gwax's rumblings

Although exceed­ingly warm by my stan­dards, Austin is not an unpleas­ant place. The pri­mary events of the 3^rd day of my jour­ney were lunch with Gautham and Ariel; the acqui­si­tion of nearly suf­fi­cient wardrobe items as will serve most of my needs for the sum­mer; a rather sub­stan­tial nap; and din­ner with Riad, Gautham, Cyrus, and Riad’s lady-friend.

Baldr has been hav­ing a good time hang­ing out with Nico and Shockley, as well as, gen­er­ally, not being in the car. Baldr mostly sits, stands, lies down, or naps in the car, which, prac­ti­cally speak­ing, is not alto­gether dis­sim­i­lar from what he does dur­ing the vast major­ity of other times.

Also, I fin­ished Moby Dick and it was awe­some. Moby Dick is, truly, a leviathan of lit­er­a­ture in every pos­si­ble sense.

Austin is serv­ing as a nice part-way spot to rest and, if it were the week­end, it might be pleas­ant to stay a lit­tle longer. In order to cover dis­tance, rather than wait while peo­ple work, Day 4 will, hope­fully, see the Louisiana shore and the city of New Orleans.

It’s 3AM Central Time and I arrived at Riad’s place in Austin, TX some­where between 30 and 60 min­utes ago.

It being 3AM, I shall keep this brief and, per­haps, go into greater detail tomorrow.

There were a few notable things that occurred dur­ing the day:

There was a US Border Patrol inspec­tion point on I-10E an hour or so East of El Paso, TX whereat I was first asked if I was a US cit­i­zen, then asked where I was from, where I was going, and what the pur­pose of my trip was. My car was visu­ally inspected from the out­side and sniffed by a dog. I was asked Baldr’s age and I was sent on my way. The line of cars wait­ing to be inspected, the time spent per car, and the inter­rup­tion to my cruis­ing speed prob­a­bly cost me a half hour or so. I’m not sure whether this is an indi­ca­tion that the ter­ror­ists or the anti-immigration crack-pots have won.

Somewhere in the midst of Texas, among the scrub­land and the mesas, in the mid-afternoon, I hit bore­dom for the first time; it was an odd, unpleas­ant feel­ing that I haven’t felt in a very long time but its explo­ration and com­ing through the other side are chief ele­ments of this vaca­tion. After hit­ting that point, I drove in my bore­dom with the music and audio­books off for a time before the bore­dom passed and Moby Dick resumed. Speaking of Moby Dick; I am on the 18^th or 18 discs, near­ing the final chap­ters and absolutely riveted.

Sometime shortly after my bore­dom passed I encoun­tered a rain of insects. Droplets, or what seemed to be droplets, began hit­ting my wind­shield at the rate of a mild shower but, some moments later, when I decided to use my wipers to remove the droplets, they merely smeared across the wind­shield. This hor­rid rain per­sisted for a good fif­teen to thirty min­utes, even­tu­ally leav­ing my wind­shield with sub­stan­tially dimin­ished clar­ity, in spite of many appli­ca­tions of wind­shield wipers with fluid.

Due to my own lazi­ness and my cars extreme econ­omy, those insects remained on my wind­shield through night­fall, on into the night, and only finally were extri­cated by an actual rain­fall about a hun­dred miles out from Austin. I say a hun­dred miles out because that is where the rain began; it was not, how­ever, very local­ized. For the last hun­dred miles of the drive, the weather vac­il­lated wildly between mild mist and rains so tor­ren­tial that I haven’t seen their likes since last I saw the outer fringes of hur­ri­canes in New England. I have heard that there is a trop­i­cal storm off the coast now and this truly felt like its outer edges.

There were plenty of other sights and events dur­ing the day but, as I said before, the time is late and I must sleep.

That I am in the Buckeye Motor Hotel in Buckeye, AZ should answer the ques­tion of whether or not I suc­ceeded in sleep­ing in the 90°F weather present at that rest area.

Overall, $55 ($45+$10/pet) isn’t a bad price to pay for a room with air con­di­tion­ing. Given my cur­rent needs, I prob­a­bly would have paid $55 for a 6.5’x6.5′ closet with air con­di­tion­ing; I’d be grip­ing about it in this post but I prob­a­bly would have done it. I guess, alter­na­tively, I could have left the engine idling and the air con­di­tion­ing on in my car; the fuel prob­a­bly would have lasted the night and on to the near­est gas sta­tion but the main­te­nance costs down the line would not have been worth it.

I’ve been tak­ing I-10E since LA, which passes straight through Phoenix. Since I’ll be dri­ving in the morn­ing, I have no desire to hit traf­fic, and Buckeye’s half-way between I-10 and I-8, I think that I’ll divert myself around Phoenix on I-8E so as to meet back up with I-10 south of Phoenix.

Ok, the air con­di­tion­ing seems to have cooled the room suf­fi­ciently that I can get some sleep.

With luck, my next post will be from Riad’s place in Austin.

Right now, I sit in my car, typ­ing to you on my work lap­top over my phone’s Internet, in a rest area where I plan to sleep, approx­i­mately 50 miles easy of Phoenix, AZ, hav­ing dri­ven 703 miles in just shy of 10.5 hours, hav­ing used less than two tanks of fuel.

So far, bar­ring two issues, it’s been an alto­gether pleas­ant trip. Due to tar­di­ness in pack­ing and clean­ing, I set out around noon-thirty, which was about three hours later than I had intended but there isn’t really any time crit­i­cal­ity to my jour­ney, so it’s not a big deal. A cou­ple hours into the jour­ney, when I set about get­ting break­fast, lunch, my first meal of the day, or what­ever you want to call it, that I had for­got­ten to bring Baldr’s leash and pinch col­lar; as a result, Baldr’s short walks dur­ing the trip have been either off-leash or using a bungee-cord as an impro­vised leash; I will have to buy a new leash and pinch col­lar some­time tomor­row; so it goes. We encoun­tered hints of traf­fic near LA but noth­ing too both­er­some and, oth­er­wise, have had smooth and fast paced travel.

I have been lis­ten­ing to Moby Dick on audio­book and am cur­rently on disc 8 of 18. I must, truly and hon­estly, say that this work of prose is truly an amaz­ing thing. Moby Dick is, at times, for that mat­ter, most times, rather slow paced, such that I expect I wouldn’t be able to man­age this degree of devo­tion were I not a cap­tive audi­ence with a great deal of monot­ony on my side. However, see­ing as I am a cap­tive audi­ence, I have been greatly enjoy­ing the work for its vari­ety, depth, descrip­tive­ness, phi­los­o­phy, and sheer grav­i­tas. At this rate, I should have fin­ished this mon­strous epic well before I make Austin.

Sometime, approx­i­mately two hours ago, I was think­ing about whether or not I would change my clothes while on the road when it occurred to me that I had no rec­ol­lec­tion of load­ing my suit­case into my car. On fur­ther inspec­tion, I can, in fact, con­firm that I also for­got to put my suit­case in my car. Man, do I feel like an idiot. Thankfully, my suit­case con­tains only clothes and toi­letries, which are rel­a­tively eas­ily replace­able for the pur­poses of such a jour­ney; though it is supremely both­er­some to have to do so unin­ten­tion­ally. My lap­top, charg­ers, and every­thing else are thank­fully in my mes­sen­ger bag, which leaves me still able to per­form the var­i­ous tasks that I intend to per­form and, to be entirely hon­est, I was think­ing, just yes­ter­day, that it was about time for me to buy some new clothes; call it unfor­tu­nate prov­i­dence, I guess.

I won­der what else I will come to dis­cover that I have forgotten.

Anyway, now it’s time to see if I can get any sleep in this abom­inable 90°F Arizona night; hope­fully it won’t dis­tress Baldr too much either.