RV Journey 2010 – Las Cruces to Tucson

Today I woke up late. Of course I had no idea where I was, as that happens on road trips and/or tour. We stayed at Dan’s house for the night. I slept on a familiar couch that used to be one of my beds from when I lived in Las Cruces, clearly grandfathered into Dan’s ownership from 5 years ago.

We went to Andale’s, a Las Cruces Mexican restaurant with delicious Mexican food that doesn’t make me want to die after I eat it.

Josh finally got to show me who he believes to be my look-alike doppelganger. Josh had wanted to show me this guy for years, and he happened to be our server for the day. I insisted he looked nothing like me, but everyone at the table, including those I just met, insisted the guy was my counterpart.

We made our way to Tucson and stopped halfway to take photos of a spot containing a tree (of life) next to a small lake paired with an old windmill.

Strange things happened here. First, there was an infestation of other-worldly grasshoppers, hopping all over the place, 50% of which were in the process of procreating to perpetuate the plague-like presence of their species.

As we neared the photographic oasis of lake, tree, and windmill, Josh came inches from stepping into the striking zone of a rattle snake hidden deeply in the brush. Of course, we took some time and effort to poke him with a long stick to test his anger threshold. Surprisingly, after a good 5 minutes or so of moving him around with a stick, we realized that he was a little too full to put up a fight, as a bulge in his body signified that he may have just swallowed a small animall.

After we finished taking some photos, a strange thing happened…

We headed back towards our truck, illegally parked on the side of the freeway (I-10). I took a moment to get some video of the train that passed near our truck. While I did that, Josh disappeard to a bushy area, and began to yell after me…

“Jimmy, come check out this snake!”

I took the camera with me and found Josh pointing at a 6 foot snake that was standing up almost like a cobra looking straight at both of us. I quickly approached him with the camera, first noticing that this wasn’t a poisonous snake, and I knelt in front of the snake to get a good shot. He slithered away super fast into the bushes.

I didn’t have time to get any shots of him. We were left alone to observe the surroundings.

A dead crow.

A dead cow carcass.

Another dead crow.

Then, a third snake.

Josh approached the snake, also different than the other two. It was small, like a baby rattler, only no rattle on its tail.

It slithered away in the most creepy way possible, rhythmic, pulsing, strange. It wasn’t fight-or-flight. It was slithering in a mocking way. Like… you guys shouldn’t F@#%^ing be in here.

I looked at the dead cow. I took photos of it. Something felt strange about taking photos of the dead animals. Then I took note of how dry the ground was, cracked desert platelets of dirt, and then noticed how grass seemed to refuse to grow around the small trees within the boundaries of the place. The place wreaked of some unique stench, as if the rotting cow had been sugar-coated with some kind of fragrance.

Josh expressed how uncomfortable he felt to be in there. With a chill, he left ASAP-style. I followed.

We talked about how strange the event was. It was quite close to experiencing a dream that suddenly takes a turn for the worse, a nightmarish trap.

3 snakes. 3 dead animals. An oasis versus a dead zone. It was too weird. We talked about animal archetypes, numbers, and what it meant for the future of our journey.

The windmill was on the left point, the tree and lake on the right, the dead-zone was on the top point, like an isosceles triangle.

RV Journey 2010 – Butte to Las Cruces

Elephant Butte was finished with a boat ride out to the middle of the Lake. Josh swan-dived into the water without hesitation. I was on a boat mostly full of strangers, plus old friends from my 4-month life in Las Cruces in 2005, Judd and Raul.

I didn’t jump in. I probably should have. Instead I filmed and took photos.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wondered how the fun of owning a boat and driving jet skis outweighs the other shtuff… the amount of time it takes to back them into water, drive them onto a trailer, and park them in a high-security storage space… plus all of the maintenance, payments, hangovers that it requires.

But, other people’s boats? Fun enough.

Nevertheless, we downed some meaty tacos and bailed to las cruces. Raul made us some tortilla soup. The name doesn’t make sense really, as there aren’t any tortillas in the soup, but plenty of chili and chicken to burn a hole in your bowels. But, man oh man, it was worth the pain.

Then we went to a hill and took photos of Dan for his website, and later got carried away doing a series of jumping photos by which we created this one, no photoshop required:

RV Journey 2010 – Elephant Butte

We started in Elephant Butte (pronounced B’YOOT). There was nothing going on there but beer-drinking next to a lake. I had a bizarre experience there. Everybody began to drink beer right away, including me. The beer selection entailed only bud light and pabst, so I was only able to finish 3 beers (barely) for the entire night. Something about bad beer makes me want to drink my own urine to wash the taste out of my mouth. I guess that’s what I get for starting my beer drinking career with beers like New Castle and Guinness.

While Josh and friends Judd and Raul proceeded to get a little inebriated off of terrible domestics, I was distracted with observing the human behavior and dynamic of Labor Day at the lake with drunk strangers and six-figure trailer configurations. No real epiphanies hit me that night until it was time to go to sleep, where I was cloistered in the corner of a boat on a padded bench in a winter sleeping bag that leaks down-feathers.

This was the darkest night I had seen in a while. No moon. No city lights. All stars, planets, and the Milky Way belt. I lied there in my sleeping bag, watching falling stars, all of different types; some falling at light speed, some threatening to fall forever and penetrate the hull of the boat I slept on. The sky never seemed so vast, yet never seemed so in-my-face. The cosmos seemed to stare me down that night. Then I remembered how delayed I am in the development of my perceptions, along with the idea of how we, humans, another form of ants, go about our days busy as can be, forgetting about the stillness, the stoic magnitude and ordered chaos of the space above our heads that shall remain fixed and eternal in the scope of our existence, a comedic blink of God’s eye.

RV Journey 2010

I feel like I’ve sinned against the gods of Mount Olympus for not updating this for so long. But now, I have an decent excuse to do it.

Over the last few months, I’ve been bar-backing. I turned 28 in July. I’ve been playing with Coma. I’ve been hanging out with Julia quite-a-bit.

Weeks are going by, and instead of landing an extra job-or-two like I “should,” I have only ended up doing things I really like.

It turns out Josh’s dad got himself a 1975 Ford RV and didn’t really have any place to put it or have any immediate use for it. So he’s going to let Josh drive it all over North America for as long as he wants to.

I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to go along, but Josh has very effective ways of convincing people of doing above-average things. Sort of like how he made a teaser/trailer for the trip, probably to get me to stop being fickle about leaving on a whim.

We’re taking his Canon 7D along to document everything in photo/video form, along with accompanying homemade dolly and jib.

I really don’t have any idea how far we’re going to get, for 3 reasons:

1. Money

2. The RV is from 1975

3. We’ve already started the roadtrip, sans RV because the engine is currently in pieces.

We’re hoping to meet the mechanic and the RV in Phoenix, AZ this coming week. If all goes as planned, we’re heading to Pacific Coast Highway to make our way up to Canada, maybe Alaska. The true length of the trip is still unclear to both of us, but the efficient RV average of 7-miles-per-gallon will require some creative thinking and oddjobs to successfully travel the 3,000+ miles required to make it to Alaska or wherever else.

It makes no sense for me to be doing something of this magnitude right now. But it also makes all the sense in the world.

Vegas, Baby. Vegas.

Climbing with Kevin and Josh in Red Rocks, Las Vegas, NV.

A Not-So-Conventional Las Vegas Experience.

This was pretty gnarly, despite the inviting, warm smiles. We climbed two different rock faces that day. The first climb was a bit wacky for me, so I was nearly set to skip the second climb, a 300+ foot, 2-hour adventure. A big reason I decided to do it is because Kevin/Josh had magical bro-like ways of talking me into it. A bigger reason is that a couple of weirdos showed up at the bottom and wouldn’t leave. Anyway, Click Here to see a video of me on the final stretch.

I guess we were pretty mellow when we finally made our way downtown. But some of the photos I found on my camera were new to me in the morning.

We met a lot of people, but Lana was the one who stuck around. She was from Canada.

We saw Cirque du Soleil (serck-day-so-lay), a famous Vegas show that sells out every night because its one of the most mind-blowing shows anyone will ever see. A kid named Danny hooked us up where we didn’t have to wait in line and paid half the price.

Leaving Vegas: Since everybody is so paranoid about terrorists these days, they’re building a new bridge so cars don’t have to use the Hoover Dam anymore. But maybe the paranoia is worth the architectural acheivement.

Fun Final Note:

I would be so stoked to write all about Las Vegas. But the day I came back, I was offered a new Production Assistant job. Ever heard of Robert Patrick? It appears I might be picking up the T-1000 himself from the airport sometime soon (or maybe just filing his paperwork).

The hours are long, 10-12 hours/day, 5-6 days/week. But its only till July, I think.

Going To Arizona And Drinking Its Spring Water

On April 26th, I left Albuquerque to go to Phoenix, Arizona. I’m still in Arizona, but was off the grid for most of the week; no phone, no computer.

I met up with Josh. This time last year we camped in Kauai for 5 days on different beaches around the island, but this time we took a cheaper approach.

I flew into Phoenix. The next day we drove north for about 2 hours, then hiked 4 miles into a mountain and set up camp next to a gushing spring pumping water out of the ground.

There’s a reason one feels amazing when drinking spring water. Not as in bottled “spring water”, but real, happy water where ecosystems flourish. This documentary talks about mysteries of water, how it is affected by states-of-consciousness, and possibly might make you think about the potential of life itself (cool).

• They said water has a memory of everything that happens around it.
• Even turning on lights can change the structure of water.
• It’s structure is like a nervous system, reacting to outside stimuli.
• Positive and negative human emotions are the strongest level of influence on water
• Love increases water energy levels
• Animals always choose to drink water that has been taken from a spring, no matter how purified tap water is. Purified water is dead, lacking natural energies.
• Fish were introduced to a batch of water that was exposed to very low energy electromagnetic waves. The breed of fish was highly unusual in appearance and behavior. They were all behaving exactly the same, operating by what seemed to be one single collective mind.

It goes to show that humans may act more like zombies under the influence of a low-energy water supply.

Preaching aside… I’ve seen 2 bald eagles since I’ve been out here, watched Kick-Ass, went down a river on a raft, and mountain-biked in amazing Arizona scenery I didn’t know existed.

I also found out that any American has the luxury buying automatic weapons (with proper licenses, of course).