A long haul in an alien place

The last 3 days has been getting up in the morning, grabbing some food , slinging down some precious precious coffee and getting back into the car. We've been driving and driving and driving since leaving Austin and are now in Utah. We've sidled in and out of the Navajo nation and experienced the most amazing surroundings I think either of us have ever been in.


At one point on our way we decided to stretch our legs a little. We were incredibly far into nowhere and just before this our GPS system had simply given up on us. The screen went blank and Darth Vader insisted that we should turn right, even though we were on what seemed at this point to be the only road in the world, which went straight ahead. As we stretched our by this time bloodless and twisted legs we admired a huge red rock. Ivan went and did some weird tracking-voodoo-foo fidling with the red sand, now in lack of a proper guidance system.

We blundered around under beneath the cliffside for a while and Ivan broke a red rock in his hands and said " look how fragile this stuff is Mia". I looked up at the cliff towering above us and said "maybe we should move away."

We then both remembered a sign we had just past saying "Falling rocks - dont stop for any reason". We got back into the car and took off.

Turbine park

If any of my colleagues still read this blog, they will enjoy or get nervous tics from these lovely pictures of a New Mexico wind turbine park.

Odd...

...is seeing something like this on the road.

Thunder

As I have hinted at, we have been blessed with the frequent occurrence of heavy thunderstorms. In fact, since we left New Orleans, I believe we have had one every day! They tend to be short and awesome. Some of them though, went one for hours and were among the most magnificent things I've ever seen. We were at a strip-mall in San Antonio, buying hiking gear for Ivan, when the dark skies started blazing like the Apocalypse and the Great Fire of London at once. There was no rain, just a dry, swirling, ominous wind and black skies torn apart and menacingly illuminated. This went on for hours and I was completely enraptured. On our drive from Austin we experienced another great one. We drove all day, and some time after dark we pulled in at a gas station, to refuel both ourselves and the rock'n'rollercoaster. This was 40 miles east of El Paso. A bunch of mexican looking guys were hanging around the station but otherwise there was nothing at all out there. Then we noticed the Saloon. An old creepy building right next to the gas station looking like it had been a mean old saloon for a long long time.

We both got a corn dog from the store. A very dry and old corn dog. Before I ate it, it coughed on me. I ate it anyway. While we were eating, we were standing by the car admiring the saloon. The Lady in the store, who sold us the corn dog shaped morsels of pain to come, told us it was open most nights with a very tired expression on her face. Not tonight though. We talked about how that was a great shame. Then agreed it was probably for the best anyway, since we would most likely have gotten hurt somehow. Then the lightnings started. Looking at that old saloon while the lightnings blazed behind it, was pretty eerie. Then the rain came and we dived back into the car and got out of there.

As we drove on through the night towards El Paso, we were right at the edge of the storm. Clear skies to one side, the prairie being ripped apart on the other. So we rode with the top down hearing Immigrant song very loudly again and again.

Leaving Austin and crossing the Plains

Driving further west we found that there is a vast deal of space around here. Just...lots! And lots and lots. And the landscape is very different from anything known to us Scandinavian Island-dwellers.


We got out of the car at one point, since we noticed we were driving into yet another thunderstorm and had to get the top back on the car. Streching our legs a little, we found wild-growing cacti all over, which is pretty amazing for us. I instantly jumped into the grass to photograph. Untill Ivan shouted, "Mia get out of the grass, there are snakes."

We continued driving all day and enjoyed the sorroundings a lot. Its beautiful and there's so much of it.

The internet...

A series of trucks carriyng tubes? How does that work?? I'm confused...

So much love!

We generally got the feeling, that Austin is not a place you can just swing by for a weekend and feel at home in, like New Orleans or DC. But given time, effort and getting to know people, we feel sure that it would be an awesome place to be.

The day after our night out I naturally had a hangover, but I also got sick with fever and general patheticness. And my neck hurt horribly after demonstrating to all the Weltschmertz infested angst-metal brats how to rock. While I was ill, Ivan spend the evening getting very friendly indeed (and very drunk) with the hotel staff from our Holiday Inn. We even stayed on the good side of the restaurant staff, despite Ivan being a ninja with the napkins during most of dinner.

So when we were leaving the morning after, the goodbyes were long and sad. One of the staff, a middle aged woman named Gayle, had taken care of our laundry after the hotel machine broke down and she had folded everything so neatly that it brought tears to my brothers eyes. When she came down to say bye, I was talking about my shattered neck, and how much I would like to buy one of their pillows. This was not possible. But on hearing this, Gayle went ahead and brought me a pillow, which was a gift from her, along with motherly admonitions about being safe, and coming back to see them... something about caring and loving hotel people just make me go a big blubbery one. I gave Gayle a hug and cuddled up with my Austin Pillow.

A brief encounter with Austin...

We're a little confused about Austin. It's great in really many ways. People are cool and relaxed and alternative culture thrives. A lot of stuff seems to be going on all the time and you can faintly feel the pulse of the place as a great place to be. After coming out of a whole foods place, we found a huge skater thing going on outside. It was relaxed and fun and seemed filled with nice people.


Look at this awesome DJ booth/bycicle contraption!

This was encouraging, since we had had a hard time till then, really getting a feel of the place. We went out that night to hear some music and punish various internal organs. Now this is awesome: They have an entire street with metal bars and clubs! There were 5 or 6 places that had koncerts that night and they each had 2 or 3 bands playing during the evening. We visited two different clubs and heard some really great bands. The downside: These clubs were filled with boring and arrogant metal saps who were completely spoiled and showed no real appreciation for the music that was performed. This horrified us a great deal, since the bands were actually pretty awesome!!

What more was, these people were impossible to get in contact with. They were apparently too full of Angst and dark Emotions of the "daddy shot my horse, I smell like soap and the tip of my eyeliner just broke in the mensroom" variety. Since people were uncharactaristically hard to talk to, we didn't have as much fun as we usually do when we're out.

Detour

Still moving towards Austin, our GPS thing, which is currently directing us in the voice of Darth Vader, sent us on a weird detour into the countryside. We drove along on old dirt roads through dried up farms and plains for a good while, wondering what infact we were doing there. The smell of oil here was completely overwhelming to the point of becoming a stench but the landscape was pretty. We understood the stench when we saw an old fashioned oil pump on a field besides us. Soon it became apparent that all these farmers had pumps and some even refineries on their land. It seems to fit in with the whole idea of being as independent and selfreliant as possible. Texas...

One for Mom

On our continued trip towards Austin we took a little swoop around Houston. It's really quite impressive in an odd way, with all those shimmering monoliths... and I instantly thought of mom. When I was a kid, she and all other women present in our house were always plastered to the tv when Dynasty was on. These pictures are for mom :)

Daaam dadaaaaa ... Daaam daaAAaam dadaaaa ... daaa daAAAAA daaadaa daaaa, daam dam dadadaaaaa dadadaaaa... daaa daaaaaa ... dada daaa daaaaaaaa... dam dam daAAAAAa dadaaaaa damdam daa daaaa.... dididadidadidaa dididadidadidaaa dididadidadidaa dididadidadidaa .....

She watched Dallas too!

Driving through Texas

We had a very long drive from New Orleans, through the beautiful swamps in Louisiana and into Texas. It was an inspiring and fascinating landscape... poor Ivan who has to drive all the time couldn't look around as much as I, but I think we both enjoyed it a lot.

We figured we had probably entered Texas, when oil refineries started appearing everywhere around us.

The smell of it where in the air most of the time, now more than ever the smell of money. We drove far into the evening. Allthough signs became harder to read, it was a very pleasant time to be on the road. Less traffic and less of the crushing heat that bakes our brains during the day. And the refineries and highway bridges looked quite fantastic in the failing light.

When we finally parked for the night it had been pitch-dark for a long time. We dragged our bags into the LaQuintas Inn or something like that, just outside of Houston and collapsed into yet another pair of beds in a nondescript hotel.