Artifact #4

PHOTO TAKEN DURING A BEAUTIFUL STOP IN ALBUQUERQUE, NM

In the summer of 2001, I still had dwindling ambitions of becoming a writer, and so a reporting internship at Reuters* in LA became the impetus for our first roadtrip. We crammed a boatload of stuff (including one--naturally--leaky gas canister) into the pint-sized Ford Aspire and took of from Columbia, through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and into California.

Many mini adventures were had. A twilight-zone-esque stop in Shamrock, Texas, where the hundreds of dead crunchy beetles underfoot, hostile-looking locals in a grocery store devoid of groceries and the abandoned/vandalized motel we parked in front of creeped us out so much that we broke off our lunch halfway through** and hightailed it out of there. Being involved in a shoot with a famous photographer in Santa Fe. Visits to as many of the gorgeous Southwestern National Parks as we could afford. Delight in the discovery that the $3.99 Grand Slam from Denny's could sustain us for a good part of the day, virtually every day (and that it is sometimes a 'secret menu item;' ordering it made us feel very insidery). Driving through the Mojave Desert without air conditioning was also quite thrilling. About ten minutes into it I had to pull over, change into a pair of Nick's boxers (shorts were crammed into the bottom of some bag or other) and drive the rest of the way clad only in those and a sports bra. An outfit quite popular with truckers.

Nick says that it was during this roadtrip that he realized our relationship really works. If we can navigate halfway across this huge country in a tiny car without ripping each others' throats out, it means we've got a good thing going. The trip is still one of my fondest memories.


*Where I panned such masterpieces as "Crunch's L.A. Aerobics Class Strips Off Pounds, Inhibitions" (now only available on random websites that picked up said masterpieces)
**Interestingly enough we reached our inexplicable-discomfort saturation point at exactly the same time. A strange episode.