Odometer: 90273

 

Gas price in Needles: $1.29 a gallon. Gas price when I said “fuck that” and drove three blocks back into Arizona: 97¢ a gallon. Sometimes I hate California.

I hated it more and more as I crossed the Mojave into Barstow. Traffic got progressively worse and worse. By the time I hit I-5 west of Bakersfield, I was in the midst of a nasty automotive clusterfuck. I had a near-death experience outside Santa Nella, where I just missed being car number 16 or 17 in a 25-car pileup. Fortunately, no one actually collided, although two cars were forced off the road.

There were minor storms in the mountains west of Mojave. There were fairly intense ones (by California standards) just south of San Francisco.

When I crossed Altamont Pass, I was more or less home. I was also just about out of gas. I finally stopped in Castro Valley. At this point, I knew I was really home in the good old Golden State because I had to drive through this suburban strip for fifteen minutes before I could find a gas station.

Oakland. Bay Bridge. Home. After 7003 miles…

Odometer: 89729

 

There is nothing quite so annoying as being in a huge thrift store in Albuquerque NM on a Saturday morning in the midst of a half-price sale. I was in and out in about three minutes and off to my final Luby’s Cafeteria, where there was no fried okra, but there WAS fried zucchini.

I stopped at a truck stop just outside town to get gas. Imagine my surprise at seeing an Oakland city bus in the parking lot. The driver said it was being delivered. I saw another one a few miles down the road, rolling along with its “West Oakland BART” destination sign out of place in the desert.

About this time, my odometer crossed the 90,000-mile mark.

 

This was another long day of driving with few stops. Once again, I was covering familiar ground, through western New Mexico and all of Arizona in one day. The only highlights were a devilishly cute gas jockey in Holbrook AZ and a brush fire in the median somewhere west of Flagstaff. I was completely worn out by the time I hit the California state line and rolled into Needles.

Needles CA has to be one of the most depressing places in the country. There was absolutely nothing there and absolutely nothing going on. And this was a Saturday night following a rodeo! OK…there ewre a couple of cute cowboys around, but they were on the way out of town.

I coped by going to the AM/PM, getting myself a 59-cent death dog, some Doritos, and a Foster’s Lager, and then settling in for “The People vs. Larry Flynt”. Slept like a baby, although I was a little worried that I was running the air conditioner while it was 50 degrees outside. Guess I’d sort of gotten used to the cold.

Odometer: 89127

 

Nice full morning in the city, fueled by cheap gas and a Waffle House breakfast (the menu in the motel room worked). First stop on the “abandoned buildings and urban decay” itinerary (again courtesy of Grant, as were most of today’s highlights) was the abandoned Belle Isle Power Plant. Couldn’t get within a mile of it.

After Belle Isle, I found a veritable treasure trove of abandoned buildings in an area just north of downtown. OKC is an amazing place to witness the way cheap land and wide open spaces causes a city to develop (and decay). Particularly depressing (disturbing?) was the old Mercy Hospital, a huge streamilne building which sits empty and exposed just a few blocks from its replacement. Much like in Detroit, I kept wondering “how does this happen?”

 

Then I went downtown for a pilgrimage I missed last time through. I experienced the bomb site, where the Federal Building stood until a nutcase destroyed it (and most of its occupants) on 19 April 1995. It was much creepier than I expected: a fence covered with memorials surrounding a collection of stairs leading to nowhere. Underneath, a parking garage, which is astonishingly still in use. A memorial is under construction, but for now, the whole site is little more than a really eerie vacant lot.

 

It was time to hit the road.

 

Oklahoma City is a crossroads between the south and the west…a place which looks western but where you can still get fried okra. The “southern touch” continues through the Texas panhandle to Amarillo and ends shortly afterward.

More cheap gas before leaving downtown Oil Country and I headed west. Didn’t make many stops as I’d covered this ground pretty thoroughly on last year’s trip. Once in Texas, I hit some of the densest fog I’d ever driven through, which lasted for most of the 90 miles from Shamrock to Amarillo. I grabbed more fried okra at another Luby’s and shed no tears about skipping the rest of the town.

 

I didn’t spend the night in any of Tucumcari’s 2000 (or however many) rooms, but I did a drive-through, accompanies by “Born to Be Alive” on some queen’s “retro disco” college radio show. Seemed a strange enough way to experience Tucumcari, I thought.

Thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time, I was finding myself doing more night driving that I really wanted on the return trip. A big disadvantage is that I was really beat every time I rolled into town. the one advantage was that I could scan AM stations from all over the place: news/talk from Salt Lake City, hillbilly music from Tulsa, and even traffic reports from LA. I purposely avoided any SF stations.

My time in Albuquerque was pretty uneventful. I hit a few bars, but was never able to figure out which was “the cowboy bar” of Albuquerque legend. There was way too much bad country music (which pretty much covers all country music of the past 25 years or so) and the one dive bar with “potential” smelled too bad to keep my attention. I went to a dance club and saw only one boy worth watching. He looked like a heroin dealer. He turned out to be one of the bouncers.

 

To top it off, most of the Central Avenue motels had their neon turned off. I was disappointed.

About the only excitement came when I was pulled by an Albuquerque cop. I’d only had one beer (being really anal, as I was, about not driving drunk), but I was still nervous. I pulled out my license as the cop called in my tag info. When he came to the window, he told me the license was unnecessary. Seems he’d pulled me because the glare from his headlights had made my validation sticker look blank. One he saw everything was OK, he APOLOGIZED for pulling me over.

I was stunned.

Odometer: 88593

 

A big benefit to not going out was being able to get on the road early and get the hell out of Lenexa KS. Today was an almost completely freeway-free day. I headed south on US71 through Peculiar MO en route to Joplin, the only town mentioned in “Route 66” (the song) where I’d never been. Pretty anti-climactic place, but at least I’ve been there now…

The most exciting radio moment on this stretch was an ad for a “mountain oyster fry” somewhere in Missouri. I’m hesitant to describe exactly what a”mountain oyster” is, but if you ask really nicely I may email you the gory details.

 

And as of Joplin, I was officially on Route 66. After Joplin, I saw the 12-mile stretch through Galena KS, and then crossed into Oklahoma, through Miami and Vinita, on a course for Tulsa. I managed to skip the Oklahoma Turnpike (I-44) completely and followed the old road all the way to the outskirts of Tulsa.

 

Tulsa was more impressive that I’d pictured. In retrospect, I’d really like to have spent more than an hour there. My friend Grant had recommened lunch at Nelson’s Buffeteria, which looked great but was, alas, closed by the time I arrived. So I pretty much just drove around downtown for a while and found my way to outbound Route 66 and Sapulpa. Never did get around to eating, and by the time I hit Depew, I was desperate enough to settle for KFC.

The stretch of Route 66 between Tulsa and Oklahoma City is great if you’re not in a hurry. It’s a two-lane road through a dozen or so small towns like Chandler, Bristow, and Warwick. There are diners and old gas stations and leftover tourist cabins from a bygone era. I can only imagine the generic horrors of the turnpike a mile away, with its franchised rest stops, etc. Glad I missed it…

 

Hearing “I Am the Walrus” while driving down a particularly deserted stretch made it all the more surreal.

 

Rolled into Oklahoma City about 8:00 and checked into the Red Carpet Inn off I-44. This was truly one of the creepiest motels I’ve ever stayed in, which is (of course) the reason I was so drawn to it. It was the quitessential “major chain gone to seed”, a once large collection of motels which has dwindled to about a dozen (my experience with the Red Carpets dates from trips to Atlanta in the 1980s). This one was particularly far-gone and was empty, aside from me and two cops from some small town.

The really nice Southern gentleman at the registration desk told me the attached restaurant had closed on Thanksgiving Day in 1996. It was now, he said, a really huge employee break room. The guest rooms were huge too, with tasteful pink tiles in the bathroom, a sink which was becoming disconnected from the wall, and a laminated Waffle house menu on the table. The place smelled, but I liked it.

After a nice dinner of fried okra, sweet tea (and other stuff) at Luby’s Cafeteria, I hit the frightening Oklahoma City bar zone. First was Levi’s, which I loved last year but was lukewarm about this time through. At least I scored free beers from a friendly bartender.

I met a guy named John at Levi’s. He knew Planet SOMA, which was just a little creepy. We talked and decided to drive over to the Habana Inn bars. In the car, John told me he was on trial in the morning for felony DUI. Needless to say, he was a little antsy, what with this possibly being his last night of freedom and all.

The “gay area” on Oklahoma City centers around this motel called the Habana Inn. It was as creepy this year as last year. I hit four bars. Two of them had drag shows. And somehow this year, I never made my way into the actual motel complex. I don’t think I missed much. I went back to the empty motel alone.

Odometer: 88061

Random “pro” thoughts on leaving Minneapolis:

• It’s nice parking directly in front of your house.
• Rents are cheap, people are nice, and there are neighborhoods with a pedestrian scale.
• Surprisingly good local newspapers, which cover planning and urban social/economic issues well. Of course ANYTHING would look good after six years of the Chronicle and Examiner, perhaps the worst pair of “big city” newspapers in America.

And the “con” list:

• Minnesotans are horrible drivers (among the worst I’ve ever seen) and the freeways are badly designed too.
• It’s damn cold.
• The queer bars suck, and they close at 1 (which might actually be a GOOD thing).
• Not a decent burrito to be found in the entire city.

I managed to leave at a fairly reasonable hour and just in time to miss the predicted snowfall. I’m heading south, I thought, so it will surely get warmer. Yeah…right… By the time I hit the Iowa state line at noon, it was five degrees colder than in Minneapolis. But I was moving to the hot polka beat of 920AM in Faribault, so I was OK.

 

Iowa was no less boring from north to south than from east to west. I got through it as fast as the ridiculously low speed limit (and the proliferation of roadkill) would allow. Missouri was a welcome sight.

Until I got to Kansas City.

I had a great time in Kansas City last year. History did not repeat itself. I was never able to get in touch with the friend in whose house I was to stay. It’s my own fault for not getting in touch by phone first. I’m an idiot and I hated not being able to catch up with old friends. I decided to get a room. Two hours and about 50 miles later, I found a really skanky one which smelled bad. I was not in a good mood by this point.

When I went out for food, I realized I was in the absolute suburb from hell. There was no visible fast food. All the roads went to nowhere. I finally found a Burger King. Inside, five teenage stud wannabes were in line, talking on their cell phones as they ordered. One of them paid with a check. I now know what hell looks like.

Going out again was out of the question.