NEW MEXICO OR BUST: Part One

OK, folks -- here we go!

Pay attention and you might learn something, especially how not to do this or that. The tortured reasoning and endless rationalizing is especially instructive, I think. All I know is that something had to be done, and by God, we did it!

To recap briefly, this past spring my lovely and talented wife decided that 27 years of college teaching was plenty, thank you very much, and that waiting another ten years or so until "retirement" would be the spiritual and physical death of her. It was simply time for a change, and New Mexico was calling. We put the house up for sale, somehow survived the worst Maryland summer of both our lives (unbearably hot, humid, scary as hell), and tried to figure it all out. The more enlightened among you are no doubt already convulsed with laughter, right? -- because there just didn't seem to be any easy way to do what we wanted to do, namely pack up and move to a new home we hadn't even found yet!

No one wanted to buy our house, the big paychecks had stopped, and we didn't know what to pack or when to move. Should we rent the house? Lower the price?? Burn it down??? (my favorite option!) It had been two years since we'd been to northern New Mexico -- Good Lord, would we still even like it?? Our friends were boo-hooing, we were stressed to the breaking point, but we had a dream: mountains and dry, cool air!

And so we made things happen, rather than sit like a couple of doomed terrapins in the middle of the road. We searched the Internet and found a place to rent in San Cristobal, NM for the month of September. We would just GO! -- take whatever we needed to get by for a month, find a long-term rental, then come back to Maryland and empty out the house for good.

But uh, what about my job? Well now: just what would you do if you were an Internet editor and you were going to move 1,800 miles away? I have a PowerBook, a PowerPC-upgraded 540c, but depending on it alone for a month was out of the question. No, I would have to haul my whole system down to San Cristobal: Power Macintosh 8600/200, monitor, printer, scanner, software, the works. That meant we'd have to take my '87 Ford F-150 pickup and the '91 Nissan 240SX. . .

It seemed to make sense at the time (a remark with all the moral weight of "we were only following orders"). Both vehicles would have to be moved one way or another, after all. Besides, this way we could take Hobbes the cat. Just think of it, a 4-day road trip with "the little bastard"! Motels just love pets, remember. That's why they all have little doggie beds and kittycat scratching posts in all the rooms. . .

At this point saner minds are asking, "why didn't you just shoot the cat and buy a new PowerBook?" Good question. My answer is that I had already ordered a tangerine iBook, but they aren't shipping yet! Ammo-wise, I was out of shotgun shells and only had a few 22-longs -- much too tedious and unreliable. Besides, money was already draining out of our savings account faster than skink, so how on earth could I justify buying a PowerBook G3 to use for just one month?

"Well, why didn't you RENT one, dummy?"

Ah, an excellent question! The answer is that I didn't think of that! (See, I told you you might learn something.) Anyway, what will be will be. The forces that would propel this adventure forward were already building up to critical mass, and the proverbial camel's back was already broken. Clear thinking in these circumstances is nothing but a dream, alas.

Where was I???

Oh yes: mighty 4-day road trip, me driving the loaded truck and the wife driving the Nissan avec le chat. Okey dokey: a fortuitous trip to Radio Shack produced a pair of FM 2-way radios (on sale!), the truck got new tires and a cap (there went another thousand), Katy Jane made reservations at cat-tolerant Best Western motels, and we were off!

[Dum, da-dum-dum. . .]

And herewith my List of Revelations:

#1: A freaked-out feline (tethered, of course) will immediately head straight for home when released from his cage at the first rest area. (At high speed, with great vigor and gusto!) And there's nothing stupider than holding a cat on a leash: except for the odd escape attempt, it feels like being tied to a cabbage! (Good for a laugh but little else.)

#2: The Best Western in Cambridge, Ohio is actually clean, quiet, and has at least a few rooms with computers! Our room had a normal analog telephone with a data port (phone jack). I would have been able to do some Internet work, except for #3: After driving a pickup truck almost 500 miles, all I could do was eat and fall into bed!

#4: You can use AOL software to locate a local access number from a motel phone if you dial "9" and hang up at just the right moment. All you sophisticated road warriors already know this, but for me it was a real discovery. ("New Concord? Where the devil is New Concord??")

#5: This will do you no good whatsoever in Great Bend, Kansas. (Look at the map!)

#6: Interstate 70, at least in the East and Midwest, is not the road to take. Monster trucks outnumber passenger cars by a ratio of at least ten to one and the roadway itself frequently exists only as a figment of the relevant state highway department's imagination. Expect long detours and many miles of watching orange barrels, which for some reason always seem to be the only thing wrong with the lane you're not allowed to use.

#7: Expect every truck to kill you.

#8: Take whatever action is necessary to avoid spending the night within 100 miles of St. Louis. There is something in the air, the water, and the battered soil of this place where the rivers come together that is simply evil, I kid you not. The vibe-meisters among you can literally feel it. And in the case of what has to be the worst restaurant in North America (Granite City exit), you can see it in the blackened, grimy carpeting with the ground-in food. (This part of southern Illinois, by the way, is particularly well suited for above-ground nuclear testing. Please write your congressman!)

#9: Well, we just lost all you Cardinals fans!

All I can say is that dodging 18-wheelers for days on end in two vehicles can make a person paranoid ("oh, really?"), especially after repeated attempted poisonings by so-called "eating establishments" and a night in the Motel from Hell. This place had the effrontery to call itself the "Camelot Inn" and boasted double beds with one (1) pillow each, surplus institutional "towels," and carpets that had never been vaccuumed. A careful search of the bedsheets revealed no body parts, thank God, but we still had to deal with a misguided (and unsuccessful!) attempt to charge us $10 extra for poor Hobbes, whose catbox was lots cleaner than the room we occupied. . .

#10: Kansas is one helluva great place when you get far enough away from civilization. Great Bend is a nifty little burg with a real downtown, a zoo, at least one excellent Mexican restaurant, and a fabulous Best Western: clean, friendly, great indoor pool, and analog phones with data ports. But the Applelinks staff AOL account was useless: the nearest local access numbers were in Wichita and Leavenworth!

Whew! That's enough for one page. But since there was no FARR SITE last week, I'm giving you a double dose! The next page will cover Colorado and our arrival in New Mexico. For now I can say this much in semi-conclusion: this is a BIG COUNTRY. . .there is nothing to compare with driving a motor vehicle from one end to the other. A trip may be hell at times but will also fire your imagination and make you proud. You might even have a few laughs. Just watch out for trucks and restaurants with filthy carpeting, and never grab a restroom door with your bare hand on the way out!

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives have links to all past columns and occasional snippets of biographical info.

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January 08, 2009