The thing about flying is it sucks. Not the actual flight, but the amount of time you have to prepare for it. An 8:17am flight on the surface doesn't seem that terrible, but when you factor in getting to the airport an hour in advance, you're at 7:15. The shuttle from the parking lot makes it 6:45. The drive to the airport makes it 6:00. Waking up and getting ready makes it 5:30. At the latest.
Then there's the airport. People don't know what the fuck they're doing in the airport. I'm not saying I'm the world's most experienced traveler, but so far I've yet to meet an airport that was exceptionally difficult to figure out. Signs point you to check in, baggage claim, your airline, etc. People stand dazed in front of the self help kiosks, as if the concept of reading and hitting buttons on a screen is totally new and foreign. I wouldn't care about any of this, but the legions of the lost and the damned milling about in the airport makes it a maze of zombies and a painful waiting game behind the clueless.
Flying is by far the most painless part of the experience. After paying $10 for an eight inch sub at the airport and waiting for 45 minutes for the gates to open with children screaming and running around and their parents pretending not to notice, you can finally board the plane and wait for another half hour on the plane for grown adults to figure out the plane's cryptic seat numbering system. Inevitably, someone will ask you to switch seats with them because somehow they didn't get seats with their companion, and God forbid they have to be apart for an hour and a half. I've gotten used to saying no and not feeling guilty about it because it's always someone who wants me to give up my aisle or window seat in row six to move to their seat between the two largest people on the plane right in front of the rear bathroom, so A) you can't lean back, and B)you can tell what 50 people had for dinner the night before. The reason flying is the best part of flying is once all that's over with, you can put on headphones, close your eyes, and ignore everyone until it's time to land.
And now, I present Section A, Part 1, The Drive from Tucson to Bisbee, or, Why Does Adam Love the Desert So Much?
I worked for Hertz but I'm renting a car from Enterprise. The Tucson airport is so insignificant that I don't actually remember anything before getting to the rental car place. I must have walked through an airport to get there, but your guess is as good as mine as far as what it was like. In Denver when you rent a car there's a manned gate when you're leaving the lot with a guard who verifies that you're in the right car and have permission to take it. In Tucson you get in and drive away.
I fell in love with the desert the first time I saw it at 17 during the Trista years. I'm reminded now of why that is. This place is the Old West. On the two hour drive to Bisbee there are few other cars. Aside from the highway you can look as far as you can see and see nothing but bushes, short trees, and dirt. I have never been able to do the desert justice. It is nature untouched. It's so easy to imagine the pioneers and their wagons making their way to their new homesteads.
Tombstone is a tourist trap full of leather clothing stores, trinket shops, and cowboy hats. That said, standing at one end of the street and looking down it, it's easy to imagine you're back in the Old West. Some of the more well maintained buildings are full of interesting 1800s memorabilia. Bullet holes still in the walls and roofs, stairways to the whore rooms. I looked into the mirror at the bar that every famous wild west cowboy sat at and stared into. I also saw the least appetizing fudge I've ever seen. Dead bees in the food case is not good.
Bisbee is an old copper mining town. I had no idea there were mountains down here, but this town is in them. It reminds me of a Colorado mountain town the way it is just built onto the side of a hill.
The directions I had said "you will pass a big hole in the ground." The Lavender Pit is not a big hole in the ground. It is a slice carved out of the earth. More than a mile across and hundreds of feet deep, it shimmers copper and silver. There is a 12 foot deep "lake" at the bottom that looks like a small puddle from above. You can see turquoise shining in places that the mining company abandoned because turquoise is of no use to copper miners. There's a turquoise jewelry store right aboce the pit that I didn't go into because I have no use for turquoise jewelry. From the road you can't see the bottom of the pit. I'm pretty sure jumping in would be a good way to commit suicide.
That's enough for today. I'll do the rest, or part of the rest, sometime soon. Tonight I go see the Avett Brothers! Tomorrow I go see District 9! Alright!
No comments:
Post a Comment