Desert trip

Our family Thanksgiving kind of fell apart this year. It was supposed to be at Cris's sister's house, and Cris and I had an inkling to go down to the desert instead. What ended up happening was that I went down to the desert alone, by car.

It was a road trip I'd wanted to take for a long time, but I did it in a very disorganized way. I took ten pair of underwear for a week, but forgot to pack any pants, so I had to wear the same pair all week. I forgot all kinds of stuff, including the power cord for my laptop. Then when I fired it up on the battery, I found I didn't even have the story I intended to work on. So I got nothing done this week, writing-wise.

What I did was drive down to my ex-lover's house. Christine lives near Twentynine Palms in the middle of nowhere -- specifically in the middle of Wonder Valley. We went hiking a little bit, I read a lot, and on Thanksgiving there was a dust storm. Or it might be exaggerating a wee bit to call it a dust storm, but anyway there was a lot of wind and blowing dust and sand, and visibility about a quarter mile. At the last minute we went over to a friend's, Perry's, for Thanksgiving chicken. Perry is this Wonder Fag from San Francisco who has followed Christine down to the desert -- they met 40 years ago in kindergarten in Monterrey Park, Calif. -- and now has his own place. He is a decorating fiend, and supposedly his cabin is now under consideration by Nest magazine for all the chachkas he has stuffed in there and the general wonderous atmosphere.

The next day I left the area and drove north across a few hundred miles of desert to Death Valley. It was a great drive through the Mojave Desert National Park and a lot of very minor roads -- I didn't see a billboard the whole time. But when I got to Death Valley, there was no place to stay. So I drove another couple hundred miles to Las Vegas and stayed in a TraveLodge under an underpass. It was actually surprisingly clean and comfortable for the price, $55. That's the West Sahara TraveLodge in Las Vegas.

I went to a sushi restaurant on West Sahara and a salesman sat down next to me at the sushi bar. He was some kind of regular who kept trying to engage the sushi chef in conversation. Atrocious overweight twentysomething salesman. He said, "I hate holidays, man. I can't make any money, and there's nothing to do." He also told about some ridiculous scheme he had to rip off one of his own employees by financing a car for him, and then charging the guy interest. "I'm gonna make about $2000 on the deal," he boasted. "Hey, I figure, he charges me for his labor, so I'm gonna charge him for my money. If he worked for free then I could do him a favor."

The next day I drove through a desert rain to Bakersfield, and today, home up through the lower Central Valley and the Salinas Valley. Highway 33 rocks!

Back to work tomorrow. I totally missed out on Christ the King services today, so there's not much to say about that. Actually I said most of it on the 20th from the desert. This is the last week of the church year, and Advent starts next Sunday.