SCENIC ROUTE ...WRONG SCENERY Thursday 17th January 2008
With the mileage ticker over 2100 on the heels of two straight 600 mile days, we got cocky.
As we had done in previous days, we calculated distance to a destination (in this case the Grand Canyon) which via Mapquest, was 400 miles.
A dawdle, or so we thought.
We looked at the map, and decided to take the scenic route, heading northwest from Santa Fe up to the Four Corners (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) before heading down through Monument Valley on 160, a route I (mistakenly as it happens) remembered going down with Steens to the Grand Canyon.
Toby was utterly determined to see Monument Valley.
Flushed with our Hotwire success, we booked a hotel in Flagstaff, as we assumed we could go up on the secondary roads, down to the Grand Canyon to snap some pics of sunset, and then drive down to Flagstaff for a well-earned rest.
This little itinerary was at best, delusional.
At worst it represented a fantasy on a par with the most practised opium smoker.
However, like naive and optimistic rookie voyagers (who should have know better) we took our time with breakfast, didn't fill up the tank, returned on second thought to Santa Fe after having driven five miles up the road, and then set off again under brilliant blue skies that in London one can only dream about to head up into the New Mexico mountains.
Yes, you heard that right. Mountains.
Now then, what happens in mountains in winter?
It snows. And if the sky is blue with no prospects of clouds BUT the temperature is 5-10 degrees fahrenheit and the sun beats down during the day, what do you get on the road?
How about ICE?
Our timetable was immediately in jeopardy as we wound our way through deserted roads amidst spectacular scenery.
At one point we saw two cars in sixteen minutes.
We also entered into Injun territory, where we would spend most of the day. (My apologies to native Americans. I only say Injun because it makes it sound like driving a car is some sort of adventure).
We first were in the Jicarilla Apache reservation , and then the Navajo reservation.
When we turned to head into Jicarilla land (jicarilla means little basket in Spanish), we began to notice what happens when the federal government cedes you land.
It is a case of no tickee no washee.
The feds say: okay, you can have your land, but you can forget about getting our first team road builders up there.
The difference between jicarilla roads, with turns cambered at the wrong angles (ie. the bank, unlike a Mercedes test track , is either flat or slopes with the curve) meant that on some corners there was a real risk of whipping off the road.
A few shrines of flowers proved this point.
Also, in the shade of the mountains, there was ice.
Thus mountains plus ice plus crappy roads meant our progress was slow.
Given the lack of people and the cold I was forever thinking that one f***up could be problematic, to say the least, and so drove defensively.
Finally, we emerged from Jicarilla nation, which I should say was gorgeous and unspoiled, and trundled on into Farmington, home to a prison up on a hill, one of a plethora of barbed wire enclosures we happened by out West.
A little known fact; there are 2.1 million prisoners in America (population app.300mln). Compare this with the UK (pop 66mln-82,000 prisoners), or Sweden (pop app 9mln- 7000 prisoners).
So don't believe those unemployment statistics.
Faced with a lack of restaurant choices (surprise, surprise) and ravenously hungry, we decided (perhaps for the last time ever, at least that is what we subsequently said) to go to a Burger King.
Standing in the queue in front of me was a girl who smelled of stale cigarettes and weekend old clothes.
Her hair was long and tangled, and she had a poor complexion, a nose which looked as though it had been recently broken, and scratches on her face.
She was, what one could charitably call a real piece of work.
She made eye contact with me in that cynical come-hither way, and then turned to talk to the woman behind the counter.
"How's work?" she asked.
"Honey. I been working 143 hours in the last two weeks and I'm tahrred," said the woman, with a big deep fat fryer tush.
"You need help?" asked the girl.
"We always need help."
The woman pointed disinterestedly to a stack of employment applications on the counter.
"You know me. I'm a good worker." said the smoke girl, a comment followed by a pointed silence which made both seem unconvinced by this assertion.
"Where you been, girl?" asked the woman.
"I was in for seven days with that good for nothing boyfriend of mine."
She didn't elaborate, but we all knew what she meant.
Then all of a sudden she turned to me.
"Can I borrow a quarter? " she asked with a practiced smile.
"Uh....okay" I handed it to her, thinking she was really hard up.
Her thank you turned with her head.
The next thing I knew, she whipped around to a guy standing off to the side, a guy with a marine corps haircut who I originally thought she had come in with and said: "Here", and handed him my quarter.
She then took her fries (no sandwich) and sauntered off.
I looked at the guy briefly but he did not acknowedge me.
I was the chump, and he had just received some chump change from a cockroach intermediary masquerading as a woman.
The burger, full of the onions I had specifically stated three times to omit, left just as sour a taste in my mouth, and with each subsequent rancid burp I just wanted out of that town.
Ditto Toby.
BAD CALL. NO. SCRATCH THAT. TERRIBLE CALL.
The day got worse. Rt. 160, which passes by Shiprock NM and heralds the start of the Navajo reservation which runs a couple of hundred miles through the Painted Desert, does not run through Monument Valley, the whole reason for taking this detour. Instead it runs through a thoroughly depressing Navajo reservation, where housing is in maroon/brownish pre-fab squares.
The women are fat, and if the two Indian (er. ..not Injun) men we encountered are anything to go by, the warriors have given way to a generation of panhandlers or drunkards.
Of course we had a limited sample, but at the first gas station we stopped at to refill, we got a drunk and ornery Indian who yelled at Toby in the washroom (remember, Toby is 6'6") and then staggered out to lambast us both.
This was at 1PM. We felt like aliens, which I suppose we are.
Our mood remained sour as it became clear that we were NOT going to make it through Monument Valley, a fact which Toby did not tire of pointing out was my fault.
He was right of course, but while he pouted I saw not a young man but a big child who had not gotten his way.
Eventually we got to Kayenta, after a long stretch across the Painted Desert (painted a uniform beige, as far as I could tell).
When it became clear that I had definitely taken the wrong route Tobes said: "I told you last night it should have been 163, and you said you knew the way."
He was right of course, but I told him that if he knew he should have insisted, for that route was a good 80-100 miles out of the way and most likely we never would have come that way in the first place.
Then for some reason, we both suddenly realised that we were no longer father and child, but that we were equals, and our decisions were joint decisions, the responsibility both of ours, the consequences borne by both of us.
We also, without actually saying it, realised that our ill-thought out and casual decision had wasted a day, that there was no way we were going to make the Grand Canyon before nightfall, and no way we were going to recoup the $60 we had laid out on Hotwire for the hotel in Flagstaff.
Instead, we stopped at a Holiday Inn, cut our losses, and reserved a spot at the Grand Canyon South Rim....still a ways away.
We then agreed to divvy up the driving the rest of the way (I had done all the driving through the ice).
The air cleared, at our next changover at the other end of the Navajo nation, we stopped off to throw the Frisbee, our de rigeur tradition to clear out the cobwebs and refresh ourselves.
We needed a good outlet for our frustration, and after a good session in the pre-sunset light in a parking lot, I was suddenly approached by an Indian. He was small, with greasy hair and a wispy moustache, probably mid-40s.
"Hi." he said. "You're throwing the Frisbee."
"Yep." I responded.
"Where are you from?" he asked disinterestedly.
"England," I said.
"Oh," he said. "I'm from Shiprock, New Mexico (we were now in Arizona).
"I've been there," I said, noncommital.
"My named is Ray," he said, and stuck out his hand.
I shook it reluctantly.
"Hey, you don't think you could give me some gas money..." he said...."you know, to get back to Shiprock."
There was no car in sight for this phantom gas.
I looked at him.
There was no shame, no feeling, no humanity.
I was just another chump in a long series of chumps.
Sometimes you just know.
I reach into my pocket and pulled out all I had. 50 cents.
"Here..." I said and handed it to him. "Now push off."
He didn't say anything and slinked off, taking with him any residual goodwill I may have had towards him.
Now both of these experiences could well have been isolated, but I doubt it. I can't blame either of these small timers, but I found the whole day's experiences profoundly depressing. Just how cheap is the human soul anyway, and how do you pay for the years and years of mistreatment of these people at the hands of people like me.
Chuck them 10% in a casino for their chiefs?
In this barren land, the only economy seemed to be panhandling on both an individual and societal scale, with a nice school and courthouse in Shiprock and precious little elsewhere.
The ubiquitous pawn shops were also there for all to see, except parked behind them were a lot of pickups. Who pawns their pickup unless they are really desperate?
Just survival seemed to be difficult in these parts.
Toby and I discussed this as we went towards the dying sun, leaving the Navajo reservation and heading for the South Rim.
We listened to the political debates on NPR, and I could only think of the difficulty of keeping the system in this vast country humming along with so much inequality, simmering history, and different peoples under an overlay of opportunity clearly NOT available to all, despite the rhetoric.
I wondered about a woman who had to work twice the time that is mandated in France just to survive.
Of another who is clearly on a day to day schedule and whose scale of handout asking is down to a quarter, or an Indian whose horizon is the next bottle of MD2020.
I think I would scream or give up as well.
How do you fix this mess?
We arrive at the Grand Canyon National Forest after dark.
We go right through the unmanned gates devoid of rangers. It is freezing. Really freezing. The air is crystal clear. The stars as bright as they will ever be in a land with absolutely no light.
We stop the truck, get out and breath the clear air in big gulps and yell at the top of our lungs as an empty wilderness.
It is the end of a long day of discovery and frustration.
We then get back in the truck, a team who has just been exposed by their nonchalance.
We find our hotel (having to exit the park again), and settle on the cheapest restaurant in Tusayan called WE COOK PIZZA AND PASTA, (no kidding) where we drink a beer, scarf a pizza, and watch a private girl's school's basketball team stroll in, some of the girls in shorts and flip flops in this brutal dead of winter.
They are from Flagstaff, our original destination, and are completely oblivious to the irony that only 50 miles away, some Indian schmuck is easing his shivers with a purloined bottle of rotgut partially financed by a Frisbee throwing plonker who passed there by mistake.
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