Whip It! ...the Trek to Houston

Autographed copies of Adventures with the Mojave Phone Booth are now available!

Manny from Heaven:
We get Mo Jack!

We finally hooked up with the Caravan at the Albuquerque Pep Boys. From there we went to visit a children's hospital, where a rather lethargic trio in Manny, Moe, and Jack suits worked the street instead of the sick kids. We came away from the trip with lots of Pep Boys paraphernalia.

I was warned to expect some razzing for towing my art car instead of driving it to Houston. Instead, more than one Caravan member expressed relief at having along "a real car." Burford's van was eventually dubbed the White Courtesy Van, where people could crash as we traveled, listen to trip hop music, or store luggage (except for Daniel's pukey-smelling tent, which went straight into Whip It!'s trunk),

We stopped at this beautiful art house for an impromptu tour by the daughter of the artist. The caravan invited her to that night's drink & drop party at the ranch/studio where we were spending the night. Burford & I spent fifteen minutes trying to coax the Courtesy Van/Whip It! assembly into a u-turn on the ultranarrow street, finally ending up stuck in the driveway of a guy who looked none too pleased. Happily, he turned out to be a pretty nice guy. Even more happily, he turned out to be a tractor trailer driver, who helped us maneuver out of what looked to be our new permanent home.

The drink & drop was energetic--fatigue and general sleep deprivation would set in later, causing the next drink & drop to be way more drop than drink. Contributing to the trip's fatigue was a development that became apparent that night as all of us were trying to sleep in a large one-room bungalow. It was then that we learned that two of our party snore. Real snoring. The kind that shakes the walls. It was like bunking with a twin-engine Cessna. The snoring is so bad that I don't get a night's sleep until Thursday night, after the Art Car Ball, at Kathy's place. Very quickly my brain and judgment are affected.

Burford slept fine, so I don't know any excuse for his lapse in judgment: I emerge from the bungalow the next morning to find him having his fingernails painted metallic blue by a caravan member. He looks like Herman Munster. He looks up when he sees me staring. "This nail polish is for men," he assures me. "There's a male symbol on the bottle." Oh. Okay, then.