So there is this secret going on all over the US. It’s called the suburbs. In these sneaky little villages people are living in massive houses with excellent pools.
I grew up in the suburbs, and many of our surrounding neighbors had pools. We lacked a pool but had a long grass covered lawn perfect for whiffle ball and 3 on 3 tag football.
Living in cities for the past 15 years I forgot what that was like. I still think I’m a city boy now, but I sure do like taking advantage of some OPP (other people’s pools).
Met many wonderful people in Knoxville and was invited to relax in wonderful homes with pools.
Knoxville is known as a scruffy little city, and that is a good descriptor. It is very green with wavy, rolling hills. Lots of old buildings that people put cool things into (like breweries).
Drove east from Dallas on to Tennessee. We were kinda waiting to leave there, our place was small and cramped, the heat was stifling, and the city was overwhelming. Gettin’ out on the open road always feels good know what I’m sayin’?
Had to stop over in Little Rock to see the Bill Clinton library. Had a beer and some tacos afterwards, leaving Little Rock with a pleasant warm feeling. I’d like to go back and check it out more sometime.
Memphis felt so open and comfortable after staying in Dallas. Still hot, but we had space now, or at least that’s how it felt and it felt pretty good.
Here’s something I really missed and had in Memphis – a grocery store within walking distance. This made me very happy, to be able to walk for 5 minutes to go get some groceries. Let me tell that is fine livin’, the good life.
Memphis has a lot of old buildings, kinda feels like you’re in a time warp back to the 60’s at times. Things are kinda shitty, but cool. That is what Beale Street felt like when we went down there. Kinda like a mini version of Bourbon Street.
I ate a bunch of food in Memphis and probably gained a few pounds. But when you are around BBQ and and burgers cooked in 100 year old grease you indulge a little bit.
We only spent a week in Memphis, and maybe that is enough. The guy at a souvenir shop said as much – “First time in Memphis”
“Yeah, but just for a week.”
“You can see all of Memphis in a week.”
Probably true, but I appreciated the sights and sounds, the slow pace of the people, and I really enjoyed the fact I could not understand what a lot of the locals were saying. Like I really had to pay attention and ask them to repeat themselves. Fascinating accents, and you feel like you are someplace different (at least for me, being more of a northerner I guess).
Saw Graceland and a good chunk of the city, but I’d like to go back. Still gotta check out that weird pyramid they have.
If you look at a satellite image of Dallas you’ll see cement in all its glory. Freeway wraps around everything like a spiderweb stretching every direction across the expanses of Texas. Really got me thinking about cement (and all sorts of asphalt, you know, mixtures of rock laid on the ground or formed into buildings and such). When you drive on a road, in a car, you are aware primarily of the road itself, how smooth or bumpy it is, the width of lanes. But then I had this thought of simply considering the vastness and volume of roads and sidewalks. It’s no wonder roads are always in disrepair and always yet never being fixed, just too many goddamn roads to fix.
So there is the traffic in Dallas – serious white knuckle freeway drivin’ there. Interchange after interchange and crossing five lanes of traffic back and forth. So many cars. Human populations, like volume of roads in the US really are difficult to grasp. Dallas and Fort Worth have almost 8 million people.
So I think a lot about the cars, and the people, and the roads of a city as I like to walk and bike. Decent bike lanes in Dallas, but the roads weren’t great in our area, a lot of debris in the lanes, etc. And a lot of super busy thoroughfares that take forever to cross from the traffic. I guess it is just city living (I’ve lived the past 15 years in the city, but Dallas is just too much for me man.
That said, there were some really cool civic things to do, and for this reason the city is worth a visit. Kennedy museum, George W. Bush library, Art museum – all top notch. Downtown is fun to walk around and look at stuff. Lots of places to get a beer, sit outside and see some music. So all that is cool and really the reason city-livin’ is cool in general. Just too many people for this ol’ dood.
ABQ was just a ten day say, in between a month long stay, a few one day stopovers, and a four day stay. It had been a busy few weeks on the road, absorbing incredible natural beauty in the southwest, driving, packing, unpacking.
We had a nice place in a nice location in ABQ, and I figured it’d be a nice palette cleanser before we get back to more “traditional” month long stays.
Ten days was definitely not enough in New Mexico, and I am definitely going back to explore the rest of the state. Ten days though is a nice amount of time to spend in a place – you get two weekends, but it is still a short enough time to be motivated to do “things”, and not get lulled into the day to day work life as you do when you have a whole month (so you think, hey I got time, I’ll take it slow).
ABQ is crusty (in a good way), quiet (in a good and bad way), and spacious (again, in a good and bad way). It’s one of those places I don’t quite understand – kind of like Nevada generally, there is good/bad and beautiful/ugly all mixed together in a fascinating panoply. Hatch Chiles everywhere – green or red or Christmas (both).
Had a game changing breakfast burrito – sidebar, I’m generally against potatoes in a breakfast burrito. For me, potatoes in a breakfast burrito is like pineapple on pizza to some (I think Hawaiian pizza is awesome, but I can appreciate people thinking it is an abomination). That is how I feel about potatoes in a breakfast burrito. Eggs, cheese, sausage (or bacon), and some salsa – that is enough. Too often you get some potatoes in it, they’ll be under or overcooked, and just makes you too full. The tortilla is your starch man – why put potatoes in it too! Still – I get that people like it, just not for me. But then I had a burrito in ABQ that in addition to the green chiles had hash browns in it. I’m sure this isn’t groundbreaking from a burrito perspective, but it opened my mind to the potato in a burrito thing. It was like Kuato himself came out of the burrito and spoke to me.
On the topic of food, here’s a story about eating a chicken sandwich that was way too hot. In downtown ABQ there is a new food hall type of thing. In it was a place serving fried chicken sandwiches. They asked me how hot I wanted it – so I asked what the levels were. The guy went into a description, from not hot to very hot, so I chose what I thought was the middle of that spectrum. It wasn’t until after I ate the sandwich that a painting on the wall read “hot means hot!”. Now, I enjoy hot food more so than the average person, certainly. I’m not bragging here, just saying I like it. This sandwich though was so hot, that it would be totally inedible to the vast majority of people. I enjoyed it, but let me tell you I paid the price. My stomach was digesting it for the next 24 hours, easily. At some point I’d like to try authentic Nashville “hot” chicken to see what an appropriate baseline is. The fact that this was not the hottest available is what was interesting. Anything hotter – no way it can be worth it.
Traveled a bit down ol’ route 66, exploring some of the random southwest and seeing some of the sights. Strange experience going into vacation/travel mode, switching over from working/travel mode.
I don’t really have much to say about this area – really just a photography kinda thing. Grand Canyon, Grand Falls, Petrified Forest National Park. Beauty overload.
We spent a night in Kingman and went to a nearby Alpaca farm. The proprietor there was an interesting dood. We learned about alpacas and talked about all sorts of things for over an hour. This guy was about to retire and was building an earth berm house. He had a lot of ideas about science, history, other things. He spoke with a clarity and certainty, blended beautifully with outlandish conspiracy theories. Still, he wasn’t wrong about anything, just probably more eccentric than most. My kind of guy.
A few things worth mentioning that got me thinking. He often said “the math just makes sense to me” – for his earth berm house he had a rock solid argument about energy efficiency base temperature and so on. The other thing was he decided that 4,500 feet elevation is the ideal point to live at for longevity. Near Kingman, as it turns out, is pretty close to this. I’ve been considering elevation more and more as we travel – Henderson is at ~1,800 (felt pretty good), Flagstaff is at 6,900 (a bit too high), so I do think there is something to this. Having grown up at sea level with freezing winters and boiling humid summers, I think I do benefit from some elevation.
He also mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that the housing market is going crash in about two years or so (again – because the math doesn’t make sense). This was in April 2022, so we’ll see what happens…
There is a town called La Quinta, not to be confused with the hotel chain, in California. It’s nestled in a mountain cove, and if it weren’t for the dozens of surrounding golf courses, it’d still feel like a sleepy Spanish mission town. Having spent time in various deserts over the past few months a lot of cities feel like they really shouldn’t exist (but they do, because we created massive lakes to water the lawns), but in La Quinta, you see some palm trees popping out here and there from natural oases and in reality, it is a good place for a settlement since there actually is water there. Then you learn the native Cahuilla people had been there much longer, when there was actually a giant lake roughly where the Salton Sea now lies. Perspective man…
Anyway – now there are tons of golf courses. We went on a hike through La Quinta cove, it is absolutely beautiful and quiet, ridges bending around choppy mountains, grand vistas stretching to the higher mountains – jokingly, I said “You know what’s missing here? A golf course.” Then, a bit further on sprouting out of the dusty tan rock is a patch of serene green. There was indeed a golf course edging into the nature preserve.
Beyond that golf course was a gated community. There is a lot of money in the area obviously, and these houses were at the high end of most economic stratums you can imagine, like giant houses made of polished granite, I wondered what the countertops are made of.
So if you love gold and money, La Quinta is probably a good place for you. Ang and I pride ourselves on being “early birds” – that is, we tend to go out for food/drinks during happy hour. Normally this is great for us, but this part of California has a lot of retirees, so we had competition. Funny to think I’m more like a senior citizen now than a kid.
During the day I walk around in the sun like a bum but at night I watch Netflix like a rich man. I’m neither rich nor poor, young nor old it seems.
A month in La Quinta allowed me to straddle that line to perfection. Staying in a house we couldn’t afford, we had a pool and extra space. Having a refrigerator with an ice machine, a garbage disposal, and a pool means living the high life man.
Early on during our voyage I thought that a month in a place would give a good sense of what its like to live there. This isn’t really the case. You are still a tourist for a month. I think it takes much longer to learn a place, meet people etc. Maybe that’s just me, but I think it takes a while to understand a place, identify any “culture” that may exist, and make friends. I’ve always thought it fascinating people who can maintain large friend groups – like going out to dinner with 10 people is pure anxiety for me. Anyway, being anonymous in random cities can get old too. Still, a month somewhere isn’t long enough to get bored, I think any place has enough things to do for a month.
Work is work wherever you are. No matter where I am, there are going to be a few days a week I do nothing. Work hard, play hard, veg hard is my motto. But on a random Wednesday, if you can take a five minute drive and go hike in desert nature preserve, that ain’t so bad.
I was out for a Saturday morning walk. Cool air, but the sun was out. Dead quiet. Sleepy Whitney Ranch was slowly stirring awake. Then a low-pitched ascending hound howl, and then his high-pitched partner. I turn the corner and laugh at the dogs. The hound has an absurd howl. The dogs next door to us are pretty unruly, but it could always be worse, I say to myself.
There are hundreds of the same house in the windy-roaded subdivision. Maybe four or five different models of house that vary only by color (tan, dark tan, pink) and placement of the pillars and overhangs (left / right). It’s easy to get lost. The roads curve around, change names, and everything looks the same. No point of reference other than the type of dog bark you activate as you go past.
Man I got a lot of thoughts about the suburbs.
“Where should we put the houses?”
“Way out in the desert.”
“Cool – how many houses?”
“Like a million. Millions of houses. Put ’em all right next to each other.”
“Should we put a foot of space between them? We got a lot of space.”
“No. Zero feet. Put them all right next to each other. Never stop building them.”
This is how I imagine Henderson, Nevada came into being. Subdivision after subdivision, non-stop houses and mini-malls until you run into a mountain.
Go out of the subdivision, cross a street, and there is a mesa. You climb up the mesa and look at stuff. That ain’t so bad.
Go basically in any direction from Henderson and you see dumb bullshit like this.
Walking down the street, among non-descript houses and barking dogs, and then there is a mesa. Climb up and you’re on top of a beautiful rock. From the top you have a 360 degree view of the surrounding area. Sunset Station Casino and mountains. This is the dynamic in Nevada for me, some of the ugly cement sprawl alongside wonderful natural beauty.
I consider Nevada the Florida of the west. You never know what to expect, like there are different rules about basically everything. There is an order and logic to it, but not always obvious to the visitor.
Death Valley, big.
When I first got to Henderson I felt the drivers were horrible. A lot of speeding up quickly, riding your ass, etc. Then after a week of driving here I realized you have to drive that way here in the suburbs. There are (an estimated) five hundred million strip malls in Henderson. God help you if you need to make a left turn, but if you can cross traffic, and then get over four lanes in fifty feet, you have a good chance of getting on to the freeway, where you can accelerate to seventy and ride for about forty seconds before getting off again.
Went into Las Vegas a few times. For me, the strip is basically the worst place on the planet. Really just a sad, sad place. And I don’t even mean the gambling addicts smoking with oxygen tanks drinking Bud Lights in the smoke filled casinos type of sad. I mean the “I intentionally took a vacation to come here because I enjoy coming here” type of sad. I’m clearly in the minority here because people seem to love this place…
Camping in Tecopa Hot Springs. Really great.
We went during the week to see Jon Lovitz perform live at a comedy club at the Tropicana. This casino was it’s own type of sad. Stuck somewhere between outdated luxury and complete obsolescence. We didn’t know what to expect, but what we saw was Jon Lovitz making pretty obvious, mildly racy, down the middle politics and sex jokes. He was funny, because he is funny, but the material wasn’t great.
All in all, Henderson is A-OK in my book. Yes, it is the suburbs, so a certain amount of ugliness is going to come along with that. But the nature you have easy access to is phenomenal. We did a lot of hiking and biking and I enjoyed myself. We hiked on some great trails and took a trip to Death Valley. That probably needs its own post.
Drove down from Seattle to Sebastopol in Sonoma County, California. Packed up the car with all our stuff (minus a storage room of other stuff) and headed south. This place is surrounded by vineyards and close to the ocean, so we drank wine and went to the ocean.
It was nice to get back on the bikes after a long lay off. Great bike trails here and only the occasional “super busy highway that is terrifying to try and cross” thrown in for good measure. Oh and tons of places to drink wine and beer of course.
Ang had a birthday while we were here so she had the idea to visit a new winery every day. But as it turns out, that is way too much wine. We managed to visit a few. We rode our bikes, sat outside and drank wine while overlooking the vineyards. Not much else to say, it’s pretty great.
Shout out to Rosalyn at Fog Crest winery. Very good wine and a most gracious host.
On the weekend we went out to Bodega Bay. Very high level of beauty in this area. Walked around and then ate some fish tacos and crab sandwiches. It’s swell.
Bodega Bay. Fun fact – hiking through sand dunes is exhausting.
Drank some beer here too. We were staying in the Russian River Valley. My main point of reference for the area was Russian River brewing. I was pleased to be finding Pliny the Elder in basically everywhere beer was sold. The brewpub is in Santa Rosa, so Ang and I took a nice bike ride there down the Joe Rodota trail.
If you’re my age and drink “craft” beer you no doubt have heard of Pliny the Elder. This is one of the most famous IPAs. This has been around since before there were twenty microbreweries in every city in the U.S. and thousands of IPAs. I remember when I first starting getting into IPA the most well-known ones (for me) were basically all from California – Lagunitas, Green Flash, Ballast Point Sculpin, and Michigan’s Bell’s Two Hearted. But Pliny was more mythical. I remember people talking about it a lot with reverence. And one time I was at Brouwer’s in Seattle and they got a keg of it. There was a line of doods around the bar waiting for it to be tapped. So that went pretty quickly. I wasn’t buying into the hype as much because, why would I wait for one beer when there are like 40 others ready on tap.
So I was thinking of this as we went to the brewery, having the chance to drink the beer on draft, from the source, abundant. I drank the beer with a great satisfaction.
The colors, man.
I mean look at ’em.
The wind blasted grasses hangin’ on for dear life to the sand, soft like a little baby harp seal.
Two weeks in Sonoma County felt like too little. It really is wonderful. From a traveling perspective, two weeks was probably enough. Our place was great, but small. This is where noise cancelling headphones come in handy when you have two people working at the same kitchen table (love you Ang!).
For a person from a non-lemon growing state, lemon trees are endlessly fascinating to me. I mean, you got lemons growing in your backyard.
Walking down the beach – awesome. Nice firm sand, warm sun, cool breeze. Then you turn left to a trail and it is loose sand dunes. Really more of a horse trail I guess. Man that’s tiring. Yeah, shoulda gone back on the beach.
My instinct to go straight into “travel mode”, as I like to call it–that instinct to simply go outside and walk and see things in a new place, was very strong when we got to New Orleans.
So I went outside and walked around and looked at things. I looked at the map, saw where “things” were, and walked over there. I did this a lot, walking in every direction from our place and covering a good amount of the city over the course of a month. I’m kinda like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, always looking for “more input”.
St. Louis Cemetery #1. Famous scene from Easy Rider. Go get a tour from Casey – he’s great. He’ll tell you all about Nick Cage’s sweet pyramid tomb too.
We stayed in the Uptown area of New Orleans, which is nice and hipstery; lots of restaurants and bars, coffee, shops, and stuff like that. You can head east-ish down Magazine street for miles of things until you hit the French Quarter, Frenchman Street, and then the Bywater. And there is cool stuff everywhere. But then, there is only so much you can eat and drink, and only so far you can walk before the miles start adding up and your old feet start getting sore. So then you take the bus to get to places further afield. But waiting for the bus gets old fast man, but you don’t want to spend $20 on an Uber every time you want to go four miles, so your travel mode walking starts to slow down to a whimper after a month of this.
Hey Ang, go stand in front of that building.
New Orleans is a great city, I would say universally loved. Lots of tourists, like us. I’m fairly certain you, or someone you know, has said the words “I love New Orleans” and can give you a recommendation for a specific bar, or restaurant, or place to see live music. I’m sure they are all good recommendations. There are few places better to “walk around and drink some more“. Get a sweet frozen drink in a plastic cup, walk around the French Quarter, look at the architecture, cross Bourbon street and see a lot of people drinking a lot.
Walking past Bourbon on the Friday before Christmas was pretty gnarly, almost a shock to the system to see such a loud street with so many people collected and drinking, generic blues music. For me, there are many more interesting (and quieter) streets to wander with a beer in tow.
According to some post on the internet this is the House of the Rising Sun.
Getting drinks to go really is a great thing. You can get drinks anywhere and walk around with them outside. I know this is obvious when you think of French Quarter, slushie drinks or whatever. But you can also just go to the bakery down the street, get a kick ass pastry, and a Bloody Mary to go in a plastic cup with a straw.
Looked at this and then went and had a beer.
At one point we walked past the French Market and there was a small band playing Hit the Road Jack outside. Nice rendition for sure, we didn’t stop, but enjoyable to hear some music out in the open air you-know-what-I-mean? Anyway, I noticed this guy filming basically the entire thing on his phone, which of course, you always see, all the time. Now, I was thinking, dood, put the phone down and just listen to the music maaaan, enjoy your day! But then I thought, if a random guy playing Hit the Road Jack at four in the afternoon on a Thursday is so mind-blowing that you are compelled to film the performance in its entirety, maybe you have to do it? I mean, maybe the guy showed the video to his friend, and his friend said “HOLY FUCKING SHIT! IS THAT HIT THE ROAD JACK???“
This is the third time I’ve been to New Orleans in my life, so I’ve seen a good cross-section of the tourist areas like French Quarter, Frenchman, been to the WWII museum (probably one of the world’s best military museums by the way), also – the site of the battle of New Orleans for you War of 1812 buffs out there. So this time around I just wanted check out the city more broadly, be outside, and get a sense of what it is like to live there. So yeah, a lot of walking and looking at things, parks, and stuff.
Observed the mighty Mississip’. I’m not sure most people realize how effin’ big this river is. It’s like a non-stop giant lake that goes on forever.
That boat is also massive.
I felt compelled to visit the Tabasco factory on Avery Island since we were in the area. I got hooked on the sauce in the “war”. My first real exposure to hot sauce, and southern food, was when I went to Fort Jackson South Carolina for basic training. It was a novel thing for me to see Crystal or Texas Pete on the tables in the chow halls. So you put a little on yer eggs, in yer grits, whatever. Then you eat a shitload of MREs and they all have little bottles of Tabasco in ’em. And the hamsteak tastes like shit so you put the sauce on. The boneless porkchop ain’t so bad but you put Tabasco on it anyway. Speaking of MREs I saw a lady in Nola walking around with a little purse made out of an old MRE bag. Hey that’s kinda neat I said to myself.
The Tabasco Estate has a nice swampy park that’d be great for gators to just hang out like the weird old dinosaurs they are.
Nowadays there are a million hot sauces, but I always find myself coming back to Tabasco as a staple. The key is the fermentation process, it gives it that sweet sweet funk. Try the Family Reserve – aged eight years and made with white wine vinegar, good stuff maynard.
Regardless of your taste in movies, I think we all can agree that Total Recall is one of the best five or ten films ever made. Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 masterpiece elevated gratuitous violence into high art, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s portrayal of Quaid/Howser will surely stand the test of time.
A good amount of Total Recall was filmed in Mexico City, so I felt obligated to check out some of the locations. Maybe I’d even have the chance to reenact a chase scene through a crowded subway station where I use an innocent bystander as a human shield, and then throw his bullet-ridden corpse 15 feet down an escalator on top of my uzi-wielding pursuers.
One of the entrances to the Chabacano subway station. I’m pretty sure they shot some Total Recall exterior shots here. You just have to imagine it clean, unpainted, and empty. And 30 years younger.
This is actually the second Total Recall filming location I’ve visited, the other being Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada where they filmed some of the Mars scenes. (Link to some photos/videos of that trip to be inserted here sometime in the future :)).
Total Recall is set in the year 2084. Apparently director Paul Verhoeven had wanted to film the movie in Houston (which looks very futuristic and was the set of his other masterpiece of violence Robocop), but it was too expensive, so they went to Mexico City (insert Google search for Total Recall internet research).
One of the many stairwells/escalators in the subway station. The signs, though in Spanish still have the same font and style as you see in the movie.
When you watch the movie, it does look futuristic. Clean, smooth, cement seems and fresh silver subway cars have that effect. But this movie was filmed over thirty years ago. So while I could get a sense of it being the same place the movie was shot, it was just as interesting as an exploration of time and aging buildings. Here you get to see what cement structures having been used non-stop by millions of people for 30+ years looks like. The subway cars were the same too, but they are painted now, and also just really old and grimy.
A view from one of the subway tracks. I only wish I could have ran alongside a moving train, smash a window and jump inside like Quaid/Howser.
Ultimately, I wasn’t able to reenact any scenes to great effect. The main issue was just how crazy the subway stations were. This is one of the largest cities in the world and every station and every subway car was absolutely packed with people at all times. The stations themselves are massive, with tons of staircases, escalators, and winding walkways. There really isn’t a single place you can just stop walking and stand comfortably for a moment to compare historic photos from the movie.
