Farewell, my lovelies

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Advised by Mr. Language's bedbug expert friend, we then spent about four hours putting everything we owned into black plastic garbage bags and then putting all of our clothes in laundromat dryers at 160 degrees for an hour to kill all life. I was desperate to leave and spent some time standing in the motel room with my mouth open in a silent scream.

We drove through Death Valley. I should have pictures of this, but I don't. It wasn't the first time I've been through Death Valley and I'm sure it won't be the last; it's really pretty and rocky and hot. We stopped for an hour and put all of our possessions out in the sun. Later, we wandered around the ruins of an old borax mine. The extreme paucity of pictures reflects the desolation of our souls.

We had originally planned to spend the night in Las Vegas, but because of our exposure to bedbugs, we were social pariahs, unable to sleep anywhere. With the assistance of nominally legal pharmaceuticals, we decided to drive through the night to Tucson. On the way, we encountered such mysterious wonders as the Pahrump Nugget, Wickenburg, and a spectacular meteor shower that moved us to stop the car and stand at the side of the road for an hour, mouths agape. The sunrise was glorious as we approached Phoenix, and we finally arrived in Tucson in the late morning heat. In a surreal interlude, we met Roger at Eegees and ate terrible sandwiches, all fucked up on 25 hours of wakefulness. Three hours later, we finally managed to negotiate bedbug politics and got a few hours sleep in Mr. Language's mom's rec room.

Somewhere between Eegee's and Mom's, this picture was taken:



I am fuzzy on the details.

Time passed. We went out somewhere. We saw an abandoned mini-golf course:



We went to the Desert Museum:




We were a little tired the morning we headed into downtown to meet Roger and Freeky:



We met them at the Epic Cafe, perfectly named for the day and the entire journey. After fueling up on caffiene, we headed to the Wall, first stopping for some liquor and other supplies. I didn't take pictures of the offering left, but trust me, it was appropriate. I did, however, take a picture of the Wall itself.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

There was an eerie interlude at an absolutely amazing shrine called El Tiradito, for the ones who are beyond redemption.





Evening arrived far too quickly. Roger was starving and Freeky was suffering from overheating, so we went first to a Korean joint and then to the cafe at the Hotel Congress, where Freeky has much to say about the menu, particularly the duck confit tacos. I happen to agree with her. Then we went on to the famous Meet Rack, which, contrary to everything I've read and heard about it, which is considerable, was empty save for God, a bartender (God's niece, who actually owns the place), and two other patrons.




God disappeared after a while, and Freeky, Roger, Mr. Language and I retired to the heat of the patio. St. Gulik in the flesh made his appearance shortly afterward. My biggest regret of the trip is that I don't have more pics of the day we spent with Freeky and Roger! It was great; surreal, strange, funny, and wonderful.

The next day, we commenced a drive to Bisbee, Douglas, Agua Prieta, and northeast to Morenci.



We stopped at a gas station, and the weather was glorious!



But then, the thunderstorms set in. I was excited! I'd wanted to see such a storm.



The picture doesn't do it justice. There were several storms, lovely, with lightning, all like perfect dark islands standing on columns of rain.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Bisbee was funny, and had a large abandoned copper mine. Douglas was meh. Agua Prieta was dark and closed, so we gave up on finding dinner there and went back to Douglas, then northward. And then, holy shit, and then, storms. I am from a place where there is rain and thunder and lightning and wind may snap off massive trees 30 feet up, but this was some fucking what the fuck holy shit motherfucking RAIN. Lightning like giant trees in discrete storms surrounding us, 10 or 12 of them, storms we couldn't get away from and which we would drive under, rumbling so loud we could feel it, hair on our arms standing up from the electricity. It wasn't the thunder or the lightning which alarmed me, though; not so much. Not even when a bolt struck our car; we felt it in front and heard it behind at the same moment. It was the water; the sheer insane volume of water. We slowed down to 30, and sometimes even then felt the car struggling through the skim covering the highway.

Then that was over, and we were in the hills, in the mining towns. I am going to wait, now, until tomorrow and being less tired, to talk about the strangeness of the mining towns and the rest of the trip.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

The photographs and the narrative are superb. Looking forward to reading more.

[Triple Zero]

what is it with your photographs btw, Nigel? all of them (except perhaps the last one of the storm) have the same look to them, very saturated/vibrant colours, vignetted, they look beautiful. Is it the camera, something with the lens, why do they all look like that? Is it that vintage camera that you were so jazzed about a while back, maybe?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thanks! 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

what is it with your photographs btw, Nigel? all of them (except perhaps the last one of the storm) have the same look to them, very saturated/vibrant colours, vignetted, they look beautiful. Is it the camera, something with the lens, why do they all look like that? Is it that vintage camera that you were so jazzed about a while back, maybe?

Perhaps horribly, it's an iPhone app. It mimics the camera I bought (the Argus 40) especially if I use the John S "lens" and the Ina's 69 "film", which are my favorite settings.

Perhaps also delightfully, the thing I love about the app is that it mimics the use of a vintage camera to the point of taking forever to "warm up" and to "develop" the film, which leads to a sense of having to be careful with each shot, as there will be a significant delay before you can take another. The best thing is that I don't have to drive out to St. John's and spend a small fortune getting it developed!

[Rumckle]

Nice pics, looks and sounds like a fun trip.
I'm glad to hear you and Mr Language made it back from Arizona alive.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

By the hair of our chinny chin chins! Thank you.

[Cramulus]

this is great! and I'm with zilch, I love that hipstamatic filter.  So glad you had a great time, and I wish you had more pictures!

I find it really weird to enjoy other people's vacation photos so much, but I love you guys and I'm very glad you had a great time. 

[Jenne]

VERY awesome!  I love that hipstamatic too--makes all your photos look cherishable.  Sounds like you had quite an adventure, Nigel, glad you are safe and sound, though!

[Suu]

FUCKING BEDBUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:

[Freeky]

That whole day was awesome.

You think our big storms are big? Wow.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh, there are more pics... trying to get them all in order!

I'll talk a little about the mining towns. They are fucking bizarre. After making it through the storms (which were still going on to either side) we stopped at a little town called Safford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safford,_Arizona.



The streets were broad, clean and eerily vacant, but we found a bar and ordered a drink. There was a guy sitting on the curb in front of the bar, and another guy standing near him. Inside, A few Apaches were shooting pool, and overall the vibe seemed pleasant enough. We decided to smoke, and asked the bartender if we could take our drinks outside; her vehemence startled us. "Are you CRAZY?? Of course not!" Aback, we put our drinks down and went out front to smoke. A minute or two later, three cops walked up the street toward the bar, and asked us if we knew a guy by the name of Sean Somethingorother. They went in the bar and called his name, then came back out. Meanwhile, a guy sidled up to us. "Pretend you're talking to me" he said. "I just broke up with my girlfriend today". He was obviously very, very drunk.

I am leaving a few details out here, but let me emphasize that this was all very, very strange. Very. Strange. We were relieved when the police discovered him and we were able to make an escape.

The one thing that stood out, to a remarkable degree, was how afraid the bartender was of the police, and, in fact, how terrified everyone seemed to be of the authorities. The reasons for that became more clear later on. We escaped the weird scene of Safford and drove on up to Morenci, which is not a town so much as a mine with a few houses around it, all of which are owned by the mining company.

This thing, Morenci, is impossible to describe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morenci,_Arizona. It's North America's largest copper and gold mine, and it is a vast machine, tearing rocks from the hillside and grinding them for ore. It is bright orange lights and noises and it runs all the time, all night long. The inhabitants sleep and wake to the noise of this machine, and they eat and fuck to the noise of this machine. Safford is not technically owned by the mining company, but I think it is owned in another sense, and the people know it. Everything, everyone is under the ultimate authority of the mining company, and the police are instruments of the mining company. We were stopped and questioned very thoroughly on the way out of Morenci, suspicious just by virtue of being there.

You may not be able to see this well, since it was taken in the dark:



The world's LARGEST leaching division!

None of the pictures I could find really convey what Morenci is like. There is the machine, which is many machines, and there is this:



We didn't see it during the day, so the machine was what stood out with its lights and its noise, the pit being just a black space to one side. Google Earth gives us this: http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=morenci,+AZ&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.106236,95.097656&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Morenci,+Greenlee,+Arizona&ll=33.043637,-109.341516&spn=0.050076,0.092869&t=h&z=14

I'd like to return to it someday.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I believe it was the next morning that we went out to breakfast with some of the Language family, including Stepfather of Language, who I had not yet met.



Then it was time to say goodbye, and commence our return trip.



We headed northwest toward Flagstaff:



Flagstaff was beautiful, and we dined with some old Friends of Language, but there are no pictures of that. The return was blessedly uneventful, though we did see some more shooting stars on the same road we'd seen them on before, on the way from Flagstaff to Las Vegas. We slept in a Motel 6, which was quite honestly the most awesome motel I've ever slept in because it was completely bedbug-proof; the floors were bamboo, there was no carpet, and the bed was a mattress on a platform connected to the wall. If a guest were to bring in bedbugs, they could simply replace the mattress; there was nowhere else for the damn things to hide.

In the morning, we headed to the Las Vegas airport to rent a second car, because we had to return the first one in Bishop. Then, onwards for a five-hour drive in separate cars (oh, the misery! The loneliness! The missed opportunities to share commentary!) to the terrifying bedbug-ridden hellhole that is Bishop, to complete our quest and beat the final boss. We had these goals in Bishop: to return the rental car, to retrieve the Feynman CD I'd left in the now-defunct original car, to somehow dispose of the original car (without a title), and to poop. Things could have become complicated at any one of those tasks, but somehow, almost miraculously, it all went smoothly and we were soon enough on our way to Reno. Before we left, we had a stranger take a picture of us in front of the laundromat which was our bedbug-free safe haven in that wretched little Stephen King town.