Encore: New York City pt III - The Postcard That Redeemed Our Faith

While at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in Manhattan, I stopped at the gift shop to buy a postcard to send to my lab. I wrote a message, got a Stars Wars stamp from Thad, and put the postcard in my pocket as we went out that Saturday night, figuring I would find a mailbox as we were carousing around. I never did find a mailbox; in fact, I rather quickly forgot about the postcard in my pocket. The next morning I realized I had lost it, and I was a bit depressed about my postcard lying in the middle of the street somewhere in Manhattan or Brooklyn. But, since the the postcard already had a stamp on it, perhaps some honorary citizen would find it and mail it for me. Thad was skeptical, saying something to the tune of "This is New York City; You'll never see that postcard again." 

Checking my lab's mailbox yesterday, look what I find! Someone, somewhere in New York City, found the postcard and placed it in a mailbox. Thank you whomever you are. I immediately called Thad to rub it in, and he said "Wow. That's awesome. I was wrong. It's restored my faith in the humanity of New York." 

I should note that Thad's faith in New York City's humanity had been recently damaged due to a robbery of his apartment four months previous during which his labtop and guitars were stolen.

Encore: New York City pt II - Biking Around Town

Upon landing at LaGuardia Airport, I took a cab to Bushwick, a Puerto Rican/ Dominican neighborhood in Brooklyn where Thad lives. I immediately noticed a change in the cabs from last year; They now have TV's blaring ads to you while you are in the car! You can turn it off, but in my cab it kept restarting every 60 seconds. It's the end of days. I felt like I was in Bladerunner.

I met Thad at his place, and after a couple hours of me asking him about his art (he is a apprentice glass blower for the famous artist Josiah McElheny) and he asking about my science, we decided the most appropriate action would be to find a place to rent a bicycle for me so I could explore NYC without the confines of a cab or subway car.

We went to the local bike shop where Thad gets his service done and espanol is the lingua franca. The owner, a nice short South American looking dude, told me he didn't rent bikes. I explained to him that the weather was just so nice I wanted to bike around NYC the weekend, and I would even buy one from him and sell it back if necessary and was there something that could be worked out? and so on. It didn't take much; he took me downstairs to a storage area full of old bikes  and offered to give me an older, but working, racing bike for a $60 deposit and $20 to rent for four days. 

Oh yeah! New York City in the summertime! Now, I've always felt I am a pretty good biker, given that I bike anywhere from 3-10 miles a day for work and use a bicycle as my principal mode of transportation, but navigating the traffic of Ann Arbor is child's play compared to New York. I just couldn't believe how fast, and how reckless, Thad was in weaving around the traffic. He would literally cut cars off, and with no helmet either. His bike was also faster than mine (he had a light single speed with freewheel), so he was always way ahead of me. I took some videos with my camera; they don't really show our biking in NYC in full glory, as the most exciting, hairiest spots I couldn't film because I enjoy being alive.

(By the way Thad, The East River is technically a strait, not an estuary.) But anyway, unless you are an Olympic Athlete or a Nobel Prize Winning scientist, there's always someone better than you. Check out this link of Bike Messengers in NYC. They make Thad look like he still is using training wheels.

Last summer when I visited, we happened upon a community hang out bar behind a deli in Bushwick, and we ended up spending all night drinking beers and hanging out with the locals. It was the cheapest bar in town; you go inside the deli, buy some beer, and then go out into the back yard to hang out and listen to Cuban/Puerto Rican music on the large speakers. Last year they said we were first white people there in a long time (they also said we were cool, but don't bring any more friends into the neighborhood and jack rent up). We came back this year after getting the bike, and they actually remembered us. One of the dudes, Pablo, actually asked me if I had finished my PhD yet! Per last year, the other people who didn't know us gave us weird looks, but as the night progressed, and we began playing dominoes with some of patrons, pretty soon we were just part of the noise. I asked Pablo to take a picture of us, and he, half-jokingly and half-seriously, said, "Sure I can. Now you can show all your friends at home you were slumming it." Ouch.

Thad had to go to work the next day, so we called it a night fairly early. Thad doesn't have a couch, so I slept on a small sleeping pad in the studio room of his apartment. It was so hot that week (late July Brooklyn) that this minimal sleeping arrangement was actually pleasant compared to a bed that would have gotten soaked in my sweat.

When I woke up, Thad was gone, so I hopped on my bike to Williamsburg to do some reading and work on papers. And, yes, all you skeptics out there, I actually did get some work done editing some drafts of my manuscripts (one of which I just recently submitted!). The change of scenery was refreshing, and sitting outside at Verb Cafe, idly people-watching and thinking, was downright lovely and relaxing. 

After a few hours I had done all I could do with pen and paper, and I went to a nearby internet cafe to begin editing my documents. After a few hours of that, Thad got off work, all flustered from God knows what, so I suggested we get something to eat at a nearby Italian restaurant...Ahhh....Our waitress actually had an Italian accent. Who knew?

Turns out Thad was flustered because multiple other Toledo (our hometown) friends were in Brooklyn that weekend, and he was getting overwhelmed because his cell phone kept blowing up. After dinner, we saw, quite randomly, a friend's band who was in town at a local overcrowded venue full of hipsters quite younger and more beautiful than us. I was getting a little bored, so I suggested to Thad and the random Toledo friends that we go the Ear, one of the oldest bars in NYC, and a nice biking distance away on the west side of Manhattan. After a brief silly "Who's doing what?" conversation...

We made it out to the Ear around 1 AM in the morning, and stayed, like we did three years ago, until it closed at 4 AM in the morning (I don't know if I could handle living in New York City year round. The city would tempt and swallow me whole with its seductive vices; I would never get anything creative done and would simply waste away financially and spiritually). 

Before we left, we took a picture next to the "Ear" of the Ear bar, similar to previous years. Thad and I then rode our bikes back to Brooklyn, and I had to withstand Thad's verbal onslaught of how badly I was riding my bike. Ugggg,,,,

Coming up: The postcard that restored faith in humankind.

Encore: New York City Pt I - Landing

After the NIC conference in Cleveland, I was hoping to drive Bopper out to Brooklyn, New York City to see my friend Thad in my annual pilgrimage to the big city (2005, 2007). I had grandiose plans to recruit Thad and the locals to spraypaint/tag Bopper. Alas, Bopper broke down, and my roadtrip was cut short. I called Thad in Cleveland and told him I couldn't make it.

But....never say die. It turned out I had enough frequent flyer miles on my Northwest Airlines account that I could fly in New York City for free, and first class to boot! So, a month after returning to Ann Arbor, I finally completed the vacation tour of America by getting on a plane to New York City. Due to inclement weather the night before in NYC, air traffic control had the arriving planes circling for an hour while other planes took off. I didn't mind, as the seats in first class were comfortable enough that I actually (gasp) enjoyed being in the plane (the free wine also helped).

The upshot of the circling was that when we descended, we were able to get a very nice view of Manhattan due to the direction we were coming from.

In the pic below you can see the docks of Brooklyn in the background.

In this pic you can see the Williamsburg bridge (left) and the Brooklyn bridge (right).

And, flying over Midtown, if you look in the lower left of the pic below, you can make out the Empire State Building.

The Hand of God Saved Chevrolet

Tonight, I am in Chicago,  and a tornado hit and ran havok among the neighborhood. My friend's Chevy HHR car was miraculously saved by the power lines. That tree branch is literally 6 inches above the car. We could drive it away if the zombies were coming, but only if the zombies were coming. That's a 6 inch difference from rather funny to incredibly tragic. 

Memphis - Will You Still Rock when You Are 80?

With sad hearts Eric and I left Austin to drive to Memphis. I had to be in Cleveland in two days for the Neural Interfaces Conference to present a poster of my research,  and I was sad that my great American roadtrip was drawing to a close.

Such being my dreary state, driving through hot, humid Arkansas was still rather fun. 

While on I-30, a Jeep full of cutie pie black girls kept passing us, and we passing them, on the highway for about half an hour. They were heckling us and Bopper, saying things to the variation of "You need to pimp that thang!" but with a good-natured smile. I would occasionally jokingly yell back about how Bopper didn't need any modification.

Later on that day, we saw a Lexus pulled over by the side of the road and a black guy trying to flag people down for help while his family and friends sat miserably in the heat under an overpass. Given that we had been helped in New Mexico and weren't in any particular hurry, we stopped to see what he needed.

They had a flat tire, but the man didn't have the right socket on his tire iron to remove the lug nuts for his car. He asked me if I had any tools.

I have dreamed of this moment.

Do I have any tools? Sir, how about a full mobile garage? I dug* through my trunk....

*Note: My trunk latch had failed in Austin, so the only way to access all my gear in the trunk was by digging and scrounging through a hole in the back seat which I had ripped off the frame. That was fun in the 90 degree humid heat.

....gave him a full socket set, a 2 foot long socket wrench, and a 2.5 foot long torque wrench. I guarantee no one on the highway, besides maybe a travelling mechanic, had the extensive tools I had. The man was jubilant with my tools (he actually wanted to buy some off me, but I said I was on the road and might need them later). Sure enough, the man had his tire removed and replaced in no time. I looked at his car, a 90's era brown Lexus, and I noticed his tires had absolutely no tread. I said to his friend, "Wow, are these aftermarket racing tires?" I genuinely thought they were, as they looked like Goodyear flat rubber racing tires. The man changing the tire said, "No they're not. I know they need to be replaced. I was going to change them next weekend." They were normal tires, just completely worn! Wow, I guess if it never snows you can get away with it.

He wanted to give me money for helping him, but Eric and I wouldn't accept it. We just told him that the next time he sees folks on the road in need, help them. He said he would, but he still shoved a $20 in my shirt pocket anyway. He wouldn't take no for an answer.

We finally rolled into Memphis at 10 PM that night and tried to check into the hostel. Now, Eric had checked in with his cell phone, so we had rather cryptic instructions via text message on how to get into the hostel. The hostel turned out to be a converted church, and when we pulled up there were two British lads trying desperately to get in. No one was answering the door. Luckily for them we showed up, and we entered the door codes to get in.

And then frightening happened.

There was NO ONE there! No one is the hostel! No one at the desk, no one in any of the rooms. The Brits kept saying, "This is mental man! It's like a horror movie yeah?" I did check the refrigerators for severed heads. There weren't any.

We knew Memphis was a happening place, and it was Saturday night, so we figured maybe everyone went out to Beal street for the night (but shouldn't there should be at least one nerd reading a book on the couch?), so we dropped our stuff off on random beds in the hostel and caught a cab out to Beal Street and the Home of the Blues.

Lots and lots of black people on Beal Street; white folks are minorities there. I dug it. The street was closed off, and people were walking around drinking beers watching, dancing, and listening to the street musicians. We had four hours to kill since some of the clubs didn't close until 4 AM, so we walked around for a bit and Eric and I got a kick out the British lads speaking of their sexual escapades with American women (some of their exploits were lovely, some were funny, and some were rather disgusting (i.e. soiling the trousers)).

After the street musicians began to wrap up, We decided to walk into a club called Blues City Cafe and see a band that sounded pretty rockin' from outside.

Now as a music snob, I've heard a lot of live music. I've heard a lot of GOOD live music. But mostly I have heard musicians in their 20's and 30's performing some variant of rock or country music with guitars, keyboards, drums, or some combination thereof. But I was not prepared for what I heard in the Blues City Cafe; I witnessed the tightest blues-rock band I had ever heard, and they were just some house band called Freeworld! The band consisted of about 10 members, from vatos in their 20's to dudes in their 70's with multiple combinations of horns, flutes, guitars, basses, drums, and numerous vocalists. When they went into a 20-minute improvisation version of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition," Eric and I just sat there, shaking our head in disbelief at just how damn good they sounded.

I particularly liked one of the players, an old man periodically playing the flute and alto saxophone. During a break, I went up to him and complemented him on his playing. He turned out to be incredibly friendly and warmed up to us rather quickly. He ended up talking to Eric and I for most of the night in-between sets, regaling us with stories about the course of his long career. He had played with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the like in his earlier days; you can see a picture of a younger version of him in the middle of the photo below playing next to B.B. King.

And a picture of him playing now.

His name is Herman Green, and he has a star on Beal Street. He serves as a sometime musician and spiritual leader for the band Freeworld, and at 80 years old, he still rocks, still dances, and still flirts with the pretty gals in the club (and in a charming way that old men can sometimes pull off). Neither Eric nor I brought our camera out that night; all we had was Eric's camera phone, in the night no less. But forgive me gentle reader. Here is a pic of Herman's star on Beal Street.

And at the end of the night, we took a picture with him and the cutie-pie waitresses. In this grainy image, I am on the left, then a waitress, another waitress, Eric, and Herman standing outside the cafe.

The police started to clear up the streets, and we found a cab back to the hostel with an Ethiopian woman cab driver who spoke Amharic all the way back home on her cell phone. The hostel was still incredibly creepy, but we were so tired (and drunk?) we just passed out on any random bed that was available.

When we woke up the next morning, there were people roaming around, so I guess that confirmed we were staying at a normal hostel. When we looked at the chore board, sure enough, Eric and I had been assigned chores to clean the bathroom! What!? No one answering the door? No notification from any human being whatsoever the night before? Sleeping on random bare mattresses? Eric grabbed our chore card off the wall, looked at me, said, "this is bulls**t dude, let's get out of here." And, trying to hold grins off our faces, we crept out of that hostel and got the hell out of there, having never talked to a single person. We had to do some backtracking to get back our way on the highway, but we were able to get a lovely view of crossing the Mississippi during daylight hours.

I had to make it to Cleveland that night for the NIC conference, but we got stuck in traffic in rural slow speed limit Tennessee, and we were only in Northern Kentucky by 10:30 PM. We ended up staying in a hotel in rural Kentucky that night, just below the Ohio border.

The next morning we crossed the Ohio river and I got that familiar sinking feeling. Why is it that Kentucky is interesting but Ohio is not? You have deep Southern accents in Kentucky, but you cross the Ohio River, and suddenly you are in bland Ohio (give or take 50 miles of Southern Ohio where it is still hilly and rural.) My mind kept saying, "Oh my, Tim, you have traveled around this wonderful county, and now you have to come back. But be still your heart, at least you can have one last adventure before going back to Ann Arbor by heading out to New York City after the NIC conference." But when we stopped in Columbus for gas, the disaster with Bopper's head gasket began.

But I did make it up to Cleveland (over four hours to cover the last 100 miles), and I was able to attend the conference in a badly damaged Bopper. I hob-nobed with some scientists, talked about my future with some potential future scientific collaborators, and I also saw the coolest poster ever that qualifies as modern art. It's from Bill Shain's group at the Wadsworth center in New York.

But my mind was also elsewhere with my car troubles. I made friends with a local cab driver who drove me around town over the next couple days while I tried to figure out what to do with Bopper.

I eventually found out I was done. Bopper was prohibitively expensive toast to the tune to $3000 if I had it fixed by professional mechanics. I had to rent a U-Haul for $300 at the end of the conference and tow Bopper back to Ann Arbor. My great American road trip was cut short, and that was that.

The cat came back the very next 6 years- Austin

With Eric as my sole roadmate following Sean's departure in El Paso to go back to Michigan, we got in the car about 11 Am in the morning and said goodbye to the animal zoo that is my Mom and sister's house. With the desert surrounding us, we motored on past El Paso, on I-10, to Austin, on that road I am so familiar with. I love I-10; on various roadtrips, I have driven on its whole extent, all the way from Santa Monica, California, to Jacksonville, Florida.

Bopper has no air conditioning, and to those of you who have never been in West Texas in summer, recall the last time you used your oven. Know that blast of hot air that hits you everytime you open the oven to check on your food? Now imagine wind that feels like that....for 10 hours. I was "that guy" in the car driving without a shirt on. Eric and I could only drive 2-3 hour shifts in the heat before we became exhausted and would fall asleep for a bit while the other person would drive. Bopper, Eric, and I went through a lot of water on that leg.

We made it into Austin about 10:30 at night, and we stopped at the gas station on the edge of town where I would always stop I was an undergraduate. A fellow traveler on a motorcycle saw our little Tercel filled with gear, with the guitar to boot, and asked us if we were musicians for the biker festival (yeah, I wish, maybe there's a market for Johnny Cash impersonators). Turns out there was a huge biker festival in Austin the same weekend we were there, and lame ol' me thought "f**k, where are we going to stay? all the hotels are gonna be booked." Sure enough they were. We drove around for two hours in Austin trying to find a place to crash for the night. We even stopped at my old dorm and asked if they had rooms for "visiting scholars," cause, hey, I am an alumnus neuroscientists, and my roadmate is a molecular biologist. Didn't work.

But we finally found a hotel room by the highway for about $65, though only for the night, as the rate was going to shoot up to $150 once the biker festival swung into full tilt. We booked the room for the night, didn't even take our gear into the hotel room, and went straight away to my favorite live country music bar in Austin (Hole in the Wall) to try to catch the last bit of live music and have some Shiner Boch. We talked to some cool local struggling musicians over a couple pints, the night ended too damn soon, and we had to motor back to the hotel at 2 AM, with full excitement in our hears to be in another city but unable to be jubilant simply because we got in too late. But..in the hotel I received a text message from my old college girlfriend who was still working around in Austin, and we set up a lunch in for the next day.

Next morning, I got up, took a shower to wipe the days of grime from my skin, loaded the car, dropped Eric off on Central campus so he could surprise some old high school biology friends who went to UT for grad school, and I picked up my old college sweetheart. Twas an old feeling I've never felt before, almost like a country music song. I haven't spoken to this person in 6 years, but she still knows me pretty well, asking me about my research and family. We had a minorly awkward lunch at Threadgill's, a popular local soul food/ Southern restaurant, and the feeling that permeated the table was the unsaid thought running through my mind and probably through hers: "I am really glad to see you again, though I know the relationship is over, and it probably is a good thing the relationship is over." It's still very hard for me to describe in words what it felt like. Happiness and an odd sort of bittersweet nostalgia at the same time. After lunch, I dropped her off at her car as she had to go to her second job, and I said to her, "It was great seeing you. I do think about you, and I am glad we were able to hang out, at least for a little bit. This went well, considering the last time we spoke you said to me, 'This is it, Don't ever f**king talk to me again.'" She wouldn't admit she actually said that (that's what I seem to remember), but she did admit she probably felt that way, with a grin on her face.

After that, I wandered around my haunts on the UT-Austin campus. I walked by my old lab, but I found myself pausing and staring at the entrance, simultaneously wanting and not wanting to walk in and say hello to my old advisor. Given that I had defended but still technically was not a PhD due to the revision requirement, I couldn't bring myself to walk in. I stood outside the door to my old lab, stared at my old posters still on the wall, and I then slowly walked back down those stairs I used to walk down all the time. I excited the building where I decided to go to graduate school in the first place and went on to further explore the the old town.

Eventually I hooked up with Eric again, and ta da! turns out there is a hostel in Austin, and they had 2 beds available for the next two nights for $50 total. Damn that expensive! A hostel for $25 a night?! But whatever, we didn't have any other options, and it wasn't a big deal. The hostel was in a beautiful location on the Colorado river which some local water fowl liked to frequent as well.

Once we checked in, I convinced Eric to walk with me all the way to 6th Street, about three miles, to meet up with some high school friends. But..Damn! We didn't realize it was so hot and humid. I was badly sunburned to boot.

But we eventually made it out to a local watering hole where I met up with some friends I hadn't seen in seven years. Twas very nice. The dude in the orange shirt below, Lon, was actually my roommate during my college freshman orientation, and we also came from the same part of town in El Paso. I remember him getting mad at me for asking silly questions in our high school advanced Chemistry class. Praveen, the Indian gentleman on the right, was also a close buddy from high school who is now a successful computer engineer in Austin. Allegra, the gal on the bottom, was my best friend in college and high school (We were in plays together, and I also took her to my high school prom). She is now a budding film editor in Austin's cinema scene, and the gentleman on the left is her fiance. After a nice long dinner, some beers, and nostalgia where I wondered why the hell I left Austin in the first place, Lon, Eric, and I walked on over to the Congress Street bridge to see the bats fly out at sunset.

Austin has the largest urban bat population in the world. It's a big community event in the summer; many people hang out on the Congress Street bridge in the sunset hours. Sure enough, a few moments after the sun set, the beautiful creatures, all 1.5 million of them living under the bridge, began coming out in swarms.

After watching the bats, we headed out to famous 6th Street of Austin to see the night life and watch all the killer hogs motor down the street. We went to too many bars, and many of them I can't recall the names of; it's too easy to lose money down there.

But the hipster bartenders are a trip with the mix of tattoos and old style country facial hair.

We made the required stopover at Emo's, the indie-rock punk bar I used to frequent when I was an undergrad. The VHS tapes I am holding in front of Emo's were given to me by Lon, and the tapes consist of a bunch of videos my high school friends and I made when I used to live in Toledo. Lon told me, "I have moved multiple times since you first let me borrow these tapes when we were in high school 8 years ago, and everytime I moved, I said, "No, I can't throw these out. They are a part of Tim's youth, and I know, someday, I will see him again!" And indeed he did, and indeed he gave me the tapes. Truth be told, most of the movies I had copies of and have since transcribed to DVD. But there was one gem. As juniors in high school theology class, my friends and I made a video about, of all things, premarital sex. For our project, me and two of my classmates walked around the University of Toledo campus with a video camera we borrowed from the school, and we asked random college students what they thought of premarital sex. The responses were all over the place; the whole thing was rather cute in hindsight. I try to imagine if I was walking on the University of Michigan campus and some high school students interviewed me about premarital sex. What would my response be? Probably something like, "Use protection, and get it when you can, because life is transient, your beauty will fade, and one day you will be old, crusty, and retired, yearning for your salad days and, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said "the joy of losing your innocence over and over again."" But that may be a bit creepy.

And finally, when the night was over, as we all left the bars, Eric and I commenced to witness a quite unusual and beautiful sight: Two bombshell Texas gals engaging in some odd giddy conversation with a homeless alcoholic stammering drunk. I had to take a picture of these two worlds colliding, and one of the women turned to look at me at that exact moment. I love the smile and expression on her face, among other things.

Eric and I tried to get a cab back to the hostel, but with the bars closing, we failed, and we then walked for 2.5 hours, lost in the urban jungle trying to get back home. We had to cross the Colorado river but despite our damnest efforts we couldn't find the pedestrian bridge! I even considered swimming across, but Eric wisely convinced me not to. We doubled back, finally found the bridge, and got back into our hostel at 4:30 in the morning, completely exhausted.

I didn't even get a nice sleep. One of the drifters in the hostel, the type that travels for months on zero budget, woke me up at 8 AM to ask for a ride to the nearest town 20 miles away because he had found a job "distributing flyers" by the road, in the hot sun, for $100/day. Wow, I guess wanderlust is a powerful thing for some people; I would have headed home if I was in that much of financial dire straits. Feeling sorry for him, I agreed to get up and give him and his friend a ride.

Not much happened the rest of the day, as my legs were crazy sore from all the walking the day previous. Eric and I simply went to a local natural pool, Barton Springs, swam for a little bit, I played a little guitar, and we both napped and tried not to look at the jail bait.

For our last night in Austin, we decided, again, to go to Hole in the Wall. It's my favorite bar in Austin, a good music venue of alt-country and roots rock and roll, as well as just being an all around excellent chill dive bar. Allegra came by, and we all ended up playing shuffleboard with some pleasant NSF-REU students from Georgia visiting Austin for the summer.
While we were there we saw this emo dude sporting some serious bling. I really didn't know what to make of it. But that's not the interesting part.

The Emo Bling Dude actually tried to steal our pitcher of beer! As in grab it from the bar from us when we weren't looking steal our beer! The nerve! Maybe he thought his medallion entitled him to it, I don't know. So Elysse ( the NSF-REU geology student) and I pretended to talk about igneous rocks while Eric shot a picture of us standing behind him.

And soon enough, the night ended at the Hole in the Wall. I hadn't seen Allegra in 7 years, and we had a pleasant bittersweet goodbye. I was glad to meet her fiance; he's a film editor and they seemed pretty near perfect for each other.

And the next week they were married! Official Shot below.


Coming up Next: Getting Schooled in Memphis, or the Most Awesome Blues I have ever heard.

Socorro to El Paso to Juarez - The Desert Cities

After Denver, it was time to leave the Rocky Mountains and head south to the desert. We were trying to make it to the Very Large Array (from the Movie Contact) in Socorro before motoring on down to El Paso all in the same day. Most people who have never been to the West Texas / New Mexico area of the country have very little conception of just how damn beautiful it is. Open Country and Open Sky makes for an Open Mind.

Of course, some minor car problems prevented us from making it very far (like running out of gas), and we spent the night in Socorro, planning to go to the telescopes the next day.

We stopped at a tex-mex joint to eat and watch some of the Lakers/Celtics game, and Sean began chatting with some local fire fighters about what we were up to and our various adventures. We still weren't sure where we were going to stay for the night, and Sean in all his charismatic magic managed to get an offer for one of the firefighters rooms! The firefighters were doing a training exercise in Socorro, and they had about 5 rooms at the local Econolodge. Some of their crew were late, and they gave us one of the empty rooms for $30. After settling in, we invited them to our room for some beers, and we stayed up late into the night listening to them tell fire stories.

My favorite was "Don't ever cheat on a smart woman." A couple months previous, a woman had found out her husband was having an affair. So....she soaked the whole house with gasoline, put a piece of steel wool on the edge of the front door, and placed a 9V battery on the wall near the door jam. The cheating heart came home after a night of adultery, opened the door, the steel wool made contact with the 9 V battery, and..well..that was the end of that.

There were a bunch of other stories; their knowledge of chemistry and how things burn was rather impressive. I've personally never held any stereotypes about firefighters; it seems like an admirable enough public job to me, but they said multiple times: "Man, people think all firefighters do is play cards and watch porn. That's not true. This is hard ass work, with 48 hour shifts sometimes." But they did say, with all the administrative bulls**t and restrictions on their offjob behavior they have to put up with, the job is ultimately rewarding: Bringing people back to life never becomes mundane.

The next morning we woke up a little fogheaded, had some huevos rancheros at the local diner (where cowboy hats and the Spanish language are the norm), then we headed west on a small state road to the telescopes. I had visited them before with my family when I was in college, but I was totally down for seeing it again, and Eric and Sean had never seen them before.

I love big Science. Neuroscience is exciting and mysterious in its own obvious ways (as in, what makes us what we are?), but there is a much bigger question beyond the C-word: What is the nature of the universe? How old is it? How did it come about? In the desert, surrounded by beef cattle ranches, you come up on the plain and witness that functional monument to humanity's attempt to understand itself.

Of course, the happy nerd that I am, I had to channel Jodie Foster for a little while. Back in the day in early graduate school, when I spent a summer in California, I had a chance to meet the real scientist Jodie Foster's character is based on.

And after an hour viewing the big science, I thought maybe our neuroscience is not so interesting after all. It's an odd feeling, being in the desert amongst the telescopes...it's not as if you drive to the middle of New Mexico to see someone doing whole cell recording of a dorsal root ganglion. What I love about astronomy is that the instruments are always in your face....staring at you..taunting you...asking you..."What are you doing with your life? I am a tool to answer the grandest questions of all."

Eventually we got back into the car and made it down to El Paso by the late afternoon, and I had a happy reunion with my mother and sister. The last time I showed up in El Paso with my own wheels was eight years ago, when I was a junior in college. Every time since I have flown in, which always diminishes the distance. I am in Detroit, and 6 hours later I am in El Paso. On wheels and motors, I rolled in, covered in sweat, in a packed car, and having been on the road for two weeks. Obviously, arriving into El Paso in that fashion makes you realize how far away West Texas is from Michigan.

I hung out with my sister that evening, and I dropped the idea of going into Juarez, Mexico (the border city to El Paso, literally a couple miles from my house), because whenever I go back to El Paso, I like to spend an afternoon in Juarez, get something to eat, maybe buy some belts or clothes, grab a beer, and walk along the streets of the sad border town. But my sister was defiant. She would not come with me. She said, "Ay No! There's major gang wars going on now. The drug cartels sent an e-mail out to the cops saying no one would be spared. 40 people have been shot in broad daylight in the past month!" (I love the fact the drug cartels sent an e-mail. Subject: We are at war. Die?) But Sean and Eric, having never been there, really wanted to go, and we figured the US authorities at the border would tell us whether it was safe or not. So we drove the short drive from my house to the border bridge. The shaky movie below depicts the 30 ft boundary between Texas and Mexico...

And sure enough, when we crossed the pedestrian bridge, there were 18 year old military police with assault rifles watching everyone coming across the border (sorry, apprehensive Tim didn't take any pictures). The streets were noticeably vacant. During normal business hours you usually see many folks going about their business. The streets weren't dead, as in "let's get the hell out of here" dead, but I would say there was only about 30% of the normal foot traffic on the streets. No matter. It was so hot out anyway, we quickly forgot about the whole thing. But notice how few people are in the picture below...

After walking around for a bit, we decided to stop for a beer at the "Kentucky Club" on the main drag near the bridge and watch the Celtics/Lakers game. Twas a rather cool bar, with us drinking Sols, simply enjoying ourselves, and watching the Mexican businessmen with their "just a little too hot, and just a little too young" dates.

I am always a little on guard when I am in Juarez, and to tell you the truth, the only time I have been there at night was once in high school and a couple times at home from college. Having been around the world on many adventures, I hate to admit I get uncomfortable in a city so close to one of my hometowns, but Juarez is a den of pestilence and poverty, especially given the current climate with the drug wars. There's always stories of hueros being caught in the wrong place in the wrong time. The gal I took to my high school prom in El Paso actually had a friend who was shot and killed by random gunfire in one of the night clubs. So when the sun began to set, we walked back across the bridge, passed through border control, and arrived back in El Paso, Texas, land of the free and home of the brave.

As our last bit of fun before leaving West Texas, I suggested we stop at my favorite country & western bar close to my mom's house to hear some live country music. But...drat..that night was karaoke night, so we had to provide our own entertainment. Being somewhat of a drama queen who loves being on stage, I immediately signed up for a few songs. Below you can hear my rendition of David Allen Coe's "Long Haired Redneck."

I gave my mom and sister a call, and though it was late, they came out to join me and my friends. I convinced my Mom to come up with me and sing "Hard Day's Night" by the Beatles (when she was growing up, she remembers her parents really liking that song). We tried to get my sister to come up as well, but she's a bit shy about public performance. It felt so good to be back home, if only for a little bit...

Following the night at the bar, Sean parted ways with us and went home back to Michigan via bus ("bent to it again, gone. - Kerouac-). Eric and I went to bed, again too late, and again regretting the next morning when we would hop back into the car for another long ride to the next city...

Coming Up Next: The cat comes back. Seeing Austin again.