About A Stepdad

One of the neat things about the 300 is that it has a rear view camera. I’ve never driven a car with one before so I wanted to really try it out and see if I could park the damn thing using only the back-up camera.

I tried to do it at night, so I could best see the camera, and chose the parking lot of the Best Western where I was staying.

I picked my spot, between a black, sported-out Honda and a big ass truck.  There was just enough room to squeeze in and I thought it would be the perfect test.

So I pulled up, put the 300 in reverse and looked only at the camera.  It was a pretty good view with two parallel lines to help me figure out where I was going.

Easy, right?

Well, first attempt had me parked about 3” from the big ass truck.  I pulled out and tried again.  This time, I managed to nearly back into the black Honda.  Then, out of frustration, I tried the old fashioned way and just looked.  Zipped in the 3^rd time nice and easy-like.

When I got out, I saw there was a guy in the big ass truck.  He took one look at me and shook his head.  To make matters worse, the owner of the black Honda was standing in front of his car, looking at me.

When I got out I was forced to do what I do when I’m embarrassed.  I smiled and nodded at him and said, “Hey, Sean Sommerville, nice to meet you.”

Fired up my writer’s senses and drove south.  Saw tons of neat little things like a memorial built of rocks with a small flower in the center.  Saw lots of abandoned buildings.  Saw the Colorado river.  Noticed what the roads sounded like.  Found out what standing in the freaking heat was like (simple terms, just go into a hot car on a hot day and put on the heater full blast.  Longer description, it’s like being wrapped in a blanket of air.  It’s almost smothering.  Stand long enough and you get a little dizzy and your pulse starts to pound and wind does not help to cool you off.)

I think the most surprising thing was how green the desert actually was.  Plus, it was so vastly different from little region to region, sometimes the ground covered in dusty, tiny stones, other times larger black stones, sometimes full of plants, others with plants barely hanging on.

I saw pigeons hiding under a roof overhand for shade and protection, I saw smiley faces painted on broken concrete at an abandoned garage, tar drips down the side of a motel, rusted AC units still in use, wooden water towers baked grey in the sun, old mining equipment left to rust away, a shopping cart along a desert path going towards the mountains, a dead crow with its wings poking up in the air, scorched pavement where I can had probably caught on fire, piles of gravel beside the road waiting to be used or long abandoned, hardy, wood-line roots that anchor the desert plants into an unforgiving soil and so much more.

I learned you have to enter your zip code at the pump, tough for me since I don’t have a zip code and have to prepay.  I learned the drive from Ludlow to Barstow is bumpy from the damage to the roadway and your ears pop from needles to Ludlow due to the elevation change.  I learned that most of the rest areas are closed for repair and yet there is no sign of repair.  I learned that most of the traffic is actually truck traffic, more so than in Canada.  I learned the speed limit is 70 and enforced by radar (and, in some places, planes but no planes ever flew overhead.)

All good writing stuff.

Unfortunately, though, as I passed from Boulder City to Needles, the weather turned to overcast and then, as I came upon Ludlow, it actually rained.

Rained!

It was too bad because I think I’ve become an abandoned building junkie and Ludlow had some great ones.  More for picture taking than story-telling, though.

So the rain put a damper on my picture taking.  But I will return tomorrow.  Never got to Amboy.  I’ll hit that tomorrow.

Spent about 8 hours on the road today but in that car, it felt like 2.  Oh so comfy.

Found lodging in Barstow, ate at Denny’s at about 9 and was too tired to do any more writing so just went back to the hotel and fell asleep.

Lots and lots to do tomorrow.

Originally I had thought I would get into Vegas, yesterday, by about 5:30, say another hour in customs and half hour to get to my hotel and that still would leave me about 2-3 hours to do some vital shopping.  For one, I needed a phone.  A throw away.  Something cheap.  I also needed more underwear and shirts and shorts as I had packed only enough to last me few days.

But that plan died on the linoleum floor of airport customs.

So, now that I had the car, I needed a phone.

I had asked the nice girl if there was a walart nearby and she showed me on the map where I would likely find a Target.  I, then, promptly left the map at the rental agency.

However, I knew what street I needed and following signs, (oh how Margot would have been proud of me, I thought), and found the right street and drove until I hit mall, grabbing cheap American gas before I pulled into the parking lot.

But there was danger in this mall.  A Barnes and Nobles.  Filled with lots of books.  Precious books.  Lovely, new-smelling books.

I tried to ignore the call of the books but after buying some clothes (including some cool shirts), I had to peek inside the B&N.  Just peek, you understand.   A quick look.  I didn’t even grab a basket, cause, you know, that would stop me from buying a book, right?

An hour later, $200 odd dollars later, I emerged from the book store with two bags of books.

It’s why I’ll never do heroin or cocaine. I know I would never be able to resist them and I would end up broke and giving handjobs to hobos in the downtown eastside for a fix.

I stuffed the bags of books in the trunk large enough to hold another 20 bags (or two bodies, four if you dismember them) and went to get my phone.  Easy as pie.  In and out really fast.  Now I had something that would tell me the time and something I could use to call for help if I was attacked by bikers, dingos or forgot to fill up with gas at some point.

By now it was about noon so before I got on the road again, I would eat.  Had the best red velvet pancakes and more cups of coffee than I should have had.

Then, I hit the road.

If I could do it, I wanted to hit Amboy in California (along old route 66) but first I wanted to see Needles and the area around it.  Needles wasn’t anything special but all around there were massive farms in the middle of the desert and I wanted to look at them.  And see the area south of Vegas.

But by the time I got out of Vegas, it was 1.  Lots of driving ahead and I was determined to stop at anything even remotely interesting.

It took me about 5 min to realize that the 300 had a keyless start (after I had jammed the key into pretty much every hole I could find.)  Then, even after I found the button labeled, START, it took me a moment to figure out what I had to do to actually start it (that is to say, put my foot on the break THEN press the button.)  Then I had to figure out how to adjust the seat and then how to work the Sirius radio and then how to work the AC and then how to turn off MSNBC on Sirius radio and then how to shift the car from park to reverse.

Hey, it was complex!

All the newfangled gizmos and fancy-pants electronics, they confused little old me.  Oh, I could have asked but, let’s face it, I’m not an asking guy at the best of times.

However, once I got going, I really appreciated the car. It accelerates like a bat out of hell, is so comfy that I may just sleep in it one night and you cannot over emphasis how important good AC is in 102 degree heat.

In fact, I’m very, very glad I didn’t bring the doggies.  Even in the shade, it’s so hot that it would have really stressed them out.

So, I had my car.  It was now time to implement my plan.

2nd rookie mistake

Alarm clock by the bed actually had the right time.

Turns out, it didn’t.

Ha!

So I got up at what I thought was 8.  I mean, it looked like 8am.  There was sun and it was hot outside on the balcony and so I went down stairs in search of a map.

Now one thing a casino does not have is a lot of clocks.  In fact, there are none.  For a reason.  Time here is different.

I found a map, talked to a grumpy conseirge and found out my rental car was not within walking distance.

So back up I went and phoned enterprise.  Hey, they pick you up.  They said they would be there at 9.

I said awesome and looked at the alarm clock.  It was 8:50.  So down I rushed, checked out and raced to the entrance which is, in fact, the loading dock.

And I waited.  It must have been a good half hour but without a watch (note to self, remember to wear a watch on vacation,) I was wondering what the hell had happened.  Had he got lost, had he gone to a different part of the building.

So I waited and waited and finally went back inside to make a call.  I found a pay phone, not the easiest thing in the world and then bought a water so I could get change and phoned enterprise.

Seems it was 8:43 by their clock.

Sure enough, when I got out my laptop, it was 8:43.  OMG.  No wonder check out was uber fast, it must have been 7:30.  Maybe even earlier.

Ack!

However, a nice car pulled up driven by a pretty girl just a little after 9.  She asked if I was me and I said I was and in I got.

Turned out the car was a Chevrolet 300.  White. Fancy interior.  AC so cold you could store meat.

On the way back to enterprise, I had a nice chat with the girl who had just moved to Vegas from California.  I was my best Kanadian friendly and got her talking about the people (who she thought weren’t a friendly due to the transient nature of the city), about the housing prices and recession (though her husband is a CPA which makes him a lot more immune to the downturns than most) and I even found out she has family in Victoria of all places.  She said she’d love to retire there someday.  Hahaha.

Anyway, I have no idea why I was all chatty but I was.

Filled out the paperwork and took off in my zoomie car.  Ok, not quite.  At least in my mind that’s what happened.

The truth was a little different.

Now being amazingly clever and yet unendingly clueless, I found a Vegas hotel for one night, on the strip, for $30.

Oh, how clever, right?

How amazing?

But if that deal is in a hotel under renovation, is it really a deal?

Well, the taxi driver certainly had an opinion.  He thought I was nuts.  I pointed out that the rooms were supposed to be fine, (having, of course, not actually seen the rooms, but merely read trip advisor,) and he went on a tear about how the Imperial Palace had fucked up traffic for blocks and that the only way in was a seedy back entrance beside where they kept the garbage.

Honestly, at first, I thought he was joking but sure enough, they had ripped up entire streets and one of them was the main street leading to the main entrance.  So, around the back we went, and through the back door I marched, the lovely smell of rotting garbage sitting like a fog.

Oncie inside, I immediately got lost.

Oh there were signs to the desk but the first one I followed led me to a desk that said, this desk is no longer in operation, please go to the front desk, a perfectly reasonable request if I could actually find the front.

I went up escalators, down steps, past bars and closed shops and tons of sweaty gamblers, half of whom were smoking.

Ah yes, I forgot.

Smoking is still ok in the casinos.

With a fake Michael Jackson singing in the casino and hordes of people holding drinks and stumbling around or sitting on chairs gleefully playing one armed bandits while rings of smoke swirled above their heads, I followed signs until I found the check-in desk, and… wait for it….

There was a line.

And if there was AC working, it wasn’t working here.

But I was near my goal.  An A/C room.  And food.

I got both relatively quickly.  The room had seen better days but it was cool and the sheets clean and I couldn’t hear any noise from either the other guests or the construction.  So, in search of food I went, settling on a place called the Hash House, somewhere in the casino (though, even as I’m writing this, I’m not quite sure where.)

I ordered a 24 oz Heinekin and drank most of it before ordering their speciality, a stuff meatloaf.

Now, by the time the food arrived, I was hungry, and a little drunk.  But OMFG the plate was HUGE.  I mean HUUUUUGE!!!  I could not eat it all.  I could only eat about half.

It was so good but jeebuz, in Vegas, when they tell you it’s a big plate of food, they are not fucking kidding.

I’m not even sure if 2 people could have eaten that.

But food and beer made me happy.  I drank and ate and wrote and then planned out tomorrow.

Only one rule.

Tomorrow has to be better.

Sure I survived, it all worked out in the end but man, today was exhausting.

(Pictures to come!)

Why, yes, yes it could, but by now, I was beyond mad, I had abandoned all hope of anything going right and when you abandon hope, there is very little to get stressed about.

Sure enough, the luggage area was empty, the round-and-round thingee shut down.

My luggage was nowhere to be seen.

Well now.

I looked for an airport employee and found one lurking behind a pillar.  I asked her if she knew what happened to the luggage from the Philippine flight 106.  She had no idea but immediately and very kindly went in search of someone who might.

She did find someone but they too had no idea but went in search of someone who might.

Probably unsurprisingly, the 3^rd person had no idea either.

So there we were, the four of us, 3 nice employees of the Las Vegas Airport and me, all of us looking for a 4^th person who would have no idea what had happened either.

Then I saw the black girl who had stood in front of me in line and she was over at, quite naturally, the British Airways carrousel.  As she passed, I asked if that was where she had found our bags and lo and behold the answer was yes.

The first employee looked at the second who looked at the third who was still looking for that forth person while I marched over to the BA carrousel and found my bag.  It was intact as far as I can tell.

By then most of the rest of the customs people had left and so I was waved through the last bag check and marched out into the HOT night.

Now, in a perfect world, a world that tried to redress all the silliness in the airport, that world would have had taxis waiting for me.

Instead, well, there was another line.

A long, sweaty one.

I almost laughed out loud as I got into the line.  I thought of what they would write on my tombstone.  He never even got out of the airport but died of a combination of heat exhaustion, frustration and old age while waiting in a line up.

However, I ended up talking to a nice guy from Nova Scotia.  Noooooova Scoooootia.  Loved his accent.  We did what all people do while standing in yet another line, we bitched aboot everything.  He was here for golfing, gambling and a few shows.  When I told him I was going into the desert, he looked at me like only an east coaster could and said, “Let me get this straight.  You’re going to a desert in the middle of summer.”

“Yup.”

“Las Vegas isn’t hot enough for you, then?”

“Not for me,” I said.  “And not dusty enough.”

He laughed.

About 30 hours later, our cabs arrived and we wished each other a great vacation.  I have to say, them Easterners are freaking hilarious.  I wish I could recall all of his funny observations about the line-ups, the customs people and a particularly HUGE lady squeezing into a small cab but it’s 11:00pm that I’m writing this and not a little drunk.

And for good reason.

The day was not yet over.

When Is a Deal Not a Deal?

Now being amazingly clever and yet unendingly clueless, I found a Vegas hotel for one night, on the strip, for $30.

Oh, how clever, right?

How amazing?

But if that deal is in a hotel under renovation, is it really a deal?

Well, the taxi driver certainly had an opinion.  He thought I was nuts.  I pointed out that the rooms were supposed to be fine, (having, of course, not actually seen the rooms,) and he went on a tear about how the Imperial Palace had fucked up traffic for blocks and that the only way in was a seedy back entrance beside where they kept the garbage.

Honestly, at first, I thought he was joking but sure enough, they had ripped up entire streets and one of them was the main street leading to the main entrance.  So, around the back we went, and through the back door I marched.

And got lost.

Oh there were signs to the desk but the first one I followed led me to a desk that said, this desk is no longer in operation, please go to the front desk, a perfectly reasonable request if I could actually find the front.

I went up escalators, down steps, past bars and closed shops and tons of sweaty gamblers, half of whom were smoking.

Ah yes, I forgot.

Smoking is still ok in the casinos.

With a fake Michael Jackson singing in the casino and hordes of people holding drinks and stumbling around or sitting on chairs gleefully playing one armed bandits while rings of smoke swirled above their heads, I followed signs until I found the check-in desk, and… wait for it….

There was a line.

And if there was AC working, it wasn’t working here.

But I was near my goal.  An A/C room.  And food.

I got both relatively quickly, settling on a place called the Hash House, somewhere in the casino (though, even as I’m writing this, I’m not quite sure where.)

I order a 24 ox Heinekin and drank most of it before ordering their speciality, a stuff meatloaf.

Now, by the time the food arrived, I was hungry, and a little drunk.  But OMFG the plate was HUGE.  I mean HUUUUUGE!!!  I could not eat it all.  I could only eat about half.

It was so good but jeebuz, in Vegas, when they tell you it’s a big plate of food, they are not fucking kidding.

I’m not even sure if 2 people could have eaten that.

But food and beer made me happy.  I drank and ate and wrote and then planned out tomorrow.

Only one rule.

Tomorrow has to be better.

Sure I survived, it all worked out in the end but man, today was exhausting.

Ok, rookie mistake number one.  I shouldn’t have got hypnotized by the clouds, I should have gone pee.  But hey, I decided to go pee as soon as I got off the plane.  Quick zip, whip it out, szszszszszs and zip up.  Fast-fast.

But that time made me at the end of the customs line, a line with about a billion people and only 4 customs clerks interviewing people.  ACK!!!!!

But hey, it’s vacation.  I stood there thinking of clouds and showgirls when I noticed, out of the corner of my little Kanadian eye that everyone seemed to have a little piece of blue paper.

Hmmm.

Overhead, a nice voice boomed that we had better have all our documentation or it’s our ass.  I, of course, had not filled out ANY documentation.  I asked the nice Kanadianz in front of me if I should have got a form from somewhere.  They said, yes, why yes, I should have.  The stewardess came around, they said.  What were you doing, like staring at the clouds?

So I asked them to hold my place and got a form, the correct one, I hoped.  I filled it out in line then waited and waited and waited as the line crawled forward.  People lived and died in that line, babies were born and raised to adulthood, my hair turned white and skin wrinkled.

And then, finally, FINALLY, I was shunted to the line-up in front of the customs agent.

Only to find there was no custom agent.

I shit you not.

It was a line with no one at the precessing station.

A lovely looking black girl tried to point this out but the directing custom agent said someone would be back soon.  He told us we weren’t allowed to leave the line.

WTF!?!?!

The other lines moved.  The people in our line shifted from foot to foot and shot murderous glances at the other people in moving lines.  Then someone showed up and we advanced.

But wait, just as I was 2^nd in this line, that same line director came by and said I had to move to another line.  I said, in my best calm Kanadian voice, I’m only 2 away here, brother, it’s really close.

He said, sir, please move.  And put on his serious face.

So I moved.

To a line up with 3 people.

3 people.

At this point, you can either laugh or flip the fuck out.

I had to laugh.

Then, just as my turn came up, (Oh, yes, it’s hard to believe but read on…) some custom agent began to chat with my guy.  Like I wasn’t there.  Like everyone had been processed.  He came over to talk to my guy about a break.

OMFG!!!

If I had to get in one more line-up I was going to lose it, fuck a sense of humor, I was hungry, hot and about the last person in the entire airport (the actual last person was the nice Kanadian in front of me who had told me about the paperwork requirements.)

But then I was waved forward and the customs guy basically waved me through.

Now all I had to find was my luggage.

2 hours in line.

I’m sure it would still be there.

Right?

Right?

3:00 flight delayed until 4:00.  Got there at check-in time.  2:55.  No one there from the airlines.  A few passengers looking confused.

3:40 No sign of any of the airline attendants.  Entire hallway full of passengers looking even more confused and checking their airline apps.

4:00.  Still no sign of airline personnel.  Crowd getting restless but mostly full of nice, polite Filipinos and orderly Koreans.  I log on to check just how long the flight is REALLY delayed.  The YVR site says the updated departure time is 4:00.  Clearly not.

4:20.  Airline personnel arrive.  Being orderly, we form a line.  They stand around for a bit then let us into the waiting gate area.  Why they couldn’t have done this earlier is beyond me?  We could have watched the planes come and go. Got some drinks.  Had a ton more seats to sit in.

Ah well.

Got onboard.  Window seat.  Quiet young man (jeez, did I just say ‘young man’?) sat beside me and didn’t say a word.  Just how I like it.

Flight there was amazing.  I was mesmerized by clouds.  They looked like ice cream scoops and fluffy mashed potatoes and towering plateaus and rolling seas.  I honestly got so lost in the clouds, I didn’t notice when the stewardess came by and took my food tray away.

I also didn’t notice something else that would become somewhat important later.

Apart from the clouds, there were gigantic mountains, hills that gleamed like copper in the setting sun and vast white, spreads of salt flats and then, there it was, Vegas, a huge sprawl of a city in the middle of nowhere.

The flight took 2 1/2 hrs but went by so quickly.  I was fed, no one talked to me and the view was spectacular.  As an added bonus, my newfangled ear-plugs stopped my ears from hurting like hell and left me only partially hearing impaired.  So cool.

A good thing because when I landed, it all went pear-shaped.

Well, after telling people for so long that I have to go down and visit the locations I’m writing about, I’m finally in the airport, waiting for my plane to take me to the California desert.

I’ll be taking the Philippines airline.  Yes.  Philippines.  First off, why that extra ‘p’ in Philippines?   And, then, why do the people who live there call themselves Filipinos with an ‘F’ and no extra ‘P’ dangling around in the middle?  It would be like use living in Canada and saying we’re Kanadianz.

When I get on the flight, I mean to ask them about their ‘p’ choices.  I hope I don’t get air-marshaled off the flight.

Now, in typical fashion, I arrived early only to find out my flight is late.  Honestly, it’ not a big deal.  I park my butt in a chair, haul out my laptop and do a bit of writing or watch people wander by or snicker at someone trying to carry one too many bags on a baggage cart.  It’s all good.

But I have to say, I’m a big nervous going on this trip.  Oh, the location will be fine unless I decide to visit a hells angels bar and ask the biggest guy there why they don’t have more gay or black people (or gay black people.)

It’s actually hard to put my finger on.  Maybe I’m just getting old and new things scare me.  It could be that I used to travel with the most organized, most amazing woman ever and she tempered my innate need to panic about every little thing.   It could be that I’ll be doing part of my tour by the seat of my pants, chaotically driving around the desert in search of neat locations, hidden gems and long, lost airfields.  A lot of horror movies seem to start out that way.

However, I needed a break.  At home, I couldn’t find a way back to my writing, to finishing off my latest novel.  My hope, more than anything else, is to get inspired.  To rekindle my love in writing by standing in 104 degree heat.  To live and breathe and walk in the world my character lives in.

Thankfully, I have a great friend who is looking after my doggies who has made this all possible.  I have another great friend who picked me up in Victoria and made sure I got the airport on time.  I have friends back home who’ll shoot anyone breaking into my home.

I wish I could take them all with me.  A great convoy of clueless Kanadianz driving around the desert looking for that motel with the chainsaw marks on the room doors or going off road to find that long abandoned gold mine or simply seeing how long they can stand in the heat before they pass out.

But no, I’ll have to do those things alone.

Me.

Justjoe.