The TechNomad Journals - Southwest Road Trip to Burning Man

The TechNomad Journals -San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Monday, July 4th 2005

Providence Exodus to Dallas - Bungled Terror in TN - Scorpions - San Miguel, Mexico

I know it's an intense subject line but the stories that follow pale it in comparison. For now I'll just say I'm glad to be writing this and not hanging in the woods. Or worse. So with that tasty morsel of an intro I say hello from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, 2 hours from the Leon Airport through the desert, my home for the next two months and a place I almost didn't make it to. (OK, the drama will calm down but not quite yet...). As usual you can read the BRIEF (includes new contact magic) or EXTENDED versions, and both if you're super.

Moved out of Providence. Eventful roadtrip to Dallas. Journey to Mexico. Living at my Mom's Hacienda and working at my mobile work station on five websites and a new rebranding of my own image. Generally decentrailzing baby.

Below is the link to pics of the last month in Providence including Ramon's Birthday, Cape Cod Camping Trip, Final Chestnut BBQ, The Last Supper, and the roadtrip including God-sister's Family in CT, Brief stop in Philadelphia, Tennessee and Dallas and the final leg to Mexico. And a huge hungry caterpillar as a finale.!

ALSO I have surprised even myself with my techy communication wizardry! While I will still keep the same cell phone number when I go back to the US, in the meantime I have set up 2 other new numbers:

Both of these numbers (at NO EXTRA CHARGE to you peeps) will redirect you to anywhere I am in the world via the internet to my computer and you probably won't even know the difference. Good Crap the future is now. If anyone is interested in free worldwide calls I suggest looking into skype.com, it's 100% legit, free if both parties have skype and minimal charging if you want to call a real landline phone (2cents/1pence per min anywhere I think) and as far as getting a number that will call skype - 10 euros ($11) for 3 months each, THAT'S IT no other charges, and you get free voicemail, even if your computer/internet is off.

The last month I spent in the Northeast had been filled with things I hadn't done and other things I wanted to do one last time before I left. Highlights were an excellent camping trip to Cape Cod and it's frigid waters lead by team captain Paul Osimo and a great final BBQ in the parking lot of the Chestnut St. warehouse, right opposite the Women's and Infant's Medical Center. By the end of June I was almost fully moved out from the warehouse in Providence. I was taking the majority of my belongings to storage and had packed just the essentials in my trusty, newly tired (as in wheels, not stamina I hoped...) cherokee Big Red. The much anticipated journey to Mexico would soon begin...

The exodus started with a bang. Literally. I was deaf in my left ear and the towel that I'd just put on the hood of the u-Haul truck was on fire. Right next to it was a small, smoking, golf ball sized crater in the metal and I also saw Dan, my beautifully impulsive roommate looking totally shocked on the outside of the thankfully still intact windshield. I asked him what the hell he'd done, but he was deaf in both ears and seemingly too dazed to immediately answer. Apparently he'd found a small, old stick of dynamite in his car and decided to surprise me. You know, for fun. He had missed his target (by far) and it fell on the hood of the truck. He did shock me, but shocked himself more with the combination of the huge bang and the small end of the explosive that became a projectile and left a neat hole in his shirt just before it punctured his soft pasty skin. HAHA! Dan, It's funny looking back isn't it! It's funny when we pictured what could have happened, like the entire windshield exploding into my face or you getting your hand blown off! Aaah, good memories! I love you though and thanks for the moving out help!

So that's a good warm up! Dan was OK and got his hearing back later in the day, and his wound wasn't too bad. The u-Haul inspectors apparently don't take too much pride in their job and missed the crater. I was all packed up and right on schedule for the trip to begin the next day. First however we got some pies and made one last journey to Cherry and Web beach. The last night my friend Tai made a great dinner and we had a small soiree at her place, where I crashed on the couch of the resident Hip Hop crew's recording studio on my last night in Providence.

I'd wanted to do one last thing before leaving town. I wanted to create, in the style of 'The Sopranos' Intro (for those that don't know, it's a video montage of New Jersey backdrops set to 'Woke up this Morning' by Alabama 3) a Providence outro, with my favorite Providence locations captured as I drove by in Big Red, ideally smoking a cigar like Tony Soprano. It was a poorly planned, but still cared about mini-project but I had needed a second person filming and that didn't work out at such late notice. Anyway, I tried to film it myself while driving out of the city during rush hour and am happy to say I made it out unscathed although the quality of the footage has yet to be determined. I'm not going to lie, it's not going to be quite the refined package I wanted but if it's any good I might just post it online.

So onward down the coast, I saw my beautiful sister Victoria in Cos Cob, CT and stayed the night with my God-sister Caroline and her lovely family. The next day brought me to Philadelphia where I met with Mike Pekula and Brad Hurley, two standup cats. I didn't hang around long because I needed to stay on schedule but drank some local Yuengling beer and decided to leave early the next day. I made it down through the Appalachian Mountain valley and to the top NE corner of Tennessee where I had a great stay at a nice motel. I made some Chef Boyardee Beefaroni and had a gas station chicken salad sandwich as I always think the tuna is too much of a gamble. The next morning I took a swim and prepared for my decent days drive of about 500 miles though the short but wide state to Memphis, the home of Elvis Presley. The total distance from Providence to Dallas is about 1900 miles so I had planned for 4 days of about 500ish miles a day, putting me into Dallas with a couple of days to catch up with my eccentric father. This was the day that would not go so according to plan, in fact it would not go according to anything I'd experienced on my 5 times across the US...

I passed Knoxville, feeling rather sick after eating at Captain D's fried fishery. I passed Nashville in the late afternoon, zooming by lumbering trucks in the rain and happy that I'd make it to Memphis by sundown. All of a sudden, about 100 miles from Memphis, in the TN backwoods, all the power in Big Red went dead. The 'check engine' light came on (good timing) and I noticed that the engine temperature was way too high. Having cracked Big Red's engine block before in the Nevada Desert I didn't want to take any chances so pulled off into the first place I could which was a small, quite empty trucker's rest stop. I opened up the hood and looked, quite amazed at how the fanbelt had managed to wrap itself around part of the engine and the fan axle too! After being cheerily told that my 'automatically renewed' roadside assistance hadn't been automatically renewed I decided to try to get it running myself, at least until the next exit. There I was with my head under the hood, pulling out pieces of the belt when a beige pickup truck slowly pulled up next to me. The driver smiled filthily as he sucked a slurpee through his crooked, brown teeth. He was completely naked, apart from some dirty underwear.

At which point he started to get out of his truck. Thank God, Jehovah, Shiva, Buddha and Tom Cruise but at that moment a family in a minivan pulled behind the pickup and without another word, the hillbilly got back in his car and drove away. The nice driver asked if I needed help and I said it would be great if he could just keep heading the same direction and call my cell to tell me how far the next exit was. Less that a minute later he called me to tell me there was an Exxon station at the next exit, less that a mile away. With my car cooled down and anal virginity still intact I decided to make a break for exit 101, relieved but ignorant to the fact that the worse was yet to come...

oooh! so a little break from the intensity, because the best/worst part is ahead. I am merely telling my story, not wanting to cast a negative light on any location. And yes while some of my scariest moments on my roadtrips have been in the south - like accidentally wandering into innocent looking White's Truck Stop in Virginia and finding myself (and Josh) surrounded by Neo-Nazi's and 3rd Reich paraphernalia - some of my best times have been in the South too. The friends I have down there and people I met for the most part were warm and generous, but sometimes beneath the candy coating can be one rotten m&m. And we've all seen 'Deliverance'...

OK, onward to Exit 101! I pulled up to the Exxon station and immediately knew I wouldn't be getting to Memphis tonight. The lights were low and the garage was locked so I ventured inside to get the low down. It was then that I met Wesley, an incredibly old man and the only one working tonight. Now there's no way for me to explain his accent but I pretty much could only understand about 1 in 10 of his slurred words but I managed to get the jist of what he was saying. He told me that there was nothing he could do tonight and it sounded like my water pump was shot. It would have to be replaced tomorrow when the boys came in, and that's if they can find the part down in the nearby town of Jackson which was about 16 miles away. He said that I could move the car to the edge of the road and sleep in it until day break. I didn't tell Wesley the story from the truckstop first and foremost because it would've been an exercise in comprehensive futility but also it might have been his son, who knows? not me. However there was no way I was going to sleep in my car, besides that there wasn't even room to put the seat back, I didn't want the slurpee-pervert rolling by Big Red and getting flirty again.

Eventually I piece together from Wesley's clucks and jaw snaps that he'd take me to a motel down the road at Exit 108 when he gets his break in a couple of hours. By this time it was dark so I decide to have a little gas station dinner, some Chef Boyardee Ravioli (you know, to mix things up) and some absolutely disgusting microwavable sausage biscuits. Luckily I had a couple of beers from the night before and so sat on the hood of big red and contemplated what my dad had said earlier.

"It sounds bad, that's all I know, so think about what you can salvage and you'll probably have to rent a car."

The Exxon station lights start to shut down and Wesley emerges twanging something about the moon being bored. When he gets closer and sees me wide eyeing him he has a moment of piqued eloquence and tells me to get in his maroon Ford. Oh, OK Wes. He opened his car door and a stray cat jumps off the soaked drivers seat, apparently his windows don't roll up too well. I threw my most valuable stuff in the back and got in the passenger side. The only reason I wasn't worried about Wesley is that his brittle osteoporosis-riddled bones would be no match for the concealed empty beer bottle in my cargo pocket. Haha! Seriously though, I was on alert.

So off we go, down to Exit 108 and it's raining really hard now. I see a sign for a "Best Western" motel and feel a ounce of relief. When we pull up I realize that that ounce is way offset by the pound of apprehension that greets me at the motel. Exit 108 had very little going for it; a closed (maybe permanently) restaurant and this dingy motel that hugged the deep, dark and wet woods on two sides. The man at the desk was perfectly cliche with a dirty wifebeater and dirtier mouth. I got my keys and Wesley dropped me off at my room, a cozy little nook in the back nearest the woods.

"Well I hope I don't see you tomorrow, cause that mean you will have gotten out of here!" Or something along those lines...

When Wesley left I remember thinking, I hope he was talking about getting out of this AREA, not this MOTEL. I let myself into room 41.

Drab and dank would be terms a pro realtor would use to bump this room 'up a notch'. But I'm not too fancy and have stayed in some nasty spots before. I remember some years ago naively wandering into a motel in Atlanta and while getting a room wondering why there was so many women idling around. It wasn't until one showed up at my door asking me what I needed that I realized what was up. So dammit I'd make this work. I stripped the bed down to make sure there weren't any hairy tenants and then hopped in the shower. The I got in bed, turned on Comedy Central and decided to zone myself out of my physical reality. Unfortunately, the most potent thing I had was a couple of Miller Lights. About forty-five minutes later, around midnight, there's a hard bang on the door. I stayed silent. It came again, this time with "Open up, This is the Police!" I got up, went to the door and asked again who it was. "Open this damn door, This is the Police! Who you got in there?" I told him that I didn't have anybody but he just kept banging the door. I looked out of the crack of the curtain and all I could see was the guys arm. He wasn't in uniform and just had on a black t-shirt (but pants too at least). I was still aware that he could be undercover as often in these cheapo motels there are crackheads cooking up methamphetamines in the bathtub. I told him to wait and called the front desk:

"Hello, This is room 41, there's someone trying to get in my room, saying he's a cop. Did you let a cop into the motel?"

"Well I waved a truck though, looked like he had a fireman's emblem on the side."

I made sure the chain was on the door and cracked it open, at which point the man on the other side pushed it to it's extent and put his foot in the crack. He was a darkeyed man in his early 30's and he looked really mad that the chain was on...

"OK buddy" I say, still aware that he COULD be a cop, but the next interaction tells me he's not. "How about you show me your badge if you're a cop?"

"No badge? OK, sorry!" At which point I kick him hard in the shin and simultaneously using my whole body weight to shut and triple lock the door. I call the front desk loud enough so that he can hear me:

"You better call the real cops, this nutcase just tried to break into my room!" As I'm screaming this I peek out of the curtains and see him running towards the woods to his parked pickup. He screeches away as the helpful front desk man tells me he's watching him leave. Thanks buddy. I prop a chair against the door, put my valuables in the shower behind the curtain and put the two empty beer bottles next to my bed. It takes me about an hour of watching cartoons to settle down; I let a couple of people know where I am and I drift off to sleep...

The scene transition is synonymous with most horror movies ever written. An incessant phone ringing is what woke me, I was sleeping surprisingly heavily. I woke up to bright sunlight, birds chirping and exit 108 looking far less threatening. As I answer the phone I look out the curtain and even the woods look less spooky although I think a little nature ramble would just be pushing it.

"Good news Mr. Campbell, you're going to make it out of here today!" Jim, the mechanic, didn't realize the full depth of his words. "I'll come by in your truck and pick you up in an hour."

Now that would usually be enough to make me feel that I got out lucky, but there was one more kicker to come. Jim showed up in my car which was covered with muddy cat prints and looking very happy with himself. "You're lucky boy! It was the last waterpump. Might have taken a while to get another one!" I smile, get in the driver's seat and make my way steadily away from the motel. I decide to tell Jim the story and he listens, occasionally smiling, his thin mustache folding inwards to kiss his bottom lip.

"Oh I believe it boy, not just 2 years ago they found someone murdered up in their car at that motel..."

We got back to the gas station and I payed the honest bill. I said 'Thank you' to Jim and told him to say the same to Wesley for me. Jim peered out from under a Florida licensed car, the woman driver standing worriedly by the side.

"You come back and and visit us you hear?" I didn't say anything as I pulled out of the Exxon and made my way onward towards Dallas.

As most guys would, while I felt a a good relief in being safe I got the standard 'what I should have done' pangs. I settled on the my favorite which would have been to taze him, drag him into my room and tie him to a chair. Then when he came to I would have liked to freak him out in a 'hunter becomes the hunted' routine before calling the real cops and reporting a civilian's arrest. The farther I got I realized that was pretty stupid and unrealistic. Additionally, imagine if that is how it had gone down and the cops had come, and the cops were his buddy or relatives. Ewww, Pulp Fiction all over again. Wahtever the case, I concluded that it was a strong maybe that the guy at the front desk was involved.

So that's definitely the climactic point but still wasn't quite the end of my trip. Even though I have sadly missed my Dad's 'Christian Beer Tasting Event' I'm closing in on Dallas. There was no way I wasn't getting there today. Big Red was running like a beast, which I told my Dad and he told me that he was 'just preparing me for the worst' the night before. I told him it was funny but he really hadn't. About 2 hours to go and I get a call from my mom who sounds like her puppy was run over:

"You're mother almost died today." No goddamn way, I thought I was going to be the one with the dramatic story.

"I was in bed this morning and I felt something in my hair, I brushed it away and it stung me. It was a huge scorpion that somehow climbed through the mosquito netting into the bed." Goddamn, parallel drama! She said that it had died immediately, as apparently that's what they do, and she fainted on the way to the telephone. She got up again and could only see a burning sun but got on the phone with the emergency people in San Miguel and then fainted again! Somehow the EMT's got inside and she was OK after being put on a couple of IV's for a few hours. "They said it's scorpion season down here". Sweet, can't wait. At first I wasn't going to tell her my story but she was feeling so sorry for herself that I thought it would be a good distraction. Then she got all nervous about me so I concluded that we both got a good scare but we're both fine now. If anything we should feel a renewed appreciation of our ongoing existence! Ha ha, there's always a good spin! She agreed and I told her to get some rest, she would have to be feeling good for her imminent trip over to Europe to see her boyfriend.

I got to Dallas and of course my Dad wasn't home. I tried to sneak into the condo but ended up locking myself in between two gates. I had a bunch of my bags but luckily was trapped right where the pool was. Even at night Dallas was a sticky and humid mess so I whipped on some trunks and jumped in the empty pool, washing off the last 24 hours until my Dad arrived back smelling like God's liquid gift to man...

I saw some good peeps in Dallas; in particular Nicole and Claire, both old RISD friends but I was too worn out to do anything too exciting. As usual I was amazed at my Dad's piles of old newspapers (often the same edition) and stacks of empty frames. Every time I visit his plants are getting more out of control with experiments in every room. We had a little bonding time but there is only so much I can take of his extreme right wing radio block-listening sessions. I mean Rush Limbaugh has a velvet voice and all... I knew he'd stuffed some of his Christian digest booklets into my bag but humored him and pretended I didn't. It was better that other things he'd stuffed in secretly before. I remember when I was about 13 he put a bunch of fireworks in my tennis racket case that I was carrying on the plane. I found them in Chicago and threw them out in the men's room, even at that age feeling more like the father in the situation.

So I left Big Red in Dad's parking lot and whipped out my bags for Mexico. One filled with clothes and books, the other lined with egg crate foam and filled with my mobile office. On the plane I sat next to a Mexican Mormon girl (yes they do exist!) who at first was funny cause she'd been on a mission for a year and a half and hadn't been able to be alone with boys. Then she started getting a little preachy about Joseph Smith and so I pulled out my laptop and threw on my ipod. I figured she wouldn't like my theories about technology being sciences way of recreating the deity like powers of omniscience and omnipresence. So instead I ate my pretzels while she asked the stewardess to take back her tomato juice cause she forgot to shake it before pouring.

My bags both arrived unbelievably intact. Customs began to search me but it was the laziest search ever, they took my camera case out and put it back in. The shuttle van took me 100 miles though the desert and was pretty uneventful apart from being hit on my two gay guys. I thanked Brian for the excitedly scrawled number to his hotel and got out at 13 Faroles, Atascadero. Zane was waiting for me at my Mom's place, and what a place it was! My final stop! He helped get me get set up and then we celebrated with some of the best tequila I've ever had and accompanying cervezas. The next day I setup my office, the egg crate foam worked well and all my tech equipment worked. I now sit at my desk on top of Atascadero hill, looking down into the small town of San Miguel de Allende.

I must end this story and so I do with this; yesterday a huge caterpillar greeted me right outside my window, inching his way along a solitary vine. Over the course of eight hours he patiently worked his way to the end of the vine, eating leaves, resting, waking up and then eating some more leaves. I was interested because he didn't eat all the leaves on his travels to the end but just before I went out last night I saw him turning around. this morning all the leaves were gone! So the smart little guy knew that whatever happened he needed to leave enough sustenance for the journey back if there was no other way to go! And even though he almost decimated the vine's foliage he left some of the baby growths intact. He told that me when you're traveling, always be prepared for the worse but also be respectful because you may need to come back one day.