Planes, Trains and Automobiles

After more than 6 months traveling, this little story sums up my state of mind.

I am the lucky occupant of a cigarette-smelling room at the Motel 6. It is freezing because of the air-conditioning. It is across the street from the Rochester airport and I can hear the planes as they land. This was not supposed to happen. I am not supposed to be here. I should be driving my car, which is in long-term parking, to my family cottage on Lake Ontario and then home to California. But, alas, that is not what fate had in store for this unlucky traveler.

My day began at around 8:00 a.m. in the San Francisco airport. The Monday crowd was especially large and the United self check in line reached farther than I want to remember. This is pretty much when the day began to suck.

First I waited in line to check my bags. Then, as the time ticked away, I decided not to check my bags. So, I walked to a ticket consol for people with carry-on luggage. But, of course, the computer proceeded to not work. Then a black phone on the wall began to ring. I picked it up and a female voice guided me through the process of getting a boarding pass. A boarding pass came out of the console.

My next hurdle was security. I had no place to put my knife, which I usually put in my checked bag. So, I went through with it, hoping they’d not notice. But they noticed it, and then they noticed my canteen full of water. I was told, by one of the two ladies searching my bags, rubbing everything inside with explosive detector fabric, that I couldn’t drink or pour out my canteen. They would have to keep it and my knife. I could go outside, pour out my water, mail myself my knife, and then come back through, I was told. But then I would miss my plane. So I left it all.

I just made the flight. When I finally sat down in my seat, I took a well-deserved sigh of relief.

Usually I take all this kind of thing in stride. I go slowly through the motions that, point by point, seem to push most travelers over the edge. I take off my boots and belt and hat and throw all my change and my cell phone and my computer and my chap stick in a plastic container. None of this bothers me. I walk through the metal detector and the new blower machine and still, no problem. And, although this time I was growing close to screaming FUCK! when they took my knife and then also my canteen, I held back.

But then, sitting in that airplane, looking through my bag, my hand jingled my car keys. I pulled them out to put them in my pocket. I looked at them. They did not look right. They were too few, to light… to missing my fucking car keys! As the plane lifted off, I searched and found nothing in my pockets or anywhere else. And then I had a minor freak out. You know the quit ‘FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!’ you say to yourself.

You can imagine how the rest of my lay over in Boston, and the subsequent flight to Rochester, went.  But that was not the end of my woes.  Once in Rochester, what to do? I thought, well, it’s not that bad. I can rent a car and drive to the cottage. But no, no, no, I have the luck to arrive when some god-forsaken festival is going on and every single rental car agency is out of cars. There were, like, ten.

So I sat and thought. Then I searched my bag again. Then I went back to the rental car places and asked if they might just have one car for me, just one. On my third try I actually got one. The women behind the desk asked for my license, which I handed over and then a credit card. I gave her my debit card. I would be sleeping in the cottage in an hour. But then, then she said I needed a major credit card or a return ticket. “I don’t have a return flight,” I said. “I am driving my car across the country.”

“Sorry,” she said. I wanted to cry.

There I was back at square one, or what ever square I was at, and it was like 11:30 at night and I was at a loss. What to do? What to do? Maybe I could break into my car and hot wire the thing. That didn’t sound like the best bet. So I thought, just go to a motel and come back tomorrow with a locksmith. That doesn’t sound so bad.

 At the cabstand, outside, I was told it would cost ten dollars to drive me to the Motel 6, just across the road. When the cab pulled up I asked if he might be wiling to bargain. How bought seven bucks?  He just looked at me like I was a cretin and said, “I waited an hour to take you across the street and now your complaining.” Then the he made to shut his truck. “Ten is fine,” I said and he drove me to the motel 6 for ten dollars. 

Oh the joys of travel. 

 

From Scraton to Chicago

So, I have made it this far. My car is still in working order and it’s not even that hot. My little civic kicks but. It gets something like 40 miles per gallon on the freeway and with current gas prices as they are this is a good thing. But when I am not thinking about how good my car is doing, I am listening to one of my two long books on CD.

Scranton was small and set in the low tree-covered hills of Appalachia. Above the down town rose the huge sign of the town’s paper, The Scranton Times. I spent a couple days there and met some of the paper’s reporters. It was a pretty sleepy town. That said, a triple homicide happened the day before I arrived. Some guy took out three people with a hammer.

Crossing PA was a long monotonous drive. I was surprised at how few towns filled in the rocky forest land that is most of the state. It really felt untouched in a way. But once I crossed into Ohio, farms and fields filled much of the flat lands. Here only patches of wood sat alongside the farmland. Indiana kept on in pretty much the same way as Ohio.

I made it in a day from Scranton to Chicago. By the time the skyline of down town Chicago was looming over some rusty bridge, the sun was all in my face. I maneuvered my way through town as my friend Alex tried to direct me to his house in Lincoln Park. I passed a ball park and down town and then came into a neighborhood along the lake.

One more day and then I am heading west.

WEST

It only took three more days to cross Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and then Nevada. But first Iowa. Iowa was all hills and bucolic farmland, in an English-countryside kind of way. But then came the razor edged flatness that is Nebraska. So flat it hurt. It wasn’t until the eastern parts of the state that the high plains of our imaginations emerged. But then came the crisp blue skies above Wyoming and the yellowing grass lands. Utah was a couple mountains that soon dropped into the seemingly unstoppable desert of Nevada. And then the Sierra Nevada of teh Golden State.

 

CNN (constant nincompoop news)

I was recently sitting in the Rochester Airport, waiting for my flight, and the drone of CNN bore down on me like a cascading bucket of bile. Besides its menu of political ads – mostly thinly veiled oil lobby PR about what Shell and Chevron are doing for a “green” future – the talking heads were at their usual best.

(Let’s define “best” as narrow, superficial and glib.)

While it’s no surprise that 24-hour news networks need to fill up the day with something (let’s call it, um, dog shit) their repetitive regurgitation of other people’s “news” is hard to swallow.

It’s as if they intentionally sit down at their daily meetings and think about how to annoy the American public. Mostly, their programs consist of what appears to be well-groomed talking heads repeating the headlines, again and again, and then trying to squeeze something of value from them. “Well, Joe Bob commentator,” they might ask, “What does it mean when Obama uses his left hand instead of his right to itch his ear?” Deep probing and insightful questions such as this abound. Watching this malarkey is like trying to go to sleep on acid; the horribly narcotic concerns of your brain take over and nibble away at nothing until all you want is a gun to quiet your scattered brain.

Having watched CNN, MSNBC and their sister shows during the Democratic primary perform their less than stellar programs, I have come to the realization that they are not just doing more harm than good in their horse race coverage of politics, they are degrading journalism in general.

For instance, on CNN, with their self-described “best political team on TV” there is more comment than actually reportage. One wonders how many actual reporters they have working in the field, actually reporting. From this viewer’s humble spot on the couch, it seems to be about two, and all they ever do is yell into the microphone at campaign rallies.

Come on now guys, with all that “talent” at you finger tips, you might actually produce some news some of the time instead of continually playing with electoral maps of Indiana and commenting on the slow vote count, while a million other things far more important are going on in the world, unreported.

 

EPIC DRIVE # 2

The gray 1994 Honda Civic that sits on my cottage’s front lawn will soon carry this writer across a continent, over mountains, across plains and home. Besides the rust spots and the weird rattling that comes from the muffler, I am hopeful.

Since there is no cheap way to get this car across the country, I will be driving it. I hope it will hold up. If it doesn’t, I’ll just chalk it up to my year of car sagas. What could be worse than being stuck on a beach in Baja with a flu and a broken down car — for a week?

The car used to be my brother-in-law’s. He and my sister have bought a new car and were going to donate it for tax purposes. “No, No, No,” I told them. I can fix it. Three days later I had fixed the car after a minor series of struggles. I had to saw out the old alternator with a metal bladed saw. i had banged on the thing for hours before to no avail.

After three days, my injuries were minor: a couple busted up knuckles, a metal shard stuck in my cornea (I picked it out with tweezers), and a couple bruises. I did a little dance when my triumph over the car was complete.

In a couple days I head out. Wish me luck, and look for more bloging about “my road west.”

 

McCafe? in Wolcott NY

I am sitting in a McDonald’s deep in the farm country of western New York State — surfing the Web. What is the world coming to? I am sipping an all fruit smoothie for Christ’s sake. A steel framed Ikea-inspired light hangs over the table. In this poor Upstate village, surrounded by farms and orchards, the McDonald’s is not what it used to be. They even have newspapers. It’s like Starbucks got a hold of the share holders and told them to clean up the place. And they kicked Ronald off the premises. And the Fry Guys too.

“McCafe” (I know, it hurts) is what they call the place, and I guess this means that this fast food joint has joined the 21st century. But I don’t know what to feel about this move. Should I be happy, revolted or just confused? I mean, serving salads was one thing, but smoothies?

Look McDonald’s, these half assed attempts at making yourself appear like the health spa you will never be are trying. You serve fast food. As far as I can remember, fast food is not meant to be good for you. You serve fatty, fried things that make people fat and clog arteries. You make the heart attack possible. You are the godfather of obesity. I don’t want you to be anything else. If all of this world’s bad things all of a sudden turned good, where would we be? Christianity without the Devil? God without sin? The world without McDonald’s? Who will the Europeans hate then? Don’t try to be some weird hybrid McDonald’s. Soon this venerated fast food establishment – the original – will give back rubs and facials along with milk shakes and fries. This is one step too far. And it is just one sign of this society’s decadence and ensuing collapse. Of this I am convinced.

And then, and then… they are playing fucking Bonnie Raitt. Have a Heart McDonald’s. Have a heart.

 

Lucha Libre

At the center of the small, darkened arena, in a circular well of light, a gestulating wrestler stood on the third wrung of the ring’s corner post, invoking the crowds’ cheers. She and her teammates equally excited and reviled the crowd: some parrying insults with challenges to audience members and others spreading their arms to receive the cheers of their fans. These female wrestlers were only part of the spectacle of Lucha Libre or Mexican free wrestling, which included a line of curvy and scantily clad women, masked men posing like Greek god’s on to much wine, a crowd flinging insults and finally a wrestling match that more resembles a choreographed macho version of modern dance than anything like actual fighting. I don’t know why, but I had been expecting real wrestling not the Latin version of Hulk Hogan.

Tim and I bought tickets for the match at Mexico City’s smaller and central arena, not far from the zocalo. The vendors of wrestling paraphernalia occupied the street fronting the arena: dolls, masks, posters and even videos filled the make- shift stands.

Inside we took our seats on hard concrete bleachers and bought beers and looked down on the ring with excitement. The crowd beside us was mostly families with their young children. More little girls and boys muscled their way past us then beer-bellied bruisers.

In the pit-like arena’s center, a line of almost naked women flanked each wrestler on their way to the ring. Each made his own way on to the ring, some flying over the ropes, others hurdling underneath. Once on the drum of canvas they began a series of postulations that lasted a good five minutes. As their opponents entered the arena, two or three wrestlers stood atop the ropes and raised their arms or pointed their arms diagonally into the air as if they were lightning bolts.

When the fight did begin it was a confusing cycle of events. There were rounds, it seemed, and even moments of triumph and loss when the referee pounded the mat with three pats to indicant that there had been a pin. But the confusion of the fight, with three or more wrestlers on each team, some flying through the air or throwing their opponents against the ropes, made any attempts to make sense of the match futile. Trying to figure what team was the winner was equally difficult as the match spilled into the audience or saw simultaneous pins.

It was the good guys, usually better looking and dressed in lighter colored costumes, who won out in the end. The bad team – long hair, dark costumes – in ever match, began by claiming the first victory. But the match would end with their loss and long moments of melodramatic anger over this unfair and one-sided victory.

Some matches were better acted, with more of a flare for theatrics, while others were clumsy in their slow moves and uninspiring acting. But others were both subtle and spectacular in their gravity defying acts of mock violence and their enthusiastic playing of their parts.

It was the last match, which topped the night. The match began in the regular process of posing wrestlers that we had come to expect with entry of Ivan “the Russia” flinging the sweat from his chest onto the crowd. But soon this match degenerated into a chaotic circus of flying bodies and body blows after a midget dressed as a blue monkey entered the scene. Soon the midget was in the arms of a giant wrestler who began smashing his face on the corner post of the ring. On the other side of the ring, two wrestlers careened into the crowd, but softly. Soon this last match was a montage of bodies flying through air, above the ring, two wrestlers wide, as they slammed each other down on to the bending floor.

This round of fighting was almost practiced enough to seem real: the wrestler with his knees clamped to his opponent’s head, spinning in an arch, was just this side of violence. You could almost believe that the wrestler on the floor holding his head in pain was really in pain. But soon that thought returned from where it had come. Another choreographed bounce against the ropes revealed the match’s falsity as the wrestler to-easily moved himself into his next position. He was almost dancing with his opponent as if they were both actually in some other competition spinning in pairs across the floor, dancing.

 

More Tales from Mexico: El Bribe

Tim drove through Ensenada leaning over the wheel of his van with his elbows out like wings. He didn’t have his glasses on so his squinted up face awkwardly peered at the passing street signs. We were looking for a tire shop so as to fix our van’s last illness. Both of us had our eyes on either side of the road, and neither of us was looking at where the road ran into the hills.

That is when Tim ran an unseen stop sign, but we didn’t know it yet. We knew something was wrong when we heard the siren. Whoop, Whoop. Tim pulled the van to the side of the road and we waited. “Ya that’s a cop,” I said, as we tried our best in that strange and useless way people try to prepare for an interrogation; cleaning up the trash at our feet, putting on our shoes.

The officer stood in the frame of Tim’s window with the kind of look a parent gives a naughty child. “You gringo’s never learn,” it seemed to be saying. His gaze slid away from ours behind the aviators that shielded his eyes. “You know you just ran a stop sign back there,” he said. He pointed backwards. “No, officer we didn’t see that,” we said looking at one another and then back, in wonder, as if what he spoke of was a mirage that had appeared after we had passed it. “I will have to give you a ticket,” he said. We nodded in agreement.

Then things turned weird. “But we don’t give tickets here,” he continued in his broken English. We had no reply.” So,” he said, “we are going to have to go to the station to pay the fine.” He paused. We nodded to each other and thought this was the best plan. We had heard that the thing to do when pulled over in Mexico is to go to the station so that it is harder to be forced into a bribe. So we naturally thought that this meant we were not going to have to pay a bribe — this officer was honest.

Then he asked Tim a strange question, “How do you feel?” It was as if he were asking him several contradictory questions all at once: How is your health? Are you nervous? Does this feel legitimate? Well officer, he might have answered, I’ve had the shits for three days, and you make me nervous, and this does not feel legitimate. We were perplexed. The three of us hovered in a moment of silence, Tim and I only able to shrug our shoulders as if looking for direction in this matter from the police officer, staring down at us.

After a long period of very uncomfortable silence, I said something to the cop in Spanish, and he whipped around the front of the car and stood, now, in my window, looking down at me. In Spanish he gained a new confidence, as if he could more deftly use the subtly of language to take our money. “How do you want to deal with this?” he asked me. I still didn’t exactly understand what he was about. I said, “How do you want to deal with this?” And then all of a sudden we were on the same page. He smiled and said simply, “How much do you want to pay?” He was asking for a price. He was negotiating almost. I was just glad the ambiguity was over with. Now we could get this thing done and be gone. I said, “How about twenty bucks?” and he agreed. The next thing I knew he was handing me a folded slip of paper, not unlike a ticket, and telling me to put the bills inside the paper and hand it back. As I fumbled with my money belt he looked to his left and right as if making sure the coast was clear. I slipped over the folded paper and its hidden bills. Then he let us go. Thank you officer we told him as he walked back to his cruiser with our twenty bucks.

 

More…

While my days south of the frontier have come to an end, this is not the end of the road for this blog. From this day forward it will act as a venue for writing about ideas, reflections, stories and my continued travels to as yet unknown destinations. Stay tuned…

“I don’t negotiate,” was the bus driver’s curt reply after I asked him if he could just drop me along the freeway in Sausalito. It was way past midnight and I was at the air port waiting for a bus home. Unfortunately, there where no more Marin airporters for the rest of the night. I had to make do with the Airporter express, which serves all points north of Marin. The driver said that for insurance reasons he couldn’t stop in Sausalito. But he could take me to San Rafael and then I could get a cab. I got on the bus.

As we rolled north, despite my fatigue from a three plane journey from Mexico, I was pissed. And immediately, I began comparing my situating with what I imagined would occur in Mexico. For one, a bus driver will drop you off just short of hell if you ask, and for two, in Mexico everything is open to negotiation. So when the bus driver refused to reason with me and I had to fork over 50 bucks for a cab and a bus home, I was understandably angry. I don’t negotiate my ass. My home coming was made bitter sweet because of this undeniably over priced and non-negotiable ride home.

 

The End of the Road

After almost three months and more than 2,000 miles on the road, a plane will fly me home on May 30th, ending my journey through Mexico. I will fly, in a matter of hours, over the cities, mountains, deserts and seas that took so long to traverse overland. It feels a little like cheating after such a slow progress. But it is my ride home, and I intend to take it.

What to say about such a varied and surprising collection of places? Mexico has more often than not been much different than expected, and almost always the opposite of rumor. Never robbed, beaten, kidnapped or even really harassed, (except for that little bribe I was encouraged to pay to the Ensenada police) my journey has been almost without any “real” problems.

Of course, I have dealt with all the things that any traveler must, – mis-communications, sickness, loneliness, fear, joy and confussion – but my fortunes were not much more than what, in a vague way, I had expected. Of course, there was also the unexpected: The rat that fell on my bed – or jumped – as I slept in a cabana on the Michoacan coast was not part of the plan, and neither was the killer flew I had while stranded on a beach in Baja.

After moving south for so long, through much of Mexico, what has changed most is the loss of a kind of fear that was all to present when I first crossed into Mexico at Tijuana. It was a partially informed, gossip-filled, fear of the unknown: bandits on the roads; taxi kidnappings; drug killings on isolated beaches. It was like I had a little nervous man in my head warning me not to go down any unknown path. Don`t go down that lonley road. Don`t turn into that town not on the map, off the radar screen.

Now, that is mostly gone. Coming upon places that are new, having to navigate worlds unknown to me, has become more of the norm in my day to day. I think this comfort is good and bad. On the one hand, it lets me enter into places I might not have entered before, and with confidence. On the other hand, I find it has perhaps lessened by capacity for awe and wonder, my ability to revel in the exotic of the new.

Yet in order to gain the confidence I needed, I had to accustom myself, acculturate myself, to the foreign. This was a process of normalizing or numbing the strangeness of a place, which in turn made Mexico less foreign.

To navigate through foreign countries, worlds, ideas and cultures you need a bit of wonder, which in a way drives you forward, and a sense of comfort that gives you the confidence to go into the unknown without fear being your only rudder.

 

The Sierra Norte or Juarez

After three days of walking across the Sierra Juarez Mts., north of Oaxaca, my legs feel like wet knotted rope. Tim and I trekked through a region called Pueblos Mancomunados, which is a series of 8 Zapotec communities high in the mountains of Oaxaca. For almost 400 years these communities have run their own affairs.  There home is high up in the alpine, around 10,000 feet, where you can look in any direction and all you will see is more mountains. Since 1615 these self sufficient villages have been bonded together. And their political system is akin to direct democracy and has been practiced since before the coming of the Spanish. Land is equally apportioned here and mutual aid a common factor of life. When disputes arise, village assemblies gather in order to solve the problem.

With guides leading us through the mountains and canyons we got a close look at this region. We walked a total of around 70 kilometers through rough mt. terrain. For instance, on the third morning of our trip, we left the town of Amatlan and walked directly up a very painful hill. There were no turns on the trail, it just went straight up. But aside from the pain, it was beautiful country; from pine forests to oak covered hills to deep ravines. We got back to Oaxaca very tired and in the mood for hamburgers.

On another note: Freda and Tim left town today in their trusty van for Guatemala. I waved goodby as they drove off.