Morning of the third day, October 12th I guess, Sunday morning, whew, continuing up this backcountry byway, it's pretty splendid out here, and the first rays of the sun hitting the creosote, lots of opuntia, some ocotillos... fairly typical Mojave flora... I was slowing down there because I was trying to read a sign, hmm. It looks like old mine-works up here, it's gonna be a slow dusty drive, probably take me an hour to get to town, by which time I will be ready for breakfast. Lots of little side roads going off in all direction here - I do hope I took the main road. Eh. Should I go back and look at the signs? O damnit.
OK, seen another marker, this seems to be the, hah hah hah, main road, haha. Yagh. 1-lane dirt track, winding around precipices, and cacti, and scrub. Uh, yuccas, nolinas down there, uh burro-bush, lotsa burro-bush around of course, typical Mojave lifeforms. Don't see any animals scurrying though.
Got up bright and early at 6 o'clock this morning - uh, actually got up a few times this morning, for fluid recycling - uh, crisp and cold up here. [garbled] get out of the short-sleeve, short-pant-leg stuff, into longer clothes. Ah, the sun sure is glorious, except when I'm driving right into it, like right NOW! OW!
G'z, it just wouldn't be a vacation without me driving 25 miles of dirt road out in the desert, now would it?
Lots of beavertail cactus, lots of pencil cholla with new little fruits on them. Uh, all these yuccas and nolinas - I just got up into the fir zone, saw the first fir tree. Mesquite everywhere. One spot back there, just before the sun hit my eyes, there was this, uh, great palo verde tree, fully lit by the sun, just glowing bright green, as opposed to the muddy grey-green of the mesquite.
Following watercourses, along the watercourses [are] more mesquites, willows, the riverine community. But up here above the watercourse, brittle-brush - no, not really brittle-brush - burro-brush, bur-weed, heh. Et cetera.
The nolina's like dim candles rising from spikey pincushions.
Now I'm up in the juniper zone. All this rock around here is basaltic, this is all volcanic, basalts from medium-light to very dark chunks.
Ga, these ridges here aren't lateral moraines, they're lava-flows.
OK, off of the Black Hills Backwoods Byway, having gone into and out of Clifton, threading my way through Clifton, a repellant little mining town, 3/4 closed down. Clifton is situated in a narrow red-rock canyon, the whole town is canyons: tall narrow buildings, narrow streets, um, yah it should be seen, it probably echoes mining towns further east too, in similar narrow situations - we shall see. Clifton reminds me of the nasty little burg Dashiel Hammett wrote about in, what is it? NIGHTMARE TOWN, I think that's it. Only thinner.
And now, climbing up more lava flows through this rather Mojavean desert, with the ocotillas and nolinas, and junipers it looks like here. Yeah, junipers and, uh, not many creasote [bushes] - looks like a willow or aspen down there on the hillside.
Climbing up towards Mule Creek, New Mexico. [cough] Over the line, into New Mexico. That one plant back there a ways that I thought was a fir - no, it's probably a pinyon. One lone pinyon. I'm at 600 feet now, and there's definately pinyons around here. Uh. Feels like I've topped-out in this region. All volcanic, with twisty roads. [noise] Twisty roads that demand my attention.
[New Mexico 1]
[Bach chorale in background]
So, actually I just now crossed the line into New Mexico, been tuning around the AM radio, got a station doing a few hymns, and all of a sudden here we have this connection to the classical program [Mary Hill's ??] on KPFA sunday morning. Yup. almost takes me home... almost... now all I have to do is keep searching on the dial til I find the Navajo radio station. Yup.
Up around Mule Creek, New Mexico, 5000 feet, but this is oak woodlands, rolling hills, blue mountains off in the distance - looks more like some parts of the Central Valley in California, than what I would expect of western New Mexico. Truly astonishing scenery, a 3D spacewarp.
And now I'm in Elfego Baca country! No trace thereof. Heh heh. Um, I went 7 miles down the road through the San Francisco Plazas, didn't see a thing that looked like a plaza! U'll take another look when I get back to Reserve, which is the new name for what had been Upper San Francisco Plaza. Uh, this is a beautiful farming valley, heavily forested around the sides; various mission churches along the way. Some of the houses have the Mexican / New Mexican "look", with walled courtyards and the like. Many others are just big mobile homes. Heh heh. Um, every now and then I get a scent like that smell of the woodsmoke back in Zuni - what is that? Mesquite and cedar, I'm not sure. [sniff][sniff] Smell it again there. Yup, smells familiar.
[Don't worry, be Hopi]
Hmmm, just climbed out of the Rio San Francisco valley, and the hills up here sure look a lot more sparse. There's a lotta pinyon and juniper, and a bit of dry grtass, but a LOT of brown earth showing. And the radio reception's pretty awful in Reserve, San Francisco river valley, which might be why the Very Large Array isn't too far from here, to be away from radio noise, yup. Well, next stop, V.L.A..
Or maybe a nap first.
[Indian drums and chanting on radio]
Found some Indian singing, AM 660, punched in number 6. Highway 60, milepost 80, east of Datil, I have sighted the V.L.A. antennas. Let's see, 1, 2, yeah, wow, they're strung out across there all right. Yeah, I see one line of about 20 dishes, and it's hard to tell from here, hard to tell from here, but it looks like a large box-like structure, uh, a few degrees to the south of them, um, I wonder how big that thing really is?
Between mileposts 85 and 86, what looked like one line of 20 dishes now resolves into 2 lines of about 10 dishes each, those are 2 arms of a "Y", the other arm is, appears to be extending directly away from me. So I'm right along that one axis. This big box-like structure is still a big box-like structure, um, yeah, it's big, it looks to be as tall - o could that be it? - it looks to be as tall as one of the dish assemblies. Is that something you can get to put over the dish assembly maybe, to protect it while it's being serviced? I - don't - know. Got a little - no, it's probably not mobile, heh heh heh, um, I dunno...
Well I'll be damned. Around milepost, what, coming up on milepost 88, is that what this is? [end of tape]
Tape 2, Sunday afternoon, October 12th, uh, 4:23 California time, 5:23 New Mexico time, US 60 east - no, not 60, 380 - east of Socorro, New Mexico. Socorro's a cute little place, Maureen will love it. Definately one of those New Mexico village towns, with a quaint plaza, and not too much in the way of large-scale business. No place to buy tent-stakes, even. Oy.
So now I'm heading off towards Carrizozo and the Ruidoso Range. Lincoln County. Sign back there said "Lincoln County Historical District". That must mean it is Billy The Kid territiry. Yow. Um. Heading down on to the, these plains now, I'm on the far side of the Rio Grande Valley, and um, there's clouds out there for a l-o-n-g ways - there's little stretches of'em - some of'em look like they're raining off to the - well, several directions. They're big cumulus, or chains of cumulus almost. Ahead there's a, well off at 2 o'clock, a range of blue mountains, um, like much else around here, probably basaltic.
Oh yeah, I just passed the entrance to the White Sands Missile Base, um, an entrance; that'll be the... Sinaloa Muerto Mountains over there, maybe - no, that'd be... lava beds? Have to re-check the map later.
Anyway, back to Magdalena, or Datil, or between'em, I stopped at the V.L.A. site, went into the visitor's center, and outside I got some images of a whole chain of dishes - but - it was a little too chilly for me to want to take the self-guided tour. I got the brochure. Hoepfully, on the way back, I can work my way into that, it might bew a little warmer, or if not, I will wear gloves and jacket.
But that's not what I've been thinking about. What I've bben thinking about is music. Um, and, this morning I heard the very beginning of Phil Collins, let's see, what is it? INTO THE NIGHT? THE EDGE OF NIGHT? Whatever that is... at the beginning there's a minimalist-style violin theme played over'n'over again, and that got me to thinking about applying certasin minimalist principles to certain rock'n'roll-type music.
The minimalism here would be that of taking certain [garbled] the Charles Dodge-Steve Reich-type minimalism of taking certain phrases, uh, and putting'em up there for the performers to play, assigning certain musicians to certain phrases, musicians to play those phrases every now'n'then as they feel like it. So, we take something similar, in terms of, writing out, or creating loops of, bass phrases, and horn phrases, guitar phrases... and uh, having'em appear in a work, uh, semi-randomly. Uh preferably with some continual pulse holding the whole thing together. Have to try that one out.
The realization of that in a way goes back to my old dream of combining synthesized and sampled music using a sound card, having one chunk of software that could control both, and in fact trigger sampled sounds using the same notation, same control interface, as you use to generate the synthesized sounds. So we have one score, and that score on the screen having, containing the notes for all the voices, in this case voices as opposed to voicings, all the voices, say 8 or 11 per channel for the synthesized SoundBlaster-type interface, plus however-many, maybe a total of 32 or 64 of sampled voices, where those sampled voices are just samples and they get interpolated up or down, uh, as samples do in .MOD files.
With that kind of system as the basic engine driving the music, could then, hopefully, have various, um, addons, attachments, for generating sequences of the notes, like for, um, y'know, both in terms of editing the music, and in terms of having, like, a macro-reader for the music editor. So I'd say "OK, repeat this sequence of keys" as a certain sequence, keystrokes rather, or mouse movements, but the basic principle here would be keystrokes. Take those as a pattern, and apply them every, uh, every here, every there, at every point where we want to specify such.
A way to simulate that - assuming I can dig-up a MIDI system where the MIDI notes, the MIDI events, are triggering sampled voices - would be to, using the old AdLib editor, write the patterns for each voice, lay them in, y'know - write one line that is the pulse - write other lines or take other lines where we have the pattern there on the lines, and repeat them at offset intervals, every so-many beats or measures, so you have the pattern repeated. Um, in fact at some points have the patterns repeat 2 or 3 times fairly closely, and then a hiatus, then repeat again.
Then, for a bit of incongruity, coming from having listened to THE MOLDAU here on the radio, um, have a melodic expression, a melodic - not just a phrase, but a through-composed melody that sweeps through the whole thing - sitting, y'know riding along with that pulse and being buffeted-about by all the blocks of sound from all those - aw, a road-runner just ran off the road there - uh, blocks of sound that're happening within the piece.
Well, OK, back to the drive: I'm not out at the Great Plains or the Staked Plains yet, I don't see on the map what this area between the Rio Grande, or the mountains, the hills by the Rio Grande, and the hills over here by the Little White Mountains or whatever, and going down into the Ruidoso area. Don't know what this area is called but I'me getting low here - Socorro's o-n-l-y about 6000 feet, I'm probably down to about 5500 right now, uh, when I get over the hills there it'll be even lower, and Roswell should be about the top of the Great Plains. As I dip down to near zero - well, I dunno how low it'll be when I cross the Mississippi - Memphis? No idea of the elevation there. Not very high, though...
OK, I got another look at the map. That plain I was crossing there that was so lovely was the north end of Jornada Del Muerto, the Journey Of Death!
OK, made it over the first bit of hills, coming down into Cameron, the valley the Cameron's in, I'm going over pretty good volcanic flows, all this lava, with yuccas, nolinas, junipers, grasses growing up in the lava flows, so it's been here awhile. But this valley that the Cameron's in, well the map shows that right here where the lava is there's a Valley of Fire recreation area. But this BIG valley here between the ranges of mountains, at least on the east side there, that looks pretty damn desolate. Uh, this looks like a real Journey of Death.
O boy, a sign just reminded me of what I'd forgotten - this here Lincoln County isn't just, isn't just BillyTheKid country, it's also SmokeyTheBear country. Just a few miles ahead is Smokey The Bear Historical State Park. Ewww... It's sure to be on a larger scale than that park for the guy who started the Lions Clubs, but um, which one's worth more? O there was some other starting point I passed today - what was that? Damn, somebody notable came from someplace I passed today, but I just don't remember.
Going through Ruidoso and Ruidoso Downs in the dark - it's a bit eerie - Ruidoso itself looks like there's WAY too much architecture and money for the amount of people that're here. Too much commercial architecture. Too much REALLY bright decor. Um, well, I've heard, this is what? This is where rich Texans come to play in the winter. Or in the summer. Heh. Both. So I shouldn't be surprised.
And what's the atmosphere of the place? Well, just down the road is The Museum Of The Horse. Heh heh. Yup. This town is about horse-racing. Except in the winter when it's too cold, then it's about skiing. Think about all the ski-resort towns you've ever seen, string'em together into a metropolis on the mountain, and HERE we ARE. Wow. This stuff is extensive.
[lying in sleeping bag] Wo. Way down in the lowlands low. Yeah. O that whole escapade around Ruidoso was a waste. No place to sleep. What a waste of time. Much time, a bit of gas. And Roswell's a waste too, shoulda just from Socorro towards Clovis. {sniff] Roswell's just a big city, didn't see any Alien Museums or crashed flying saucers, agh, and didn't feel like trying to find that state park in town, paying for the prevelege of pitching a tent there and trying tomorrow. So, onward I am. Um, getting kinda late tonight, down around 3000 feet here, halfway about, well not halfway, a bit of the ways from Roswell to, Pederales? [Portales] And Clovis. [snort] Just a roadside rest. They call it a parking area, which is really all it is, except there's a picnic shelter with heart, well, there's a heart drawn up, from one way it's a heart, from another way it's buns. Uh, reminds me, there was graffitti on Dad's garage door that said "Herb Addicted". Hmm.
Anyway, so I'm out here under most of a full moon, with, O I can't quite make out what kind of tree's over there next to the shelter. Yeah, these trucks go by this sheltered picnic table, so I didn't bother pitching the tent, just threw down the air mattress and the sleeping bag next to the table. Sit out here and listen to the trucks and the coyotes. Hear the coyotes howling and then howling and going into a yip-fest, then howling again at various pitches. It's the, um, one saving grace of this place. [snort] Dusty. Flat. [garbled] I have no idea what coming down out of the mountains, this side of the mountains, into Roswell looks like 'cause I was only there at night - I didn't see a thing. No good side roads to just drive off, find a spot to [grunt], to pass out for the night. Nope, so out here off the highway I will stick an ENVIRONMENTS CD in the player and put the earphones on and hope nobody robs me while I'm somnambulating. [garbled] Yow.
Even though the elevation here's pretty low in comparison to where I've been, heh, yeah, what, it's about the elevation that Maureen's folks are, in the Sierras. Yeah, well, um, it's a pretty chilly... I have the light on to adjust the, to set the CD player. I'm listening to some rippling water plus music, and with the light on I can see my breath, Good thing I have the insulated jacket here; hopefully I'm ready for the night. If not, I'll find out soon enough, then, won't I.
Boy! Misery! I don't know if it's the cold, or the, the diesel just down the way, blowin' its fumes on me all the time, or the train that just went by - I Can Not Sleep At This Rest Stop. Shit.
[partial erasure] Or, that's how it seems to me. [very tired]
I'm going to revise my strategy on this cross-country trip - I'm gonna drive as far as I can, as fast as I can, until I drop. Then I'm gonna take a cheap motel and start again when I'm awake. And that's it. Except my strategy for tonight is just, drive til I drop. I'm pissed now - I still have adrenaline in my blood. When the adrenaline runs out, I'll slow down. Then I'll just pull over and sleep at the wheel. Like, 20 minutes of that does me a lot of good, sure. Uh, there's something else I was gonna say... Oh yeah, one of the advantages of those little rest breaks is that it rests my legs, so that I can settle on the gas pedal and keep a speed consistently for awhile, so I'm able to hold it here at 65 for a bit, unlike all the wavering between 65 and 50 that I've been doing most of the night, and last night, and the night before, and all day.
This highway [is US] 70 from aw, where the fock, Roswell to Clovis, is utter misery, worse than I-5 in California, 'cause this one is UTTERLY flat, and straight. You can see the lights, headlights coming, it's two lanes, y'see headlights coming from a long ways off, and you wonder, "O is it time for me to dim my brights yet? I dunno, let's see..." One of these days I'm gonna get shot doing this. Well, not one of these days - one of these hours, maybe.
There's nothing like driving on this side of the Rockies for a few hours to make me remember how much I despise the rest of the country. I mean fock, who needs this? Who needs anything east of the Rockies? Y'know it's, I suppose, y'know I had attachments to upstate New York, and admiration of the Maritimes, but the rest of it? Fock it.
The last place I stopped for food was in Kalamazoo or Carazoo [sic] - Carazoo I think was the name of it - Carazoo [Carrazozo] New Mexico, in Lincoln County - I think that's the county seat. And there it was - well, I needed to use the restroom at the gas-station. And the gas-station also had two restaurants, and a Speedy Shoppe, that's - um, after using the restroom I went over to the Mexican portion of the restaurant, of the fast-food counter, and asked for a beef burrito because [radio noise] because, because that's what would've worked out best with pulling out a couple bills and not having any change in my pockets, and the [Navajo?] girl behind the counter started making a bean-beef burrito combo instead, and we joked about how I was deaf and how she was deaf, well, they were deaf, two girls behind the counter, because of the noise of the machines there, and so besides the all-beef burrito I got a bean burrito for free. Which was nice - there was human interaction there.
But the last food I had before that was back in Socorro, when I'd stopped at Colonel Sanders, and I'd gotten a 3 Chicken-Strips meal, with uh, potato salad, no, with mashed potatoes and gravy and cole slaw and a biscuit, which I took out to eat in the park in the town square, with a fragment from a containment chamber from a nuclear bomb at Los Alamos; strange artifact to have in a city park. There at the Colonel Sanders, the drive-through booth was set up with this revolving window thing, so that you put your money in one side of the revolving window and it swung around, and it took your money; and then they put your order in it, when completed, and swung it back to you; and there was absolutely no contact other than a microphone. I mean, this is a high-security-type operation.
And it occurs to me that, by driving cross-country, uh, by sticking your credit card into the recepticles at gas pumps, and by pulling into high-security fast-food places, one can travel [the] continent, coast-to-coast, across the continent probably east-west and north-south, without ever actually sharing air with another human being. Ain't technology wonderful?
Eventually one of the fast-food chains will discover the benefits of getting rid of the counter-person, or the window-person, and just having customers drive up and press buttons on the screens showing the various offerings of the establishment; and having the selections deposited at the window after handing over their credit-card or cash or whatever; uh, the fast-food outlet saves the wages of one person; and the participant, the customer in this operation, doesn't have to talk to a person; and that makes it then possible to traverse the continent, totally isolated, with the only connection to the outside world being the radio - and if you don't like the radio, say you play the tape deck or the CD deck; and everything's canned, everything is encapsulated, everything is controlled. Everything. [great fatigue]
Oh this is great, being blitzed driving down the road into Portales, weaving all over the place at 65 miles an hour, listening to Mahler's 3rd Symphony on the rah-de-oh - woo woo woo - better slow down sometime - like, now that I'm coming into town. And what I learned from weaving side-to-side is that the shoulders on neither side, the rough areas on the shoulders, they do not provide enough, uh, vibration to draw the attention of a driver who really needs it. At lower speeds, yeah; at 65, on both sides, nah. [dizzy]
Well, so much for Portales, home of Eastern New Mexico University and Cannon Air Force Base. Just 17 more miles to Clovis, maybe more motels there. Maybe a suitable one. Better be - I'm about to drop.
[quiet] OK, next rest stop up the line - might actually be able to sleep here. On the ground. Heh heh. On the air-pad. [I'm] up between Portales and Clovis. This place even calls itself a Rest Area, not just a parkling area. [garbled] A little bit further off the road, a little bit closer to civilization. And no train tracks right adjacent, so far as I can tell. So it's a little bit quieter, a little bit safer, a little more orderly. Y'know, I pull on my knit hat and gloves and snuggle in here, I might be able to sleep. Hell. I'll have some more peanuts and wine first. Heh.
