About A Stepdad

Ok, I tried just to lay in the sun and read but it was hot, and no matter how much they misted me, it was still a little too hot to just sit there.

But I did have eggs benny outside, read my book for a bit, wondered what Margot would have thought about this place and made notes of the small things I observed.  Things like the humidity caked the sugar into a big lump and made the salt a solid mass (but not the pepper.)

So, off I went to see the Salton Sea.

Learned something along the way.  My car talks to me.  Hey!  Don’t look at me like that.  She’s very sweet and eager to please.  I tell her the radio station and she plays it, I tell her it’s too hot and she makes it cool.  I think I love her.

I also stopped listening to the news.  To be fair, I gave up a few days ago.  It just pisses me off.   So, instead, I have listened to an audio book.  Tom Clancey’s Rainbow Six.  Super fun to listen to a book while I drive mile after mile, even if the book has a cardboard villain and the heroes are often saved by some form of deus ex machina.  Honestly, I don’t get how Clancey sells as well as he does, Slater is a far, far better writer.

Arrived at the Sea a little after noon.  Pulled into a state park, looked at a nifty little cactus garden and saw a roadrunner!!!  Meep.  Meep.  Only coyote I ever saw was, sadly, dead on the side of the road.  But man, those little road runners can move.

Made my day.

Sat on the edge of the Salton Sea on a beach made up of small shells and a ton of dead fish.  Freya and Vegas would have loved the dead fish but it made me wonder wtf had happened here?

Now I normally love being by the sea but I have to tell you, that sea was a bit too sea-smelly, even with only floating seaweed.  That heat seemed to trap the worst of the smells and just lock them in.

Didn’t stay long.

Did find another cool location.  A date tree farm with cows (of all freaking things) lounging in the shade.  Some of the farms had greenery underneath the trees, others grew in bare sand, the date trees wrapped and hanging in what looked like canvas bags.  Great place for an ambush.  Especially if you put a few explosives in the trees…

I took a detour to drive around the Joshua Tree National Park and stopped at the General Patton Memorial.  Why they would put a memorial and museum in the middle of another truckstop/gas-station/small town, I have no idea but they did have a great collection of, well, Patton tanks.  So I kinda had to stop.

But I had an attack of cheap and didn’t pay to go into the museum itself.

By the time I drove away, it was cloudy again and I thought, you know what, nap time, dammit, nap time.

It’s a vacation.

As I left the air museum, the sun was out so I thought, hey, why not go to see the Salton Sea.  But as I drove out there, the clouds gathered once again and I thought, gack, if the weather had held, it would be worth the 2 hour drive but not in bad weather.

So, I came back to my nice, comfy room and relaxed on my uber comfy bed and caught up on my writing while using my amazingly comfy pillows as a backrest.

Tomorrow, I will be reading in the sun.  Or shade.  It’s a rest day.

Paula asked where Lou would be and I have an answer.  He would be at the Palm Springs Air Museum.  Outside, an F-15, A6, F-16 and Cicadas screeching so loudly, that I couldn’t hear if my engine was off or not.

Inside, they had a fantastic collection of WW2 aircraft and a pretty impressive explanation of when and where the planes (and pilots) fought.

I won’t bother naming all the planes (like I could anyway) but man, it really reminded me how HUGE even the ‘small’ fighters were.  Some of the engines, like those on a P-47, were freaking gigantic!

Oh I loved looking at all the planes and reading about the history but the most fun I had was when one of the volunteers came over and asked what I thought of the collection.

We ended up talking for quite a while and he was very excited to tell me about how they found and raised and restored an SBD dive bomber (on display now in the museum.)

I told him about my dad being an airplane mechanic and how he came over to Canada and fell in love with the open space and he told me he went over to England and fell in love with an English woman.  Hahaha!

He was a great guy, short, round, his eyes a little rheumy and red, his hands spotted, his hair white and thin but his mind was still as sharp as, well, something sharp and he LOVED talking about planes.  How he found the engine cover for the SBD (on a windpump in Texas), how they used authentic rivets but how the plane would not fly (which seemed to make him sad.)

He talked about all the planes and pilots that come to the airshows here and how he wants to go back and see the UK museums which he thought were outstanding.

Made my day.

Lou would have loved the museum.

And the old crew chief, Tom.

It was a bit of a drive to Palm Springs.  The weather started out bright and sunny and I stopped to look around old Victoriaville.  It wasn’t that old.

As I drove out past Applevalley towards Palm Springs more and more clouds gathered.  I passed pretty iffy farmland and junk yards and more signs with land for sale than I could count.  Yikes.  Good metaphor to use in writing but sad for the people here.

Stopped off in Lucern Valley and took pictures of the sheriff station.  Funny thing, parked illegally to take them.  I wanted to see what a small town station was like.  It was small.  However, I saw the best sign ever!

I drove off before the cops realized they were being scouted.

And then the rains came.

Oh boy.

Joy.

It really came down.

It made the air smell kind of rubbery.  I turned off the AC, rolled down the windows and, while rain poured in, I sniffed and sniffed and yup, it smelled rubbery.  Kinda odd.

I drove up hills, and down hills and, at the bottom of the hills, some nasty ass puddles.  And a sign that said, flood warning!

I could totally see it.  If it rained for much longer, some of those roads would become completely impassible and I would be forced to try to drive through them and end up on some Youtube video.

But the rain only lasted, what, half an hour?  Maybe 45 min.  Not exactly a Vancouver downpour but it was enough to make the air all muggy and cloying.

When I arrived at the Renaissance, the check in desk was sectioned off with yellow do-not-cross tape.  Towels covered parts of the floor like white terrycloth dykes.  Turns out the rain hammered them.

Apparently they’ve had only 5 days of rain and today was one, a great downpour.  How do I know this?  Chatty-Vacation-Joe asked.  I found out that said rain makes the whole area very humid.  Which it was.  I found out that locals can smell a storm coming.  (This I got from the security guard lady I talked to.)  I found out they don’t much like the rain, even though they know it’s necessary.

In check-in line, met a nice fellow who commented on my glasses, saying they looked great, that he loved the classic look.

I thought this might be a hello-sailor moment but it turns out he sold eyeglasses for 20 year before becoming a camera man.  A camera man?  Well, yes, now he works in the film biz and was out here to promote lenses to other studios.  He wanted to know what brought me out this way and I told him writing about the desert and he seemed genuinely interested.  He talked about the most amazing place in the desert he had seen, not in California but in Utah, the Bryce Canyon.  He even showed me pictures.

I have to say, it was kinda fun chatting with him.  His name was Filo.

Put my stuff in the room, looked at the nice view from my balcony of the pool and felt the humid heat.  Yucky.  But the room was awesome!

But at least the sun was out.

Time to see something.

I’ve talked about the sights but what about the people?  At the risk of being general, they’ve all be so nice and polite and friendly.

A few have stood out, though, as … note-worthy.

When I checked out this morning, there was a fellow in the middle of the parking lot, standing in the sun, singing to Jesus.  At the top of his lungs.  Singing loud and proud.  It wasn’t a song I recognized, the only words I could make out were Jesus, fucking Jesus, oh Jesus, and, of course, Lord Jesus.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I should even make eye contact, so I ignored him and went about my merry business.  It could be that if I stayed, there would have been more of a message.

When I ate this morning, there was a pair of soldiers sitting in a booth and an older lady came in and made a bee-line over towards them.  I thought she knew them, being a small town and all but no, she marched up to them and thanked them for their service to the country.

I love that I see this in America.  I love that their soldiers get thanked for their service.  I’m not sure if it meant anything to the young men, and man they looked young, but it was a nice gesture.

It makes sense for a town like Barstow.  Several HUGE bases nearby and recruiting magazines in the hotels and restaurants.  It’s a place that would rely on military personnel.

Lastly, there seems to be one idiot wandering around all sorts of abandoned buildings.  Hey, ok, that’s me but it was funny to watch all the truckers in Ludlow looking at me like I was weird in the head.  They all stopped talking and, with cups of coffee in their meaty hands, all shifted to see what I was up to, since, apparently, because not a lot of people go over to see a ruined house.

See, weirdoes all over the desert.

After I woke up from a long, long nap, I checked my email and found one from my friend, Sheila, who is looking after my dogs.

It was a frightening email.

I haven’t gone on a vacation for 2 years in part due to my fear Freya would finally lose her battle with cancer and I wouldn’t be there.

However, in mid-August, I convinced myself this wouldn’t happen, that I could go away and everything would be fine.

But that email said she had to be taken to the vet.  For good reasons.

It’s hard to describe that feeling you get when you hear news like this.  When I was told Margot had cancer, it was such a shock, I don’t think I breathed for a minute, my stomach knotted up and my whole body was seized with, well, the best way I can describe it is take the worst tired, fatigue you’ve ever felt over you entire body and triple it.  It’s not like needle-pain, it’s like an agonizing exhaustion.

That’s how I felt when I read it.  The email went on to say the vet had a strategy and that Freya was still happy and full of energy, so it wasn’t fatal, but it just brought out all sorts of feelings.

I keep telling myself (and others) that Freya’s been sick for a long time and that I think I’ll be ok with her passing.  I mean, I’m not sure I could have survived losing my wife and my dog in the same year but Freya held on, took her meds, continued to wag her tail and scarf down food, and while she never got better, she didn’t get massively worse.

But the truth is, losing her will be hard.

Really hard.

Thankfully, she’s in good hands right now.  Great hands, actually.  She’s getting a lot of love, food and attention.

But I didn’t get much sleep.  Try as I might, there is a great fear I won’t be there if she has to move on.  If she really starts to go downhill, I’m going to have to cancel my trip and head back.

Sure it’ll cost a ton of money but there’s no way I could chose to vacation over being with my little girlie in her last moments.

Easy choice, really.

But let’s hope she holds on a little longer.

As I was zipping down the highway towards home I saw a huge complex off to the right, or north for those who care.

It was a huge, abandoned amusement park.  Fenced off.  Gated off.  Intact but tagged with graffiti.

Oh boy, just the type of place to inspire me.

I pulled off at the nearest exit, which turned out to be a LONG way off, and drove back along a rickety road.  And there is was.

It was behind a fence but I did manage to find a place to, errr, sneak in.

A treasure trove of neat pictures and ideas.

So here’s how my mind works.  Who would use this place as a killing ground?  Likely there would be parties here.  Teenagers.  College kids.  Not exactly a quiet spot sometimes.

But what if someone used that?  Locked up one of the rooms and waited for the right number of people.  Say 1 or 2.  Young people.  Then he would leave the door open, hoping they would come in.  Like a spider.  Spider.  Hmmm.  Would he call himself that?

But if he killed people here, how could he cover it up?  I mean, the cops come once, see a room full of blood and go, hey something’s up here.

So, what if he covers the room in plastic?  Dexter style.  Two kids walk in, see it, say, “shit, what the fuck is this?” the door closes and the spider has them.  Kills them, wraps them up.  Cocoons them.  Packs them up to be stored at his place.

And that, sadly, is how my mind works.

After taking pictures and thinking writer’s thoughts, I drove away.

Feeling a little sick, either from headache or getting in the mind of a killer for moment or from the adrenaline dump after the lightning storm (and with the clouds overhead pretty much making photography no fun,) I decided to snooze.

I guess my body needed it because I didn’t wake up until 9 and some scary news on my email.

I loved being at Roy’s, no matter how much it differed from my actual story.  I’m not sure why, though?  Why was it fun to walk around the church, the only person doing so, by the way, and why was it fun to try to see inside?  (ok, try to GET inside – but all the doors were locked.)

It’s the same fun I get wandering around a castle or a ruin or a battlefield in Europe.  I guess it’s a connection to history.  To stories or events that I found interesting.

Anyway, drove away from Amboy in a cloud of dush, a town owned by one man (something I must remember for another story).  No sooner had I got up to 100, then I saw things I wanted to take pictures of.  Weird things.  Things that I would use in future stories.

The shoe tree.  My goodness.  Considering the local population of Amboy was 1, there were a lot of shoes.  Why this site?  Why only one shoe?  Was there a reason?  Took a picture and missed not being able to talk to Margot about it.

I drove north towards the Mojave Desert national park. I doubted the countryside would be that much better but had time and wanted to look at this area.  The sun was out, but I could see clouds in the distance.  No matter, as long as the clouds didn’t bugger up any of my shots, I’d be happy.

As I entered, I stopped at the park sign and info center.  Read everything, even the part about making sure I had enough gas. I had a quarter tank.  That should be enough, right?

Stopped at every pretty shot and every interesting plant and sometimes, I just stopped to look at the rocks.  A completely different landscape than anything in BC.

But as I drove north, the clouds began to close in and man, when the sun goes, the desert gets kinda depressing.  Very dark.  Very grey.  Very bleak.

Stopped for lunch, but not at the photo place, (I took that because it was cool) and then I looked at the time.  2:40 and decided against what would be about a 6 hour drive to the Valley of Death.  For some reason, also had a headache.  Grrrr.

So home I went.

And into a desert storm.

Boy, when the rain comes, it really comes.  As I hurtled down the highway, the wind picked up and buffeted the car, then the rain came in huge, thundering drops, and then, then the lightning started.

Oh my.

I love lightning storms.

LOVE THEM.

But I tell you, driving in one, a whole different experience.  Wind hammered every car on the highway and gigantic, long streaks of lightning shot from the sky, straight down, zip, zap, lighting up the road and the sky with a great flash.

No one, and I mean no one, drove with one hand on the steering wheel.  It was all 10 and 2.  No one and I mean no one went over the speed limit.  It was 60 and I did 50 and I wasn’t the slowest one.

The odd thing though was I didn’t hear any thunder.  No loud cracks, no rolling booms.  It was the strangest thing to see lightning hit the ground about 40 feet from me and hear nothing.  Kinda freaky, actually.

It got my heart beating a little faster, especially when the lightning would strike just to the side of the road.  I won’t deny it, with the wind and the rain on top of it all, it was a little frightening.

But I drove through it, through 3 separate storms actually and made it without being hit by lightning or blown off the road.

And, as I came out of the storm, I saw a place I HAD to visit.

As a writer, at least a fiction writer, I’m not required to tell the truth, the whole truth or really any part of the truth.  I make shit up.  That’s what I do.

However, I like to get stuff right.  You know, the details, the facts, the locations, the reality.

But not at the expense of a good story.

It’s a fine balance sometimes.

If you are completely factual and realistic, you run the risk of writing a pretty boring story because, let’s face it, if you look at police work, there are a lot less car chases, interviews in stripper bars and shootouts with the Russian mob, and more paperwork, grueling stakeouts, and beers after work in stripper bars.

So when I arrived at Roy’s a setting in one of my novels, I quickly began to realize how far off reservation I’d gone.

Oh sure, it’s a pretty cool little local attraction but the café sat only two, instead of the 10 I imagined, the motel rooms were no longer being used and the pool, my lovely pool, was full of tumble weeds, (Ok, making shit up here, I actually don’t know what dead plants were in it) and the church, the lovely church that features in my story is pretty much a ruined mess, at least what I could see by jumping up and peering into the back window.  No stain glass.  No worn wooden doors.  No pews inside.

Plus, and perhaps most damaging, was that the stop was FULL of people.  Not exactly the out of the way location I had written about.

So, do I change the story, change the location, delete a few tables, get rid of the pool?

No.  Others might.  Not me.

It’ll stay as written.  Oh, I’ll add a few more cool details that I was able to see, like the old cash register, the pictures on the walls, the worn look of the countertop, the oil stand beside the food, but why break something that’s working?

If anyone is interested, the place I invented was inspired by Roy’s.  But it’s not Roy’s.  It’s Earl’s.

And it exists in my mind.

I always have the best intentions of getting up early.  Checked that the clock was the right time, set the alarm for 7, set the cell phone as back up for 7:30.  Then went to bed.

But didn’t get up at 7 and only got up at 7:30 because someone’s car alarm was going off and I thought, hey, could that be me?  Turned out, it wasn’t.

Showered, shaved and hit the road after rebooking this place for another night.  Hey, it had internet and a HUGE bed and all the towels were made into small animals.  Plus, it would save me time, later, looking for a place.

My plan was to hit Ludlow, take the pictures I couldn’t yesterday, drive out to Amboy and see one of the locations I set my story in, then drive out to the Mohave Desert National Park, and, if I had time, maybe Death Valley.

On the way out, found a tank, (I mean, how cool is that, not only are there gun shops every 10 feet but they put tanks in parks!)  Also found a neat rusty old truck, an outlet mall and an old map of the desert at an old gas station.  Took me about 30 min to get to Ludlow.

Loved the little town of Ludlow.  It’s not really a town but a gas station an place to eat, a hotel and a huge truck stop.  But it had a ton of abandoned buildings.  I parked and walked to a few of them, hoping they weren’t filled with gun-totting maniacs.  Took some pictures, felt a little sad that there were so many dead towns like this.

No big adventures to report.  Hit 110mph on the old highway 66.  Nearly hit 45 going backwards, though I couldn’t seem to break 43.

Wait, what?  Backwards.

Ok, lemme esplain.

I wanted to take a picture of the route 66 stencil on the road.  However at 100, you tend not to see stuff until you’re about past it.  So, as I drove over the 66 marker, I stopped and, since there was no traffic, backed up a bit.

I parked beside the marker, got out, took my pictures, thought, damn it’s hot, and got back in the car.

Then I thought.  Hey, if I can get it up to 110 easily, who fast could I go in reverse?  Sort of the same thinking that I had when I zapped myself with the electrical ends of a bug zapper (how hard could it hurt, I wondered- and the answer is, it actually hurts a LOT!)

Anyway, there was no traffic in either direction, and I could literally see for miles so into reverse I put the 300 and gunned it.

It went to 25 fast!  Then it took me a long, long stretch to road to finally get to 43.  I really wanted to get to 45, (OK, I wanted to get to 50!) but the 300 wasn’t able to muster the strength.

Still, it was kinda fun.

Harder to keep the car straight going backwards at that speed but maybe with more practice, who knows.

Didn’t use the rear view camera for anyone interested.

Also, for the record, going backwards really confuses the GPS (and frankly, it was kinda cool that I could actually track my speed going backwards.)

Anyway, after that experiment, it was on to Roy’s.