Day 1: With My Back to the Sunset

03/30/10 - Flagstaff, AZ


Today was the first day of the rest of my, no, today was the first day of this road trip back to Massachusetts. I left at 1:40 PM, got to Flagstaff at exactly 9:00, missing 24 which was apparently on at 8:00 PM! I drove 487 miles total which isn’t really much. Wait, is it? It felt like it went by pretty fast. I filled the car to the fucking brim. I had more stuff than I thought, and of course my book and cd collection is sitting in storage there to be shipped back at some point. I literally had a garbage bag filled to the point of ripping with sneakers and shoes. I bought two new pair of sneakers in Boston last week. Took them on an airplane back to California, never wore them, and now am driving them back to Boston where there i

(I actually fell asleep while typing last night and have no idea what was to come in that sentence!)



So here I am early morning in Flagstaff. I slept about three hours last night. Per usual, I had a shitty bed...mixed with lifting all of these heavy boxes, etc yesterday did me in I guess. I also can't breathe here at all...the elevation here gets to you if you are just passing through. Thank christ I don't smoke, last time I was through here was a nightmare.

So this place, I hate driving at night in areas I am not familiar with. The last couple of hours of the drive were through the mountains in the dark and aside from the bright as shit moon as the sign post ahead it was kind of shitty. I got to that point of seeing little things running across the road from driving all day into the night. This room I found was reasonably priced and it’s on Rt 66 which hopefully today I will be a little more leisurely on. Must be noted that if you are driving on Rt 40 in this area you are going parallel with Rt 66 so if you get off the highway to stay somewhere you are most likely staying on Rt 66 and you can surely find souvenirs anywhere. This is my third time on this road now, or rather on a road that runs next to Rt 66. The charm has not worn off, at least when you drive by some of the old school neon signs.

One bonus on the trip was a stretch of Rt 40 runs north/south instead of east/west so I had the sunset to my left for a good amount of time. The rest of the trip my back will be to the sunset which is kind of depressing in more ways than one.

I found the downtown/old town area of Flagstaff last night and had a brief dinner in some pizza place. There is a little snow on the ground here and frankly yesterday wasn’t really tourist day. The brief encounters I have had with other people have all proved slightly odd aside from the girl at the counter here when I checked in. Guy at the pizza place had this weird “yeah whatever” shoulder shrugging attitude that was one of many reasons I didn’t like Los Angeles. I stopped into a gas station to get gas and coffee before coming back to the room and an Asian woman was in there going on about aspirin or something nonsensical. The guy at counter, after she leaves is like “I have no idea what she was saying” I racistly said “yeah, you never know what THOSE PEOPLE are saying do you?”. No I didn’t really say that, but I thought it just now. He continues...”this guy came in the other day asking if I spoke some language of some country right next to Germany...and I was like ‘sorry I don’t’ and he got mad at ME”. This story seemed like it was going to get even less exciting so I just excused myself and was out.



Hit the Continental breakfast this morning which is basically a scam invented by muslims to trick white America into yeah I don’t know where I am going with this. This may have been one of the worst ones I have ever been to in my life though. It was literally three loaves of white bread, some cereal and not orange juice but orange DRINK. LIke they have at McDonalds! I of course had some toast, but really?

Leaving California and further away from her is growing more difficult as hours go by it seems. Spending hours a day by myself in the car listening to music and looking at nature is great and all, but at the end of the day I am going to dwell on shit for too long and get myself into a place I don’t need to be in.