Travels with Alex, part 1

It's 1am, I'm in Holbrook Arizona, and I'm not happy. For starters, I'm at the Best Western instead of the Wig Wam Hotel. Also, I should be in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The day started at 4am, with less than six hours of sleep. I got Dawn to the airport, where they told us her flight may be cancelled because of weather. Since our highly coordinated plan required Dawn to be in Pennsylvania tomorrow for the electricians, this was a problem. Still, there wasn't anything I could do about the weather, so I left Dawn at the airport and got ready for my drive.

Given that the movers were there yesterday, I couldn't believe how much stuff was left, including an entire cupboard we had both overlooked. It took me four hours to move the remaining stuff into the garage, which was really depressing, because I know I'll be back in LA in a couple of weeks and I'll need to go through it all: Dozens of issues of This Old House magazine, hundreds of videocassettes, a box of work-related paperwork, and everything else I was too cheap to ship and too busy to sort through. (I did ship my father's entire record collection -- about five boxes -- strictly for sentimental reasons.)

The kicker, though, was the pile of dirt on the upstairs deck. We took a large planter that our neighbor had made for us, and the movers had just emptied it onto the deck! I found a garbage bag and borrowed a shovel and cleaned up the plants and soil as best I could, but then discovered that the garbage bag was too heavy to lift! And then I punctured it, so dirt was spilling everywhere. I couldn't carry that through the house, so I just tossed the bag off the deck and watched it fall two stories to its death below. That was kind of fun.

I packed the convertible with what I could, which consisted of 40 CDs, a cooler with a can of mandarin oranges and a jar of fig spread, three suitcases, towels and blankets, my laptop, my camera, a four-foot sandblasted tree trunk, and the reason for this whole miserable trip: Alex, our iguana, who can't fly because iguanas can't pressurize their eardrums. She was crammed into a small cat carrier, and was not happy about it. (And believe me, you can tell when an iguana is not happy.)

I finally got on the road at 12:30pm, about four hours later than I wanted, and I hadn't gotten two blocks from the house when Dawn called--she was in Pennsylvania. I told her I hated her, and I should be there in four days.

We were on the road for about an hour when Alex had an 'accident.' Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that before you take your pet on a four day car ride, you probably want to make sure they go to the bathroom first. I am not a genius. So instead I spent 15 minutes driving around Chino looking for a gas station that provided water (an increasingly rare beast) and cleaning out her cat carrier. Meanwhile, I let her run around in the car, and she managed to attract quite an audience. If I'd stuck around longer, she might have made the local news--it didn't look like anything more interesting ever happened in Chino.

Around 5:30pm, my odometer was tantalizingly close to 100,000 miles, so I pulled off the freeway in the middle of the Mojave Desert and found a nice secluded road to take a photo of the dashboard with a wonderful background of some cacti and a sunlit mesa. Unfortunately, the odometer was not quite 100,000, so I spent five minutes doing donuts on the road. In the middle of the Mojave Desert. In a secluded area. If police saw me, breathalyzers would have been involved.

A couple of hours later, I was crossing the Arizona border. For some reason, I always like to get a picture of me and the "Welcome to..." sign. Unfortunately, they only put those signs on the freeways, so this always involves some combination of parking the car illegally, balancing the camera on the car, hitting the timer button and running like a fool to the sign, smiling for a second, then running like a fool back to the car. Today had the added excitement of running to the sign and turning around just in time to watch the camera slide off the car and take a two-foot fall onto the asphalt. The camera survived but the lens did not, so now all remaining photos will be using the long telephoto lens.

At 10:30pm, in the middle of Arizona, miles from anywhere, my "check coolant" light came on. Last week I paid to have the cooling system flushed, so I was a little irked about that -- after all, I'm not taking the car back -- but mostly I was just terrified that my "check coolant" light was on at 10:30pm in the middle of Arizona, miles from anywhere. I searched again for a gas station that offered water (this time in vain) but did find a store that sold coolant, so now I have a gallon jug of coolant stuffed in the trunk as well.

At midnight, it was obvious I was not making it to Las Cruces, so I changed my plans and headed for Holbrook, which is on Route 66 right by the Petrified Forest. Dawn and I had been here once before, years ago, when we accidentally discovered the Wig Wam Hotel -- cheap, clean, and in a giant cement teepee -- so I knew I had to stay there. Unfortunately, they were closed, which is why I ended up at the Best Western motel.

I checked in, then snuck Alex into the room. When I went for my suitcase, though, I realized that the four-foot sandblasted tree trunk looked awfully suspicious right next to the Petrified Forest. There are federal laws forbidding the collection of any materials from the forest, and I obviously didn't have any proof of ownership of this tree trunk. I thought about sneaking the trunk into the room as well, but that would look even more suspicious, so I finally just covered it up with my jacket. It actually looks pretty good--with a hat, I could use the carpool lane.

So I'm 600 miles into my 2600 mile journey. I'm averaging 24.5 miles per gallon, and 50 miles per hour. I have four alarm clocks set for 6am, and I am hoping that tomorrow I will have fewer issues and will actually make some good time through Gallup, Amarillo, and Oklahoma City. If you're anywhere along I-40, come out and wave when I pass by. Just look for the green convertible that smells kind of funny and has a sandblasted tree trunk in the passenger seat.

P.S. I didn't see a single firework. :-(