From: wrat@unisql.UUCP (wharfie)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: a trip to arizona
Date: 21 Dec 92 22:39:28 GMT
Organization: UniSQL, Inc., Austin, Texas, USA


	This is the first chapter of the story of our trip to Tempe.
I reserve all copyrights to this.  You can't sell it or include it 
or any part of it in a work you are selling.  The names have been 
changed to protect the innocent.





	We left after work, driving off into the already deepening
night that follows a short winter's day like cows follow a hay wagon,
heading more or less due West sailing like Tolkien's Earendil with the
twin Silmarils of my old Ford's headlights lighting the way but
floating over the asphalt waves of State Route 290 as it washed the
juniper canyons of the Hill Country instead of over the seas of mythic
Middle Earth.  To the original partners had been added a childhood
friend of Bill's, one Amelia, whose name I kept in mind by thinking of
the famous aviatrix and who had not, I hoped, inherited her namesake's
navigational abilities lest we crash on some bleak desert island
during her shift at the wheel.

	I took the first watch, piloting our craft (made in Georgia
with American pride) out across the increasingly bleak Southwestern
landscape.  Canyons and cedar turned to mesquite and yucca as we
entered the fringes of the Chihuahuan desert, the low cold wastes
between the Permian basin and the more tropical climes of Central
America.  The rest stops were full of hobos bumming cigarettes and
rides, and when we stopped for gas truckers asked us if we'd seen any
cops.  We'd only seen one, a Texas trooper in a five-liter Mustang who
insisted on playing some silly cop head game with us for about fifty
miles.  He'd blow past us at a hundred and ten , but once out of sight
he'd throttle back to 45 and cruise in the left lane until we caught
up and passed him at our steadily legal 70, then follow us for a dozen
miles until he'd zoom past at 110 again.  Yeah, right, Mr. Trooper,
I'm, like, really stupid and I'm going to drive really fast the minute
you go by so you can wait up ahead and give a ticket.  I'd already
decided that since we had no deadlines and there were lots of deer I'd
keep it slow for the night anyway.  It took us until after midnight to
make Fort Stockton where I gave out and turned the wheel over to Bill
who drove us through West Texas and on into the wilds of New Mexico.

	Now it was Amelia's turn to pilot our petroleum powered
prairie schooner.  Because I'd never seen Amelia drive even a
skateboard I felt that I should stay up and make sure that she knew a
clutch from a handbrake and what a tachometer is for and all.  Not
because of her gender, mind you, it's just that this old Ford of mine
has a trick engine and a 7K redline and you don't let just anybody
behind the wheel of a unit that'll break the national speed limit
halfway into second gear at least not without adequate supervision.
So I drank a cupful of my special tea that I'd brewed up just for this
trip to keep me awake alert and happy down all the long miles to
Phoenix.  Equal parts Suk Gok, Ma Huang, Huang Chi, Chinese licorice,
and Shiu Chiu ginseng - it's important to use only *Chinese* licorice -
and guaranteed to keep a body awake alert and happy down many a mile
it's something Neil Cassady would've definitely approved of and
probably downright enjoyed but not for the faint of heart, tender of
tastebud or those weak in the adrenals...  

	So, awake alert and happy, I rode shotgun into the desert
dawn, which much to my surpise was damp, cold and foggy.  We passed in
and out and through dense patches of fallen cloud like vaporous whales
come to beach themselves on the rocky shores of the mountain islands
that towered up from the flats.  We'd pass from impenetrable fog into
sparkling sunlight which would reveal jagged peaks floating like
Pacific atolls in a sea of silvery mist tinted by the rising sun.  Now
more than ever I felt myself to be a passenger on some Elven ship
floating in a fantastic storybook sea, the whirring of our four
Goodyears transformed into the rushing of salty waves and the music
pouring from the speakers into the notes of magical Elvish musicians.
And that wasn't far from the truth, given that life itself is a sea
that passes all around us and through us as the years and days and
hours carry us over time's rough waves, and that like all good
Deadheads the music we'd chosen was none other than that produced by 
those most magical of musicians although whether by chance or by fate
or through some divine pranksterish guidance from above or below or
someplace out to the side we were very heavy in second sets featuring
Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad...

	And while we weren't hardly feelin' bad, we weren't hardly
goin' down the road neither.  All that fog and mist forced us down to
about forty miles per hour and even then the more tangible leviathans
of the highway would loom up out of the fog where a fraction of a second
earlier there'd been nothing but translucent air and asphalt.  Ah well,
nothing left to do but smile, smile smile.  And drink tea.

	Soon the fog lifted to reveal a landscape done entirely in
shades of brown.  The desert we sped through was covered in dozens of
species of plants that had turned brown with the coming of winter.
But no ordinary browns here!  Light brown and yellow brown and golden
brown and ochre and green-brown and brown-green and more made the
world into a kind of beigescale bitmap of reality, a pointillist
projection in sage and saltbush.  We cheered as we crossed the
continental divide and within a few set's worth of time we were half a
mile from Tucson, by the morning light.

	Our immediate goal was the Saguaro National Monument where
we'd planned on communing with the giant cacti and a nice dayhike out
for a picnic in the desert.  But we couldn't find much desert that
day.  About the time we'd entered Texas canyon for our final approach
into Tuscon it'd begun to rain, and that rain had continued to fall on
our party until we reached the Saguaro forest which that day resembled
the Great Dismal Swamp with mountains more than it did any desert...
Brave adventurers that we were, we drove down some splashy dirt roads
to a picnic area and during a break in which the rain turned to a
misty drizzle ate the chickpea curry which my own dear Sugar Magnolia
had supplied us with when we'd left our South Texas home.  Because of
the rain we were the only ones in the park, it seemed, and the damp
demi-light had tempted the native denizens of the place out of their
normal daytime hideyholes.  Flocks of plump quail decorated in the
same panchromatic monochromes as the landscape scuttled through the
damp cactus forest and longbilled wrens zoomed in and out of small
round holes in the saguaros that surrounded our picnic.  A large and
fierce looking hawk came to sit in one of these strangely-branched
spiny succulents, eyeing our dinner as though he had half a mind to
swoop down and carry our chickpeas off for his own meal.  Large
rabbits with even larger ears hopped by, ignoring us and the hawk as
they sped about looking for whatever it is longeared rabbits look for
on a rainy day, the entrance to Wonderland, perhaps.

	On to Phoenix, and our temporary home in the Comfort Inn.  The
streets of Phoenix were flooded and my old Ford once again became a
boat, although this time less a magical Elven craft and more a barge
or perhaps a gondola plying the sludgy canals of an ersatz Venice done
in cholla and palms and neon.  Luckily I'd brought along my genuine
Panama hat (made in Panama by genuine native Panamanian Indians out of
one single piece of rattan that they'd braided into one single long
braid and then wound round and round in a spiral and sewn together to
make the perfect hat to wear in a soggy rainy American desert).  A
good Panama hat sheds rain like a duck's back, keeps the sun outten
your eyes when it comes back, and looks better than a Stetson.  It's
like a stylish straw umbrella you wear on your head and I was sure
glad I had it as I forded the stream that flowed past the front door
to the Comfort Inn and went inside to deal with the front desk.

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