Exit Arizona
Thursday, July 19, 2007I spent all morning pathetically hunched over my laptop in my hotel room in Williams, Arizona taking advantage of the internet-oasis – free high-speed internet access! I organized, caption-ized, backed-up and uploaded about 3GB of digital photos. You’re welcome.
I finally pulled myself off the internet around 2PM and went into town to replenish some of my desert-survival supplies – water, ice, bananas and cookies. OK, there aren’t really “survival supplies”, but they are pretty handy stuff to have while car camping in the desert. I finished up around 3PM and was ready to go to Joshua Tree National Park with an expected arrival of 8PM at the park. This would leave me enough daylight to setup camp and scout an ideal star-gazing spot.
I looked at my phone. It was not turning on and no amount of charging or power-cycling was getting it to respond. I had 2 choices. I could either risk venturing into the desert without phone-service until I reached San Diego, or backtrack 40 miles to Flagstaff where the nearest VerizonWireless store was located. I chose the latter.
As I walked into the store that was an hour in the opposite direction, my phone magically turned on. Totally unexplainable, and at that point I would have preferred it be broken. Murphy’s Law strikes again. I walk out of the store half-embarrassed, half-annoyed. I change my route to accommodate the sitch-ee-yay-shun: No back roads. All interstates. My visit in Phoenix was like suspicious Indian food through an un-inducted American tourist: it was new and exciting going down, but I went through it way too fast to appreciate it. (Explosively fast.) When I exited the bowels of the city, the stretch of I-10 between Phoenix and LA was surprisingly backed up. Don’t tell me the traffic in LA is this bad! Thanks to the jam, I make a pit stop just within the city limits at an In-and-Out Burger. (Be jealous.)
Two hours later I find myself approaching the Arizona-California boarder at 90mph. The speed limit is 75 but everyone else is doing it. A sign greets me “Welcome to California” in the most generic way – small green sign with white letters. Yay. Next sign: “Prison Next Exit… DO NOT PICKUP HITCH HIKERS”. (Comforting) A few miles later, a car fire on the left shoulder with flaming tongues whip the farthest right lane. Now this is what I’m talking about.
I finally pulled myself off the internet around 2PM and went into town to replenish some of my desert-survival supplies – water, ice, bananas and cookies. OK, there aren’t really “survival supplies”, but they are pretty handy stuff to have while car camping in the desert. I finished up around 3PM and was ready to go to Joshua Tree National Park with an expected arrival of 8PM at the park. This would leave me enough daylight to setup camp and scout an ideal star-gazing spot.
I looked at my phone. It was not turning on and no amount of charging or power-cycling was getting it to respond. I had 2 choices. I could either risk venturing into the desert without phone-service until I reached San Diego, or backtrack 40 miles to Flagstaff where the nearest VerizonWireless store was located. I chose the latter.
As I walked into the store that was an hour in the opposite direction, my phone magically turned on. Totally unexplainable, and at that point I would have preferred it be broken. Murphy’s Law strikes again. I walk out of the store half-embarrassed, half-annoyed. I change my route to accommodate the sitch-ee-yay-shun: No back roads. All interstates. My visit in Phoenix was like suspicious Indian food through an un-inducted American tourist: it was new and exciting going down, but I went through it way too fast to appreciate it. (Explosively fast.) When I exited the bowels of the city, the stretch of I-10 between Phoenix and LA was surprisingly backed up. Don’t tell me the traffic in LA is this bad! Thanks to the jam, I make a pit stop just within the city limits at an In-and-Out Burger. (Be jealous.)
Two hours later I find myself approaching the Arizona-California boarder at 90mph. The speed limit is 75 but everyone else is doing it. A sign greets me “Welcome to California” in the most generic way – small green sign with white letters. Yay. Next sign: “Prison Next Exit… DO NOT PICKUP HITCH HIKERS”. (Comforting) A few miles later, a car fire on the left shoulder with flaming tongues whip the farthest right lane. Now this is what I’m talking about.
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