my hand: 178 is Chattanooga, 134 is Monteagle, 105 is Manchester, 81 is Murfreesboro. Around exit 66, there’s a patch of rough road that will from here on be known to me as “Oklahoma.” Exit 59 is Nashville’s Bell Road, 53 is the 440 split. I know the exits between and beyond these; I can tell you where the speed traps are; and I could almost drive the road with my eyes closed. So, when driving through any state on I-40, I used 24 as my ruler: if I was Chattanooga-away from my goal, I’d stop for coffee. If I was Murfreesboro-away from my goal, I’d drive on. Once I got past the sand dunes in California, however, I wouldn’t stop at all until I was homeless no more.

The rest of the drive presented another elevation roller coaster, this time only reaching 4,000 feet from sea level. Though I’d driven on the 8 during my last visit to San Diego, I’d never approached the city from the east; when San Diego appeared, it was an abrupt ending to a long trip.

I parked the car, grabbed only my computer and overnight bag, and entered the apartment to find a birthday present waiting: a scrapbook of my life so far. Thanks, Mom.

And thus begins the next chapter from San Diego….