Life without coordination

Ahh, Seattle. So lovely. Weather: cloudy, mid-sixties to mid-seventies. Of course, no place on earth is one where corners of furniture, rocks, edges of paving stones, tree branches, etc., are not apparently attacking me. How do normal people go about and avoid collisions with these things? It’s as mystifying to me as the communication between schools of fish, birds in flights, etc., who seem to get around without bumping into each other…it’s like other humans have that with the whole world, and no one’s letting me in on the secret.

On my way to the Sunday market. May have a desk by the end of the day. (One with round corners?)

Oh, and, Not American, the follow up: I got another “un-American” the very next day after I’d gotten 2 in one day: “Where are you from? Wait, let me guess….Amsterdam?” (I’m going to pretend I’m not concerned that I looked drugged out..?) It’s starting to get creepy.

Not American?

Apparently I have that vibe. I get that every once in a while; I tend to think it’s because I tend to stay in youth hostels, which are, in fact, usually more than half full of internationals. But today, I got it from two people in non-hostel contexts (both of whom were internationals themselves, come to think of it, a New Zealander and someone I guessed to be ex-Mexican). It can’t be because I look even more slobby than usual today (which I do), because isn’t the stereotype that Americans are the slobbiest of the slobs? Maybe it’s the sunburn. If I didn’t know what I usually looked like I wouldn’t be able to see the one on my face anymore, but it’s mostly eclipsed by the arm one anyway…

Now, I would expect the coast of California to have cell phone signal. (And to be more densely inhabited.) You’ll get no complaint from me about the relatively sparse signs of human life, but the lack of signal is extraordinarily irritating. I had signal for almost 8 minutes today; I received a text message, heard it, called my mom, and failed to complete a conversation. Argh.

I might also expect this middle-of-nowhereish sparse-human-life area to have no nightlife. Well, that is where I am wrong. While looking around for accommodations*, and asking around at places that looked likely, I ended up invited to two different muscal events. (I almost went to the live Reggae dancing party. Heck, maybe I still will. Only my knee wouldn’t like it. And I have the strange suspicion that it’s going to be mostly gay guys–not that I care, but I would probably stick out. Although I could be wrong about it being mostly gay guys…maybe I’m just being more likely to think so than usual because I’m in range of San Fran? I am usually terrible at telling someone’s orientation. I have been told by persons present at various interactions that this applies even when a person is hitting on someone right next to me…or even me.)

Also: I have been spreading joy and music! Uh, seriously, almost everywhere I stay (this started at the first place, in Ohio), people seem to assume I’m a professional musician–they don’t even ask me. (Except for the ones who assumed I was an actress-wannabe and then, when I said I was a writer, screenwriter.) This is particularly mystifying when they have actually heard me play and sing already. I’ve had a lot of people ask for a CD. But mostly I have been having fun playing much more freely in front of hostel crowds etc. than I ever have been able to in public, with sing-along joy. I have not yet managed to work myself up to busking, though. I still hold out hope for myself.

And, last, most importantly: Anathem was utterly awesome. Utterly. Spectacularly. What else can I say? I will always be on the lookout for evidence of wandering ten-thousand-year maths. Dad, I swear I’ll mail it to you as soon as I reread it six more times see a convenient post office.

But now I am out of books :(. And middle-of-nowhere California coastline may have a nightlife, but it seems to have a paucity of bookstores :(. I hope I won’t be book-starved by the time I get to Portland.

*And doing an excellent job haggling people down, I might add…I almost stayed at a wicked pricey B&B that I talked down fifty bucks from their usual starting price (although I probably did this by looking poor, bedraggled, and sunburned, so…maybe I shouldn’t be proud of this), but then went down the street to a real motel and talked them down to a price range that I could not complain about.

I’m not saying I’d build a summer home there…

…but Death Valley was awesomely surreal. A 3/8 mile walk was almost more than I could take (though I accidentally did a mile or so later in the day), though. Besides the surreality of the landscape, there was the resort smack in the middle, with tourist shopping, all amenities, small airport, and golf course. (!?!)

Los Angeles was nice, for such a big, spread out city. I loved some of the exhibits at LACMA (the Cheech Marin Chicano Art was very high on the awesome scale, and there was a fabulous Rodin room with a couple of cheery, positive sculptures [not that I don't love Gates of Hell, Head of St. John the Baptist, etc., it's just nice to have a variety from tortured, and there was], and a very nice Death of Abel in marble elsewhere in the museum [not positive about that title, only the content]). And yay, Tinatsu! Though she has a cold (anti-yay). [In retrospect, I can't believe we made her do all the thinking and organizing even with her cold! Ack!] It was great to spend some time with her, though, even if I did worry that I was imposing company on her while she was sick. It was great to see Ian and Jim again too (Ian one last time before he hopped on the plane, and I met Jim’s wife, who’s a very sweet and interesting person! Also a good cook!). Haha, I wasn’t exactly at my best and brightest here, mostly tired and trying to get off of this ridiculous early-to-bed-early-to-rise schedule I seem to have gotten on.

I noticed that leaving people was hard enough in Denver, and it was even less fun the second time in such a short interval. Tina kept me distracted after I said goodbye to Ian and Jim, and then wisely (checking the time on her way to work, and sneezing and coughing from her cold) said “Goodbye” and then didn’t wait for me to draw things out and get waterworks or anything. But I have a new confidence in my ability to cope with e-mail now.

On to route 1, and the Pacific Coast Highway!

Corrections: I recently mixed up Hyundai and Honda. Whoops!

Reheartened

Okay, I almost just drove down to L.A. (well, Pasadena) and called it quits for pretty sightseeing. I’m sick of driving, my knee hurts, despite my best efforts to keep hydrated I have a constant dehydration headache (don’t get on my back, I’ve been drinking at least 4 liters a day of a combo of water and Gatorade!), and I have huge, gross blisters, three of them, on each heel, ones I didn’t notice forming because my knee hurt. And then I kindly patted my whining persona on the head and defenestrated her. She’s probably making her way through the desert trying to catch up still. It’s kinda too bad I didn’t get reheartened in time to drive down to the North Rim, but hey. Another day.

A quick list of things I kept meaning to put in other posts: there was a 14600 S street in Salt Lake City, I’ve added some blogs to the side list that I have been reading on and off (off when I’ve felt too guilty to bask in the glow, weirdly enough), and about an hour away from SLC  I saw ANOTHER DUST DEVIL! This one was tan colored and HUGE and I know its size because it swallowed the highway right ahead of me! Okay, so it wasn’t at all opaque, but it was wider than the highway, quite tall, and it had what appeared to be actual tumbleweeds in it. What more could I ask for?

Colorado: clean, spare lines, the eye didn’t even catch on the puny human additions like buildings and powerlines. Southern Utah: incredible variety of texture, with light shifting as the sun moved, again human stuff was barely hiccups. Nevada, now…well, it’s the closest I’ve come to my idea of a desert. Pretty flat, some sand dunes, just a little too much scrubby foliage for me to think I’m in Arabia, lovely mountains in the distance.

I am apparently near Area 51. I’ll be getting up early (cringe, like 5:30 AM, I hope, though it’ll likely be more like 7 by the time I’m done hitting snooze) so that I can drive through Death Valley before high noon, and poke around its edges (salt creek, ghost town, Joshua trees, anyone?), and be on my way up to Mount Whitney and Mono Lake. A cool drive, because Mt. Whitney is the highest point in the lower 48, and Death Valley is, of course, the lowest. What’s really going to kill me is that I won’t be hiking on Mt. Whitney at all. Argh. I mean, no, there’s no way I’d be able to obtain a permit to get to the top on this short notice, in this season, but I could have hiked around it, you know?

Something you didn’t know about Death Valley: they always have huge numbers of visitors because car companies all test their cars here (the hotel lady said she gets to see nifty Lambhorginis etc.). In the same hotel as I, a large convocation from Hyundai Honda* is staying, with what I take to be next year’s cars filling the parking lot. I almost went up to them and started chatting in Japanese. Truly, I would have, except that there were about 30 of them, and they had a uniform businessman look to them, so that I hesitated to approach a gorup. Also, I have a Toyota. Wouldn’t want to spark any problems.

Note: I may decide to go down to L.A. next, after driving through Death Valley. I can do that, because running around like a just-geeked chicken is, in fact, not going to inconvenience anyone when you’re traveling by yourself. Yay! I did notice that it’s quite a bit shorter to go south around the Sierra Nevadas than to go up through Tioga Pass (starting at Death Valley), and I also noticed that if I go south I may as well go to L.A. first.

*Haha, how did I get these mixed up? Well, the symbol is kinda similar, and I think someone called it Hyundai in my hearing, even though I know there’s no such thing as a “Hyundai Civic.”

Zion

Angel’s Landing of Zion: What more can I say? They named it right. The only place I’ve been that compares for natural beauty is the Inca Trail in the Andes Mountains. (Though it seems strange that this desert landscape evokes a rainforest for me…) I actually climbed up to within ten feet of a California Condor, just relaxing on the crest of the ridge.* Huge! (I cursed that all I had was a disposable camera.) I won’t even try to tell you what the view is like, because it’s not really a visual experience. To get any idea of that kind of landscape, you have to just…be there, let the sights and sounds and air and sheer bliss of being so high up, in the midst of a multidimensional panorama, just let it mark you.

I also went a ways up the Narrows. Again, there’s no describing it.

Here’s the “Meghan’s an idiot” bit, though…I went up the Narrows after I’d already begun to have knee pain on the way down from Angel’s Landing. I thought, gee, cool water will help! But in fact, the resistance of walking in water was not at all helpful. Rather the opposite. And, of course, I basically walked until I couldn’t…and then still had to turn around and make my way all the way back. Not that I would have traded that day for anything, mind you. But, ehm, now I’m hobbling around, exactly as I didn’t want to do in Denver and was so painstakingly cautious so I wouldn’t have to.

Admittedly, I’m finding the hobbling disheartening. Enough so that I may quit while I’m ahead and not go to places that will just make me want to hike. Originally, I was going to drive to the Grand Canyon today (north rim), then drive up through Death Valley and keep going up Mount Whitney, stop at Mono Lake, and drive through Tioga Pass and Yosemite to Sequoia National Park. But as much as I’ve now confirmed that I really, really want to do that, this may not be the time =(. I haven’t decided what I will do yet, but for whatever reason, I feel like I would be dwelling too much on knee pain if I did that. Maybe I think I wouldn’t appreciate it enough, maybe I think I’d end up hobbling around hikes and permanently injuring my knee…whatever, I can tell it’s a bad idea. (Death Valley, which would be all driving anyway, is a different story, of course, but the three tires that didn’t blow out were pronounced severely hazardous by a tire guy–the tread is actually peeling away in places on one of them, and when he pointed out that the tread was pretty worn out on the others I could even see it, and I realized that they’d seen about 50,000 miles without being replaced (I’m taking away the miles that I’m guessing when on the snow tires this winter…) well, anyway, I realized that in Death Valley, even if my car didn’t die, my guitar (and likely, laptop) would be completely baked, because you turn on your heater to cool off your engine when it’s in the overheating zone…argh.)

I’m hoping that after a bit of time in L.A. with Tinatsu my knee will be up to popping up to Sequoia, at least.

*Then I climbed back down so as not to scare it away for other people. Turned out that around the corner were a good ten people standing around taking pictures and admiring it. Glad I didn’t try to get closer!

Sketchy Hostel

I did not judge SLC based on my accomodations. I like this lovely tea place I’m in (that coincidentally serves gelato…really good gelato…). I love the SLC main library. (Wow!) I love the natural beauty of the area. But the city itself…? An ugly mess of streets with riculous numbers (I mean, come on. 800 street? 3200 street? It must end.) Well…let me put it this way. It reminds me of some of Florida’s uglier metropolises. (Yeah…wow, how did it get on my bad side that quickly?)

But if I judged it based on the place I stayed, I might have to revise my estimate utterly downward. I’ve had great experiences with hostels all over; everyone says that they like hostels outside our country (and I do too), but US hostels have treated me very well. I have nearly always felt safe, I’ve liked the kinds of people staying there, I’ve liked the owners, and they’re usually cute old houses made over (or big ones are cool old industrial buildings made over). Some of them have been incredible and unique and better than a really good hotel. (See Hostel in the Forest in Georgia, that hostel I stayed at in Philadelphia, one I can’t remember the town of but it was in NC, I think, and I definitely remember the really cool building.)

But. The place I stayed last night…looked sketchy, even to me, before I even parked. A bunch of not-very-well-groomed middle-aged men were hanging out in an adjoining parking lot sitting in a circle of folding chairs next to a warehouse; the nearby railroad tracks seemed less quaint than threatening; the building itself was ugly and run-down. I parked and walked in. The air conditioner was broken. While I was checking in, two policemen burst through the door* and said, “Where is he?”

Yeah.

I survived the night, with all belongings intact. Here is the part where I inevitably try to say something nice; the common area was quite nice, and the guy who checked me in was actually one of those gentle souls that you just recognize when you see them, and the place was clean unto sterile. But let’s just say that it was probably a mistake to stay there, one I’m lucky I didn’t pay for. I will be more careful in the future.

Also: I thought I had a sore throat from singing along to my ipod for hours while driving, but in fact I seem to be coming down with something. Argh.

*Poetic license. They weren’t in a hurry. But I swear, the first thing they said was “Where is he?”

DUST DEVIL!!

Yesterday I saw a rainbow. The only piece of the curve that was visible was very bright, and it was such a little section that it looked like a rhombus, the kind you get from those angle-y prisms in science classes. But today–today I saw a DUST DEVIL! It was tall and orange and perfect! Yay!

Tinatsu, brace yourself: I didn’t love Cheyenne. And (gasp), I don’t love Salt Lake city. The intervening drive was possibly the most scenic one I’ve had yet on this trip, but the cities…leave something to be desired.

I am the Tina Nemesis

Denvention was awesome. Highlights: the panel with Robert Silverberg, Connie Willis, Lois Bujold, and Larry Niven on which they talked about the shapes of their writing carrers; the how-to-do-a-reading workshop; Julie’s vampire panel (So many story ideas popped into my head! Four, to be specific! Er…only two of them were vampire stories, but one of those I will definitely never write. One of the non-vampire ideas feels unusually promising.); the P. C. Hodgell reading*; the wig-swapping on the last day; and most of all (duh) Carolyn, Tinatsu, Tina C., Nicole, Julie, Ian, Ben, Jim, and David. (And Leslie too!)

Wow. Being again with that group was…joyous, sublime. (It also reminded me how much I missed the ones who weren’t there.) Each one of these people is of the very highest quality, to the point that they must eclipse the memories I have of them because my mind just can’t hold the complete dimensions of awesome when I haven’t directly experienced it on a given day. Speaking of memories: being around them stirred such vivid memories of all of them, their voices and movements and bearings and deeds and EVERYTHING, that either I really spent a lot of time with each one, or I observed each one very closely and intently whether I was, in fact, part of whatever they were doing, or not. (Creepy? Um, I hope not. Ummm…I’m a writer, I’m supposed to pick up on details of people? Never mind my usual abysmal memory patterns.)

On my last day in Denver, I basically invited myself to crash at a couple of people’s houses on my road trip. When I left Denver, I drove about a hundred miles up to Cheyenne, and on that trip I was at first moist-eyed and singing along to my ipod for distraction purposes. About halfway to Cheyenne I had a sudden, nasty doubt…about, well, me.**

Sure, I thought, people seemed to like having me around this week, and I like to think I’m fairly good company in a big group. But why the hell would anyone want to actually be closer friends with me? (And then commenced a mental barrage of knowledge of my less fine qualities.) I am pretty good at exhaustively finding fault with myself, so I had myself worried for a minute that in fact, there was no reason anyone would want to keep in touch with me over long distance even if I did become capable of maintaining my end. With the possible exceptions of Caroline and Tinatsu, who were most vociferous in trying to get me to come to Denver, and have proven [by leaving me alive] that it wasn’t just so they could murder me. (And I don’t have to mention a certain person in Palm Bay, of whom I am another manifestation…but keeping in touch with oneself is a different story.)

Then I got over it. I am flawed; things might be actually worse if I didn’t know that. Agonizing over my own actions or inactions is something I need to grow out of. The correct response to actutely noticing one’s flaws is to do one’s best to mend those flaws.*** Sure…it’s hard to attack them all at once. I will work on e-mail for now.

*BWAHAHAHAHAHA! That made me nearly as happy as the Anathem ARC!!! Er…sorry to gloat, Hannah.

**What else? My generation is terribly self-centered.

***End of public service announcement.

The Spatula Looks After Its Own

My tire blew out–shredded, utterly. I was going almost seventy! Not only did I not die in a spin out, but within about two minutes of pulling off the highway and gaping at what once was a tire, a Good Samaritan of the highest and purest order pulled off, expertly changed my tire, and then* followed me to the next town where I could put air in my tires. Eleven miles, at a speed of under 50 mph. (The speed limit was 75. I was in fact going 80, but I had begun to slow down thanks to the ridiculous vibrations in my car when the tire actually exploded or whatever it did.)

I am always saying that I have such faith in human nature. When this kind of thing happens, I not only get helped out enormously, directly, but I get a feeling like the world is saying, “Yep, you’re right.”

*Because the pressure in my spare tire was clearly low, turned out to be 26 ppi instead of 40.

Bad Scan

But, eh. Don’t feel like torturing myself scanning it fifty more times and trying to figure out what keeps going wrong. I mean, besides the fact that I couldn’t flatten it out so that it was scanning the whole thing evenly. And that I don’t know how to use the scanning program. Though, comparing, it turns out that I managed to scan this one better than the Chicago one, even though the Chicago one turned out nicer in reality.

The Historic Haymarket District of Lincoln, NE