Sign at the south end of the Las Vegas strip
I didn't go to church this Easter Sunday. At one point I had thought about going into the new cathedral in Los Angeles, but I changed my plans. Instead I held my own little sunrise service singing hymns in the car as I drove along.
I headed back up I-15. Traffic was much lighter on Easter morning, but it was still a remarkably busy road. I stopped in Baker to have breakfast at Jack in the Box and then continued northward. BeyoBaker the interstate is really quite scenic. I traveled through the southern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, over a 4,800 foot pass that was rather uncreatively named "Mountain Pass". It's very dry here, but the mountains make for some splendid scenery.
My destination today was probably not what you'd normally think of on Easter Sunday. I was headed for probably the most un-Christian place in America, Las Vegas. While it seems as if I've been almost everywhere in America, Vegas is one place that I'd never managed to see. I figured that as long as I was in the neighborhood-so to speak-I might as well drop by.
It's about 21/2 hours from Victorville to the Nevada state line (probably just two hours, if your drive like most Californians). Primm, the border town, lets you know you're not in California anymore. This isn't the sort of fireworks and liquor store town you see at most state lines. Primm is home to some of the largest casino resorts in the country. Primm's high-rise hotels are definitely out of place in the middle of the desert, and so are its roller coasters and water park. Primm is actually about 30 miles from Las Vegas, but essentially it's where Sin City begins.
I drove up to Blue Diamond Road and went about half a mile east to the very south end of "The Strip", a.k.a. Las Vegas Boulevard. It's interesting that most of the resort part of Las Vegas technically isn't in the city of Las Vegas. With a single exception, all the big strip hotels are actually located in "rural" Clark County, which presumably has more favorable property tax rules than the city itself. Nevertheless, when you reach the first hotels at the south end of the strip, there's a big sign in the median that says "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada!" It's a cool sign, and I decided to stop for the obligatory photo.
I pulled into the parking lot of a minimall across the street from the Mandalay Bay casino, the southernmost of the mega-resorts on the strip. I had coffee at a beautiful McDonalds, finished in marble and hardwood. Fortunately the prices were the same as they would be almost anywhere else. Then I walked back south on the Strip so I could get my picture.
The one thing I couldn't help as I was walking was that Las Vegas definitely is the sleaze capital of the world. There are banks of newspaper boxes on every corner, but I never did find one that was actually selling papers. Instead they have free directories for various escort services. I thought the equivalent in Hollywood was bad, but there's much more of it here. On the front of many of the newsboxes there are "business cards" left by male and female "companions", "models", and "dancers" with pornographic photos on the front and listings that make it very clear just what services they offer. The only thing that is not mentioned is price. While prostitution is legal in much of Nevada, it is illegal in Clark County (as well as in the Reno and Carson City areas). The implication is that companionship is technically free, but that the model will advise you on what "gratuity" might be appropriate before they will be willing to consent to various degrees of companionship.
In addition to the quassi-legal escort services in Las Vegas, there were also any number of limousine services that offered to take people across the county line to the town of Pahrump. Located in Nye County, Pahrump is the largest center of legal prostitution in America. I, of course, was curious enough to pick up one of their flyers. It is technically illegal for the ladies themselves to advertise, but the cabbies are more than happy to tell you that a basic 15-minute session costs about $200 (which would already be way beyond my price range). The ladies will are apparently open to negotiation should a visitor desire more than just the "basic" services. Then there's the limo ride, which will set you back another $100 to $150, plus tip. I thought back to when I was in Barcelona twenty years ago and streetwalkers were trying to get me to pay 1000 pesetas (then about $6); things are just a bit more expensive here.
Contrasting with all the sleaze were a couple examples of another Las Vegas specialty, the wedding chapel. These days Nevada's marriage laws aren't particularly different than those in any other state, but the tradition of eloping to Las Vegas hangs on. Neither of the ones I saw seemed to be doing any business on Easter, and interestingly enough they were the only churches of any kind I saw anywhere in Las Vegas.
After photographing the "fabulous" sign, ... I drove about a mile north to the true start of the strip, Tropicana Avenue. I parked in a massive lot just east of the Tropicana Hotel for which the street is named and set off to explore the Strip on foot.
Trust me, the Las Vegas Strip was not made for pedestrians. I'll argue fiercely with those who say you can't get by without a car in Los Angeles; actually L.A. is remarkably easy to explore on foot. Vegas, though is a different matter. Las Vegas Boulevard and all the major cross streets are designed to move cars to and from the big casino parking lots. They don't want foot traffic interfering with cars, and they keep them as far away from the street as possible. In theory there are sidewalks the entire length of the Strip, but the truth is something less than that. Pedestrians are not allowed to cross most streets at ground level, so at virtually every corner you have to go upstairs to a skywalk, cross the street, and then descend to the sidewalk again. At some of the really major cross streets (like Tropicana) this is actually a good thing, but it is downright annoying at the less important intersections. Moreover, when you get to many of the big casinos, the sidewalks curve away from the street and funnel you right to the casino entrance. It's like the walkways at an amusement park (which is pretty much what Las Vegas really is) rather than a real sidewalk. There's always a tiny bypass leading past the casino, but it's definitely not the route you're supposed to take. My original plan was to literally walk the strip, but I got thoroughly annoyed after covering about a third of it, so gave up and returned to the car.
Many people had told me what Las Vegas would be like, and none of them were right. Steve and Terry, for instance, gave me the idea it would all be under construction. It isn't. In fact pretty much nothing is under construction. I wonder if the downturn in the economy since the millennium might not have put a stop to what construction their may have been. Some of my colleagues at Garrigan told me the city was beautiful. It isn't. It's basically a bunch of enormous theatrical sets built outdoors in the middle of the desert. Nothing goes with anything else, and there's no way you can miss how fake everything is. It's not exactly ugly (though it certainly is garish), but beautiful would never be a word I'd use to describe the place. Some people had told me Vegas would be lively and exciting. That may be true at other times, but today the place reminded me of New Orleans on a Sunday-with a few hung-over people wandering around as the business owners hosed everything down. It may be exciting by night, but it's not much on Easter Sunday morning.
Another thing that was different from my expectations was the whole concept of gambling. I had brought along some coins I figured I'd waste in a few slot machines here and there, but in the end I didn't drop a single one. It's not like South Dakota (where every convenience store seems to be full of poker machines) or Atlantic City (where the casinos spill out to the Boardwalk) or Spain (where you see the "baby fruits" in every corner bar and grill). I've dropped some coins in all of those places, but I didn't here. There's nothing casual about gambling in Las Vegas; you have to make to make a real commitment to gamble. There's absolutely no gambling visible from the street or sidewalk, just smoked glass doors leading into the casinos. You have to go inside if you want to do anything, and the doors just lead to a lobby. You have to go even further in to get to the actual gambling areas. I suppose this is because this adult theme park also tries to market itself as a "family" destination, and they don't want to make it easy for the little ones to gamble. In the process, they also lost me. They want you to make gambling your purpose for being here, and that's just not me at all. (I think in the downtown area there was a bit more open gambling, but I didn't bother getting out of my car there.)
Each of the casinos wants you to make it your one and only destination in Las Vegas. Ideally, from their point of view, you'd take their airport shuttle, stay in their hotel, eat at their numerous restaurants, watch shows on their live stages, shop in their on-site mall, entertain yourself with their themed attractions, and spend the bulk of your time gambling in their casino. There are brochures for the various casinos littered all over the place, and they all stress that you never have to leave the building once you're there. I can't imagine a vacation like that. I like the freedom travel affords; I'd feel like a prisoner if I had to spend an entire trip inside a single building.
Having said all that, the strip is an interesting place to see. Each of the newer casinos is centered around some vague theme. Many of them are named after places or simple concepts, and the architecture of the complex mirrors the name. "Luxor", for example, is an enormous pyramid, while "New York, New York" is a miniature skyline that looks quite a bit more interesting than the city it tries to copy. "Paris" has half-size replicas of both the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. They, too, really look nicer than the originals, though they're hopelessly out of place in the middle of the desert. "The Venetian" is centered around artificial canals, "Barbary Coast" is built on fake ships with a pirate theme, "Boardwalk" tries to replicate Coney Island, and "Aladdin" is Middle Eastern spires and minarets. By far my favorite was "Stratosphere", which is basically a copy of the Space Needle in Seattle. It's apparently the tallest building west of the Mississippi, and it's probably three times as tall as anything else in the city. There's a roller coaster and a bungee jump kind of thing on top, that looked like they might be fun. There's also a casino more than a thousand feet in the sky, and that might be the one place I'd actually commit to going inside of. Being the only one of the new group that didn't pretend to be something else, Stratosphere was also the only one that came off looking real, rather than looking like the back drop of a play set in a foreign country. The only real problem with Stratosphere is that its 4,000 room hotel (which obviously can't be housed in the narrow tower itself) is downright boring; it looks like it belongs in an office park in Rancho Cucamonga.
In addition to the new casinos there are also old stand-bys like Caesar's Palace, the Stardust, and the original Harrah's. By far my favorite among the old casinos was the place I parked, the Tropicana. The place has a sort of vaguely Caribbean theme, with lots of palm trees and bamboo around an elegantly detailed stucco building. There's a huge Motel 6 down the street (apparently the biggest one of that chain, with over 600 rooms), and if I did come back here (note that's "if", not "when", as I said with L.A.) I'd probably stay there and stop in at least once at the Tropicana.
Amid all the casinos there are a few other points of interest. The only one I actually stopped at was M&Ms World, a museum and gift shop dedicated to the little pill-shaped chocolates. The employees there were far too happy; it's a wonder they didn't scare away all the hung-over visitors. The place was interesting, though, for about ten minutes. It was also free, so I really have no reason to complain. The rest of the strip is basically a collection of cheap chain motels, fast food places, and really tacky gift shops. The only real reason I'd like to go back is to see the place at night. I'm sure it looks fascinating all lit up, probably much nicer than it looks by day.
The strip ends quite abruptly at the Stratosphere, the only big casino that is actually in the city of Las Vegas. Beyond there you get a feel for what Las Vegas Boulevard must have been like years ago-really, really sleazy. I passed pawn shops, adult book stores, erotic accessory stores, twenty-four hour liquor stores, gun shops, used car lots selling vehicles that looked as if they'd never make it down the street, second-hand stores, hourly rate motels, monthly rate motels, a soup kitchen, a blood donation center, and lots and lots of homeless people. There are no panhandlers on the strip (I'm sure they've outlawed it there), but boy they're everywhere in the city proper. I'm not sure I've ever seen more homeless people in one place than I saw in downtown Las Vegas. It seemed almost like a Third World city. Most of the bums were black, with a few elderly white people thrown in. None appeared to be Hispanic, Asian, or Indian, and almost all of them were men. It's hard to have much sympathy for these people, when there are "help wanted" signs all over town. (The McDonalds I stopped at was offering medical and dental insurance and paying $8.50 an hour to start.) There may be a problem with affordable housing, but there's certainly not a problem with finding a job. The public transportation isn't great in Las Vegas, but a bus does go up and down the Strip, so it's not like these people couldn't get to work. Thousands of Mexican women work service jobs on the Strip, and these men could do the same work if they wanted to.
I left downtown on U.S. 95 and then joined I-15 in one of the biggest mazes of concrete I've seen anywhere. (It puts the "spaghetti bowl" in downtown Chicago to shame.) Somehow I made it through the mess and quickly made it back to the south end of town. I exited again at Blue Diamond Road (highway 160) and soon stopped to buy some $2.09 gas, the cheapest I saw in Nevada.
Highway 160 leads west through a mountain area called Red Rocks. It's pretty, though hardly anything spectacular. It would actually be prettier if it were just bare red rocks. Instead there's scraggly juniper, cactus, and Joshua trees that almost get in the way of the view. The drive goes quickly, though. The two-lane speed limit in Nevada is 65 mph, and they drive like Californians here. Past Red Rocks highway 160 becomes a four-lane "expressway", and if anything the traffic slows down. "Expressway" means four-lane, with cross traffic, and while on the map it looks very remote, it's really very urban. There are some lovely homes along the road, and I'd bet these people commute to jobs in Las Vegas.
The road eventually makes it to Pahrump, home of those brothels I mentioned earlier. No, that wasn't my purpose for going here-I'd be broke if it were. Indeed, the whorehouses are either very well disguised or nowhere near the highway. Mostly I was just taking this route as an alternative to what I knew would be heavy traffic on I-15. In the process I saw one of the strangest places I've ever been to.
Pahrump is truly bizarre. It's almost entirely a city of mobile homes. Almost 40,000 people live in the immediate area, but the wealthiest of them can claim no better than a pre-fab home. Most live in really dumpy mobile home parks, and some appear to permanently reside in actual trailers that could be hitched behind a car. The best of the businesses are made of corrugated metal; many of them are also literally mobile homes, like those things banks set up before they finish the real building at a new branch. The local high school has no main building-it's literally all portable units. Even city hall and the police station are permanently housed in temporary structures. The nicest buildings in town belong to Wal-Mart and various fast food places. The towns in the Northwest Territories look more permanent than Pahrump; it is truly something from another world. Needless to say the place is dumpy to the point of being hideously ugly. By comparison Adelanto look like the beauty spot of America. It's probably no coincidence that "Pahrump" rhymes with "dump".
* * * * *
Pahrump straggles on all the way to the California line, and the whole thing is white trash central. It appears to be primarily a retirement community, though why anyone in their right mind would choose to retire here I can't imagine. I'd rather join the homeless people in downtown Las Vegas than be stuck for my golden years in Pahrump. I have absolutely never seen a place I found less appealing.
By contrast, rarely have I seen anything more beautiful than what lay just across the state line in California. Highway 178 from the Nevada line to Shoshone is absolutely gorgeous. It's the sort of place the must go to shoot car commercials, a relatively flat but constantly curving road through some of the most spectacular mountains in America. I was having second thoughts about taking the scenic route when I drove through "scenic" Pahrump, but this twenty-mile drive was definitely one of the most scenic highways I've ever seen.
I mentioned mountains, which makes it a bit difficult to believe that Shoshone is the "real" gateway to Death Valley. It's actually at the edge of both the park and the natural feature, unlike Baker which is far to the south. Shoshone is not below sea level (it's around 2,500 feet above), but it does have the same absolutely barren alkali flats you see in pictures and it has the general feeling of remoteness you'd expect from the back of beyond. The change in elevation around here is really dramatic. The mountains to the east reach 7,000 feet above sea level (further north the same range reaches over 14,000), while the floor of the valley is almost 300 feet below sea level.
A few miles south of Shoshone a series of signs makes sure you can't miss the "Death Valley OHV Facility". OHV stands for "off-highway vehicle", and this is a state park dedicated to motorized recreation. On this holiday weekend hundreds of people were surfing the dunes on four-wheelers and motorbikes. It really looked like fun, though it's probably not something I'll ever do myself.
I followed highway 127 back to Baker and was treated to yet another "ever-changing view". I'm not sure I'd thought of that phrase since high school, but it really was sort of the theme of this trip. Landforms and vegetation change quickly in the West, and it seems as if there's always something new around every bend.
I re-joined I-15 at Baker. ... Just north of Barstow is the California inspection station. To protect its agriculture, California forbids bringing fresh produce in from other states. I remember as a child traveling back from Seattle through California. My dad had bought a whole lug of bing cherries, and we had to eat every last one of them before they would let us past the inspection station. I was anticipating that there might be quite a delay at the inspection station, rather like you get at the first toll plaza in Illinois when all the city people come back from the Wisconsin Dells on summer weekends. Things could not have been more efficient, though. Everyone slowed down as they reached the plaza, but those with California plates (including me) were literally waved on. ... The goal here seemed to keep traffic moving and not create a traffic jam all the way back to Nevada.
It occurred to me as I drove through the checkpoint that it would be extremely easy for someone to avoid the inspection all together. All you'd have to do is take Cima Road or any of a number of other roads through the Mojave Preserve and then come in on I-40. The I-40 inspection station is at Needles, clear at the east end of the state, while on I-15 they wait until Barstow. I don't know if anyone ever does bring elicit produce in via the Mojave Preserve, but it wouldn't surprise me if drug traffickers use that route to avoid the checkpoint.
At Barstow I left the traffic behind and turned off onto old route 66. The old highway is called Main Street in Barstow, and it runs through an old town that probably looks much as it did when my parents lived there half a century ago. Barstow is a dumpy desert town, but at least there's something substantial about it. As a place to live it would definitely beat the pants off Pahrump.
I stopped at Von's in Barstow. Von's is one of two supermarket chains that exist in California (the other being Ralph's). This is another place where they seem to have a lack of competition that seems strange in such a heavily populated place. I had joked with Brad that if I were home when I found out about his surgery, the first thing I would have done would be to send a get well card. I picked up a card at Von's so he wouldn't miss out on the card just because I was there in person.
The clerk at Von's was a middle-aged Anglo woman, the same sort of person who would be the checker at any Hy-Vee in Iowa. Most of the help were the same teenaged white boys you'd see at home, too. I remembered that at Tommy's yesterday the counter help was all white teenaged girls, and it occurred to me that Barstow was the only place on this entire trip that the service people had been white. The vast majority of the service people I dealt with were Hispanic; a handful were black or Asian. The customers here at Von's seemed to be a mixture of Anglo and Hispanics, and it made me wonder why it was basically just Anglos that worked there.
I followed 66 southward to Victorville, the route my parents must have taken when John was born. The old road is more scenic than either the interstate or the railroad that parallel it. It runs right next to the tree-lined Mojave River, and there are pretty mountain views most of the way. I passed through Helendale, whose claim to fame is being home of the "Strippers' Hall of Fame" and then drove past Silver Lakes, the "community" that Brad calls home. The complex is a wooded development surrounding an artificial lake that is actually a retirement community. Twelve thousand senior citizens live there, but they're perfectly willing to make some extra bucks by renting out an empty apartment to some ballplayers. ...
I stopped briefly at Mavericks Stadium, where they were toward the late innings of an afternoon game. I just wrote a note on the card and left it on Brad's windshield. Hopefully he found the card funny and appreciated the thought. I then bought gas, which had gone down to $1.89 at the Ultramar in Adelanto, and set off for a few more adventures.
I drove back down to Highway 18, but this time instead of turning east toward Victorville I headed west toward Palmdale. The locals call Palmdale Road "Blood Alley", and it's not without reason. The original plan for the interstate highway system called for an interstate to follow this very route, providing a northern by-pass to greater Los Angeles. That interstate was never built, and today Palmdale Road is without question one of the worst two-lane highways in America. You're required to have your headlights on in daylight on the road, and with good reason. Supposedly the route follows the San Andreas Fault, and I swear they've followed every possible curve in it. There are curves in the middle of nowhere on perfectly flat land. There are also ungraded hills, blind intersections, drop-offs without guard rails, one-lane bridges, gravel breaks on a paved road-you name it. I'd swear that in forty-four miles I came across every conceivable traffic hazard. All this comes with the traffic that connects two major population centers (half a million in each one) that are less than fifty miles apart. It's such a terrible road that it was almost fun to drive, and there was definitely a sense of accomplishment in making it through alive.
Victorville and Palmdale are both huge, and they're both essentially part of greater Los Angeles. Between them, though, is forty-four miles of some of the most remote ranch land you'll ever see. It's hard to believe that cattle still graze on sage brush in Los Angeles County, but they do. There's also irrigated truck farming and Christmas tree farms. The "towns" en route are little more than gas stations. The only one of note is Little Rock, which comes across as white trash central. It's older than Pahrump, which gives it just a bit more charm, but it's also basically a collection of mobile homes. The main commercial enterprise appears to be the North L.A. Swap Meet, though there are also a couple of strip clubs and pornography shops. Few people who don't live there will ever say Little Rock, Arkansas, is a charming city, but it's paradise compared to this place.
By contrast, Palmdale seemed a very pleasant suburb. There are trailer parks there, too, but they are neat and well-kept. Most of Palmdale seems to be made up of single-family homes, and while there are far too many housing "communities", there are also a fair number of genuine neighborhoods. The businesses all look brand new (not a surprise in a city that grew from 20,000 to 200,000 in twenty years), and generally it's a handsome-looking place.
I drove straight through Palmdale and turned onto Highway 14, the Antelope Valley Freeway. This is the "over the pass" road that connects this set of high desert suburbs to L.A. proper. There's a Metrolink route that parallels the freeway through the Soledad Canyon and on into the San Fernando Valley. It takes two hours and twenty minutes to get from the end of the line to Union Station, and I'm sure the car trip over the pass is no quicker.
I drove north from Palmdale to the adjacent city of Lancaster, home of the Mavericks' arch-rivals. This is a somewhat older, more established city than Palmdale. It is the service center for the nearby Andrews Air Force Base, and I'd bet a lot of the city dates to the 1950s. It looks a lot like Moline or Rock Island, but with the dry weather the buildings have stayed in better shape with age.
I exited at Avenue I (there is an alphabetic avenue every mile from the northern L.A. county line down to Soledad Canyon; the in-between streets have creative names like Avenue I-1, Avenue I-2, etc.) and turned westward. Just west of the highway is the home stadium for the Lancaster Jethawks, with a big fighter jet enshrined in front of it. West of there is an enormous state prison and further west the Los Angeles County Jail. I'd guess the jail used to be a military base. It's basically a bunch of Quonset huts, and it looks as if it would be an absolutely dreadful place to be incarcerated. I also passed a Los Angeles County fire station that looked remarkably like old Station 51 from Emergency.
I came out here to see one of Los Angeles County's lesser-known tourist attractions, the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve. Poppies need water to bloom, and they don't bloom very often. In fact for the past three years there were virtually no blooms at all. I had read ahead of time that in 2003 the poppies were blooming again, and that was definitely true. I never actually made it to the official preserve (which charges a $4 admission), but I easily saw the hillsides carpeted in orange. I'm didn't really expect the poppies to be orange. As far as I know I've never seen any poppy up close before, so I guess I expected them to look like those red things the American Legion forces you to buy. The orange poppies were pretty, though, both up close and spread across the hills. Going here was really just an afterthought since I had some time left after I came back from Las Vegas, but I'm glad I did.
I returned to the freeway and drove north past Andrews Air Force Base to the town of Mojave. This is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere that has more services than most big cities. I turned east there on Highway 58, a lovely four-lane freeway with remarkably little traffic. I think it exists mainly as a way for commuters to get into the air force base. I stopped briefly at a rest area in an artificial oasis in the middle of nowhere and then continued back.
I said Highway 58 was a lovely freeway. That was true until I hit the San Bernardino county line. There the four-lane ended, and we had solid traffic on a two-lane road the rest of the way. I turned south on 395 into even more traffic. There's got to be a Wal-Mart distribution center somewhere near Adelanto, because for the 30 miles from there to Highway 58 there's a steady stream of Wal-Mart trucks. It reminded me of 218 north between Mt. Pleasant and Iowa City before they four-laned that road.
I drove back down to Mavericks Stadium and stopped once more at Bravo. This time I tried their Mexican menu, ordering a chicken quesadilla. Little did I suspect that my dinner could have fed a large family. The tortillas were probably 15 inches across (well over a foot), and they were stuffed with chicken, cheese, guacamole, lettuce, tomato, and grilled onions, sour cream, and pico de gallo. They had to cut the thing into thirds and stack it on top of itself to get it to fit in the foam "to go" container. On the side I had six separate cups of salsa. I took the meal back to the motel and ate as much as I could. Try as I might, though, I couldn't finish it.
The movie Bull Durham was on TV tonight. That's always been my favorite baseball movie, and it's one of my favorite movies-period. I stuffed myself with Mexican food, browsed through the Sunday Victor Valley Daily Press, and packed up my bags as I watched the movie. Watching Annie and Millie and Crash and Nuke made a fitting end to the main part of this trip.
I was up at 6:15 this morning, quite a bit earlier than I had to be, but two hours later (due to time zones) than I'd have to get up for work tomorrow. I went through the morning routine in slow motion, and packed up the car. I went to the office to turn in my room key, but the door was locked, so I just ended up leaving the key in my room.
I drove down 395 to Bear Valley Road in Victorville, an even bigger strip than Palmdale Road. This is sort of where that Red Roof Inn and the Marie Callender's restaurant we ate at are located. I say "sort of" because it seems as if everything in Victorville is built on an access road. Some things are on the access roads for I-15, and some are on access roads for major streets like Bear Valley Road. That keeps traffic moving pretty well on the main drags, but it makes it a real pain to get to any of the businesses.
I stopped at Winchell's Doughnut Shop on Bear Valley Road. Winchell's is a chain that started in Anaheim and now callis itself the largest bake shop chain west of the Mississippi (where Dunkin' Donuts and Tim Horton's don't exist, and Krispy Kreme has just opened). They have shops pretty much everywhere west of the Rockies, as well as in New Zealand. This one was in a little strip mall, and it had all the doughnut shop essentials except a cop. Winchell's is very inexpensive (2 rolls and an enormous coffee for $1.99), they serve excellent coffee, and the baked goods are truly outstanding. Their doughnuts aren't as greasy and sickeningly sweet as those at Krispy Kreme, but they are warm and fresh. They also have an unbelievably wide selection, including a variety of puff pastry offerings and absolutely exquisite caramel pecan buns. I had one of those buns, as well as a chocolate bismarck. I probably got my day's worth of calories in two doughnuts, but it was worth it.
As I drove south on I-15 I passed one of those a changeable warning signs that had one of those "Amber alert" messages you hear about, telling me to be on the lookout for a specific vehicle. Until tonight as I wrote this, I hadn't realized that "Amber alert" was named after a person (a girl named Amber Haggerman, who was kidnapped in San Antonio). I'd always assumed it was a color code, not unlike those meaningless alerts the government keeps issuing about terrorism. (If you were a terrorist, wouldn't you wait until they officially lowered the alert level to catch people off guard?) I've had America's Most Wanted on in the background as I'm writing, and John Walsh just explained the background of the concept. What seemed strange to me as I saw the sign was that all it had was a car license number and color and model of car. They didn't say why they wanted that particular vehicle, a crucial piece of information I was certainly curious about. They also didn't tell me who I should contact or what do if I saw the car in question. I suppose I'd call 911, but I'm not sure reporting a wanted car really qualifies as an emergency.
Victorville (more precisely Hesperia, but it's basically the same place) ends abruptly at Cajon Pass, and there the weather changed abruptly too. It was bright and sunny in the Mojave today, but at the pass I hit a wall of fog. It was also extremely windy, and there was lightning in the distance. I definitely needed both hands to maneuver my way down the pass. Cajon Pass ends at the split of I-15 and I-215 north of San Bernardino, and there the fog and wind ended. I turned west toward Fontana, and was greeted by a familiar memory of my first trip to the Inland Empire two years ago: smog. It was officially partly cloudy in Fontana, but it looked gloomy and overcast, and the air smelled atrocious. It's amazing just what those mountains catch.
I had quite a bit of time to kill before I had to be at the airport, so I decided to do one more bit of sightseeing. I drove down Sierra Avenue again and this time turned eastward at Foothill Boulevard, which is the route of old highway 66 through the L.A. suburbs. Foothill could be an aging strip in any city. It looks a lot like Manheim Road in Chicagoland or University Avenue between Minneapolis and St. Paul. I drove eastward for quite a few miles to the border between Rialto and San Bernardino. Right on the border between those cities is the famous Wig-Wam Village, an entire motel made up of concrete tee-pees. The place dates back to the '40s and was apparently at one time part of a chain of Indian-theme motels. By the '80s it had apparently gone way downhill. I have a book on roadside attractions that shows this place with an hourly rate sign and an enormous billboard out front proclaiming "Do it in a tee-pee!" Today Wig-Wam Village has been greatly cleaned up, and I'd bet it's a sort of "retro-chic" kind of place. The tee-pees are freshly painted in varying shades of blue, and there is a lovely pool out front (not that anyone would want to use it in the chilly weather today). They no longer have hourly rates, and while there's still a "Do it..." sign (that lights up, no less), it comes across as a bit of a joke. .... I was fortunate that a light changed just as I reached Wig-Wam Village, so I could snap a few shots from my car without actually getting out. Then I just turned around at the nearest cross street and headed back west.
I followed Foothill into Rancho Cucamonga, where I stopped to buy gas. Part of the rental contract states that the car must be returned with a full tank of gas, or else I would be charged $4.89 per gallon for whatever is missing. Mobil in Rancho Cucamonga was charging $1.97, which was a much better deal than $4.89. This place, like all gas stations in California, required pre-payment in some form before you could pump your gas. ... This station insisted on "pre-charging" my credit card. The attendant (who bore a striking resemblance to Apu on The Simpsons) ... asked me how much gas I wanted. I honestly had no idea, and I was a bit confused by the whole concept. He suggested $20. I knew it would be less than that, and said it would be $15 at the most. He ran a charge for $20 and made me sign the slip, assuring me that I should come inside after pumping for a refund. I over-filled the tank, but still the tab was just $13.50. When I went inside, he had run a second credit card slip for $13.50, and he had me sign that one too. He never did tear up the first slip, which bothers me quite a bit. ... The second slip had the details of the gallons purchased, though, so I'm hoping it replaced the original in the official records. Neither charge has come through yet, but you can bet that if both do I'll be quick to dispute it.
* * * * *
I found the rental car return area easily enough (although I tried to turn into the exit of the Alamo lot itself-nearly causing severe tire damage). Returning the car was a snap. The attendant scanned a bar code at the bottom of the windshield that I didn't even know was there. Apparently the car is equipped with a global positioning device, and just scanning that barcode allowed his computer to calculate exactly how many miles I had driven. He took my word that I had filled the tank within ten miles of the airport (which may not technically have been true with all that wandering through the office parks) and gave me a final receipt without even giving it a quick once-over for damage. (There wasn't anything except for tons of dead insects splattered all over the place from all that driving through the desert.) He took the keys and asked if I needed to get anything out of the trunk. The receipt said that the car was returned in good condition and on time, and that the gas tank was full. Unlimited mileage was included in the rental price, but even so the exact mileage was automatically recorded on the receipt. It all went so quickly and easily that I went inside to confirm with the desk that there was nothing else I needed to do. There wasn't, and the charge came through on my credit card bill with no surprise additions.
I took the shuttle back to Terminal 2 together with a family of four who had a total of ten large suitcases among them (plus carry-ons). I don't know what airline they're flying, but that wouldn't cut it on Northwest. They allow two checked bags, with specified dimensions that imply to me one large bag and one smaller bag. You also get a single carry-on and a purse, briefcase, or computer. The carry-on, by the way, is also supposed to fit within specified dimensions-specifically 9" x 14" x 20". I did quite a lot of work to make my stuff fit into those dimensions only to find that absolutely nobody at the airline cared if you lugged around a bigger bag than that. As long as you could make it fit in the overhead bin (of the large plane-it didn't even have to fit into the bins on the Mason City flight), you were okay. I probably won't be so careful in my packing next time.
Northwest has a self check-in system at Ontario Airport. It's not unlike the self check-out at K-Mart. There are several touch screens, with a single employee available if you need assistance. If you don't have luggage to check, self check-in is extremely easy. You swipe the credit card you used to buy your ticket (I don't know what you'd do if you didn't have that credit card with you), and the machine brings up your itinerary. Then you basically touch "OK", and it prints your boarding passes. The whole thing took about 30 seconds for me. It takes a bit longer if you're checking luggage, because before your can get your boarding pass you have to take your luggage to the federal inspection station. They send it through the bomb-smelling machine. Once they know you're not a terrorist, they give you a card to take back to the machine to get your boarding pass.
There was one of those tape mazes at security that could have handled a crowd of hundreds. As it turned out there was basically no line at all. This time I put my watch in my carry-on, and with that I didn't set off the machine at all-even though I had the same riveted jeans and silver chain I had in Mason City, and even though this time I had my wallet with my spare care key in my pocket.
The strangest thing at security was that no one asked me for any identification. They're supposed to ID everyone who comes into the secure part of the airport these days, and I don't think that requirement changed when they reduced the security alert from orange to yellow. All they did was look at my boarding pass, though, and then they waved me on. The closest thing to identification was scanning my credit card at the self check-in machine. Anyone could have pick-pocketed me and checked in under my name. They also asked for no ID at the gate, which they had in both Mason City and Minneapolis on the outbound flights. It made me wonder just how secure things really were.
Northwest uses just one gate (#209) at Ontario International Airport, and the only place they fly from here is Minneapolis (three times a day, twice with continuing service to Hartford and once continuing to Amsterdam). The rest of the quiet, boring concourse was mostly dominated by Delta, but there were also gates for United, Frontier, American, Alaska Airlines, Hawaii Airlines (flying not to Honolulu, but to Las Vegas), and Jet Blue-supposedly a cut-rate luxury carrier. (They seem to fly to and from second-rate airports that are vaguely near big cities.) Most of the other terminal is occupied by Southwest Airlines, which is by far the biggest carrier at this airport. They also have a customs station there, so that's where they handle flights to and from Mexico, Korea, and Japan.
I don't think I mentioned before that Ontario International Airport is owned and operated by the City of Los Angeles. L.A. owns it, though, and from their point of view it functions as a "reliever airport", a place that can take traffic away from LAX and keep them from having to expand that airport. According to their literature they're creating another reliever airport by converting a recently-closed air force base in Palmdale. (I got the feeling that President Bush has closed just about every military base in California-it made me wonder if he had closed anything in Texas, and what we're doing closing any military bases in wartime for that matter.) Palmdale is at least in Los Angeles County. Ontario Airport is about ten miles inside of San Bernardino County. Nevertheless, here in the city of Ontario, the place that prides itself on being the "Inland Empire" that isn't L.A., all the officers patrolling the concourse wore those "to protect and to serve" badges of the Los Angeles Police Department, the information desk had a sign that read "Welcome to Los Angeles, Gateway to the Pacific Rim", and posters suggest that travelers "Fly Ontario, L.A.'s airport for business".
I killed some time by having a second breakfast at Carl's, Jr., the only restaurant on the concourse. I spent nearly forty-five minutes reading papers as I ate a croissant and nursed a cup of coffee. When I finished I started putting the papers on top of the trash can, but a woman at a nearby table asked if she could "do her thing for the environment" by reading the papers I was discarding.
I waited for a long time at Gate 209. It was interesting that while they bill this as "L.A.'s airport for business", pretty much everybody here at this day and time was a leisure traveler. The most interesting people was a group of three boys, each of whom had brought a skateboard as his only carry-on. I got bored there, so I browsed through the gift shop where I bought one of those cell phone covers that clips onto your belt. It was marked down to $2.99, from an original price (that I doubt anyone actually paid) of $15.99. Then I used up a bunch of change at the US Postal Service "business center". I put $7.40 worth of nickels and dimes into their machine in exchange for twenty stamps.
As they started boarding the plane, security people began re-inspecting people's carry-ons at the gate. They checked a huge number of people, but somehow I managed to avoid the extra inspection. The gentleman who was announcing our boarding said to have our "boarding cards" ready. My pass was printed on thermal paper and bore no resemblance whatsoever to a card, so I was a bit worried that I might have missed some step of the process. I was re-assured when I saw someone with one of those internet print-outs I had on the trip out here, though. As it turned out, what they really cared was that whatever you had (and there were probably six different formats-including good old fashioned tickets) had a bar code they could scan.
They seemed to board this flight in slow motion. I was seated fairly far forward (13-D), and it took almost twenty minutes before they got up to my row. Again the flight was overbooked, and they had to get volunteers to be bumped. This time I really had no choice. This was the latest flight that could make a connection to Mason City, and if I didn't get back I couldn't get to work tomorrow. Fortunately they got enough volunteers to clear things out.
We took off right on time at 11:55am, although in Northwest's official log the time is recorded as 12:05. We got lunch on this flight, though "snack" would probably be a more descriptive term. The main course was a sandwich the size of a dinner roll, turkey or corned beef on an oatmeal-covered bun. We also got a tiny apple (I've never seen apples so small), 3/4 of an ounce of Fritos, and a 3-ounce cup of bottled water. I was glad to have eaten that croissant at Carl's, Jr. I graded more tests on this flight. In fact, I pretty much graded tests from take-off to landing. We officially landed at 5:28, which was actually pretty close to what my watch said and about ten minutes ahead of schedule. It was really a very uneventful flight.
It would be almost impossible for me to have had a longer connection between my flights. We arrived at the end of the "F" concourse, and the flight to Mason City would take off (31/2 hours from now) at the end of the "A" concourse. The airport has a brochure that says that connection should take about 20 - 25 minutes-using the moving sidewalks. I'd definitely hate to have to make it in a hurry.
I mostly walked under my own power on this connection. I also stopped for a break at a Cinnabon stand about halfway through. The roll I had here cost more than three times what the one at Winchell's had, and it was definitely no better. I made it to the very last gate at the end of "A" (so far down, it's past the last of the moving sidewalks), and sat down to grade the last of my tests. When I finished I still had well over an hour until the flight for Mason City departed, so to kill time I walked the entire length of the combined "A" and "C" concourses, a total of over forty gates. At the far end of "C", up by the terminal, I stopped at a place called Maui Taco that served over-priced and really disgusting Mexican food that didn't appear to have any Hawaiian influence at all. Then I took the moving sidewalks back down the concourses and arrived back at the gate about 15 minutes before departure.
The flight to Mason City was packed, but fortunately they didn't have to bump anybody. I think there may have been three empty seats on the entire plane-quite different than the empty plane I had flown up on. Our flight attendant this time was a pleasant middle-aged woman who said they didn't normally serve drinks on short flights at night. She said she was "up to the challenge", though, and she proceeded to serve drinks to around fifty people in less time than it took the girl on the way up to serve eight. She even offered re-fills to everyone as she took the cart back down the aisle.
We arrived in Mason City before 10pm, even though the scheduled arrival time was supposed to be 10:15. About two-thirds of the passengers got off, including a couple of confused people who thought they were in Ft. Dodge. Most people hung around to get luggage, but I went straight out to my car. I put $10 in the parking envelope (compared to the $60 the same parking would have cost in Minneapolis) and headed out.
As I drove down U.S. 18 through Clear Lake and Garner, I could tell I was back home. This was a decent two-lane road with manageable traffic. The highway signs were all in place, and all reflected well in my headlights. The homes were mostly separate from each other, surrounded by spacious lawns and not walled in. Even the businesses looked different (and to my eye nicer) than they did in California. Here the lowliest fast food place maintains its grounds, while there all the maintenance money seems to go into the building. I'm sure visitors find Iowa boring. We don't have the mountain vistas of the Sierras, the stark splendor of the Mojave, or the futuristic skyline of downtown L.A. Neither, however, do we have the endless suburban sprawl, the junky businesses, the walled-in housing developments, the eight-lane "rural" freeways, or the general cramped feeling they have in California.
As I drove home I kept trying to imagine what southern California must have looked like before twenty million people lived there. I thought back to the gorgeous drive through the Sierras east of Shoshone, the flowering desert by Cima, and the wooded hillsides in Griffith Park. I suppose that's what attracted people here, but it's really too bad it attracted so many of them. I was reminded of the Eagles' ballad "The Last Resort", which closes their Hotel California album:
She came from Providence, the one in Rhode Island,
Where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air;
She packed her hopes and dreams like a refugee,
Just as her father came across the sea;
She heard about a place people were smiling,
They spoke about the red man's way and how they loved the land;
And they cam from everywhere to the Great Divide
Seeking a place to stand, or a place to hide.
Down in the crowded bars, out for a good time,
Can't wait to tell you all what it's like up there;
They call it paradise, I don't know why;
Somebody laid the mountains low while the town got high.
Then the chilly winds blew down across the desert
Through the canyons of the coast, to the Malibu,
Where the pretty people play, hungry for power,
To light their neon way and give them things to do.
Some rich man came and raped the land-nobody caught him-
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and-Jesus!-people bought them;
They called it paradise, the place to be;
They watched the hazy sun sinking in the sea.
You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina
Just like the missionaries did so many years ago;
They even brought a neon sign: "Jesus is coming",
Brought the white man's burden down, brought the white man's reign;
Who will provide the grand design? - What is yours and whit is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier; we have got to make it here;
We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny and in the name of God.
And you can see them there on Sunday morning;
They stand up and sing about what it's like up there;
They call it paradise, I don't know why;
You call someplace paradise and kiss it goodbye.
Leaving out the vaguely anti-religious tone of the song, it's a reasonably good account of what happened to California-not to mention Colorado and Hawaii. I'm sure California was paradise to almost everyone who came there, and traveling around I could really see what they must have seen in the place. It's really a shame that it was paradise for so many people, though. Now that Los Angeles has crossed the passes and is marching across the desert--150 miles from the coast--I really wonder how long it will be before all the land is raped and they kiss the last of paradise goodbye.
( ... to be continued Memorial Day weekend ...)
The background music on this page is the calypso song "Jamaica Farewell".