I got in the car. It is a Hyundai. It is the smallest car I’ve ever owned and it gets great gas mileage. Matt and Michelle were waiting for me. I was giving them a lift to Louisiana. They had a carnival that was to begin soon and work had run out in Florida. They were desperate. I wanted company, and a little help with gas. It was a mutual relationship, sorta. I had packed the car. Not much. It doesn’t take much for me these days. I like it like that. One day I will have a wealth of objects. Perhaps I will hoard like the best of them, but for now all I need is a boot full. I had bought a bike rack also. When I bought it I didn’t realize the rubber strap dealios were broken. I tied it up with some half hitches. Sailing training paying off again. I got in the car. I pulled out of the drive-way and waved goodbye once-more to the family. I drove down the street and pulled left and turned up some road tunes. Then the car died.
Well, it died around the corner. I had stopped to check the fluids. I had meant to do it while the engine was cold, but I was a bit scatter brained that morning. My father’s friend Paul showed up. He hit the gas tank with a hammer. The car started. Fuel pump. He offered to fix it in several days. I didn’t want to wait several days. “This will make things interesting” I said as I looked at my father. We laughed. I guess it’s only funny now because I’ve been in crazier situations. If I were leaving on my first road trip than perhaps it wouldn’t have been as funny, but it was. We laughed.
I picked up Matt and Michelle. They ran out of money. I only got half of what was promised me for gas. I didn’t mind. I had already decided I would take them for free. They needed a ride and I had a vehicle. It made sense to me. They didn’t know I would have given them a ride for free though. They gave me $50 for the journey. I spent $20 buying them dinner in New Orleans. No one should go to New Orleans and not have red beans and rice.
I slept in the car. The first night I slept in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I thought I was going to drive to Texas but I didn’t. While driving down Interstate-10 I was directed to take a detour. The road looked familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly was so familiar but I knew this place. I had lived there for a month and a half working on Little Chenier, the last movie I worked before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. As I drove down the road I realized it would be much safer to pull over in the town to sleep, otherwise I would have pulled off of one of the exits along the main interstate. As I decided to do this I saw a familiar signage. It was a sign for a hotel and had I not been so tired I might have smiled. The hotel was the same place I met my sound mixer boss, Ron Scelza, for the first time for cocktails and a briefing. I would work with Ron for many months in both Louisiana and Miami after that initial meeting. Years later I would return from a year in Australia and on my way to live in Las Vegas and would sleep in my car under that same hotel bar.
Texas was mean. As soon as I reached Houston the next day I hit a wall of water. That is when I realized that my windshield wipers are no good. The roads were slick and the little Hyundai was nearly run over by those large Texas trucks. It wasn’t until after Dallas, some four or five hours later, that the rain subsided. As I continued through Texas, which took the entire day and equivalent of driving from Florida to Louisiana, I saw patches of snow along the road. I thought it looked pleasing to the eye as the sun set over the Texas plains. At that time I didn’t know that there was more snow to be seen either.
I woke up on the outside of a hotel in a town near Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had slept in my car again and had pulled a sleeping bag from the trunk because it was cold the previous night and I could tell that it would be colder that night. I opened my eyes to ice crystals. They had formed on the inside of the car. I don’t know how cold it had gotten, but the car was completely frozen over inside and out. My mobile phone didn’t work because the liquid inside had frozen. My clothes were stiff from the iced over moisture. As my eyes adjusted and my might realized the severity of the situation I was thankful that I had that sleeping bag.
Scraping the ice off
When I reached Arizona I noticed some homes that were built into the ground. They have similar homes in Australia. It is because it is cooler inside of the earth than it is on top of it in the desert. I also noticed a dark rain cloud in the distance. Cars came in the opposite lane with their headlights on. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I reached the storm. I just didn’t know that the storm wasn’t going to be rain.
I should have replaced the windshield wipers. The snow made the ascent and descent in the Arizona mountains interesting. The little Hyundai handled it well and if there was any question before whether I was on a road trip or not there wasn’t now. The little car was no longer a midnight black but now a sort of mocha-coffee brown. As the little engine screamed to get up the mountain incline large trucks and even small calls came close enough to give my rear a kiss. When I came out of those hills I was glad to have done so. The rest of the drive was cake. Signs for the Hoover Dam and Las Vegas came soon. The car swept right along and when I came to the Hoover Dam I was greeted by a jumbo bridge that I hadn’t seen there on my visit years before (the bridge had just began construction then).