the night has a thousand saxaphones

So, I'm home. I will NOT be catching up on the flist, because, five days! So if there is anything I should see, please do point me at it.

( cut for road trip babblings )

Final mini-nano update: 17,000 words this November. I wrote 16 days of the 24 days I was at home, so that's kind of a sucky record. I made that 15,000 conservative goal (that's what an average of 500 words a day works out to), but totally missed the 20k or 25k I really wanted. But I'm really happy with what I wrote. The news to me is that I suck at writing what I SET OUT to write- I had three specific things I wanted to work on, and those are still untouched. Hmm. Now the trick is to keep up regular writing, because it makes me happy. *nod*

I-10 was closed right outside Las Cruces, all the way to the Arizona border, apparently because of high winds. For fully four miles up to the closure, both shoulders were lined by semis. A solid unbroken line of them, all stopped and just sitting there, with no drivers visible.

It looked like the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse.

New Mexico sure doesn't look like it's at it's best, economically, does it? I mean, stuff is run-down, boarded up, rusted out... the outskirts of Las Cruces look a lot like a hotter, dustier version of the worst Rust Belt horror stories I've heard. I sure as hell would not want to be trying to get a job there.

Indiana Jones was a thoroughly awful movie, for reasons of story structure (why KGB instead of Nazis? Why aliens instead of God?), character motivation (when did we stop caring about putting it in a museum, or about keeping it out of the hands of the bad guys, and start caring about returning it to the aliens? And why wasn't Miriam as awesome as we know she is?), predictability (what, you think that's Indy's son? No!), suspension of disbelief problems (the waterfalls? Really?), and just general idiocy (oh god, the FRIDGE OF DOOM). Which sucks because it had the potential to be a VERY VERY good movie (miriad came up with one beautiful plot for Indy 4- her husband and I came up with another). But in the end, Shea whats-his-name was good and Harrison Ford was FANTASTIC and the fight scenes were Indy fight scenes, even if they were about five hours long and had the quality of parody, so... *shrug*

I had fun.

Arrived safe and, you know, no less sound than before. Very little in the way of internet- Mariott with no wireless (huh?) and I can't make the actual physical jack work *headdesk* Feeling generally unconnected and deprived. Deprived of fic, deprived of tv, deprived of flist. Due to logistical barriers, will be a solid week before I have actually MOVED IN anywhere (which I thought I was doing, you know, today) so that makes it worse.

Note: In the three days I was gone, not one person emailed me. Or commented. Or called. Not one.

Going to go be sad now.

( road trip log day 3 )

Randomness:

*Starting at the coast and driving NE for three hours is better than any seven chapters of geography textbooks for internalizing the concept of "rainshadow"

*Rest stops in the middle of the desert are WINDY

*Can you imagine covering all this distance on Route 66, at 55 mph with tons of little towns with stop signs and everything?

*They sure don't let you forget about Historic Route 66! now do they?

*Gas station on 66 selling gas at... wait for it... $4.99. Sign by the register:

We have sunk a lot of money into this business. It costs a fortune to operate in the middle of nowhere. You have the choice to purchase from us or not. But please do not complain to our employees about prices. PS. Next gas 50 miles.

Snarky buggers.

Saturday evening, at the grand canyon:

*Colorado plateau very high. I expected it to be hot, without taking that 7000 feet of elevation into account. Huge drifts of snow. Forgot that outside the So-Cal Weather Free Zone, it's still very early spring.

*More forest- I mean, genuine alpine forest- than I expected.

*God, this country is HUGE.

*Reached first observation point just 30 minutes before sunset. Perfect timing- slanting light, glowing pink and gold canyon walls, dusky depths, whole nine yards. Gorgeous.

*Lodge is RIGHT on the rim- just three steps outside my door. Nice.

*Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings time, and so is not one our ahead (except the Navajo reservation, which is). Will not reveal how long I spent trying to figure out why my cell couldn't detect the time zone and I couldn't change it manually. V. Embarrassing. Convinced they do it just to confuse tourists.

*Haven't really seen stars since the summer before I moved out of mom and dad's- not proper ones, anyway. Tonight might just be the best stars I'll ever get. When you travel, you expect the food and accents and geography and such to change- but it startles me a bit to realize I'm far enough away from home for the stars themselves to change. Not a lot- North Star just about 15 degrees or so too low, but enough that it's not where I look for it. Just enough to make you feel small and far from home.