Composition From A Moving Vehicle: "State Prizes and Signatures" Episode

This is a piece post because right now we're on the road and the batteries in the DS are dead. It's too dark to take pictures (good ones, anyway), and I have/had a splinter in my finger that keeps me from knitting. It feels gone, so if I'm not driving when I finish typing or run out of laptop juice, I may go back to that.

It's 3000 words long, but Reagan says that the people who matter will read the whole thing.

ooo, an owl just flew in front of us. Big one, too.

Question: if owls are supposed to be creatures of the night, why are so many of them white or light brown?

would they otherwise have a hard time hiding during the day?

As we drive, our standards for civilization change. I know it comes from a suburb-centric California viewpoint, but we need something to comment on as we drive.

In New Mexico, we did a long stint where there were no towns to speak of. When we ran into a place with a Home Depot, one of us said "Wow! a real town!".

Here in Texas, the standard is higher (lower?). There are a few Home Depots, but we knew we were in a "cali-style" suburb when there was an Office Depot.

For some reason, these big chain stores are comforts. The familiarity, the predicability are what stabilize us. In a HUGE Wal-Mart somewhere in Texas (I don't remember the town name) I knew exactly where in the store to look for the hand sanitizer I needed. While in that department, i met a lady looking for tweezers. She was looking near the hand soap. I said, "Look in the cosmetics department". Granted, I didn't know where cosmetics are in that store, but it was bound to be in the same general area as my home Wal-Marts, yes?

One thing that is NOT familiar is how they set up roads in these parts. I don't know if it's because they have so much room to work with or what, but all these business loops and highways get my brain rattled. Once today we got off on the wrong track by about three highways.

Proof of concept: someone just turned the wrong way down a one way street in front of us. It's about 9:30, but that's no excuse for crazy driving!

Overall, I like Texas the best of the non CA states we've been through. Nobody wins in the Road Quality category, but New Mexico and Texas both are pretty poorly off. Texas for convoluted interchanges, New Mexico for the strange "left lane for passing only" rule. It's so creepy to be driving on a 2 lane (each direction) road and NOBODY is driving in the "fast" lane. I'm not comfortable with the long string of cars in the right lane. The highway is empty and you can go as fast as you consider reasonable, but EVERYONE in one lane? *shiver*

Arizona pretty well wins for landscaping, although New Mexico was good for some of it. Texas is flat. It's hard to get a good variety of pictures from the car when it's all flat.

But what Texas really has going for it is the personality. Reagan said once that Texas is an excellent parody of itself. And it's true. As though everyone knows the silly ideas that tourists have about Texas and ham it up, especially in signs and business titles. (We haven't met many people who don't work in restaurants/hotels/gas stations.)

Arizona may have been more beautiful, but Texas has a better sense of humor. And it's friendly. The lady that rung us up at Wal Mart carried on the conversation even as we had our bag in hand, and she was ringing up the next guy. One texan on a porch waved to us as we drove by.

Another dumb Texas driver moment: We're going about 70, and mr. Turning-onto-our -road waits until we're about 40 yards away to make the right-turn into (what is to us) the oncoming traffic lane. Why not wait 10 seconds more and make us NOT worry that you're going to swing too wide?

Texas, you may be big,and we may have driven a hell of a long way in you, but were soon to be OUT of this joint. Texarkana is only 10 miles away!

I'm proud that our only full-day state was Arizona, and that wasn't even our fault. (Stupid sun, setting so early).

Intermission on Reagan's behalf: A great moment on our trip was seeing cowboys and indians sitting together in a hotel lobby watching a TV show on... cowboys and Indians. \m/

Yeah.. Texas. I'd like to come back here. I may find that other Southern states are as (or more) friendly, but this one has lots of "antique" stores. And lots of kitch. It'd be like a field trip. Fly to Dallas/FW (or Austin), rent a car, drive some smaller roads for a while (hop some fences, take some pictures), spend a night, then drive back and fly home. Some towns have awesome amounts of broken-down-ness. It's kinda sad for the people who live here, though.

Speaking of "Sad for the people who live here", Four corners was quite disappointing. I'm glad we went, but it's a LOT lower rent than I expected. We only spent 9 dollars (three each for entrance, three for frybread). But there's no way to leave there happy for the state of Four Corners.

See, the whole "monument" is on Navajo Nation lands, and the Navajo don't have the funds to do a tourist attraction the way that I'm accustomed to. (Yes, this is Annie-centric, but I don't know enough to speak for the nation or the world). If I was in charge of things, the Visitors Center would be a palace to geography, not just a single rack of free brochres and an old Navajo lady working on sand paintings.

It feels hypocritical, almost, for the Navajo, a naturalistic peoples, to be the ones overseeing a point on the map that's pure bureaucratic theory. Totally artificial. Four Corners should either be used to celebrate that theory, or tell local stories in a dynamic, dioramic way.

The two paragraphs above and the four paragraphs below blur the line between Tuesday and Wednesday. When you get to talk of I-20, that's pure Wednesday. And, frankly, so is this.

Reaganism of the moment: "It's amazing how everything shuts down so early. They need more Asians."

Texasism of the moment: Swampoodle Creek

Reaganniesm of the Texas: "There are a lot of cemetaries" "Well, there are a lot of dead people. It's Texas, after all." (guess who said what. =P )

I was just talking to R about how easy it would be to do a book or serial comic of the one/two liners we play off each other, like the Reagannieism above. Those happen pretty often when we're together.

Sometimes, however, we don't need to make the jokes, the jokes just happen. Between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham the I-20 was terribly jammed with traffic. Two lanes wide, it took us an hour to travel five mines. It's possible we were caught in all that for 100 minutes before we saw signs of what all may be about. But before that happened, the road took us through a nice forested area that also had a wide, wooded median between the directions of traffic. Occasinally cars in the left lane would veer a few feet off the road to look ahead, trying to see past the semi we were behind. One car in particular took itself farther off the main road, a full two car-widths away from traffic. We were two cars behind and not going anywhere fast.

At first when the driver got out, I thought she was switching with her passenger. Reagan and I were considering doing that. Instead, the lady took off in the direction of the trees, with something balled up in one of her hands.

We had already been stuck in traffic for an hour at that point. Anybody have any uncertainties about what the lady in the bright pink scrubs was doing?

Later another... "interesting"... thing happened on that I-20. This taught me that Alabama drivers need to be more like California drivers. We were in traffic for an hour and a half in an area where there were very few exits (so the congestion couldn't be blamed by new automovehicles). Finally, it looked like a light at the end of the tunnel, A reason for all the madness that made us miss the sunset. (Due to seeing two police cars (one unmarked, but with lights) drive past on the right shoulder, we thought there WAS a legit reason for the craziness.) There it was. A sign proclaimed that "they" were doing roadwork and that the right lane would be closed 1 mile ahead. There was one of the big blinking arrow signs, so it looked very official.

Over the next mile, everyone in the right lane merged left as signs continued to say that the right lane would be closing soon. After a predictable distance (about a mile), there was.... nothing. Without passing roadwork, it all returned to normal. High speeds, space between cars, rapid progress down the roadway.

Thus, Alabama drivers are too trusting of warning signs. In CA, people wait until the cones and bulldozers force them to merge before moving over.

Reagan theorized that the whole thing was a Dharma Initiative experiment.

Other creepy and LOST-like things that happened over the past couple days: Right after we drove into Arkansas (and it was practically a sudden change from Texas non-scenery to trees), we were confronted by two ghosts hanging out in the road, waiting to welcome travelers. Honestly, two dense sweeps of fog came into view so suddenly I jumped. Some accounts may say that I yelped, but I deny that in most company. The fog in Arkansas was cool, even after we saw the fog factory.

Reagannieism of Arkansas:
"What's Kansas's largest export?"
"Canned ass?"
"No! Canned Sass! You know who their biggest rival is?"
"Our-Canned-Sass (Arkansas)?"
"No! You!"

I've done a running mental theme of "Signs of Civilization" throughout our drive, and I need to update it for the latest states.

Arkansas: None! Instead, Arkansas had Signs of Life. The state was dark and quiet when we drove through, but it was a two lane road with no divider (usually), and lots of wilderness between tiny towns. By the side of the road we saw occasional deer, a grip of dogs (in one place, even), and a couple wild canines. After we switched off, I almost hit a coyote. :( But I did slow down fast enough and he moved.

Mississippi: Starbucks. Some people may argue that it's a sign of the downfall in our society, and civilization has to do with culture (at least the game does!), and Starbucks detracts from that... but I like some of their specialty drinks and desserts. So Starbucks. And 1.99/gallon gas. And we GOT SOME.

Alabama: Traffic. This was the first state in which we hit MAJOR traffic snarls. There was one in New Mexico, but it was overwith pretty fast.

Georgia: W Hotel and Trader Joes in Atlanta. We only know these by reputation (for now), but I really don't think I have to defend my new home state. I've already peed here!

I got distracted. I was talking about creepy things. Arkansas was pretty big in that area. I did some driving there (and also over the Mississippi River). It was dark and foggy, the road was small and winding, and the most of the other vehicles on the road were big trucks. It's a had-to-be-there kind of argument.

But nobody can deny that our motel room was haunted. First of all, it made me laugh at Family Guy, which is an anomaly in itself. This was room 208 at the Days Inn in Greenville, MS, in case any of you want to check out my story. First, Reagan spotted our room number on the north side of the building. We parked, I walked up, tried the key. It didn't work. I looked at the number on the door and ... it wasn't 208 anymore.

We pinned it down on the other side of the motel (south side). The first thing I noticed was that the number was painted on the door instead of in raised metallic numbers. Also, the font was way different. ooooOOOooooo!

Inside, the room was big. Waaay big. Bigger than any hotel we had stayed in thus far. King bed, chair, desk, chairs, dresser, hidden fridge, closet with mirrored (oooOOOOoooo) doors. It was big, and it was swanky.

While poking around and checking out the temp digs, I found a plaque that said that the price for all Days Inn rooms is supposed to be 125/night, all seasons. Reagan and I paid less than half that. ooooOOOoooo! Why were they so eager to let us stay for much less than the listed rate?!

Also, while examining the sink area, one of the panels fronting the sink's counter fell off and smashed my finger. It hurt, but through the pain, I saw that there was a large empty space beneath the sink. Under normal circumstances, anything put there would be locked away from view. Nobody would or COULD look at what was put under the sink. It was dark I didn't look too close.

I just propped up the panel that fell off and ran to hide under the covers.

Did I mention that I woke up this morning covered in sweat?
Did I mention that the door once swung open without either of us touching it?

dun dun DUNNNNN

Jump to your own conclusions.

TAG: travel