Ahoy, Houston! (part I)
Feb. 2nd, 2002 02:13 pmI finally got on the road about ten after noon on Thursday. It turned out the gal who delivers the Wall Street Journal was right: it had stopped snowing by the time I left, but the roads were very icy.
The ice was on-again, off-again, here-again, gone-again all the way down past Santa Fe. I decided to stop at the intersection of I-40 and route 285, at a place called Clines Corners, to refill my gas tank and buy replacement batteries for my MP3 player.
The parking lot was, basically, solid ice. As I filled the gas tank, I kept in mind the weather map I'd seen that morning, showing a band of freezing rain, ice, and snow that stretched from what looked like the heart of Oklahoma up to Vermont. On that basis, I decided to not take I-40 eastbound (which would take me to Santa Rosa, where I would exit south toward Ft. Sumner and so on, or past Santa Rosa all the way to Amarillo, after which I'd take 287 down toward Dallas and Ft. Worth). I turned back on the road and headed south on 285. Destination: Roswell.
The idea was to get as far south as I could, as quickly as I could. As I rolled down 285, I noted that the road was still wet in places. Once the sun went down, this water would freeze easily, forming an invisible hazard known as "black ice." As I drove, I wondered what kind of town Roswell is.
Roswell is known to people the world over for one thing: the so-called "Roswell Incident" that is said to have occurred in the late 40s (if memory serves), when an alien spacecraft crash landed near the town. Since then, many books, articles, movies, and so on have been dedicated to uncovering the truth about what really happened.
True or not, I wondered, as I tooled down the road, whether Roswellians were anything like the inhabitants of Ft. Sumner, who have liberally plastered the roadsides within 100 miles of their town (it seems) with billboards, placards, and banners inviting one and all to come see the grave of Billy the Kid, which is located in their town. Are there, I wondered, billboards enticing people to visit various UFO-related businesses?
As it turned out, I got to Roswell well after dark. If there are any such billboards, I missed them. If there are any UFO-related businesses on 285 in the northern part of town, I missed them.
I did not miss the Motel 6, where I checked in with Sasha to spend the night. When I went out a few minutes later to go find something to eat, I ended up in a place called "Hastings," described as a discount book-movie-video store.
Silly, gullible me. The store had apparently given up the pretense of discounting their prices, and in fact had applied labels with a price a nickel higher than SRP, so they could "discount" it to the SRP. I bought some magazines and split.
Besides being a pet-friendly outfit, Motel 6 offers guests HBO in the rooms (yeah, I know... whoo-whoo!). I allowed myself to watch something called Flash Gordon on the SciFi channel. The only notable thing about this movie (besides the obvious attempt at high camp, which failed miserably, leaving the poor thing in the middle of the highway, facing high-speed, oncoming headlights, but I digress...), was the appearance of ... (drum roll, please) ... Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin.
I'd have thought that anyone associated with this movie would have been banned from working in Hollywood again, but it turned out a future James Bond was among the pretty, vapid (or was that "pretty vapid") performers on the big ol' silver screen.
I may be overly critical of the movie... naaaahhhh! It's a stinkeroo, all right. It's just that I remember seeing the original Flash Gordon (with Buster Crabbe, if memory serves), serialized, broadcast on television back when I was a kid. Don't ask me why, but that version just didn't seem as schlocky as the remake I saw in Roswell.
Upon learning that Ming's plans to destroy the earth had been foiled, I decided to go ahead and turn in. The morrow (yesterday, as I write this) was still to come.
Cheers...
The ice was on-again, off-again, here-again, gone-again all the way down past Santa Fe. I decided to stop at the intersection of I-40 and route 285, at a place called Clines Corners, to refill my gas tank and buy replacement batteries for my MP3 player.
The parking lot was, basically, solid ice. As I filled the gas tank, I kept in mind the weather map I'd seen that morning, showing a band of freezing rain, ice, and snow that stretched from what looked like the heart of Oklahoma up to Vermont. On that basis, I decided to not take I-40 eastbound (which would take me to Santa Rosa, where I would exit south toward Ft. Sumner and so on, or past Santa Rosa all the way to Amarillo, after which I'd take 287 down toward Dallas and Ft. Worth). I turned back on the road and headed south on 285. Destination: Roswell.
The idea was to get as far south as I could, as quickly as I could. As I rolled down 285, I noted that the road was still wet in places. Once the sun went down, this water would freeze easily, forming an invisible hazard known as "black ice." As I drove, I wondered what kind of town Roswell is.
Roswell is known to people the world over for one thing: the so-called "Roswell Incident" that is said to have occurred in the late 40s (if memory serves), when an alien spacecraft crash landed near the town. Since then, many books, articles, movies, and so on have been dedicated to uncovering the truth about what really happened.
True or not, I wondered, as I tooled down the road, whether Roswellians were anything like the inhabitants of Ft. Sumner, who have liberally plastered the roadsides within 100 miles of their town (it seems) with billboards, placards, and banners inviting one and all to come see the grave of Billy the Kid, which is located in their town. Are there, I wondered, billboards enticing people to visit various UFO-related businesses?
As it turned out, I got to Roswell well after dark. If there are any such billboards, I missed them. If there are any UFO-related businesses on 285 in the northern part of town, I missed them.
I did not miss the Motel 6, where I checked in with Sasha to spend the night. When I went out a few minutes later to go find something to eat, I ended up in a place called "Hastings," described as a discount book-movie-video store.
Silly, gullible me. The store had apparently given up the pretense of discounting their prices, and in fact had applied labels with a price a nickel higher than SRP, so they could "discount" it to the SRP. I bought some magazines and split.
Besides being a pet-friendly outfit, Motel 6 offers guests HBO in the rooms (yeah, I know... whoo-whoo!). I allowed myself to watch something called Flash Gordon on the SciFi channel. The only notable thing about this movie (besides the obvious attempt at high camp, which failed miserably, leaving the poor thing in the middle of the highway, facing high-speed, oncoming headlights, but I digress...), was the appearance of ... (drum roll, please) ... Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin.
I'd have thought that anyone associated with this movie would have been banned from working in Hollywood again, but it turned out a future James Bond was among the pretty, vapid (or was that "pretty vapid") performers on the big ol' silver screen.
I may be overly critical of the movie... naaaahhhh! It's a stinkeroo, all right. It's just that I remember seeing the original Flash Gordon (with Buster Crabbe, if memory serves), serialized, broadcast on television back when I was a kid. Don't ask me why, but that version just didn't seem as schlocky as the remake I saw in Roswell.
Upon learning that Ming's plans to destroy the earth had been foiled, I decided to go ahead and turn in. The morrow (yesterday, as I write this) was still to come.
Cheers...