Welcome to Marfa.

So the journey has ended and we made it from San Francisco to Marfa and back. It was a long trip and a lot of miles to think and see some pretty outstanding natural beauty in America.

Along the road I met a lot of great people, some I knew only online and others we bumped into at various stops along the way. Meeting strangers and spending time with them is not to be taken lightly. I think learned a little from everyone I met. Getting into some wide open spaces is a good way to clear your mind and think about new ideas and old themes afresh.

Marfa? Well, turned out that Alpine is a lot nicer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty town, a small place and does not appear to be littered with chain food and coffee branches so that’s a blessing. There’s a lot of art, some bookstores and three hotels – all booked at the weekend and all fairly expensive. Maybe I’m getting old or maybe the small towns on the way were so filled with charming locals, but I found the self conscious and arty ways of Marfa more like the attitudes on either coast. Self-conscious, too self aware.This seemed displaced in the middle of a deserted area. If you’re headed that way, visit for sure, but stay in Alpine if you can and talk to the people there. I liked them a lot, even the half-cut cowboy in the Buffalo Rose and his friends who were so embarrassed that they continually apologised for his amusing outbursts.

I like being on the road. I like looking around and processing things. I like a different place to the one I live in. It’s a vacation from everything familiar and not so challenging for language and culture as to make it hard work. An easy way to take your mind out for a steam clean.

Blogging on the road has been fun too. I was armed with an Acer Aspire One, a Flip – first generation and a Cannon 450 D. Shooting a place you have an affection for makes the action easier. It’s good practice and sharpened the pencil a little I guess. I had forgotten what it was like to file my own copy without having to report to someone else.

Two months ago, in an unkempt motel out in Fernley, Nevada — the night before I went out to drive some of the same roads we wound up traveling on our leg from Death Valley to Yosemite —  I’d had one of my Delphic dreams about Miss K. Even so, I didn’t expect this trip to pry me out of my life so fully. I did know it was the last real commitment I’d made to an arc I’ve been on since I decided to leave Los Angeles just about two years ago. I was aware going in that it was an end, but that’s about all I was sure of.

I’ve long been a fan of singer/illustrator Rick Froberg. For those unfamiliar, he was a pivotal figure in the early ‘90s San Diego music scene, back when it was being done over with a nitcomb by A&R men with an eye fixed on finding “the Next Seattle.” But the record long-considered his magnum opus, 1994’s Yank Crime by Drive Like Jehu, never quite connected with me.  I’d known it was important; little lines from it like “Do you compute?” and “Aloha! Suit up!” had stuck with me for years. The cover art — a simple black-and-white drawing of an India ink bottle with the dropper suspended by an invisible hand, trickling a puddle down the side — had always hung somewhere in the recesses of my mind. But the whole of it was way too big for me, somehow. Finally, fifteen years after its release, about five days into the desert, it became all I wanted to hear.

My copy was in a storage space with the rest of the detrius collected moving from town to town; job to job; woman to woman. Gathering dust in an uncertain stasis as to where it would land next as part of an actual home. In lieu of having the record to listen to, remembered snippets played themselves out, stretching and contracting with the scenery.

Six-hundred-mile days seemed about right. We both preferred the windows open, only resorting to air conditioning when the wind got too extreme or the thermometer on the dash crested 42C. Eventually, it was as if we were taking separate journeys to the same places. We’d stowed the iPods in favor of the roar of the long-distance interstates and blast-furnace air. And that’s when the expansive, rolling, abrasive patterns constructed into soaring mini-suites — topped with oblique lyrics about standing in the face of decay, accusation and misunderstanding — began to assert themselves as the internal score to my side of the journey.

The thing about my Delphic dreams is that they never play out literally. They tell a story and assign some sort of fate. And any attempt to fuck with or subvert it or make it something else, or to play off the literal aspects of the story spun in my subconscious, just seems to make that fate more certain. When I had that dream of her in the desert, I sensed that I would come away from this trip fundamentally changed. But I’d largely discounted that premonition when I picked her up in San Francisco. Or if I didn’t exactly ignore it, I tried to half-ass my way around it like Laius of Thebes in low-top Chuck Taylors.

For the better part of two weeks, I’d been trying to see America — and myself — through her eyes. The result was somewhat like seeing my obsessively-maintained collection of myths as a room full of stained-glass art and wincing as a hammer-wielding logician took them on. The fragile ones shattered; the ones worth keeping held under the blows. There was a lot of glass on the ground by the time we got back to San Francisco.

After dropping off Miss K., I really just wanted to get out of the City as quickly as possible; staying in the 415 area code was only going to make me dwell unhealthily on everything I was leaving behind — something I’m already fantastically good at. So out it was, across Market, across Mission, across Folsom and Harrison, left on Bryant and onto I-80 toward my beloved East Bay.

In the middle of my favorite bridge in the world, I realized that the Northern California where I’ve spent roughly 87 percent of my life seemed totally foreign to me, other than that I knew where the roads went without the aid of an atlas. It was immensely freeing. After all, when everything becomes unfamiliar, there’s really no bias when it comes to dropping the next pin on the map. Or, to quote Froberg once again, “Take it or leave it. Do both. Do both if you choose.” -DGJ

[Thanks so much to my lovely and brilliant travel companion for inspiring this trip and for doing so much to make it the transformative experience it became for me.]

Out in Death Valley, I took a walk on a lost river bed. Deep, cracked patterns took off in all directions. The wind was fierce and the heat was astounding. Just after filming this clip a sand storm took up on the other side of the road. It was time to get back into the car. But for those minutes while I dehydrated at speed, I managed to touch the ground and get a lot closer to a long natural event.

Another example where I prefer to be out on my feet is probably in any given city. I tend to strike out in one direction, see something that takes my fancy and head off somewhere else. The good people of San Francisco seemed horrified at the distance I would make (“But that’s like, more than Seven Blocks toward Castro!”) But I took off through more sparsely populated areas – the mission – find Al’s comic book store and purchase Ignition City issues. It was not really that far away but it did take me to an art store with some nice chaps who confirmed the way I was headed, a book store which would have broken my bank account had I stayed due to all the lovely editions in there and finally to my destination.

That’s Al’s Comics and that’s Al. He’s really friendly. So far Al has been running his shop for more than 20 years. The radio plays good Uk and US punk and alternative music, he knows a hell of a lot about the funnies, not so funnies and decidedly adult papers. While I was browsing, an incredibly charismatic woman came in and gave him a huge bunch of roses. The rest of that is their business.

Not only did I get what I was looking for, I also picked up some nice local prints too. Check it out! Zombies vs Robots vs Amazons! I’m delighted by that combination and hope to catch up when the Mermen enter the battle!

From Al’s Comics I took my boots all the way back into town, all the way down Market to the ferry port and then along the way to Fisherman’s wharf in time for the last rocket boat ride of the day.

It’s a little bit schlocky, but kinda fun. I like fast boats in the same way I like fast cars. It’s also great to see the coastline from the water at a pace.

After all that exercise and frankly feeling a little bit crippled in the pins, I had a quick fish supper on the wharf and caught a cable car back toward the hotel.

I short walk to collect some coffee and I was back at the Bijou to jot some notes and upload some pictures. Nice change from riding shotgun, though even now I am aching from the route on foot!

JK – Who clearly needs more exercise.

American brand attachment astounds me. Naturally as I don’t live in the same culture at all, I find it surprisingly different and occasionally difficult to navigate the differences between one burger house and another.

Enough already!

Those who may know me, might realise that I can be a somewhat quiet and reclusive person for long stretches. Being out on the road in a huge and glorious landscape tends to aid that introspection so the arrival at a brightly coloured house of fast food is particularly jarring.

Pulling in to roadside selection of red, yellow and white signs that stand about 100 ft high, I am unsure of the choices and ask DGJ to take the lead. Ok – Chilis.

Stepping in through dark glass into the cold air con from about 35 deg heat, it takes a moment for eyes and senses to adjust.  This might not be an option. As we walk in I am blown sideways by loud cocaine waitress who screams wide eyed, “HI!! YOU WANNA SIT DOWWWN?” She grins maniacally at me and I start to fluster and back away. Thank goodness for an US native guide. DGJ negotiates and we walk through to find a booth. Various and assorted pretty girls on probably crappy wages wish me well, ask how I am today and grin as though they might be executed for “lack of flair”. It’s deeply unsettling and I have a feeling that I now know what it is like to be an elderly Chinese traveller having directions screamed at them in London. Lesson learned to be gentle on that one.

At the table we order vegetarian, so far I have a mildly suspicious take on road food. Even though I’ve been known to buy the last lonely stick of luke-warm catfish in a gas station and eat it. A young man that by rights at his age should be sultry and mumbling adds his voice to the over-friendly chorus. He plies us with bottomless glasses of fizzy sugar and provides five minute updates on how things are on our table. It’s sort of tricky to chat and DGJ is much amused and very helpful in calming my skittish reaction to the shouting. People are like this, they are often working for tips and well, friendly and attentive is FTW here. Mostly I would like to have some peace, but it seems terrible to tell these kids to naff off when they are trying so hard.

Brand wise we kept a bit of a table on the road. Chilis became a no – I couldn’t handle being shouted at over my food. Dairy Queen, truly unappetising and bless the staff at the till who are not so bright when it comes to putting together simple orders. They must have something else to do. KFC – nope, no thanks. McDonald’s didn’t even come into the equation. The damn golden arches are in almost every small hamlet all over the Union. Even in Alpine, gorgeous rural town, yeah – right there, dominating the landscape. Irritant.

In trying to participate and not reject the whole experience – and face it, UK roadside cuisine is somewhat risky too – I tried Sonic Burger as my weapon of choice, but you know, I sort of wish we had tried more in the way of independents. Cruising into town at midnight doesn’t really make this an available option, but if you are ever in Salina, Utah, pleasego to Mom’s cafe. The fries are spectacular for what they are and the service is friendly and firm without being over zealous. The also sell the local salt.

It’s not surprising that a few days into the journey I was suffering with mild gut-rot. So many additives that I think I might have some sort of cold turkey experience on the plane home. Shivering and shaking with sugar and processed chemical overload is part of a road journey, unless you have time to source nicer places. But this trip was a little more speed and sights than special food requirements. Also things are cheaper this way. I can see why there is a lot of obesity here – this food is very cheap and simple to eat (think soft textures and not much flavour) but for a few dollars, the portions are almost ridiculous. Taking in that much sugar and fat is like slowly poisoning yourself over years.

Back in SF, I took a walk all the way down to the Wharf and found a restaurant off the main drag on a boat. The fresh crab cakes were spectacular, the cod – tasty and wonderful. There was texture and flavour and freshness!
I don’t mind compromising food on a road trip – it’s worth it to get by. Also, I appreciate good food and home cookery all the more when I get to a place where it’s available!

JK – Can you hear my arteries screaming?

Further along toward the cities, I smelled a Skunk for the first time. (I guess this still fits into the WB Looney Tunes theme of the whole run). I can now see why people call their drug of choice by the same name. I really didn’t believe that the two would actually have the same scent notes but they do. Also, skunks don’t smell half as bad as I was expecting. Though naturally I’d rather not be wearing that particular perfume.

One of the really cloying smells of the road arrived as we passed through oil fields. Lonely pastures were dotted with small pumps, perpetually nodding with only a tank for company. The smell is powerful and acrid and seems to describe all of the monetary and political associations with the product.

A sense of smell has the power to immediately transport me to another place in time. The pine trees of Yosemite took me home to my grandmother’s house. With that sweet pine in the air I could remember so clearly the soft pine needles under my shoes at the back of her garden.

An even stronger evocation of home arrived on the road between Salinas and San Francisco; end of the new world along the Pacific. Sweetest pine and ocean salt air mixed with Eucalyptus – any Australian can be homesick on those two alone. Hot air to accompany a gum tree on the breeze, well you might as well be in the hills of Melbourne. It’s one of my favourite smells and so delicious, I’m a little disappointed there’s not many things to eat with that combination.

It’s obvious to point out that the United States has a lot to offer when it comes to landscapes and climates, but sometimes it’s fun to remember that you have more than one way of “seeing” it all.

JK – Smells like the sound of a piano falling 5000 feet

Morning in Death Valley and it’s about 54 deg C. I’m happiest with the windows open and the air con off.
Hard winds rush over the dead river beds, dust devils are whipping up sand and spiralling across the super-heated open space. It’s possibly my favourite place on earth.

Permission to rock - granted.

The history of a more wet and fertile time is all around us but for now, bone dry and restless, this place is not an area for survival but for a few hardy critters.  There’s nothing much here but heat and cracked ground. Nothing much to hear but the wind whipping around my ears. It’s hard to take for long, but it’s incredible while I can.

We head up to slightly cooler air in the hills around the valley. At midday we stop to look back at the tiny winding road we took, so small from this distance. Whilst marvelling at the perspective we get a surprise visit from the US Air force. A pair of fighter jets is buzzing the canyon we are standing next to. They are giant and loud, elegant precision fliers and frightening killing machines all rolled into one. They move so fast, beating the speed of sound through the heat and withing seconds appear to play across the mountains in the distance.

In a day of contrasts we cover the miles to Yosemite National Park. By this time and place the air is much cooler. The tall trees create dim corridors.

As the sun sets a Morse code of light flashes through the odd gaps in the trees leaving marks in my vision.

It’s an altogether different natural beauty. Between the two, dead heated spaces and cool wooded oasis, America does provide some of the most breath taking places to see, without seeing anything man made.

JK – Sandblasted

The dirty west of Nevada is as much where I’m from as Ulster is. Oddly enough, I’ve spent more time in the latter. My dad’s side was ranchers and electricians and immigrants and rapscallions and silver-seekers and famine-fleers. Post-Civil War Kentuckyans and folks who downed a few too many with Sam Clemens. You can read a bit more about that (and gay rodeo and a Maserati GranTurismo and a cute shrink who stuck me with an emotional shiv) here.

But this summer, I’ve found myself up and down and across the Silver State with rather alarming regularity. Miss K. and I were both hoping to avoid Las Vegas, and we mostly did, skirting across the northern part of town on Clark County Route 215 and up US 95, a road we’d taken the Arizona portion of on our sojourn from the Salton Sea to the Grand Canyon.

What struck me was how blasé I was about seeing the Nevada Test Site. Bear in mind that the spot has been on my list of places to visit since I was a teenager. I had a poster of the inner workings of the Nova Laser at Livermore over my bed during my prime dating years. Yet I was not all, “Holy shit! Operation Plumbbob!” or “Jumpin’ Jehosephat! The site of the Sedan shot!” I was not fearful. I was not enraged. I was not in awe. And my traveling companion knows a bit too well that I cycle through those emotions with fluid regularity. It was more like, “Oh, there was a marker? No. I’m not sure if there will be another marker. Sure, I’m more than willing to turn around and go back.” As Miss K. noted at the time, it did seem a shame to come all this way and then just miss it.

So we stopped and took a few pictures. It had none of the charge of our evening at the White Sands National Monument. It had none of the grandiose “Wha?” of the must-be-a-matte-painting Grand Canyon. Yet the phrase “Sunset over the Nevada Test Site” seems like a wonderfully loaded line from one of those atonal, yowling love songs I’m such a sucker for.

Still, there was none of that. Just a marker on the side of 95. And out there, somewhere, craters. And glass. Lots of glass fused from desert sand.

I must be getting old. Who says “Oh, hey.” to Death, Destroyer of Worlds?
-DGJ

In the cloying heat and shocking pink sunset we draw up to a marker, “Nevada Test Site”. It tells us about the ancient dwellings, the flora and fauna and how it was all blown up for the greater good. It’s a small sign and doesn’t seem to sum up the feelings I have about the anonymous highway along side and the fences bearing warnings to keep out.

We move on. The road is desolate and the traffic moves fast. People do not seem to want to stick around. The sun is setting in an almost preposterously friendly array of colours, the feeling of this place is not good. Naturally, the motor is running low on gas.

We pull in under one of America’s incredibly tall ad boards. Above my head on one side it warns us that this is the last rest stop before Area 51, on the other is a reclining lady, promoting the “gentleman’s club” attached to the service station. She looks alluring enough, but the whole presentation looks as though it was designed to fill a double page spread in Hustler, 1971.

The light is dimming and my spidey-sense is going nuts about not liking the air around here. The store is named Nevada Joe’s, open 24 hours for gas, groceries and apparently “gentleman’s requirements”. Extraordinarily, the entire wooden building has been painted bright pink and appears to have a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon daubed in giant proportions. I wonder if that is the cause it is meant to represent.  DGJ adds gas to the car. I head into the shop to see about getting more water.

Inside, the store is much too large for it’s contents and appears to be understocked. A large dog wanders about, the girl at the till greets me unsmilingly and a large old cowboy mutters curses as he sits at a bank of slot machines. There’s no music and not enough light.

At the back I see a sign marked “Restrooms” that is right next to an open door, through which I can see the dark and neon of a back room strip bar. I scuttle past the cowboy to the refrigerators and snatch up bottles of water, hoping that the dog will leave me alone.

Paying at the desk, I fumble with American dollars, oddly nervous, mixing things up and sounding very British in the hope that this might encourage sympathy. The young woman behind the till looks on unsmiling and simply repeats the price. DGJ wanders in and off to the back to use the rest rooms.

To pass time away from the girl at the till, I read a list of distances, hand written in large letters on a sheet of paper about three feet long. So, 35 miles to the next town, 107 to Baker if required. I note that the cowboy has stopped paying attention to the slot machines and is now looking in my direction. I step out onto the pink porch outside.

Sweating, I take a few photos and wait for DGJ to return. What looks like a small bird is flying circles in the pink and purple dusk. Squinting at it’s odd way of flying, I realise, it’s not a bird, it’s a small bat.

In the distance a large full moon is hanging low and the little bat shoots off around toward the club at the back. I start to shift from foot to foot when mercifully DGJ appears, chipper as ever.

Driving away from the spooky Nevada Joe’s, it comes to me what this place reminds me of. You know that bar in “Dusk ’till Dawn”? Yeah.

I’m sure it was probably the light, or the bat or the heat that got my senses running about this place. I would even bet in the light of day that it all looks real friendly. Apparently it even serves a mean steak diablo.

JK – Possibly working as a zombie stripper in Nevada, please let my boss know I won’t be back in the office. Braaiinnnnzzzz

The Missile Park at White Sands looks as if Bob’s Big Boy came to play and forgot to take his toys with him when he left. At the gate, the man in the hi-viz vest informed Miss K. that we could take as many pictures of the park’s hardware as we wanted — as long as we shot toward the mountains. Apparently, the barren expanse of the rocket range holds secrets that we can’t have the Russkies getting their hands on via flickr and/or Wikipedia.

The day before, we’d started the day by shooting down Texas State Highway 118 from Alpine to Terlingua. And while the ghost town seemed to have been retaken by residents and businesses, the one fantastic find was the old graveyard. It was like no cemetery I’d ever been in — and was possibly more affecting to me than any of them. Simple mounds of rock covered the graves. Rough-hewn wooden crosses marked the sites. Some of the more ornate resting places featured stones with beautiful, uncomplicated typography. The whole place was messy and final and alive, despite the fact that the latest burial I noticed took place in 1945.

Yet people still pay tribute. Faded Virgin of Guadalupe candles long since burned down and filled with stagnant rainwater litter the place. Stars made of soda cans hang from the crosses. 

On the flipside, die-cut tribal bro-ham iconography now passes muster with the United States Air Force. Given the fact that they built a Challenger with Lambo doors to attract new recruits, this comes as no surprise. 

Wait ‘til the rubout, wait ‘til the purge, indeed. If anyone’s left, please bury me in a place like Terlingua. -DGJ

It’s a couple of towns out and up there on the roadside. It has its own power source and it looks pretty neat. The installation went up in 2005. I’ve been intrigued by it ever since but never really thought I would get to see it. I love the desolation of the area and I love that it is placed just there.

Apparently vandals have at it all the time, but it was fairly tidy when we got there. I like it. I’d definitely come and not shop here all the time if I lived a little closer.

Go Google it or something, I’m on vacation – JK