On the road (day 1)...
Aug. 9th, 2001 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI got up bright and early at 5:15 am on Tuesday and was all set to get on the road by the time Galina and I went to open the store. I was going along to put the daily postal report to bed and to spend a little time introducing the new hire, Caleb, to the store. Drew was going to come in at 9 am, at which point I would take off and he would take over the training.
The report got done, along with some other things, but for some reason, the new hire didn't show up. Drew came, and I left. However, before leaving town, I dropped by a few places to take care of some outstanding bills. By the time I had done all that and filled up the gas tank, it was 10:15 am, at which time I pulled in to the parking lot of the Junction Restaurant, which lies a scant couple of hundred yards from the intersection of highways 160 and 84. My trek would start when I turned down 84 for the long trip to Houston.
The service at the Junction was abysmally slow, but the food was good. I finally got on the road a few minutes past 11 am, provisioned with some fruit, a few bottles of lemonade, and a couple of sandwiches. I've found that if I refrain from eating full meals on the road, I am less likely to be overcome by the desire to sleep. This is a good thing.
The day's drive was fairly uneventful. The car is poorly equipped for entertainment. There's an AM/FM radio, and that's it. Reception in the mountains was pretty poor, and it wasn't until I was nearly to Santa Fe that I could get anything decent on the FM bands.
The weather around me was rainy, but I lucked out, and didn't get rained on until after I'd turned off of I-40 at Santa Rosa, headed for Ft. Sumner (the site of Billy the Kid's grave..whoo-whoo), and then again between Ft. Sumner and Clovis. The classical station out of Santa Fe fed me Schubert's Eighth Symphony (the "Unfinished"), which made the drive more pleasant.
Once I passed Ft. Sumner, I put on the earphones to listen to some MP3's that I'd put on a flash card. The selections included "Wild Thing," by the Troggs, Barber's "Adagio for Strings," and "Sixteen Tons," by Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Barber's adagio affects me differently almost every time I hear it. Sometimes I feel exultant; other times, I want to cry. It's that kind of piece. For that reason, I can listen to it over and over again and never be bored.
I hit the Texas-New Mexico border around 5:15 pm, Mountain Time, entering Texas at the thriving metropolis of Texico. I immediately started looking for a place to get the car inspected, as its inspection sticker had expired a long time ago, and it's really hard to get a Texas inspection in Colorado.
No dice. The time in Texico was already 6:15 pm (Central Time) when I entered the state, and although there was plenty of daylight left, most businesses were closed. I drove on, passing through Lubbock and trying to make it to the truck stop at Tye before turning in for the night.
As I tuned around the radio dial, I found mostly C&W stations, and though I'm not a fan, I decided to dwell on one particularly strong signal and listen for a while.
There was this one song that struck me as curious. It concerns a young man who decides to go to Mexico for a good time. His Spanish is limited to the phrase "una mas cerveza, por favor, senorita" (which, my possible spelling errors notwithstanding, I believe means: "another beer, please, miss").
This vocabulary stands him in good stead in the first stanza, when he's in a bar, but in the next two stanzas, it becomes clear that this phrase has limited application. In stanza two, he meets a girl, but can't talk to her (except for "una mas cerveza..."), so she dumps him. In stanza three, he drives to the beach, gets drunk, ends up face down in the sand, can't find his truck when he wakes up, and the locals can't help him, again owing to his rather limited vocabulary.
Why on earth (aside from having a song to sing) would he then conclude that "una mas cerveza..." was perfectly adequate for his needs? Ye gods.
As I was on the outbound side of Lubbock, I tuned the classical station and was surprised to hear... Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Again. This time, however, I passed out of range before the performance was complete. I wondered... was this a sign?
I finally got to Tye, filled up the tank, and then pondered whether to check in at a motel or try to go on through the night. Houston was still 500 miles off, and I knew that if I did not turn in somewhere, the night would consist of catnaps stolen at intervals between sleepy stints of driving. At that moment, an exit came up that was festooned with billboards from various motels advertising cheap rates. I decided to stop at a conveniently placed Motel 6, checked in, locked the car, and dragged my butt up to my room. Once there, I ate a PowerBar that had been hiding in my toilet kit, scanned the estabshment's limited TV selections, showered, and went to sleep.
Cheers...
The report got done, along with some other things, but for some reason, the new hire didn't show up. Drew came, and I left. However, before leaving town, I dropped by a few places to take care of some outstanding bills. By the time I had done all that and filled up the gas tank, it was 10:15 am, at which time I pulled in to the parking lot of the Junction Restaurant, which lies a scant couple of hundred yards from the intersection of highways 160 and 84. My trek would start when I turned down 84 for the long trip to Houston.
The service at the Junction was abysmally slow, but the food was good. I finally got on the road a few minutes past 11 am, provisioned with some fruit, a few bottles of lemonade, and a couple of sandwiches. I've found that if I refrain from eating full meals on the road, I am less likely to be overcome by the desire to sleep. This is a good thing.
The day's drive was fairly uneventful. The car is poorly equipped for entertainment. There's an AM/FM radio, and that's it. Reception in the mountains was pretty poor, and it wasn't until I was nearly to Santa Fe that I could get anything decent on the FM bands.
The weather around me was rainy, but I lucked out, and didn't get rained on until after I'd turned off of I-40 at Santa Rosa, headed for Ft. Sumner (the site of Billy the Kid's grave..whoo-whoo), and then again between Ft. Sumner and Clovis. The classical station out of Santa Fe fed me Schubert's Eighth Symphony (the "Unfinished"), which made the drive more pleasant.
Once I passed Ft. Sumner, I put on the earphones to listen to some MP3's that I'd put on a flash card. The selections included "Wild Thing," by the Troggs, Barber's "Adagio for Strings," and "Sixteen Tons," by Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Barber's adagio affects me differently almost every time I hear it. Sometimes I feel exultant; other times, I want to cry. It's that kind of piece. For that reason, I can listen to it over and over again and never be bored.
I hit the Texas-New Mexico border around 5:15 pm, Mountain Time, entering Texas at the thriving metropolis of Texico. I immediately started looking for a place to get the car inspected, as its inspection sticker had expired a long time ago, and it's really hard to get a Texas inspection in Colorado.
No dice. The time in Texico was already 6:15 pm (Central Time) when I entered the state, and although there was plenty of daylight left, most businesses were closed. I drove on, passing through Lubbock and trying to make it to the truck stop at Tye before turning in for the night.
As I tuned around the radio dial, I found mostly C&W stations, and though I'm not a fan, I decided to dwell on one particularly strong signal and listen for a while.
There was this one song that struck me as curious. It concerns a young man who decides to go to Mexico for a good time. His Spanish is limited to the phrase "una mas cerveza, por favor, senorita" (which, my possible spelling errors notwithstanding, I believe means: "another beer, please, miss").
This vocabulary stands him in good stead in the first stanza, when he's in a bar, but in the next two stanzas, it becomes clear that this phrase has limited application. In stanza two, he meets a girl, but can't talk to her (except for "una mas cerveza..."), so she dumps him. In stanza three, he drives to the beach, gets drunk, ends up face down in the sand, can't find his truck when he wakes up, and the locals can't help him, again owing to his rather limited vocabulary.
Why on earth (aside from having a song to sing) would he then conclude that "una mas cerveza..." was perfectly adequate for his needs? Ye gods.
As I was on the outbound side of Lubbock, I tuned the classical station and was surprised to hear... Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Again. This time, however, I passed out of range before the performance was complete. I wondered... was this a sign?
I finally got to Tye, filled up the tank, and then pondered whether to check in at a motel or try to go on through the night. Houston was still 500 miles off, and I knew that if I did not turn in somewhere, the night would consist of catnaps stolen at intervals between sleepy stints of driving. At that moment, an exit came up that was festooned with billboards from various motels advertising cheap rates. I decided to stop at a conveniently placed Motel 6, checked in, locked the car, and dragged my butt up to my room. Once there, I ate a PowerBar that had been hiding in my toilet kit, scanned the estabshment's limited TV selections, showered, and went to sleep.
Cheers...
