The Road to Arizona (and Back)
Saturday 26 March 2005
After the futile trip back to L.A., we finally set off for good at about 3 am. The original plan was to drive for a few hours, then stop and nap a couple of hours at a motel along the way. However, by the time we wanted to stop, we'd gone too far - all the motels were behind us. We were in the middle of the Mojave Desert by then, a veritable no man's land.
In the desert, a beautiful sunrise appeared bit by bit on the horizon ahead. Jingli was having trouble taking pictures from the car, so I stopped by the side of the highway to take some. Two, actually.
Right after I took these two pictures, I heard someone behind me. I whirled around, and a scruffy-looking man stepped up and started talking to me in Spanish. Jesus fucking Christ! I almost had a heart attack. I was right by the shotgun passenger's door, so I banged on Jingli's window, yelling at him to lock the doors. Then I ran to the driver's side, only to find it locked. Again, I frantically yelled at him to open it. The second he did, I flung the door open and jumped in. I didn't even look back at the guy as I peeled away at top speed, images from Monster playing in my head.
I mean, it's freaky enough under normal circumstances. But at dawn, in the middle of the fucking desert? Hello? What are the odds that he's a psycho killer? I've seen enough slasher flicks to know The Rules.
Yeah, we spent a long time in the desert.
Slowly the morning light crept across the barren land, gradually revealing the evocative shapes of the mountains and the rows of gnarled cacti. And it was day. We'd made it through our first night.
We drove past the Hoover Dam, apparently. There were lots of structures and shit like that perched high on a mountain, and the highway became this stretch of tiny winding road, which was annoying as hell. It was fucking huge. Apparently it was also the border between California and Nevada, so they had police roadblocks along it. Also pretty annoying.
We reached Vegas in the morning at around 7. Deciding we didn't have time to stop there, and that it would be cooler to see it at night, we decided to keep moving and only stopped for gas there.
We had to figure out the directions from the atlas (and actually had been doing that the night before), because I hadn't Mapquested the trip this way. The original plan was to go to the Grand Canyon straight from Anaheim, and then stop at Vegas on the way back. But somehow it got changed. It didn't matter much, because Jingli turned out to be a good navigator, once he figured out how highways and interstates worked.
Since it was only the two of us, he also had to try his best to stay awake, and additionally, had the unenviable task of keeping me awake. God knows how hard that must've been for him, since he's prone to passing out in moving vehicles. The poor guy. He tried so hard though, and it's to his credit we're still alive today. I probably would've driven off a cliff otherwise.
We actually did try to stop at some motels we saw along the way for a quick nap, but they were all full until the afternoon. Bastards. There was one kindly lady who told us she had a room with a jacuzzi for US$100, but somehow I don't think we'd go for that.
We finally neared the Grand Canyon in the afternoon. We never even noticed we'd passed the state border and entered Arizona. This was taken at a gas station along the way. It was the first time Jingli saw snow, and he was suitably excited. I hoped that for his benefit, we'd see some in New York or Chicago, but alas, that was not to be. It's too bad that his only glimpse of snow was behind a shitty little gas station.
We thought the gas station was pretty close to the Canyon. After all, there was only one small stretch of highway to go.
That stretch turned out to be hell. A neverending two-lane road, going on and on forever, finally culminating in a massive traffic jam at the fucking park entrance. A traffic jam. We drove for nine fucking hours only to get caught in a jam. At the entrance. So near, yet so far. I could cry, I tell you.
I think we might've been stuck in the jam for at least an hour. I do know that by the time we paid the exorbitant US$20 admission and entered, it was already past 3 pm. We drove on a little further, and finally we were there.
The Grand Canyon. The Final Destination, so to speak.
Please pardon the shitty composites. My Photoshopping skills have deteriorated somewhat since college. Please also forgive any liberties I have taken with the actual geography of the place. Sometimes the most important thing I need to do is have the horizon line match up, and adhering to The Truth comes a distant second.
To tell you the truth, personally I was a little underwhelmed by the whole thing. Perhaps I was too tired from the drive. Perhaps I was pissed off by the tourists swarming the lookout points. But I looked out and thought, "Aww, it's all big and rocky and pretty. Yup, that's about it." I felt ashamed for having those thoughts; I think one is supposed to stand there and marvel at the Powers of Nature and contemplate the Meaning of Life and things like that.
Try as I might, I couldn't do it. So in lieu of having deep thoughts, I behaved like the fucking tourist I was and took pictures instead. Unfortunately we ran into our usual problem of low battery power. Additionally, I was running out of space on my memory card, not being able to transfer pictures out of it at Arielle's (Damn you, shitty USB 1.1 port!). So pictures were limited, and eventually Jingli's camera died completely.
As we drove along, the sun began to really hit my eyes at dusk. Driving west during sunset really sucks; the light just pierces into your skull. Additionally, it got harder and harder to stay awake during rest of the day, and if not for the magic wrought by my trusty iPod, we probably would've succumbed to sleep and crashed into a ditch.
We reached Vegas at around 10 or 11 pm, after losing our way a couple of times from the interstate. I think most of it was my fault; I tend to want to try things my way when I'm driving, and very often, I have shitty instincts and everything backfires in my face. I hope I didn't piss him off too much, because it seemed his instincts were usually pretty spot on, and I know it must've been hard for him to resist the oft-used "I told you so".
Even at that hour, The Strip in Vegas was still packed bumper to bumper with cars. We inched our way along the street, blinking lights and neon signs blinding us along both sides. In a way, it was exactly what I'd imagined Vegas to be like - cheap, trashy and slutty, full of faux grandeur, cold hearts and deep pockets. We'd driven along The Strip that same morning as well, but Vegas by day and Vegas by night are completely different entities, even though you could kinda see the potential then.
Poor Jingli was so tired he fell asleep in the car while we were driving down the street. I wanted to check out the roller coaster on the outside of the Stratosphere, because it sounds really cool, but as it turned out the wait was so long we weren't going to make it in time. Ah well, next time then. So we parked the car and got out for a little walk.
The sign below just about says all there is to say about Vegas.
And we even managed to have a little Ocean's Eleven moment, even though the fountain had shut down for the day by the time we got there (boo!).
I really enjoy this next picture because of the combination of a scantily-clad female, a sign saying "Ballys" (it just sounds dirty) and a very phallic Eiffel Tower. It's just magical, seeing these three things together.
Sunday 27 March 2005
We started off from Vegas at about 2 am.
No time = no motel stay. Ah well, it's cheaper that way.
However, that made the drive back to L.A. quite literally hellish. At that point I was so fucking exhausted I'd begun seeing things. The taillights of the cars in front and the lines on the ground merged into mysterious shapes, like an octopus, or a devil dressed in long flowing robes. The emergency phone by the roadside became a glowing man standing there waiting for help. We had to stop, or I'd endanger our lives.
I admitted, "I'm fucking scared right now." At any point I could simply veer off the road and crash the car. No joke.
We pulled into Primm, a town near the border of Nevada and California, and got gas and snacks. Jingli asked for some naptime before we resumed, and I was so beat I had to agree. I set the countdown timer on his phone for 20 minutes and we settled down to sleep.
I woke up after some time, feeling that I'd slept for ages. I looked at the timer. I couldn't believe it, it said we'd only been sleeping for a little over a minute. No fucking way. I examined it again, slowly, waiting for my head to clear. Then it hit me.
I'd set the damn thing wrong.
I'd set it for 20 hours instead of 20 minutes.
No. Fucking. Way.
We'd been sleeping for over an hour. I woke him up. It was almost 4 am at that point. We had to make it back to L.A. in time for our flight in the afternoon. We had to move fast.
The nap did wonders though. I had no trouble staying awake the rest of the night.
We had to navigate through the fucking Hoover Dam again, but in the dark this time. It pissed me off again. It's like someone built a parking garage with tons of curving ramps and called it Highway 93S. And hey, to make things more exciting, let's have the fucking state border run right through it!
For some reason, the drive through the Mojave Desert was a happy one. Good songs were playing on the iPod, we were singing along, and there was an even more beautiful sunrise than the one yesterday, if that's even possible. The colors seemed even richer and more vibrant. Unfortunately, I could only see it in the rear-view mirror, and I didn't want to risk stopping again - not after that psycho yesterday.
We saw some pretty hills in California that we'd missed the night before because it was too dark. And yes, we decided to attempt our pilgrimage to The Hollywood Sign one more time.
At 8 am we arrived in Los Angeles. There was no view of The Sign to be had from the Hollywood Hills. We finally got what we wanted at the Kodak Theatre.
I know, it all seems rather sad when you think about it.
After a good breakfast at Mel's Drive-In (apparently somewhat of an institution in the area, according to the pictures hanging on the walls), we left for LAX at 10 am. Bless big American appetites, you really can feed two little Asians with an American breakfast.
As we drove on the freeway I almost blacked out at one point. That's not good. To Jingli's credit he managed to find an alternative route which wasn't on a freeway. Traffic lights help me keep awake. Much better.
After returning the car to the Enterprise at LAX, we hopped on their shuttle with a bunch of schoolgirls on a school sports trip. There is nothing more annoying in the world than a bunch of schoolgirls. It's amazing how loud teenage girls can be, and how universally loathsome.
The security at LAX was unbelievably rude, reminiscent of the Nazi-like enforcers at Disneyland. I'm already taking my fucking shoes off, you don't need to make me feel like a suspect when you're doing it. There's a difference between asking someone to do something, telling them to do it, and ordering them. Fuckers. I don't care if you have shitty jobs, you still have to be civil. They were also incredibly slow, so by the time they were done, it was the final call for our flight.
We passed out on the plane. I hate domestic air travel.
Touchdown at JFK International. I hate that fucking airport. It's ugly, out of the way, and just plain sucks balls.
A long ride on the Metro to Naureen and Danielle's at 145th Street in West Harlem, probably over an hour and a half, maybe two. It's an old apartment building, with a loose step on the ancient creaking wooden stairs, a silly dog belonging to the landlady, and a crazy temperamental shower. But it's cozy, and has real character. The shitty shower bit sucks though.
Dinner? Chinese takeout from the Golden Wok! Now, I'm not one to miss Asian food while on vacation - I'm not fifty, for God's sakes. It wasn't amazing, but hell, it was good to get some decent food after days of fast food crap on the road.
And finally, some sleep at last.
Goodnight.
After the futile trip back to L.A., we finally set off for good at about 3 am. The original plan was to drive for a few hours, then stop and nap a couple of hours at a motel along the way. However, by the time we wanted to stop, we'd gone too far - all the motels were behind us. We were in the middle of the Mojave Desert by then, a veritable no man's land.
In the desert, a beautiful sunrise appeared bit by bit on the horizon ahead. Jingli was having trouble taking pictures from the car, so I stopped by the side of the highway to take some. Two, actually.
Right after I took these two pictures, I heard someone behind me. I whirled around, and a scruffy-looking man stepped up and started talking to me in Spanish. Jesus fucking Christ! I almost had a heart attack. I was right by the shotgun passenger's door, so I banged on Jingli's window, yelling at him to lock the doors. Then I ran to the driver's side, only to find it locked. Again, I frantically yelled at him to open it. The second he did, I flung the door open and jumped in. I didn't even look back at the guy as I peeled away at top speed, images from Monster playing in my head.
I mean, it's freaky enough under normal circumstances. But at dawn, in the middle of the fucking desert? Hello? What are the odds that he's a psycho killer? I've seen enough slasher flicks to know The Rules.
Yeah, we spent a long time in the desert.
Slowly the morning light crept across the barren land, gradually revealing the evocative shapes of the mountains and the rows of gnarled cacti. And it was day. We'd made it through our first night.
We drove past the Hoover Dam, apparently. There were lots of structures and shit like that perched high on a mountain, and the highway became this stretch of tiny winding road, which was annoying as hell. It was fucking huge. Apparently it was also the border between California and Nevada, so they had police roadblocks along it. Also pretty annoying.
We reached Vegas in the morning at around 7. Deciding we didn't have time to stop there, and that it would be cooler to see it at night, we decided to keep moving and only stopped for gas there.
We had to figure out the directions from the atlas (and actually had been doing that the night before), because I hadn't Mapquested the trip this way. The original plan was to go to the Grand Canyon straight from Anaheim, and then stop at Vegas on the way back. But somehow it got changed. It didn't matter much, because Jingli turned out to be a good navigator, once he figured out how highways and interstates worked.
Since it was only the two of us, he also had to try his best to stay awake, and additionally, had the unenviable task of keeping me awake. God knows how hard that must've been for him, since he's prone to passing out in moving vehicles. The poor guy. He tried so hard though, and it's to his credit we're still alive today. I probably would've driven off a cliff otherwise.
We actually did try to stop at some motels we saw along the way for a quick nap, but they were all full until the afternoon. Bastards. There was one kindly lady who told us she had a room with a jacuzzi for US$100, but somehow I don't think we'd go for that.
We finally neared the Grand Canyon in the afternoon. We never even noticed we'd passed the state border and entered Arizona. This was taken at a gas station along the way. It was the first time Jingli saw snow, and he was suitably excited. I hoped that for his benefit, we'd see some in New York or Chicago, but alas, that was not to be. It's too bad that his only glimpse of snow was behind a shitty little gas station.
We thought the gas station was pretty close to the Canyon. After all, there was only one small stretch of highway to go.
That stretch turned out to be hell. A neverending two-lane road, going on and on forever, finally culminating in a massive traffic jam at the fucking park entrance. A traffic jam. We drove for nine fucking hours only to get caught in a jam. At the entrance. So near, yet so far. I could cry, I tell you.
I think we might've been stuck in the jam for at least an hour. I do know that by the time we paid the exorbitant US$20 admission and entered, it was already past 3 pm. We drove on a little further, and finally we were there.
The Grand Canyon. The Final Destination, so to speak.
Please pardon the shitty composites. My Photoshopping skills have deteriorated somewhat since college. Please also forgive any liberties I have taken with the actual geography of the place. Sometimes the most important thing I need to do is have the horizon line match up, and adhering to The Truth comes a distant second.
To tell you the truth, personally I was a little underwhelmed by the whole thing. Perhaps I was too tired from the drive. Perhaps I was pissed off by the tourists swarming the lookout points. But I looked out and thought, "Aww, it's all big and rocky and pretty. Yup, that's about it." I felt ashamed for having those thoughts; I think one is supposed to stand there and marvel at the Powers of Nature and contemplate the Meaning of Life and things like that.
Try as I might, I couldn't do it. So in lieu of having deep thoughts, I behaved like the fucking tourist I was and took pictures instead. Unfortunately we ran into our usual problem of low battery power. Additionally, I was running out of space on my memory card, not being able to transfer pictures out of it at Arielle's (Damn you, shitty USB 1.1 port!). So pictures were limited, and eventually Jingli's camera died completely.
As we drove along, the sun began to really hit my eyes at dusk. Driving west during sunset really sucks; the light just pierces into your skull. Additionally, it got harder and harder to stay awake during rest of the day, and if not for the magic wrought by my trusty iPod, we probably would've succumbed to sleep and crashed into a ditch.
We reached Vegas at around 10 or 11 pm, after losing our way a couple of times from the interstate. I think most of it was my fault; I tend to want to try things my way when I'm driving, and very often, I have shitty instincts and everything backfires in my face. I hope I didn't piss him off too much, because it seemed his instincts were usually pretty spot on, and I know it must've been hard for him to resist the oft-used "I told you so".
Even at that hour, The Strip in Vegas was still packed bumper to bumper with cars. We inched our way along the street, blinking lights and neon signs blinding us along both sides. In a way, it was exactly what I'd imagined Vegas to be like - cheap, trashy and slutty, full of faux grandeur, cold hearts and deep pockets. We'd driven along The Strip that same morning as well, but Vegas by day and Vegas by night are completely different entities, even though you could kinda see the potential then.
Poor Jingli was so tired he fell asleep in the car while we were driving down the street. I wanted to check out the roller coaster on the outside of the Stratosphere, because it sounds really cool, but as it turned out the wait was so long we weren't going to make it in time. Ah well, next time then. So we parked the car and got out for a little walk.
The sign below just about says all there is to say about Vegas.
And we even managed to have a little Ocean's Eleven moment, even though the fountain had shut down for the day by the time we got there (boo!).
I really enjoy this next picture because of the combination of a scantily-clad female, a sign saying "Ballys" (it just sounds dirty) and a very phallic Eiffel Tower. It's just magical, seeing these three things together.
Sunday 27 March 2005
We started off from Vegas at about 2 am.
No time = no motel stay. Ah well, it's cheaper that way.
However, that made the drive back to L.A. quite literally hellish. At that point I was so fucking exhausted I'd begun seeing things. The taillights of the cars in front and the lines on the ground merged into mysterious shapes, like an octopus, or a devil dressed in long flowing robes. The emergency phone by the roadside became a glowing man standing there waiting for help. We had to stop, or I'd endanger our lives.
I admitted, "I'm fucking scared right now." At any point I could simply veer off the road and crash the car. No joke.
We pulled into Primm, a town near the border of Nevada and California, and got gas and snacks. Jingli asked for some naptime before we resumed, and I was so beat I had to agree. I set the countdown timer on his phone for 20 minutes and we settled down to sleep.
I woke up after some time, feeling that I'd slept for ages. I looked at the timer. I couldn't believe it, it said we'd only been sleeping for a little over a minute. No fucking way. I examined it again, slowly, waiting for my head to clear. Then it hit me.
I'd set the damn thing wrong.
I'd set it for 20 hours instead of 20 minutes.
No. Fucking. Way.
We'd been sleeping for over an hour. I woke him up. It was almost 4 am at that point. We had to make it back to L.A. in time for our flight in the afternoon. We had to move fast.
The nap did wonders though. I had no trouble staying awake the rest of the night.
We had to navigate through the fucking Hoover Dam again, but in the dark this time. It pissed me off again. It's like someone built a parking garage with tons of curving ramps and called it Highway 93S. And hey, to make things more exciting, let's have the fucking state border run right through it!
For some reason, the drive through the Mojave Desert was a happy one. Good songs were playing on the iPod, we were singing along, and there was an even more beautiful sunrise than the one yesterday, if that's even possible. The colors seemed even richer and more vibrant. Unfortunately, I could only see it in the rear-view mirror, and I didn't want to risk stopping again - not after that psycho yesterday.
We saw some pretty hills in California that we'd missed the night before because it was too dark. And yes, we decided to attempt our pilgrimage to The Hollywood Sign one more time.
At 8 am we arrived in Los Angeles. There was no view of The Sign to be had from the Hollywood Hills. We finally got what we wanted at the Kodak Theatre.
I know, it all seems rather sad when you think about it.
After a good breakfast at Mel's Drive-In (apparently somewhat of an institution in the area, according to the pictures hanging on the walls), we left for LAX at 10 am. Bless big American appetites, you really can feed two little Asians with an American breakfast.
As we drove on the freeway I almost blacked out at one point. That's not good. To Jingli's credit he managed to find an alternative route which wasn't on a freeway. Traffic lights help me keep awake. Much better.
After returning the car to the Enterprise at LAX, we hopped on their shuttle with a bunch of schoolgirls on a school sports trip. There is nothing more annoying in the world than a bunch of schoolgirls. It's amazing how loud teenage girls can be, and how universally loathsome.
The security at LAX was unbelievably rude, reminiscent of the Nazi-like enforcers at Disneyland. I'm already taking my fucking shoes off, you don't need to make me feel like a suspect when you're doing it. There's a difference between asking someone to do something, telling them to do it, and ordering them. Fuckers. I don't care if you have shitty jobs, you still have to be civil. They were also incredibly slow, so by the time they were done, it was the final call for our flight.
We passed out on the plane. I hate domestic air travel.
Touchdown at JFK International. I hate that fucking airport. It's ugly, out of the way, and just plain sucks balls.
A long ride on the Metro to Naureen and Danielle's at 145th Street in West Harlem, probably over an hour and a half, maybe two. It's an old apartment building, with a loose step on the ancient creaking wooden stairs, a silly dog belonging to the landlady, and a crazy temperamental shower. But it's cozy, and has real character. The shitty shower bit sucks though.
Dinner? Chinese takeout from the Golden Wok! Now, I'm not one to miss Asian food while on vacation - I'm not fifty, for God's sakes. It wasn't amazing, but hell, it was good to get some decent food after days of fast food crap on the road.
And finally, some sleep at last.
Goodnight.
posted by cinewhore @ 10:27 PM
0 mindfucks
0 Comments:
gimme some mindfuckery
<< Home