Gosh, where to begin? I can't even remember where I was the last time I wrote so you'll have to bear with me. The Outer Banks I believe.
The OBX, as they call it, is the long peninsula/sand bar that runs down the coast of North Carolina. In the summer time (I am told) it swarms with nubile young holiday makers but at this time of year it's just the construction workers and itinerants like me. As I think I mentioned, the weather while I was there was pretty fantastic. I even sunbathed for a couple of hours on Thanksgiving day; which was a poor alternative to working but I guess you can't have everything in this life.
I wanted to work because I was planning to leave a couple of days later and needed the money, but when I arrived at "the shop" as arranged I found the gates locked and nobody there. Grrr. So I had to swan around and check out the chicks on the beach instead. I'm sure I have your sympathy at this terrible turn of events.
In the meantime I had been living in a house that we were repainting - it's a 45 minute commute and as I was paying to stay in a Youth Hostel it made sense from everybody's point of view for me to just "keep an eye on the place" while the owner was away. It was a bit of a mess at first, but my bedroom was completed early on and after that I was laughing. For the first few days I was working just with Ron, whose hobby is shooting things and was once busted for barking at a policedog, but soon there were 3 or 4 of us there and "English Bob" came in for a lot of ribbing.
Usually I was woken by sunrise over the ocean, and would be all breakfasted and hard at it by 7am. The other guys would arrive some time between 8 and 9, and disappear again around 4, which left me another hour or two of daylight with the place to myself. Sadly the CD player didn't work, and the 'phone had been disconnected, but the local radio stations were pretty good and it was still not a bad deal. I worked the weekend too, but took time out during the warmest parts of the days to go walk on the beach and generally make the most of life.
Sadly that all came to an end and we were all sent back at the $10million McMansion, which has turned into what the Australians call a "shitfight" - everybody being prevented from being finished because they are waiting for someone else to finish something and nobody willing to take responsibility for any of it. Some of the outside stuff has been painted for so long that it has weathered and needs redoing. Meanwhile there isn't a wall in the place that hasn't had holes drilled in it, or similar, after painting so it all has to be done again. Jobs like that drive you up the wall, especially when Mike (who does live close to the Waltons after all) turns out to be a serious country music fan. Like I said, I was doing my best to learn to like the stuff, but it's hard when it goes on all day. Still, you'll be glad to hear that that dude's girlfriend still thinks his tractor's sexy, even though I'm rather fed up with hearing about it.
My bank had been kicking up a fuss because I had miscalculated and gone overdrawn by a fairly miniscule amount. Naturally this provided them with an opportunity to pile the charges on, even though I was within the overdraft facility they gave me. By the time I had finished paying for the letters telling me I was so overdrawn I wasn't allowed to use my card at all and had to send them some money post haste. Guess what? No branch nearby. America is rife with small regional banks that tell you how easy it is to bank when you're away from your local branch, but you just try it. I had to pay to send them money and then they charged me $20 to receive it. Don't you just love it?!?
Anyway I've left enough in there to pay all my insurance, internet, etc. for the next few months and I'm working strictly cash for everything else. I'm sure they'll find a way of catching me though.
So that was North Carolina and at the end of November I jumped in my car and headed south. The weather was on the change so not a moment too soon methinks. I said my goodbyes to all the girls and boys and went back to Mike's place for few beers - he gave me some of that millenium beer to take away and drink on the big night - and then had to decide where to
go next.
I did contemplate Florida but Texas won out and a couple of days later I was back in Corpus Christi in search of the missing dive gear. I checked all the pawn shops, and there were an awful lot of them, but no luck. I did come away with a nice pair of roller blades though and had a very interesting chat with one guy about gun laws. I was looking at the Uzi submachine gun in the glass case and asked him what you need to buy such a thing. Answer: a Texas driving license. They do call the FBI to make sure you don't have a criminal record, but otherwise away you go. As I had no trouble getting a license in Oregon I dare say I could get one in Texas if I wanted and then....
Actually you can avoid the on the spot check too, he told me, by getting checked out in a little more detail. You then get a permit to simply walk in and buy whatever you want, over the counter, and can carry it under your coat on the streets. He didn't seem to think it was that big a deal - "Anyone can get a concealed firearm permit," he said - but wasn't sure that europe would be such a great place to live on account of all the other kinds of crime, by which he meant pornography. Presumably this means that Texas is a state where you can't look at pictures of naked ladies in case some harmless passer-by pulls a magnum out of her handbag to explain to you the error of your ways.
Woohoo.
So, off to Mexico for me. Just for a few days to get a feel for the place and spend a little less money while I work out what I'm doing. On the way I met Officer Gonzalez from the County Sherrif's Department. He pulled me over with all the flashing lights at his disposal and, after telling me where to stand, proceeded to explain why he had done so: "The reason I pulled you over is that I noticed that your tags seem to be expired. That says 10/99 right? It is now the November, that's the eleventh month, isn't it?" I know he was only doing it by the book but I couldn't help remembering a comedian I once heard ask why, if the police are so clever, do they always need someone to help them with their investigations?
Anyway I explained the situation re trying to get the ownership papers for the car and we get chatting while the lady on the other end of the radio checks me out. (I couldn't figure out why he kept getting nervous and backing away - trying to make myself heard above the traffic noise I kept stepping closer to his gun. Funny the things you don't think about when you're an innocent abroad.) So far he's recovered 5 stolen vehicles that were on their way to Mexico, just by stopping anybody with out -of-state registration when he had nothing else to do. He hadn't seen my dive gear either, which is a pity, but it transpired that he thought the car was now registered in my name. We never found out for sure, nor did I find out whether the FBI would let me buy an AK47, because he had to dash off and arrest somebody - without having time to do anything more than suggest I get my tags updated at some point in my travels.
At Brownsville (the pits, don't go there) I stopped at the information centre to see if they knew of any place I could leave my tools and work clothes so I didn't have to explain them to US immigration on my return. I ended up leaving them in the manager's office after discussing his remodelling project and nearly scoring the contract to repaint the place. Then we went outside for the grand turning-on of the christmas lights. There were loads of kids around so naturally the police turned up to do crowd control. I must say they looked jolly fetching on their official police mountain bikes, wearing those tight pants and wrap- around sunglasses, but I was on a mission so I left them keeping the young americans in order and got on my way.
While waiting for the great on-turning I was chatting with a guy (who was doing his community service after a traffic violation) and he was telling me about the police in Mexico. Totally corrupt, don't trust them, they'll arrest you for nothing, scare you with stories about all the nasty things they're going to do to you and demand a bribe. Take lots of cash (small notes 'cosnobody ever has any change) to pay your way out of trouble and so on. Better still, don't go. It's a jungle, totally corrupt. Blah Blah.
So off I go and ten minutes later I'm driving across the bridge into the third world. A few cars ahead of me were waved into inspection bays but no-one took the slightest notice of me and I cruised through the crossover without even having to get my passport out. I had it in my mind to get away from the immediate border area and follow the coast road south until I found a suitable place to stop. There must be one, surely?
So, after getting lost twice, I find myself on the right road and proceed merrily on my way for half an hour or so before coming to a federal inspection point. I stop like everybody else and this dude in a sort of uniform jumpsuit shines his torch all over my windows - looking for my Permiso de Vehiculos. Now I don't really speak much Spanish, actually hardly any, but it's not hard to figure out that I need a vehicle permit to go any further. I end up out of the car with half a dozen uniformed guys trying to explain it all to me. Funnily enough the only english that any of them spoke corresponded to my few bits of spanish, so we spent a pleasantly futile 10 minutes each saying the same things in each other's languages but unable to actually communicate in any meaningful manner.
Eventually I had to accept that I was going to have to turn around. Torchman expressed it beautifully with a combination of a shrug, downturned mouth and contemptuous toss of his head in the direction that I had arrived from and I gave up. Nobody seemed to want to be bribed either, or perhaps I'm just not sensitive to the nuances of the culture. In any case I turned around.
A little ways back was a side road to (I think) Puerto Mezcal and, in the spirit of adventure, I went to see if puerto meant port and, if so, whether the mexicans built their ports by the sea. A picturesque fishing village with an entirely affordable little hotel full of interesting people was all I asked for. Is that unreasonable?
It started out promisingly enough. The road was an absolute beauty, marred only by an encounter with a Mexican Homing Rabbit. No matter which way I swerved it changed direction to counter and eventually self-destructed under the front wheels with a dull thump. Didn't hurt a bit, I'm pleased to say, and I continued under a starlit sky at fairly unreasonable speed. In fact it was all so wonderful that I had to stop and take the roof off, then stop again for a pee, then stop again just to enjoy the view because I hadn't stopped for long enough the first few times. I even contemplated just parking and putting up my tent but with all those exciting curves ahead I had to press on and see what was at the end. In fact some of the last curves were extremely exciting, by which I mean that they were a lot sharper than anticipated, and I entered the village at the end in a state of some disarray.
But no matter, there wasn't a lot to disrupt except for a few falling down shacks so I turned around again to try another run through the desert. As I was accelerating away I passed a group of somewhat distressed looking soldiers who yelled at me incomprehensibly and I thought it prudent to stop and say Hi. They were a bit flustered at first, but I suppose they're not used to being virtually ignored - not with all those machine guns in their hands. But what do they expect, standing on a dark road, dressed in dark clothes, with dark skins and maniacs like me on the loose? Honestly!
They cooled down a bit OK and I managed to explain that I am definitely not, under any circumstances, american - which seemed to cheer them up a bit and we moved quickly on to searching the entire car and everything in it for guns and drugs. They even mimed what they were looking for, after everybody had shaken hands and played the "How much of my language do you speak?" game for a while. Eventually we parted, the best of friends, but not until after a stern warning which I obviously didn't understand.
There was a lot of waving of guns and references to "Stop, no", driving mimes and the word "peligro" came up a few times too. Peligro? Pelicans? Pedestrians maybe. Drive carefully in case you hit a pedestrian and if you pass people like us at night we might have to shoot you, so be ready to stop. Something like that anyway and with a last "Va Biene" they waved me goodbye and I sped chastened into the night.
Ten minutes later all the flashing lights behind me suggested that somebody else wanted to talk to me, only this time they looked more or less like the police. (Or a heavily armed version thereof.) Try explaining in a foreign tongue that you have been stopped from going where you want to go because you don't have a permit, so you've come somewhere else you don't know the name of looking for a place to spend the night. But there isn't anywhere so now you're going to have to retrace your steps and try to find somewhere somewhere else. It barely makes sense in english, so I had to do a lot of improvising to get the message through in a language that I learned while selling Fish and Chips in Gibraltar. That and from songs. We got there in the end but he looked a bit mystified when I asked him if he wanted salt and vinegar, and I don't think he got the reference to La Bamba either.
While I was shaking hands with his pal, who was trying to teach me to say his name, he went off and got a torch so he could search the car. Then he started with the lecture, the same one as the other guys but this time I think I got the message. As well as pedestrians there were "bandidoes" around. Fat guys with straggly moustaches, rifles, big straw hats and crossed bandoliers over their preposterous, many-buttoned jackets. On horses of course. Well maybe not, but the mime was fairly explicit as he pointed at all my stuff and then took his pistol out of his belt, put it to his own head and made shooting noises. At this point I twigged that "peligro" meant danger and the message was: "Don't stop for anybody, they're probably bandits and they'll shoot you for the contents of your car."
Then I followed an ambulance back to town.
I eventually found an uninspiring, expensive motel and holed up for the night. Conveniently enough the floor was tiled so I got my new roller blades out and practised for a while close to the bed. Then having satisfied myself that I wasn't going to break my neck I went out and spent half an hour or so skating around the car park, much to the bemusement of the night porter, before going to bed tired and shagged out.
In the morning I followed another road signposted to Bagdad Beach and, after paying for entry, found that it was a pretty desolate spot off season. There was nobody there except me and a couple of guys painting the trees (I kid you not!) and it was too cold for the normal beach activities. So I spent another hour or so rollerblading in the car park before I got tired of dodging the holes in the road and decided to go see the officials about taking my car south.
Getting a vehicle permit involved putting down several hundred dollars as a deposit and producing the ownership papers, neither of which I had to hand, so I crossed back into the good ole US of A. The immigration guy slapped a sticker on my windscreen and directed me to an inspection bay where both me and Gloria were surrounded by burly men with lots of questions. They were probably more intimidating than the nasty corrupt men south of the border, but they lightened up after the dog gave me the all clear. In fact one of them went so far as to suggest that I pay the deposit using a credit card, but cancel it first. Smart guy, huh? He forgot to ask me about the paint on my shoes though.
I passed through 3 border patrol checkpoints that day and finally camped close to the site of the Alamo. The original is long gone and I'm not paying to visit a fucking theme park, but I did stop at the Judge Roy Bean visitor centre the next day and that's a totally different kettle of fish. Roy Bean's first adventure was a cattle drive to Mexico, when he was about 15, and he left in a hurry after killing a man. He lived in San Diego, where his brother was the first mayor, but had to bust out of jail and go on the run again after being arrested for duelling.
Eventually he found himself (divorced) in Texas, catering for the construction crews working on the new railway, and a pretty exciting life it must have been too. West of the Pecos River there was no local authority or law enforcement and the area came to have a fearsome reputation for lawlessness.
Roy Bean stepped into the breach in pretty inimitable fashion, volunteering for the job and trying his first case a week before his appointment as judge was confirmed. The courthouse doubled as a saloon, owned by the Judge, and had a sign outside reading "Ice cold beer & law west of the Pecos" Cases were usually tried on the porch with juries being picked from the bar's customers. And if anybody wanted a drink the judge would suspend proceedings long enough to go pour the drinks.
Drunkards were usually handcuffed to the trees outside until they sobered up enough to be tried and the usual punishment was a hefty fine, with all proceeds going into the judge's pocket. In fact there's even a story that he once fined a corpse $4 (all the money in it's pockets) for carrying a gun.
Amazingly enough the system worked and Judge Roy Bean managed to keep getting re-elected for 20 years. One time he even circumvented the law and staged a world title prize-fight on a sand bar on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande - building a footbridge to make crossing the river easier. What a guy! There was a movie made (Paul Newman?) which exagerates the whole story, but I don't think there's any need to do that. The truth is crazy enough.
The saloon is still there - along with a FREE visitor centre that's jam- packed with information and even has a hologram of the the Judge drunkenly idolising Lily Langtry, with whom he was obsessed. The town is also called Langtry, after one of the railway construction foremen, and Bean wrote to Lily telling her that he had named the town after her. She responded by sending a fountain, which caused Bean to reply that it wasn't much use to the town - water being the only thing they didn't drink there. If you're ever passing through that part of Teaxs go take a look.
Next stop (or possibly the one before, I can't remember) was Seminole Canyon, where I went on a guided tour of the rock shelters that were inhabited for some 6000 years. Some of the paintings on the wall are allegedly 4000-odd years old, and mighty good they are too. The lady giving the tour was telling us about meeting her husband's great grandfather. He had ridden his horse across Texas in the days before the railway, and the judge, which is pretty cool. What I like about American history is that it's recent enough to be real, especially when you're standing the desert where nothing has changed for millenia.
The next few days were spent at Big Bend Park, an area of desert and mountains with not much to do except hike, lounge around in the hot springs and contemplate your navel - all of which I did in abundance. I also swam across the Rio Grande (naked) to Mexico, had a pee, and swam back. Just because I could. I met a couple of interesting characters, including a road runner that obviously hadn't seen the Wile Coyote cartoons and actually took food out of my hands. Another was a distant relative of General Custer and he'd been touring all the battle sites at which his ancestor fought. Then the weather changed and a big wind blew up so I had to spend the night with my tent blown flat on top of me, even after moving Gloria to make a wind break and the next morning I was on my way again.
I found a couple of interesting roads, and a couple of not-so interesting ones, and eventually found myself running out of Texas and coming back into New Mexico. At this point I remembered that I have a contact address in Santa Fe, which is where I am now - although I had to spend the night at Truth or Consequences, something I won't do again in a hurry. I also had to get through another 3 border patrol checkpoints on the way, with a bag full of work-orientated stuff in the car too. They're looking for illegal mexicans, not people like me, so mostly they just flicked through my passport and then waved me on.
So now I'm in a lovely house in the hills at 7500 feet. The temperature outside overnight was 10F, which is about -12 in real measurements. There's a bit of snow on the ground outside but I'm snug and warm on the inside. Today I'm emailing, walking the dog and painting a few windows. It's not a bad life really is it? Astrid and Virignio, my hosts, are devotees of an Indian (From India, not the reservations) spiritual leader and have her photo all over the house. I have a feeling the next few days are going to be quite interesting. Look forward to the next email!
Oh well, that's all for now. Keep in touch.
chris
POSTSCRIPT: Just a quickie.
I stayed in Santa Fe for a couple of days while I caught up with my correspondence, and did my washing but I felt a little bit in the way there and decided to go back to Las Vegas. Although I've been there before that was 10 years ago, and it's changed quite a bit since then. I drove through on my way from Oregon but didn't really stop to make the most of it and thought that I should go back and have a proper look.
By the time I'd got my act together and driven back to Nevada it was pretty late so I camped at Lake Meade over night and rolled into town early the next morning. The strip (Las Vegas Boulevard) is pretty bizarre at 7 in the morning. The sunlight is very pale and the place has a sort of "washed out" look, virtually deserted with nobody around except the clean-up crews, wierdoes like me, and all the construction workers going to work. The architecture is like nothing on earth, with everything from fun rides to giant coke bottles to the Eiffel tower right there by the road. Plus the Luxor pyramid, venetian gondolas, arabian gazebos and of course all the traditional style mega- buildings like Ceasar's Palace.
At night it's all lit up and full of life, and I did have a pretty enjoyable time wandering around soaking up the atmosphere before hitting the Casinos
But that was later. After the day's adventure.
I'd been wondering where to stay. The tacky motels were $22, the youth hostel $14, and the Hilton has a midweek special - $24.95
Ordinarily I think the Hilton would have won out, but I've been travelling on my own for a while and you never meet anyone in places like that. So I check into the youth hostel and ten minutes later this guy wanders into the kitchen and says "Anyone want to fly to Death Valley today?"
!!!
His name was Boaz, and he's here more or less legally from Israel to learn to fly. Taking people on sightseeing trips is the cheapest way to log flying hours and he was trying to get a crowd together for a day out, so a little while later I find myself at the airport with an Irish girl and a Nicuraguan student pilot. Quite the international expedition really.
There was a lot of faffing around to no real purpose, but around midday we eventually climbed into a ratty old Cessna 172 and pressed "start".
Nothing happened. Try again. Still nothing, so Boaz runs off to get someone to give us a jumpstart while we sit sweltering in the cabin. Eventually this dude shows up and decides that the easiest thing to do is just swing the propeller until the engine fires, then pull his hand out of the way bloody quick so it doesn't get chopped off by the prop.
Then we find that we can't radio the tower to get permission to move so more faffing ensues until that problem is fixed, and eventually we get on our way.
Our student pilot got us into the sky OK and we headed off to the northwest, taking care to keep to the left of the highway. (To the right is a restricted area, believed to be the home of Area 51 - the place where NASA and the Air Force keep all their captured alien spacecraft.) We had to divert from our intended route as the military had decided to go parachuting en-masse in the desert, and ended up skirting Mt Shasta. (12000 feet) All these names of places that I've heard of in the past are slowly starting to have some meaning as I stumble across them in my travels.
We trundled along at over 9000 feet for an hour or so and watched the desert change - from barren rocks, to really barren rocks piled up into mountains, to really really barren rocks and salt flats. The colours were incredible and the sky a clear blue, although at that height it was a bit chilly.
Furnace Creek airport, at 211 feet below sea level, is the lowest airfield in the USA and generally the warmest. After dropping over 9000 feet we landed at a deserted, and silent, airfield and I automatically took off my woolly jumper while Boaz went and found a 'phone.
Golf courses are rife in the USA and inevitably there's one in Death Valley. They sent a van down to pick us up and take us to their bar for lunch, although the driver offered to take us to an indoor restaurant if we thought that that would be too cold for us. Cold? Death Valley? I think not, but by the time the food actually arrived I was actually feeling a bit nippy. The barman was wearing a thick jacket, as was everybody else who wasn't in direct sunlight so I guess I shouldn't have left my woolly in the Cessna should I?
Anyway we made our choices from the 5 items on the menu (3 of them were burgers) and sat looking at the mountains and manicured lawns while Manuel explained to sceptical Irish ears why it was OK for men to sleep around but not for women. Boaz and I hastily moved out of the line of fire but Anna Marie restrained herself admirably and we talked about the Coyote that was stalking the half-tame quail instead. I hope you're insanely jealous.
After lunch we flew along Death Valley and then turned back to Las Vegas, fighting our way over the mountains to the south of Mt Shasta and getting back at sunset. All in all an utterly splendid day out and it only cost $35 each. Not half bad really, I thought.
And that's pretty much that. I'm going to hang around here for a day or two more and then head for the California coast. If there's no work to be had by the sea then I'll probably have to come back here - there's plenty of work, although it's not too well paid.
ttfn, and keep those emails coming.
chris
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