Archive for the ‘Wanderings’ Category

Sorry I haven’t written you sooner, but I didn’t have your e-mail address,
and Berck isn’t very good about granting requests for information.  I’m
finally writing from HIS computer… solving that problem.  I’m actually
typing in the car on our way to Knoxville.  Otherwise, it seems like I
arrive just in time to leave for yet another airport and return in time to
go back home, leaving little time for sitting down at his computer in
between.  (When I do, he forcibly removes me from his desk chair so he can
read what the latest news from the cult of small Mazda convertibles has to
say.)

Thank you for the birthday card and the picture.  I’d been admiring Jim’s
copy sitting on his bookcase in the living room.

One of these days we’ll come see you.  I understand you’re moving soon
finally?  Maybe we can arrange to come down during the process to get in the
way… and possibly help move heavy objects.

My uncle, who lives in Atlanta, is moving down to Mobile next week, so most
of my family will be shuttling back and forth over Easter getting him
resituated.  I’ve enlisted Berck’s aid, though I think I overheard him
conspiring with Crew Scheduling to make sure he’s on a looong trip that
weekend.

I had hurried up to Atlanta this week so that Berck and I could take
advantage of the miracle of four days off in a row (it must have been in
exchange for working Easter weekend, right), but both of us were still
exhausted from our whirlwind tour of Chile.  In addition, in the interrum,
Berck had been worked to the limit, and I’d been fighting a headache and a
cold while trying to get done all of the things I had three days to do.  The
only flights with space available were to places like Akron, so instead of
waking up early on Tuesday morning and heading to the airport, we watched
videos.  But we had to go SOMEWHERE, so here we are on the way to
Knoxville… by car and not plane, no less.

…Which is why we have the computer with us.  By the magic of GPS
technology, we know exactly where we are… longitude, lattitude, AND
altitude.  Berck keeps interrupting my composition by asking how high we
are.  I swear, if it were an option, he’d put an altimeter on his dashboard.
I’m not sure why it’s so necessary to find our exact location… we’re
taking I-75 the whole way there (we got a late start and want to get there
politely before dinner).

It would have been nice to have such locating devices in Chile.  I knew
where we were the whole time (except for a brief period heading the wrong
way around Santiago in the dark before I recognized a giant beer can we’d
passed when we took a wrong turn the day we arrived), but I didn’t always
know how to get to where we were going.  Berck may testify differently, but
he had the steering wheel; I had the map.

We drove the stew out of that little Hyundai.  I think the guy who rented it
to us thought we were going to the beach.  Oh no.  We were headed for the
Andes.  Next time we go, we’ll rent a Jeep.

Flying around, visiting places I’ve always dreamed of going… I’m living
out my fantasy.  Now I’ve about run out of places to see (within this
hemisphere or 200$, whichever comes first).  I’m also running out of money.
Going to Knoxville means Berck gets to pay for transportation, and no hotel,
hostel, camping, or food costs.  Chile was a little expensive, so I’m not
complaining about our present destination.

Well, we are almost there, and Berck wants to consult the Street Atlas
software, so I’ll bring this to a close.

“Please push the button…”  Green.  “Thank you.”

Successfully using my limited Spanish (and the phrase list in the back of
the guidebook) to find the bus station across from the airport (bus ticket =
$4, taxi fare = $38).

When she realized we didn’t understand much Spanish, the woman at the 100%
Mexicana restaurant reading the menu to us very slowly, her finger pointing
to every word.

Amazing mole.

Checking into a hotel that cost $13 a night.

Eating chicken covered in a sauce of tomatoes, green olives, capers, and
almonds, which all amazingly balanced each other out…then biting into the
pepper resting atop it all, only to come to the painful conclusion two
seconds later that it was an habenaria.

Neal Negro cervesa.

Huevos rancheros.

Mexican Coke.

Bandwagon.

The view from the top of a Mayan pyramid across the impossibly flat Yucatan.

Popcorn topped with…picante sauce?

Hard-boiled egg enchiladas and sausage that tasted great but looked like
shit.

Huevos rancheros.

Stumbling into a procession of white-dressed mothers and daughters carrying
banners, following a couple of men shooting off homemade fireworks as they
walked and followed by a ragtag band playing.

Standing up and announcing, “This is just a shuttle bus to the real bus,” to
the relief of a gaggle of tourists.

A room with A/C and a clean bathroom floor at last!

Our waiter placing some green sauce on our table, glancing us in the eye,
and pronouncing, “Picante.”

Habenaria sauce – seventy cents a bottle.

Amazingly smooth tequila.

Guacamole that actually tasted good.

Watching a tower of waiters pour flaming liquid from one pitcher to another
to another before finally missing a glass and catching the tablecloth on
fire.

Paying a taxi driver the same amount to get to the airport as a bus ticket
costs.

I’m at Dad’s house in Atlanta (Well, Douglasville).

I’ve been unable to get a job, and, as a result, am going to be with Dad until he leaves for Birmingham on Monday 8 August, at which point I’ll leave for Knoxville and return to Douglasville on Friday 11 August. I shall leave Douglasville on Monday 14 August for Dallas.

These “plans” are subject to change at any point (by either my capricious self or any of the parties mentioned above), and may not be relied upon for anything other than a device to make you stop worrying.

I’ll be checking email, so respond if you like. If you are simply so worried that this email hasn’t done any good, (e.g., Mom), then feel free to call me here at 770.489.3352. I suppose you could call for any other reason as well, since you’ll be paying for it.

I passed the strangest thing on I-65 about 100 miles south of Montgomery today. I had the top down, cruise control set, my music playing, and was, in general, doing my best, even if somewhat unsuccessfully, to enjoy the drive, which was doing its best to be entirely uneventful. Few things exciting happen on I-65 between Mobile and Montgomery, AL. The road is boring and patrolled. The weather wasn’t too terribly sunny because of several Mobileish clouds covering the southern Alabama sky. These clouds were waiting for the Mobile Afternoon to come around so they could pour rain for a few hours, then mysteriously disappear, I’m sure. I was heading north, though, and figured I would get far enough by the time the afternoon rolled around that I wouldn’t get too wet. I was wrong. This happens occasionally, but not with great frequency.

I was alternating between passing the endless stream of large semi trucks (WHY are they semi trucks? There is nothing semi about them, they’re whole and complete trucks!) and letting the endless stream of redneck pickup trucks pass me, when I glanced up at the trucker I was passing. I can do this with the top down, but am completely unsuccessful with it up. I usually glance at the truckers because they usually glance at me, and in doing so, create a small moment eye contact of a sort peculiar to the highway. This time I was unable to make eye contact with the trucker because she was wearing sunglasses. I was traveling at least 10 miles an hour faster than she was because she was stuck in the right lane behind a very slow redneck. (I should be fair, its possible that the drive wasn’t redneck simply because of Alabama plates. Nah.) As I flew by, I thought I was seeing things. As someone who has looked at a lot of truckers, I’ve seen the occasional female driver. Never have I seen a beautiful young woman driving a truck. I looked in my rearview miror to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, and hoped I was awake. I was, she noticed me staring, so she smiled and waved. I waved back as her truck faded into the distance.

That was about the only interesting thing that happened. I stopped about 40 miles south of Montgomery, and the clouds, which had become darker and more ominous (ever notice that clouds are always ominous? I would bet that the world ominous is most frequently used to describe clouds than anything else.) than before, began to pour rain. I put the top up in the Miata, and drove rather slowly for quite some time, while the rain cleared. It never really cleared until I got fairly close to Atlanta. It doesn’t rain in Atlanta this year.

I tried to take a short cut instead of heading all the way to Atlanta on I-85, then heading back west on 20. This would have worked fine had I not been trying to drive and read a map at the same time. I ended up missing a turn, and driving 20 miles west instead of 20 miles north, which probably cost me at least 1.5 hours. Oh well. Someone should give me a GPS device for Christmas.