Playing Catch Up

We're home now. With high speed internet! The blog seemed like a really good idea before we realized internet is a luxury at hotels/log cabins/wigwams/motels/hot springs/ etc. During the trip, we wrote some and uploaded pictures/movies in hopes of posting them. Ideally, that will happen. Maybe it's good we weren't able to post real time. Memory usually softens things and makes past reality a little kinder. Plus, I think Orion and I are at the point where we can laugh (mostly) at what drove us to annoyed silence on the trip. This is what happens when you are released from the prison cell that is a car with the person you, um, have many feelings for.

Recap: December 21-22 Las Vegas, NV (Luxor)

December 23 Sedona, AZ (Log Cabin)

December 24 Holbrook, AZ(Wigwam Motel)

Captions are from Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD. These are my favorite passages from the book. Orion read the novel to me first as a bedtime story and then as I drove. That is until, I sat down for a couple of hours to simply finish the sucker because I wanted to know what was going to happen to the man and the boy.

He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

The man squatted and looked at him. I’m sacred, he said. Do you understand? I’m scared.

The boy didn’t answer. He just sat there with his head bowed, sobbing.

You’re not the one who has to worry about everything.

The boy said something but he couldn’t understand him. What? He said.

He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. This is no later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.

Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.

Cathedral Rock Vortex

On Christmas Eve, we spent the day hiking to the Cathedral Rock Vortex in Sedona, AZ. The vortex energy there is suppose to be feminine and boost the "goodness" in it's visitors. I'm not entirely sure if that's what was brought out between Orion and myself on the hike there and back, but while we were at the Vortex things were good. Here are some pictures from the good times. Fate or Orion accidently erased the videos and the pictures from the, um, not so good times.

In the spiraling vortex of Las Vegas' Luxor Inn, giant shaped like a Pyramid, a barrage of sleepy sin-eyed Nevadans and travelers, gamblers and vixens, the stale air making me sick, my nose still dry and cracking. We stumble through the neon fantasy like some Disneyland memory of mine from age eleven, dressed in black, mopey. It isn't until I run across a highway leaving Jenny to fend for herself at the Venetian Casino, do I experience the real Las Vegas in the form of a Russian liquor store and deli. I sit at a counter with Russian limo drivers waiting for my sandwich while the old Russian lady who runs the deli hands me a piece of salami. I get a coffee and set out in search of Jenny lost in Venice. We go to a buffet and get really fat trying to make sure we get the food that would be the most expensive then roll into the show at Harrah's. We watch Jerry Lee Lewis, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. I like Jerry Lee and Michael the best. Then we slid into a Casino after seeing an angel come off a karaoke stage. We then proceed to become heavily involved in one of the most amazing Karaoke shows of all time. Unfortunately my renditions of When Doves Cry and Spend the Night Together got deleted from the camera during our vortex sojourn. All way have to prove that we were there was a souvenir t-shirt and a broken toy. The T-Shirt, Jenny got for spinning the drink wheel and the toy she got from an old man from vancouver.

The next day we got the hell out of their amidst coughing up blood, stale air, and neon slot machines to Lo Lo Mai Springs outside of Sedona Arizona.

The First Hour

December 25, 2009

We are at a Best Western in Albuquerque. We finally have internet (and Food Network!!!) Merry Christmas. Expect many updates while we can.

Orion packing the Prius, before the exits

Hour One

Jenny is following Orion down rainy 280 in her red nail polish Prius (chosen for it’s color) to help drop Orion’s car off at his Aunt’s house. Orion mentioned earlier that they would need to take 101/580/680 (at the time it all made sense somehow) to get to his Aunt’s house in Milpitas. Jenny, who hates following and being followed for that matter, wonders why Orion passes the 101/380 turn off as he would need it to get to any of the aforementioned freeways. She tells herself to trust Orion and that he must know the way, after all, he’s been there before. She knows she’s about to go on the longest car trip of her life with that man in the bumper stickered Toyota Tercel in front of her. For their sake, she’ll have to learn zip her lips and temporarily lose the key.

5 minutes past 101/380 and nothing.

10 minutes past 101/380 and nothing.

Jenny starts to stew. “Calm down” she tells herself, “Don’t be a bitch. Don’t pick up the phone. It’s illegal to talk and drive anyway.”

15 minutes past 101/380, still nothing.

“Fuck this shit” she says as she picks up her phone and hits the “Boyfriend” contact. Of course, he doesn’t pick up. It goes to voicemail, “Clickity Clack, Clickity Clack, Howdy Partner, This is Orion blah, blah, blah…”

She waits the requisite minute and hits that “Boyfriend” contact again. The rain clouds part as he answers. Jenny tries so hard to be nice sometimes. Usually those are the times when she should lay it all out there unafraid of hurting feelings because you know what, she’s smart and to put it nicely, he makes mistakes. She simply could not indulge this one any longer. She uses her best special ed teacher voice and gently asks him if they are going the right way. She reminds him of the 101/580/680 comment he made earlier, hoping this will give him the bolt of brains he needs to get them back on track.

He doesn’t bite. He reassures her they are going the right way. “Montague Expressway” he says, “We just need to look for Montague Expressway.” Oh, she’s been looking alright…

5-10-15 minutes go by. By now, she’s screaming in her car. Pounding the steering wheel with angry little fists. If he knew the names she was calling him, he’d be smart to cancel the trip. This is reason she asked him earlier for an address. She has technology on her side—an iphone, a GPS, and an internal compass that knows when something isn’t right. All she needed was an address. She’d just plug that shit in and be there. Jenny adores Orion because he doesn’t need those things. She thinks its sweet in an irresponsible way. She wants a little of that to rub off on her, but this is not the time.

A phone call. Bruce Springsteen singing “For You.” Orion is lucky to be tied to Bruce with a ringtone. The happy association probably makes Jenny feel a little nicer toward Orion. It’s like he has a Bruce shield protecting him from her missed exit wrath. Orion tells her they missed the 101 exit.

Eye roll. Ughhhh. Duh. Another eye roll. She tells him she knows. She called him earlier about that. Ohhhhhhhhh. He gets it. He finally gets it. They each pull off the freeway into a residential section of Sunnyvale. He gets out of his car. She refuses to leave hers. An address. She needs an address. Orion can get lost as much as he wants, but Jenny will not. He calls his Aunt. It wasn’t so hard. She programs her technology. They meet again. At the right place. Christmas cookies and banana bread in hand, he climbs into the Prius.

680 N to 580 E to 5 S. They are finally on their way.

Orion during.

Jenny after.

Pre-Trip Jitters

A glimpse into the future: Today I woke up at the crack of dawn to the sound of Jenny snoring in my ear (Um...No. This is Jenny. I am purple font. I don't snore. Grind my teeth yes. Occasionally talk. But no snoring. I am a lady). I got out of bed and walked to the window of our Sedona hotel room. I could see the vortex from the patio. A murder of crows doth fly across the cold winter sky (WTF?).

Jenny must eat Yummy Yummy before we leave. She needs her Vietnamese spicy noodley fix (#8 heavenly yum yums!!!) before we eat nothing but indian fry bread and apples for ten days (Write for yourself, I be eating corn nuts).

Right now we are watching Little Miss Sunshine to mentally prepare for the adventure. Jenny wants to be Olive. She thinks I'm the heroin snorting grandpa that dies. Jenny, essentially, wants to drive from Phoenix to Santa Monica with my dead body in the trunk (Uh huh!!!).