The Year of Living Aimlessly.

Welcome to my belated Rumspringa.

It’s July 13th and I can put it off no longer. The cold feet, nerves and hesitation can no longer be counted on to do their job. I’m bound for Florida. I’m heading into that barren, boiling wasteland that lies beyond La Mesa. It’s an emotional sendoff as Rebecca, tears in her eyes, waves a final goodbye. I let out the clutch and ease away, Rebecca not wanting me to leave, is next to me running as fast as she can, still waving. She actually manages to keep up with me for the first two blocks, but then abruptly disappears from my side. Unbeknown to me, she had actually tripped and fallen, nevertheless I was away, the adventures begins!

My destination today is Slab City, a place where hope went on holiday, found out it had cancer and stayed, dying a slow horrible death. A disused military base, one hundred and fifty miles from San Diego and just east of the Salton sea. Its main selling point being the camping is free…as is the hepatitis and gonorrhea.    

Just by the entrance is the world famous Salvation Mountain, a toxic mix of stucco, paint and religion. What it lacks in artistic merit, it more than makes up for in bad taste. It looks like a bus full of clowns has been targeted with an airstrike. Slab city itself is a collection of cars, RV’s and buses that look as if they’ve been abandoned or vandalized by colorblind hippies. It’s like Mad Max meets the Grapes of Wrath. A convention of meth crazed hillbillies, with mental issues and some questionable fashion choices. It’s my first night of the journey and it ends up being a long, hot one.

Ocotillo Wells is where Satan goes on spring break. A series of trailers and out buildings clumped around a desert highway, it has the look of an abandoned leper colony. Riding through its 108 degrees, the bike is overheating and I can hardly see straight. But it’s too hot to stop in this godforsaken wasteland. I’m already rethinking my life choices.

Arizona is a nightmarish post apocalyptic landscape…much like Detroit. Flat, devoid of trees with all the personality of a one legged pedophile clown, scoring crack at a truck stop. Riding its roads you have a vision of what the whole planet will look like in twenty years; hot, sandy, bone dry and full of people from Arizona. Off in the distance a double wide trailer (which will at some time in the near future, be referred to in police files as “burnt out abandoned meth lab”) sits surrounded by a collection of wreaked, dilapidated vehicles in various forms of disrepair. Never to be used but never to be discarded. Much like that condom that hooker gave me in Vegas.

All you need to know about Arizona’s attitude to incarceration can be seen in the Jail Tree: prisoners would be tied to this tree to stop them escaping. Seen as too progressive by the good people of Arizona, prisoners are now instead forced to spend summers in Phoenix.

Dear Christians of Arizona: quick question.

I already know about how much you love Jesus because you put it on all your signs, billboards,, bumper stickers, and tattoos. I know he’s your best friend/co pilot/jogging buddy and will be descending shortly to pick you up. 

With this knowledge in hand, let me ask you this: If you’re driving along and see a guy on a bike broken down on the side of the road, in 120 degree weather, do you;

1. Ask yourself; were there any lessons in the thousands of hours you’ve spent in church that might apply here?
2. Put the peddle to the floor, turn up the AC and crank the christian rock.
3. Swerve into him, leaving his lifeless body on the side of the road, comfortable in the knowledge that Jesus forgives all.
4. Nothing, you’re all ready late for church.

Hi Jolly was a man who moved from Syria to Quartzite, Arizona to join the US armies short lived camel core. If that’s not the back story for a superhero, I don’t know what is! The film pretty much writes itself.

I often think of the pioneers arriving in this area, having escaped rat infested tenements, with their twelve screaming, typhoid ridden kids, rolling up here and thinking: this place is hell, I want to go home.

Monument Valley. A place desperate for a theme park if ever there was one. And perhaps a water slide too, oh and decent wifi wouldn’t hurt either. Don’t get me wrong this iconic destination is lovely… for the first five minutes. Windswept and hot, the endless brown desert strangles the will to live. Nothing a rollercoaster and a 7-11 wouldn’t cure. With the sun going down, the decision to camp was forced upon me by the exorbitant price of area hotels. 

In the shadow of a brown chunk of rock, I began to set up the tent. Then out of nowhere as if god had singled me out for biblical retribution, a sand storm came ripping through, forcing me to lie spreadeagled on the tent and groundsheet like some beached whale trying on a small tutu. Meanwhile my camping chair, hat and cooking gear are flying off with all the eagerness of a meth addicted greyhound.

After it finally passes, I retrieve my gear and get the tent set up. I climb into the tent, or rather I roll into the sweat box where I will spent the next six hours dropping twenty pounds in sweat. In this hellish, plastic prison, I’m like a pig in a sauna with a duffel coat on. That relaxing night consists of maybe half an hour of sleep. I’m up at daybreak. This will be the last time I camp on the trip…. maybe ever.

Never mind the fires, shouldn’t we be more concerned with roaming gangs of pyromanic bears who have mastered  the ability to use matches and are marauding through the southwest igniting the countryside! 

Not many people know Arizona is originally a Navaho word. Ari meaning hot and zona meaning as fuck.

People of New Mexico, please stop shooting your signs. Made by hard working felons for your geographical information, they’ve done nothing to you. Leave the signs alone.

You know your life has taken a turn for the worse when you wake up in Albuquerque. Situated somewhere in middle earth, its like if hell had a waiting room. It’s miles and miles of sun burnt, run down, bombed out, strip malls. Devoid of any personality except perhaps the I-40 running through its middle, which also seems to be trying its best to get the hell out of town. 

The thing about staying in moderately priced hotels is that you run the risk of some of them being shit holes. There’s one in New Mexico took the grand prize. Given one star in the Hobo Hideaways Almanac, it seemed to be a halfway house for scary looking, knife wielding, face tattooed ex-convicts. There was so much yellow police tape, I thought it was being gift wrapped as a Christmas present. I don’t want to mention the name of the hotel but add three and three and put the word motel in front of it and you’re pretty close.

Five ways you know your staying in a shit hotel: 

1. The guy lying by the pool in the wife beater tee shirt is letting his pit bull swim laps.
2. Cigarette burns on the no smoking sign in your hotel room
3. The ice machine is clogged with used condoms.
4. The towels in your bathroom are almost translucent, yet still scratch your skin upon contact and have a strange inability to absorb water.
5. The Manson family next door offer you some really good meth to look after their kids for the night.
6. The cockroaches are selling timeshares for your bathroom.