Summer Vacation 2002
Best Laid Plans.....I don't know why I never get around to writing about our summer vacations until long after they happen, though I'm sure part of the reason stems from taking a long time to get over the experience. Cooped up in a vehicle for hours on end with a 7 year old boy and 5 year old girl can be a test of endurance second to none. I know now what my parents went through when they loaded all of us into the car and headed off for fun and frivolity and I now understand in greater measure the popularity of the National Lampoon Vacation films. Our vacation this past summer was much like an NL Vacation installment, except we didn't have a dead body strapped to the roof. But we did come close.
In the weeks prior to our scheduled departure from Phoenix, for the first time ever I did due diligence with maps and distances and budgets and tuned the car and changed the oil and checked the lights and rotated and inflated the tires on the suv. Normally we just wing it. Pack up, hop in and go. If we forget something, we just buy a replacement on the road. No big deal except we end up with things we don't really need as we already have a perfectly good one at home.
This year I was determined to plan our trip more economically, both time-wise and financially. I also found I enjoyed poring over maps of Arizona, Nevada and California and judging how long it would take to get from Point A to Point B to Point C and so on. Our goal was to head north through Payson, past the Mogollon Rim and stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona. From there we would head directly to the Meteor Crater and then position ourselves strategically for an assault on the Grand Canyon the following morning. This would be followed by three nights in Las Vegas and five days in Los Angeles and San Diego. No detail would be left to chance.
......Go to Waste
The night before our departure Maydee and I packed the car with all the necessities of clothing, children's toys and toiletries. Because much of our trip was to take us through the Sonoran and Mojave deserts, I decided it would be prudent to stock up on water as well, both for drinking and for emergencies like unexpected overheatings on the side of the road. August temperatures in the American Southwest beggar belief if you have never experienced them and I even had a spare fan belt in the cubby-hole under the seat, along with salt tablets and soakable do-rags. I drove the fully-laden car to Circle K and bought several gallons of drinking water and wedged these in amongst the suitcases in the back. Even though it was 11:00 p.m. at the time, it was still very hot - over 100 degrees farenheit - and the chill from the perfectly functioning air conditioning was a pleasant relief from the heat. In the comfort of artificially cooled air, I looked forward to our departure the following morning.
At 8:00 a.m. we loaded Christopher and Victoria into the car, fired up the engine and turned on the a/c. The temperature hadn't changed much from the night before and already the sun loomed overhead with promises of 110 degrees later in the day. In this sort of heat, the first stream of air that emanates from vehicle a/c units is akin to staring down the tube of a hair dryer at the hottest possible setting. Until the unit begins to function, the occupants of the vehicle are subjected to a brief, tortuous blast of super-heated air straight in the face. Once this unpleasantness is over, the air gradually cools and the climate inside the car assumes a more tolerable level and off you go. Except today.
Today the air didn't cool to more tolerable levels. In fact, it cooled no further than that of the ambient temperature outside. And there is no way you can vacation in the American Southwest in August unless your a/c unit has the capacity to simulate Antarctic conditions. The evening before the a/c unit had functioned perfectly well, but now... What had happened?
"Oh dude, like you need a new condensor!" said the barely post-pubescent service writer at the repair shop after I had unpacked the car and sent everyone back into the house. "Like, all your freon has leaked out. Like, no way can you vacation, like anywhere dude."
"Really? Do you think?" I replied irritably. "Two questions. How long and how much?"
"Uh, well the condensor is like mebbe two and half feet long and..."
"No. I mean how long will it take to fix?"
"Oh. Uh, couple hours or so. Four at most. Once we get the parts. And, um, lemme see, um, no that ain't right. Um, $634.00 plus tax."
"Well there goes the vacation budget. Alright fix away and call me as soon as you have it back together."
Back at home I scowled at the walls, impatient to leave. Maydee busied herself making an early lunch for everyone while the children watched tv. It was no use consoling myself that if the condensor was going to pack it in, it was better to happen now than in the middle of nowhere. My careful plans were now in disarray and mentally I crossed off Winslow and the Meteor Crater from the vacation stops. We weren't going to have time to see them.
At three o'clock the repair shop called to say the car wouldn't be ready until the following morning as they had finally received the parts and had only just begun taking things apart. I groaned and told the kids, who weren't in the least concerned. Maydee nodded in the fatalistic way Latin Americans do when things out of their control go wrong. "Well there's nothing we can do dear," she said. Why don't you go and mow the lawn for something to do." I sulked off to start the mower only to find it was out of gas.
Deus Ex Machina
The next day, despite shouting over the phone at the repair shop, the car wasn't ready until 2:30. Becoming as fatalistic as Maydee, I decided we'd leave the next day. We weren't going to make it very far with only half a day in front of us and the money saved from not renting a hotel room that night could go toward paying for the new condensor. So, that evening we re-packed the car and got a good night's sleep. The following morning at 8:00 a.m. we loaded Christopher and Victoria into the car, fired up the engine and turned on the a/c. Nothing!
Fighting back a nearly uncontrollable rage, I opened the hood and peered inside. The a/c had worked fine returning from the repair shop, so now what was the matter? I couldn't see anything at first, but the more closely I looked at the condensor, the more I thought I saw something glistening in the darkness of the engine compartment. I got out the blacklight we use for hunting scorpions in the back yard at night (they become luminescent under a blacklight), closed the garage door and switched on the lamp. A fluorescent mess like the blood trails of some wounded alien from Star Trek suddenly appeared all over the engine, most of which was concentrated at the neck of the condensor. All the freon had leaked out again and the fan had blown it all over the engine. It turned out that the idiots at the repair shop had forgotten to install an o-ring when completing the repair the day before. A 35 cent part had delayed our departure another day. I argued for, and received, a sizeable reduction from the $634.00 I had already spent, but it didn't diffuse my frustration at being delayed 3 days. I crossed off the Grand Canyon from the list of vacation stops and instead we headed directly for Vegas as we had reservations there that night.
Job Comes For a Ride
The first leg of the trip was uneventful, apart from some squabbling over toys from the children in the back seat and some squabbling over what temperature to set the newly functioning a/c from the adults in the front seat. We stopped just south of Wickenburg at a favourite picnic site and shoo'd off various insects from the sandwiches and drinks we had laid out under a shady elm. The children ran about chasing lizards, seemingly oblivious to the heat, while Maydee and I reclined and sipped cool refreshing sodas.
After we stopped Christopher from prodding with a pointy stick a scorpion he'd found in the grass, and suggested to Victoria that it might be safer not to hang upside down by her legs from the branch of the elm, we tossed the trash from the picnic into a garbage can and headed back to the car. I hadn't yet finished my Coke and so set it on the hood while I unlocked the doors and placed the picnic basket in the back of the car. Evidently I hadn't set the drink in a particularly level spot as it tipped over when I slammed the rear hatch closed and I spent the next few minutes trying to wipe the sticky mess off the vehicle. "Hell with it," I thought. "The car needs a wash anyway. I'll do it in Vegas."
About a hundred miles later we needed gas and so I stopped at the lone gas station in the bustling metropolis of Wikieup, population 3 or 4. As I fuelled up, Maydee took the kids into the gas station to go to the bathroom. In the meantime I waved off a bee buzzing close to my head and swatted at another one that followed it a moment later. After the tank was full, I pulled away from the pumps, noticing a few more bees in front of the windshield, and went into the gas station. Christopher and Victoria were playing a game of tug-of-war with Maydee over an outsized bag of M & M's Maydee refused to buy. I joined sides with Maydee and between the two of us we succeeded in overpowering the children and replacing the candy back on the shelf. Instead we purchased some granola bars and other more nutritious snacks that we didn't really need, but which we prayed would stop the children from complaining the rest of the way to Nevada about how poor and downtrodden they were and how we never bought them anything.
Once back outside, we headed for the car until Christopher stopped dead in his tracks and let out a screech. He pointed to where I had parked and where an enormous swarm of bees now covered the front of the car, the fenders and the grill. What seemed like thousands more buzzed about angrily looking for a place to land. I was dumbfounded. What on earth was going on? A group of elderly Texans travelling together in a monstrous RV that was obliged to stop at each gas station it passed had also gathered at a distance and were shaking their heads in idle curiosity. Then it dawned on me. The bees were probably attracted to the sugar from the Coke I had spilled on the car back at the picnic spot in Wickenburg. They were getting their sugar fix for the day. Just great!
Instinctively, a frightened Maydee hustled everyone back into the gas station. "Get rid of the bees!" she shouted closing the door behind her and peering out through the glass.
Get rid of the bees? How?
One of the ancients from the RV sauntered up and whispered something that hadn't yet occurred to me. "Figure them bees on yer car are killers?"
I started! Oh thanks! Thanks for that thought! Killer bees! Just what I needed!
"If them bees are reg'lar old honey bees, you prob'ly be ok gettin' in," he continued. "Couple of stings mebbe, but not if'n they's killers. You prob'ly git swarmed."
"Yeah? How can you tell if they're killer bees or not?" I asked.
"Yuh cain't" said the codger, "Less'n they's chasin' yuh and stingin' yuh a lot. Killer bees 'n reg'lar bees look the same. Same size, same ever'thin' 'cept them's that killers got smaller wings than those that ain't."
"Are you suggesting I approach that unholy swarm armed with a tape measure?" I replied somewhat coldly.
"Nah, 'course not. Only real way to tell is to smoke 'em to sleep with one of them puffer things, cut the branch off'n the tree they swarmin' on, cover it with a big ole bag and freeze 'em in a freezer. Then when they's dead, yuh measure the wings agin a known measurement from reg'lar bees. Then yuh can tell from an average measure whether that there swarm is Africanized, partly Africanized or just reg'lar ole honey bees. On'y scientists can tell if'n a particklar population o' bees is killers or not. You cain't and I cain't. Not by lookin' anyhow. "
I goggled. Quite the fount of knowledge the old boy was, plus he must have been formerly employed as an engineer or statistician or something. Perhaps I should have asked him if he had a Six Sigma handbook in the RV so we could run an Attribute Gauge R & R on the wing size of the bees. I did spot a couple of flaws in his statement though.
"Well, I have no 'puffer thing' to smoke them with and the bees aren't on a branch so I can't cut it off the non-existent tree. Nor do I have an enormous bag into which I could stick the entire car and freeze it inside what would amount to be a massive freezer and even if I could, I find it quite likely that the population of Wikieup includes a butcher, a baker and a candle-stick maker, but nobody with a doctorate in measuring the average size of frozen bees wings against that of a known sample."
"Well there is that," said the old boy. "Tell yuh what. If'n you ken sneak inside yer car and drive off real quick like and get right up to speed - and I mean break the speed limit as much as yuh can - them bees'll prob'ly blow right off. I can take the missus and the youngsters cowerin' ower there in the gas station an' stick 'em in the RV. Then ah'll follow yuh up the road apiece. When the bees're all blown off, jus' pull over and they ken climb back in."
"The bees?"
"No, the missus and the kids."
There didn't seem to be much else for it and it wasn't really that bad of an idea. Pretty much the only option available. So I very slowly slunk behind the car while the over-the-hill-gang kept a careful watch on the proceedings. There was no way to determine whether these bees were Africanized, but I had heard that 80% of the bees in Arizona were, so there was a reasonable chance I could find myself in a rather nasty situation if the bees disapproved of my presence. At last I reached the rear hatch and opened it enough to slide inside the car. Closing it as quickly as possible behind me, the impact of the door shutting disturbed the bees somewhat and they leapt from the hood and buzzed angrily about for a moment before settling back down to their feast. However, that was nothing compared to the hue and cry they made after I scrambled over the luggage and the back seats and started the engine. The bees simply swarmed the entire vehicle in a noisy black and yellow cloud and so I punched it and tore out onto the roadway as fast as I could, heedless of all traffic laws.
I got up to speed and the bees began to blow off the car. Those that had been unable to re-land on the car when I started it up were long gone, but there was still a considerable number remaining. Unbelievably, at 60 mph, many still remained, but by the time I got to 90 only one was left, stubbornly wedged under the leeward side of the left hand windshield wiper. I turned on the wiper in the hopes of smearing him across the windshield. Alas, he sailed off into the slipstream and was lost to view.
A couple of hundred yards later I stopped and shortly after that the old boy's RV hove into view and weighed anchor. Maydee and the kids disembarked and with a smile and a wave of thanks we drove off towards Kingman.
"That was a close call" I said.
"Yeah", said Christopher. "I nearly didn't get my bag of M & M's." In the rear view mirror I spied him brandishing a 3lb bag of candy. Maydee had lost the second tug of war while hiding inside the gas station.
The Oil PatchJust north of Kingman it started to rain. When it rains in Arizona, it usually rains briefly, but biblically. We were travelling over a twinned and freshly asphalted stretch of road following two tarped-over flatbed semi-trailers, side by side, one in either lane, neither passing the other. Typical!
Visibility was virtually zero, what with the wipers on high speed and the wash on the windshield kicked up by the rigs in front. Fortunately the inability to see put an abrupt halt on what was becoming an unbearable game of 'I spy with my little eye'. "Christopher, 'atmosphere' does indeed begin with an 'a', but out here in the desert we can't see it. We are no longer in Phoenix and have several days before we reach L.A. You can try and make us guess 'atmosphere' then."
Slowly, belatedly, I noticed my inability to see was not simply a restriction placed there by the wipers, the rain and the wash from in front. Greasy black streaks were forming across the windshield. The side windows too had what appeared to be a thin film of liquid grime coating them. I puzzled this over for half a mile and then, with sudden realization crashing in on me, I let out an anguished howl, slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. My hatred of truck drivers and their slow moving vehicles reached new heights. The swine pulling the flatbeds in front were kicking up not simply an aquatic wash from the road, but an aquatic wash containing a gritty and very sticky film of oil from the newly laid asphalt. Essentially, they were waterproofing our car.
We sat on the side of the road for five or ten minutes. I was in an impotent rage as I couldn't decide whether to give in to my desire to get out and see how badly the car was covered in oil, and get rained on, or to stay inside, ignorant but dry. My indecision came to an end when the rain stopped abruptly and the sun began to shine brightly on the newly washed desert, the light illuminating the wetness of nearby hills in an astonishing red and purple glow. It was still very hot outside and in temperament so was I, despite the fact the semis were no longer in sight. I shook my fist at the departing rain clouds instead. "Bastards!"
Stepping away from the car I couldn't believe my eyes. The entire vehicle from top to bottom, from front to back, was covered in oil and small tarry lumps. I could hardly see Maydee and the children through the windows and as I stared in disbelief a clump of accumulated tar fell from the front wheel-well into a puddle at my feet.
Stifling an expletive only because of the presence of the children I grabbed the door handle to climb back in and my hand came away with a coating of oily filth. I was beyond shouting now and demanded a Kleenex from Maydee who rummaged in her purse and offered one in silence. The children were silent too as the Kleenex stuck to my hand and came away in strips as I tried to remove it with the other. I slammed the door shut and walked to the rear of the vehicle. Risking another coating of oil, I opened the rear hatch and removed a can of Coke from the remnants of our picnic supplies. Remembering that Coke is not only a soft drink, but also a deoxidant capable of dissolving nails overnight, I thought I might try its effectiveness as a degreaser. I poured the Coke on my hands and rubbed them together vigorously. It worked well enough that additional Kleenexes offered from the passenger window did the trick. I walked back to the driver's side of the car and grabbed the door handle to get back in.... The children learned some new words that day!
A Big Pile of Cement Wedged Between Two CliffsLooking like we represented OPEC in some weird and fantastic cross-country tour promoting oil-dripping, gas-guzzling suv's, we continued our drive northward in virtual silence until we reached that dullest of tourist stops, the Hoover Dam.
Having parked and exited the vehicle as quickly as possible so no one would think the oil-covered car was ours, we wandered along the top of the dam and halfway across took the requisite pictures of the children standing with one foot in Arizona and the other in Nevada. The temperature was very hot here between the narrow walls of the Black Canyon and despite the historic significance of the Dam - it was completed in 1935 at a cost of $175 million as part of a New Deal project and now provides the hydroelectricity that powers the sea of neon that is Las Vegas - I wasn't particularly interested. Generally speaking, I find great feats of engineering utterly boring and in this case, to me at least, this was nothing more than a massive pile of cement sandwiched between two rock walls providing me with a convenient short-cut between home and Sin-City.
Christopher too was bored until he spotted a lizard of some sort scuttling along the top of the dam and chased it over the edge. Instead of plummeting 725 feet to its death, the lizard walked horizontally across the vertical wall and reappeared a few feet from where we stood. Christopher chased it over the edge again. "Don't worry Dad", he said, "It's a Western Fence gecko and, as you know, geckos have millions of very small hairs on their toes and these help it stick to any surface, even glass. The gecko is perfectly safe."
Upon returning to the parking lot we found a group of cyclists pointing at the car, which still oozed and dripped in the 110 degree heat. "You guys from Houston?" quipped one. "You got enough oil there to put JP Getty outta business."
"JP Getty has been out of business since 1976." I replied rather haughtily, grabbing the door handle and once again getting my hand covered in oil. I opened the doors for Maydee and the kids to save them the trouble of cleaning their hands by means of wiping them on the seats inside.
Viva Las Vegas
Half an hour after leaving Hoover Dam we spied Las Vegas when it popped out of nowhere at the top of a rise in the road. Maydee had purchased from some telemarketer a three-night excursion package with rooms at the Excalibur for $105.00. Not a bad deal, though hotel rooms in Vegas can be had mid-week for roughly the same price just by showing up without reservations.
As we cruised the Las Vegas strip, I kept an eye out for the entrance to the Excalibur. Like their interiors, the entrances to most Vegas casinos are just as confusing to negotiate and in the past I had more than once missed the entrance to where I had been going. Traffic congestion on the strip is usually the norm and makes turning around both laborious and time-consuming.
Suddenly Maydee shouted to turn left. "Why?" I enquired. "That'll take us into the Flamingo Hilton."
"I know," she replied, "but that's where we have to pick up the vouchers for the Excalibur."
That didn't make much sense to me. Why would a profit-oriented hotel house a business that promoted excursion packages to a competing hotel? Well, stranger things have happened, but I wasn't happy about negotiating my way into the Flamingo and then out again when we should simply have been able to head directly for the Excalibur and check in.
Once inside we were directed to the offices of the company where we were to pick up the vouchers for our rooms. By this time I was rather tired and wasn't in the mood for any foolishness. A beaming and over-courteous blonde counter-rep, hired probably more for her looks than her brains, placed the vouchers into an envelope and handed them to me. As she did she very sweetly enquired: "And at what time would it be convenient for your appointment, sir? We have an opening at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning or at 3:00 p.m. tomorrow afternoon. Which would you prefer?"
"Appointment? What appointment?"
The smile disappeared in a moment of confusion, but resurfaced again almost immediately, its radiance increased. "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. It's your appointment with our company directors. You know, to discuss your interest in our interval estates."
I looked around, but Maydee had Houdini'd with the kids into the distance.
"Interval estates... My interest in... No, you've lost me. I think you've mistaken me for someone else."
"Oh no, sir! Everyone on this particular excursion is privileged to meet with our directors. I can set your appointment for 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, which will allow you the remainder of the day free to enjoy our wonderful city." The smile was more radiant than ever. She began pencilling something on a sheet of paper under the counter.
"The remainder of the day... Free... Am I missing something here? I'm on vacation. Every minute I have is free. I'm not on a business trip. Which directors? What company? What are you blathering about?" And in louder tones to my dearly beloved I thought close to a fountain in the lobby: "Hon, where are you?"
The counter rep now looked a little concerned and became somewhat more businesslike. "Sir, it's a meeting to discuss fractional ownership in our interval estates which you discussed with one of our public relations officers when you booked your excursion tickets. Your excursion fare was discounted heavily in exchange for your agreement to meet with our directors."
Dawn rose with a flourish. My garrulous wife had booked the tickets. Any supposed deal, good or bad, always had her talking on the phone with telemarketers for far too long. "Do you mean time-shares!!!?" "HON!!!"
"We prefer interval estates, sir. We offer a high quality product."
With enormous effort I refrained from making a loud and boisterous scene. Instead I leaned across the counter and hissed through clenched teeth. "Do you mean that in exchange for purchasing 'excursion vouchers', in advance, and at the same price I could have obtained mid-week rooms in the Excalibur or any other hotel, I am, let me understand this, privileged to sit through what is undoubtedly a high-pressure sales pitch for some flea-bag time-share sold at an outrageous cost. You're out of your mind. I will do no such thing."
The woman bridled at the mention of the words 'flea-bag' but I continued unabated. "I have driven six hours through desert heat, rain, oil and bees to get here. Now I discover that I have essentially paid good money to sit in a room full of Jekyll and Hyde salesmen whose behaviour, upon hearing that no way in hell will I be parted from my earnings in order to purchase a part-share in the interior walls, roof and carpet of some grubby little cubicle in a part of the country that I have no intention of ever visiting - but would have book in advance if I did only to discover that a particularly incestuous pair of kissin' cousins from Arkansas along with their brood of mutant three-headed infant triplets have dibs on the place that week during the annual Ozark Mountain Drool Fest - will turn from what may most charitably be described as supercilious to overtly overbearing and hostile? Is that what you are telling me?"
"We offer a high quality product, sir."
"This is insane!"
"I'm sorry, sir, but the attendance of both you and your wife is a requirement. We offered a discounted travel package in exchange for your attendance. You have accepted the tickets. You are required to attend. Offer and acceptance. You are legally bound. 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning then. All the details are in your envelopes. Please bring your drivers license as primary identification and a credit card for secondary identification. Daycare will be provided if you have children. Goodbye!"
As the woman sauntered off to light a cigarette I fumed. Turning on my heel I went to find my beloved and our offspring and discovered them happily tossing coins into the lobby fountain. Good money after bad! Humpf! Give me one wish right about now! "All set?" asked Maydee smiling warily.
"Let me ask you something... No, better yet. Hand over the paperwork, directions and so forth, the telemarketers sent you. You understand of course that I have no intention of attending this ghastly time-share sales pitch, though you are. You booked us into this nightmare. You can book us out again." Maydee offered a wad of documents and I riffled through them. "Excellent! No mention of mandatory attendance. Well nothing signed anyway and I signed nothing in the office back there either. Plus I have the room vouchers. Things are looking up! Well, for me at least."
"I thought I mentioned we had to go on some sales thingy" said Maydee. "I thought I mentioned it a couple of months ago when I bought the tickets. We have to go. Both of us"
"Evidently it slipped your mind, dearest." I said, doing my best impression of Vincent Price in a particularly joyful moment just before the torture begins. 'So, tomorrow morning, one of the children - I'm not sure which just yet - will fall ill and be unable to attend. As we cannot leave a sick child alone in a hotel room, nor can we leave a sick child on deposit as a tertiary form of identification at the time-share daycare centre, one of us, me in other words, will have to remain behind. You will attend to remove any quasi-legal obligation we may or may not have with these parasites. Explain the situation regarding the sick child and apologize for the inconvenience of my consequent inability to attend. As I am not there, they can sell you nothing. They need my signature as well as yours. Without me there, they will probably let you leave. I'm sure they will be unhappy, possibly abusive and threatening, but there is nothing they can do. You have my permission to be abusive and threatening in return, not that you need it. If there is a legal obligation for us to attend, which I doubt, no law in the land would uphold the rights of a time-share company over the difficulties of a sick child when efforts were made by us to attend. These things happen. It's unfortunate, but the time-share gang will not go to the expense of suing us and if they wish us to return at a later date, we'll accept free vouchers to the penthouse suite at the Bellagio. Otherwise, no go. And let this be a lesson to you not to talk to telemarketers. When they call, hang up. Got it? Good!"
We returned to the car whereupon I grabbed the door handle once again...
No Sale
The following morning Maydee returned from the time share sales pitch about half an hour after she had left the hotel. As I had predicted, she had been let out of the sales pitch as I wasn't there, but only after she had been verbally abused and threatened with dire consequences because of my failure to attend. From what I could tell, the direst threat was one in which I might have to speak with their CEO on the telephone and explain myself. Now there was an empty threat if I had ever heard one. He was lucky he hadn't received an unsolicited phone call from me already. At any rate, Maydee was equally abusive in return and nothing ever came of the issue afterwards.
Having washed the car and with the rest of the day now free to enjoy what the blonde counter-rep had referred to as a 'wonderful city' we sallied forth and visited the aquarium at Mandalay Bay, which was prohibitively expensive but really quite good. The Rick Thomas Magic Show at the Tropicana was much more economical and was made all the more entertaining by dint of our acquiring front row seats, despite which I still could not see how any of the magic was done. The following day we attended a bird show, also at the Tropicana, at the end of which Christopher engaged the trainer in a discussion of all things avarian, culminating in an exchange of scientific names for the grey parrot, which Christopher didn't know, and the cassowary (both types) which the trainer didn't know.
Horrendous gamblers the pair of us, Maydee and I took turns in the evenings watching the children in the hotel room while one of us would venture downstairs to the casino and seek our fortune. On the only lucky streak I have ever hit, I managed somehow to get a slot machine to offer all kinds of bonuses and extra games, none of which I understood and all of which I hit right on the money until the amount of credits I had showing totalled 1600. Unfortunately this was on a nickel slot and my winnings came to only $80, less the $20 I had originally invested and so I returned to the room with the monetary equivalent of two tanks of gas. Nevertheless I was quite pleased and went to sleep contented while Maydee went downstairs to try her luck. The next morning as we stood in line checking out, I opened my wallet and discovered my previous evening's winnings absent. I turned to ask Maydee if she knew where the money had gone, but like she had at the Flamingo Hilton, she had Houdini'd with the children into the distance. Later discussions revealed that she had lost the $20 grubstake she had been issued with and had sneaked upstairs and swiped the money I had won in order to continue playing. She lost that too. I fumed. Not much else I could do.
Hell's Kitchen
Our next destination was Los Angeles and so we set out across the Mojave Desert with the a/c unit still comfortably blowing cool air Despite the sticker shock of the condensor replacement, I was grateful the unit was now functioning properly.
Our route from Las Vegas to Los Angeles took us very close to Death Valley where summer temperatures range from the unbearable to the abominable. Why people choose to live in this area is beyond me, but live here they do and when we pulled into Baker, California to refuel we discovered the world's tallest thermometer along the roadside. To say the least, this was an incredibly tacky tourist attraction, yet one which accurately recorded the temperature, about the only notable thing happening in Baker, which has to be one of the hottest, ugliest and most forlorn towns I have ever seen. The oppressive heat made it impossible for anyone to be outside for any length of time and the colour of the town was the same as the desert: sun-baked brick. Deserted ghost towns in the wastes of Arizona and New Mexico have more to offer than this horrible little place and even the tumbleweeds that blow their unsteady way across the highway seem to pick up speed in an effort to leave the town behind as quickly as possible.
Nevertheless, here we were and it was lunchtime. In this heat there was to be no picnic outside. Instead, we elected to enter a mall advertising a food court. We had a choice of Pizza Hut, Taco Time, Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy's, Subway and others. Maydee took the children to the bathroom and while they were gone I decided to try Taco Time and approached the register underneath the Taco Time sign. There was nobody at the register, though a uniformed employee at the adjacent Wendy's register stood silent and sullen and picked at something lodged in his nose. After a few minutes there was still nobody at the Taco Time register and so I glanced over at the Wendy's employee who now appeared to be examining something on the end of his finger. I enquired whether the Taco Time employee might be putting in an appearance any time soon.
The Wendy's employee replied that Taco Time was not open that particular day. "Well then," I enquired, "Why didn't you say something to that effect when I arrived at the counter five minutes ago?" In reply I received a non-commital shrug of indifference. I sighed.
"What is open then? And not Wendy's. It appears unhygienic."
"Uh, pretty much everything else, I think." He was still sullen.
"You think? You know or you think you know? How about Subway? Is that open? I don't see anyone at the register." In fact there were only three employees evident and at least nine registers all along the counter.
"Yeah, that's open."
"Fine, I'll try that."
As I wandered toward the Subway register, the Wendy's employee shadowed me disinterestedly on the other side of the counter and when I stopped under the Subway sign he stopped too.
It dawned on me then that the employees on the other side of the counter were interchangeable and, regardless of the uniform they wore, served up food from any or all of the fast food outlets, unless like Taco Time they were closed for the lunar solstice or something. In any case, now that I was in front of the Subway register and having been told it was open I placed my order. "I'll have a BLT."
The employee in the Wendy's uniform washed his hands, before I had to tell him to, and placed sanitary plastic gloves on afterwards. So far, so good. "Foot-long or six-inch BLT?" he asked.
"Six inch."
"Whaddya want on it?" Had I known my presence and food order was interrupting his otherwise busy day doing nothing I wouldn't have started to get annoyed. But annoyed I got. His finger began to stray toward his nose again.
"What do I want in my BLT? Is that what you are asking me? Don't tell me that's what you are asking me because if you are, how about some bacon, lettuce and tomato!!!
While the Wendy's employee got to work on the Subway sandwich, from down the counter came a familiar-sounding screech. It was Maydee berating a hispanic-looking uniformed Burger King employee. "What do you mean Taco Time is closed? I've been standing here with you not three feet away. Don't you have the intelligence to add two and two together and figure out that I want Taco Time if I'm standing under the Taco Time sign at the Taco Time register? Why didn't you say something? What's wrong with you? My children are hungry and you are an imbecile!" It appeared Maydee too had discovered that Taco Time was closed and had discovered the fact in the same manner I had. At that point Maydee began shouting in high-speed, high-decible Spanish so I couldn't really follow what was being said, but it was easy to tell she had lost her temper and had reverted to her native language to more eloquently express her displeasure.
The City of Angels
The next leg of our journey took us into Los Angeles without incident. The traffic was relatively light, even on the L.A. freeways and without too much delay we arrived at the house of a friend who had kindly lent us his abode while he spent the week with his girlfriend in Riverside. We got settled in and had just turned on the tv when the phone rang. Thinking it might be Greg calling to see if we had arrived I picked up the receiver, idly noting that there were 17 messages waiting for him on his answering machine. A puzzled female voice asked if Greg was home. I replied that he wasn't. The female asked who I was. I said I was a burglar breaking and entering and had picked up the phone without thinking. "Oh!" said the voice. "Uh..."
"Tell you what," I said, "If you'd like to leave a message for Greg I'll try not to leave fingerprints on his notepad and he can call you when he returns."
"Oh! Uh..." Not the brightest of sparks.
Finally I explained I was a friend visiting from Phoenix with my family while we took the kids to Disneyland. "Oh." said the voice again. "Do you know where Greg is?"
Having known Greg for some time I decided it might be best to answer that I did not. Both Maydee and I had met Greg's girlfriend on a number of occasions and I could tell from the voice that this was most definitely not Kristie. The caller hung up and I returned to the couch to watch cartoons with the children. A few minutes later I heard a key turning in the front door and stood up to find Greg wandering in, trailing a long legged brunette. This time I could tell not so much from the voice as from pretty much everything else that this wasn't Kristie either.
"Wanker Canuck," said Greg in greeting.
"Scumbag Republican," I replied. "What are you doing here?"
"I forgot a few things," said Greg as he made introductions. "Just came by to pick them up and we'll leave you guys in peace. Hi Christopher. Yo, Vicky. And of course, Maydee how are you? Looking good as always. If you ever decide to leave your wanker Canuck husband, give me a call."
Maydee gave Greg the finger as she puzzled over the brunette she knew wasn't Kristie. Thankfully she remained silent on the subject and while she and the brunette sat and chatted together I followed Greg down the hallway where Greg began gathering up beach towels and other odds and ends. He gave me a sly smirk and said he had changed his plans at the last minute, but not to worry. The house was ours for the duration. I told him about the call from the unidentified woman and added that it wasn't Kristie and that I had said I hadn't known where he was.
"Right answer!" said Greg. "Knew I could count on you. Don't worry about Kristie calling or anything. I told her you and I were meeting up in Vegas for the weekend so you should be good. Just try not to answer the phone if you don't have to and on no account let Maydee answer the phone at all. Another female voice answering my number wouldn't bode well for my future welfare."
"Alright. No worries. Have a good time and thanks again." And with that Greg and the brunette departed.
Maydee shook her head in disbelief and said that this seemed so typical of Greg. I nodded and turned my attention to the phone which was once again sounding an alarm. "No one answer," I said and explained to Maydee the probable consequences to Greg if she did. A short time later we left to dine at Marie Callender's and returned after slightly more than an hour to find another brunette on Greg's property, this one ringing his doorbell.
"Looking for Greg?" I asked. The brunette replied that she was and that she had left numerous phone messages for him. I told her who we were and what we were doing, but that I didn't know where Greg had gone, only that he had left me a key to get in. The brunette handed me a business card and asked if I could have Greg call her if I heard from him. I silently noted that it was a good thing she hadn't shown up an hour and half before.
A couple of days later I called Greg on his cellphone as we were leaving and told him of the brunette's appearance and that I had left her business card on top of his fridge. Greg went wild when I mentioned her name and he cursed her in absentia. Evidently he had told her never to show up at his house uninvited. "Yeah, well, apparently she didn't listen," I said. "Oh, and by the way, your answering machine can no longer accept messages. The damn thing was driving me crazy until finally the tape ran out, but there must be at least 3 or 4 different hotties calling you by the sounds of things.
"Cool," said Greg. "Be a bud and delete them all for me would you? My mom is supposed to call and let me know some stuff and that's one message I need to get."
Gridlock
Over the next few days while we weren't unavoidably eavesdropping on Greg's answering machine we toured some of the attractions of the greater Los Angeles area. Our first stop was Disneyland and while Greg's house was no more than 10 miles due north of Walt Disney's wonderland it took us nearly 45 minutes to get there. The traffic on the I-5 Freeway gave lie to the words Free and Way. I had thought traffic on U.S. 60 in Phoenix was bad, but that was nothing compared to the gridlock we encountered in the drive towards Anaheim.
The last time I had been to Disneyland was during the U.S. bicentennial in 1976. I was all of fourteen then and was thrilled to see the glitter that gave the Magic Kingdom its nickname. This time around, probably because I am much older, there seemed to be a lot less glitter, but I certainly got excited over the entrance fees. After parting with $150 for the four of us we entered only to find Victoria was too short for most of the rides and that Christopher was unwilling to chance his young life on the fun stuff like the Matterhorn roller coaster and the Pirates of the Caribbean. Instead I found myself relegated to sharing a train ride with Christopher on a slow-moving and circuitous tour through Mr.Toad's Manor as well as holding a frightened Victoria tightly by the hand while viewing Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Much of the rest of our time there was spent trying to find as many hidden Mickeys as we could while standing in interminable lines under an intensely hot sun to meet and greet an overheated and grumpy Winnie the Pooh. Not long after we arrived, we were ready to leave.
We waved good-bye to a sweating Tigger and a badly miscast Cinderella who really ought to have donned an ugly stepsister costume. Instead we drove north toward Santa Monica. Or I should say we crawled north. The traffic hadn't cleared up very much and the line of cars on the I-5 and I-10 freeways resembled an enormous snake without end. Two hours later we hit the beach. Everyone splashed about and had a good time building sand castles, collecting shells and digging up sand fleas. The ferris wheel perched on top of the Santa Monica Pier offered spectacular views of the city and out over the Pacific, especially when the sun set in the evening. Overall, we found Santa Monica much more to our liking than Disneyland and I found myself wishing we had spent the entire day there instead.
The following morning we set forth for the Wild Animal Park in San Diego as my boss had generously given us free tickets from his unused book of seasons passes. As a nearby resident in Escondido he usually purchased a book and doled them out to visiting relatives, but this year he hadn't drawn the short straw when most of his relatives had decided to vacation elsewhere. We became the beneficiaries of his generosity instead.
The Wild Animal Park, as distinguished from the San Diego Zoo, is a unique 2,100 acre preserve where animals wander freely in surroundings much like their natural habitats. The exhibits are large and the animals have a great deal more freedom to roam than in any other zoo or animal sanctuary we'd visited before. The children were thrilled with all the animals on display, particularly an aviary named Lorikeet Landing. Inside one is allowed to feed the tropical birds with a small cup of 'special nectar', which is really nothing more than sugar water. The birds would flap down from on high and settle on one's hand or arm and dip their beaks into the outstretched container and fly off again after having had their fill. At one point, Victoria had no less than 7 of these birds squabbling with one another over first rights to her cup and Christopher became upset as he had only 5 birds affixed to his person. He didn't remain upset for long as at least 3 of Victoria's Lorikeets decided to answer a call of nature on her sleeve all at the same time. This caused a great deal of merriment.
We gave up an attempt to return to San Diego the next day. We had intended to take the children to the tidal pools at Point Loma in Cabrillo National Monument. Not a chance. The gridlock was so bad that after two hours of sucking other peoples tailpipes we pulled into San Clemente State Beach instead. This turned out to be a great little seaside getaway with the ubiquitous California surfin' dudes riding the waves at the north end of the one mile stretch of sand. There were hiking trails atop some wind-sculptured bluffs and to spoil it all, a train track that produced freight trains every half an hour less than 100' from our beach towels. The waves, though, were much bigger here than at Santa Monica and we all tried to build a huge sandcastle that would withstand the onrush of water as the tide rose. We lost that one despite the use of kelp, seashells and stones as fortifications. I came away quite sunburned, but thoroughly happy.
On our last day in L.A. we toured La Brea Tar Pits, which were fascinating. I had seen the Tar Pits on television before and always had the impression they were located at the base of one set of mountains or another in the greater L.A. area. I was seriously wrong. They were located just off Wiltshire Boulevard with office blocks and towers on all sides and hustling, bustling traffic threading its way around the site. The George C. Page Museum on location had a number of well-presented exhibits displaying the bones of animals which had fallen into the pits over the millenia. Included in these were dire wolves, sabre-tooth cats and woolly mammoths.
Outside the museum one could tour pits under excavation, which really amounted to not much more than filling a bucket full of oily sludge, measuring the depth at which the sludge was taken and removing and recording the bones thus discovered. I'm sure there is quite a bit more to it than that, but it does look like a very simple operation. Victoria succeeded in finding a seepage of oil on the grass outside one of the excavation sites and spent a few minutes prodding the hole with a stick she found somewhere. This brought back fond memories of our drive north of Kingman earlier in the holiday and so I confiscated the stick forthwith. Thinking it might be a nice souvenir of La Brea, I stuck the stick back into the hole and extruded a large oily blob which I wrapped around the stick much like one would with taffy. This I placed into an empty plastic bag which I tossed into the back of the car next to the suitcases. The bag promptly tore open, the oil oozed out and proceeded to smear itself all over the trunk space as things got shifted about while we started our trip back to Phoenix. And you have to love the smell of raw crude whilst entrapped in an enclosed space on a hot day. With the a/c on, the temperature was fine, but the stench was overpowering. With the a/c off and the windows down, the stench wasn't quite so bad, but the heat was overpowering. Attempts to clean the car failed. We just spread the oil about. Just perfect! I still have the stick on display in our own little museum downstairs as a reminder not to be so stupid in the future.
Granny
Our last stop in L.A. was at a mall somewhere out near Fontana. We had stopped in for a late lunch before continuing on to Phoenix and as we entered the mall we noticed an elderly woman seated on a bench just outside the restaurant. She looked a little forlorn as we passed by and she was still there forty-five minutes later when we left. She still looked forlorn and so Maydee stopped to ask her if she was alright. The woman smiled slightly and said that she was. She was on an afternoon outing with her son, but he had vanished into the depths of the mall with his girlfriend because, apparently, he found his mother's perambulatory abilities wanting. In other words, she couldn't keep up, which was hardly surprising given the fact she turned out to be 87 years old, and so he abandoned her on a bench while he went shopping with his girlfriend. She had been sitting there alone for nearly two hours, she said. Maydee nearly hit the roof upon discovering this and so we stayed with the woman for another quarter of an hour just to keep her company when the middle-aged son finally put in an appearance. He was none too pleased to discover his mother talking to strangers, but when an irate Maydee shamed him in loud and voluble terms and threatened to have him charged with abandonment of the elderly or something, he calmed down, apologized to his mother and then they all left, the elderly woman now giving her son a good talking to.
I told Maydee that she had a knack for befriending the oddest people in the oddest situations and that in future she should leave well enough alone. She could simply have given the woman a plastic-wrapped ham sandwich and a coke and be done with it, else she might follow us home. I was kidding, of course, but Maydee was annoyed. Christopher, logical soul that he is, pointed out the fact that the woman couldn't have come home with us because we didn't have room in the car. I told Christopher that was true, but if we expended a few dollars on bungie cords we could have strapped her to the roof rack and passed up cold drinks on occasion. Maydee fumed, stamped her feet and stormed off in the direction of the car. Christopher and I laughed and by the time we rolled into the driveway a few hours later, we felt much better after having survived the trials of a holiday in the American Southwest.
