matt's pictures

arrival

finally getting where you’re going is awesome, especially because that means whatever madness you came for can begin.

Posted on 2012-08-05T18:10:40Z GMT

Things were fine through the national park, and then I realized I’d left my phone on silent, and I had a bazillion messages. The power was out at my house, my roommate had no AC. So, with little to no signal, I pulled off the road to try to connect and check the bill, with no luck. I stopped in a little town, to try to find some wifi, and after a bit of wandering, I found a mcdonalds that I’d missed on the first pass. Sure enough, I was past due. So I paid the bill, and then spent the next couple hours worrying that the A/C was still off in the house (it wasn’t). Anyway, that was a wasted couple hours all told, between the stopping twice and wardriving looking for wifi. It was totally worth it, though, when I saw that mountain off in the distance. Really amazing sunset for me, and a truly quaint motel in Williams AZ. Right out of the 50s, and although the town is one of those places that seems on the edge of collapse due to tourism. When a place has discount souvenir stores, it’s in some kind of trouble. I think the steady stream of people coming through keeps it in the black, though.

Posted on 2012-08-04T23:28:38Z GMT

petrified forest national park

PFNP, for short, is just off of I-40, and I figured since I had some time to kill, I might as well drive the short loop and see the sights. It’s a lovely stretch of desert, but like most of this trip, it was ungodly hot, so I didn’t care to stick around too long. Very pretty, and worth the hour that I spent on it. Luckily, I got some other tourists to take my photo, even. Thanks random family from Florida! Hope the hydrating for altitude sickness worked out. That’s a lens in my left hand, in case you’re wondering.

Posted on 2012-08-04T23:21:54Z GMT

day 2: more driving

This was day 2 of driving. It really was a pretty spectacular day, shot through with beautiful vistas and interesting stops. I had a green chili breakfast burrito to start it off, and it was just smooth sailing from there until after Petrified forest NP. Since those photos are in the next post, I’ll save that half of the day for later.

Posted on 2012-08-04T22:54:18Z GMT

road to cali (leaving town)

I went out to LA to see my friend Ashley, AKA Smash, AKA chef to the unnameable stars (not that I signed an NDA, but trust does still mean something). But before I got there, I had to roll across two deserts, two mountain ranges, and untold small towns that I passed without even realizing. I covered half of I-40, coming and going. I know that road fairly well from my college days, but there’s a difference between a full on burn, at the edge of what’s possible for a college student to run out in the time he’s got to get to school, and a nice leisurely drive across half the country. On the way there, I split it across three days; six hours from home, I stopped in the New Mexico rest area and slept, after getting out and staring at the moon. There’s a kind of tired that’s familiar to anybody that’s done any solo driving. You start to feel it at the edges of things hours before you pull over— a little ache at the corner of your eyes, wandering attention between songs on the radio. When you need to push, you can push through that kind of tired. It’s not safe, but it is at least interesting. I started to feel it before I got to Amarillo; I knew there were two rest areas before Albuquerque that would do, if I could make it, so I pushed through a little. Now, understand, this trip has nothing on some of the epically stupid things I’ve done; Once, I started to feel the same driving through Arkansas, and turned north to drive through Kentucky, for what I thought would be a shortcut through to Virginia; about 20 hours later, sans stop, I made it. It’s easy to lose yourself; to get disconnected from the moment. All that you see is a million miles of flat ground, and the same white and yellow lines; it’s easy to feel cut off from the rest of the universe. In that moment, the most important thing to do is concentrate. Lose focus, the mind wanders. Eyelids get heavy, and then it’s up to luck- bumps in the road, rumble strips, a song change on the radio. Or you don’t wake up. I have always been very lucky. Anyway, this time I decided to be at least a little rational, and stop and sleep not too far into the journey. I took pictures to try and get that feeling down, and there was a storm off to the northwest that helped-things wander, and then you get a jolt of the present that brings you back.