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Christmas Eve, 2002 I'd like to report that at this writing I am steeped whiskey-n-nog deep in the Christmas spirit. I'd like to. Alas, I am mostly just tired, moody, and sober and sore as an outhouse judge. I am every bit the Road Dog I've been training for years to be. I haven't showered in days. My hair, chopped this summer and now grown back an inch or two from its military-issue flat top tight, is a greasy garage broom salted by the Mazatlan sea and standing hither and yon, as confused as a compass at the bottom of a coffee can fulla magnets. My fingernails are the color of porcupine quills, white mostly but brown where the quill meets the skin, or in this case, where the nail meets the skin of the world. Dirty, in a word. In one word. But if I was short on words, I'd be Hemingway, not me. No, I lay it on van Gogh, thick, intense, sometimes insane, occasionally tedious. Even van Gogh had his boring moments. Speaking of porcupines, outlaw me just smuggled another ferret into the Great State of Californication. It's this pea green military flight suit. I tell you what, it's like some invisibility suit. Even as ratty looking as I am, all unshaven, unwashed, my eyes the black hole remnants of 44 hours sucked away by the road and the dwindling memory of the imploding star of sunny Mazatlan. I'd like to report that I'm in the Xmas spirit, but alas I am too road-ragged and dizzy, spun out like a dropped clock at the visions of sugar sand drifts, coconut groves, palm frond palapas... No, that's right you, fussypants occupants of the car passing me in the fast lane. I am not watching the road. I am watching ME TV. It's much more interesting. You see, all I have to do is draw the shade on my hyperconcentrated freeway mind and free my mind enough, just enough, eyes open still but seeing only peripherally (how much concentration does it take to screw in an I-10 lightbulb? Not much. Straight as a frikken machete blade. Chop chop go the coconuts and in goes the straw, yum, yum and then the spoon carving out the squidlike meat, delicious. You know how much it costs to live like a healthy king on the endless beaches like those south of Mazatlan? Five dollars a day. Make it $10 and you could have internet access and all your meals cooked for you by the dear Mama Margherita. Make it $15 and you could drink fresh Pacifico beer to the point of unconsciousness. Am I in the Xmas spirit yet? I'm getting there. The desert east of Indio rolling by like a Hollywood backdrop all around me, rolling surreal like the tumbleweed that history rewrote. According to field scientist Karen, my X, the now so-prevalent desert weed that commits a kind of honorable plant suicide, one for the better of the whole, by essentially cutting itself off at the root and rolling in the wind to spread its seeds, is an introduced species, non-native to North America and nonexistent here until the 20th century. If you're following all this, then perhaps you get the picture. Cowboys, Indians, covered wagons loaded with settlers heading west, west into an "Ooops!" tumbleweedless land. Reminds me of the opening sight gag in Peter Sellers' "The Party" where a director of a pre-Industrial period film yells "Cut!" and storms over to Sellers' character to chastise him for wearing his watch. I'm laughing picturing Peter Sellers in that film. Just thinking about that talented nutball is helping to get me in the Xmas spirit. You see? ME TV. I am better than Cable. And I wear my satellite on my sleeve. Whatever that means. Ack! But here I am on the final approach to Palm Springs where I will have to exit and drive horribly inconvenient winding mountain roads and I will no longer be able to type. And I haven't even told you about Mexico yet! I pass a flatbed semi loaded up with strawbales and think, "There goes my house!" Okay, sorry. Mexico. It was a hairbrained idea, if ever there was one, but beautiful in its hairiness like Chewbacca, and kinda scary like him, too. It went like this: Dave goes to Mazatlan this past summer, parties, meets a girl named Jaymie with a Toyota 4x4 truck with big tires and a camper shell. But there's a problem with the truck, something electrical maybe, but whatever it is Jaymie, a Minnesota girl teaching English in Guadalajara, doesn't want to deal with it anymore. Dave decides he must have it, that whatever is wrong with it can't be much (it's a Toyota!), and asks me if I will accompany him deep into Mexico to get it, fix whatever ails it, and drive it back to the U.S. Where is Rick when Dave decides to do this? Sleeping on Dave's couch on the tail end of a longerthanplanned visit to AlbuQ to deal with car problems of my own, namely replace Duke's rear main seal and get the car into some kindof semi-permanent storage situation until an upcoming gig will afford the gas to move the car again. And who is right by my side through the whole ugly, dirty process of pulling Duke's motor but David, even dead on his feet sick with a cold he'd caught from me. So, despite being in no financial position to go out to the movies let alone 1000 miles into Mexico, I committed myself to go with him as his mechanic and copilot, although the real reason I was going, I knew, was because no one else stepped up to the plate to go with him and who the hell would wanna go on such a long and potentially dangerous journey alone, and just days before Christmas? We drove the Chevy down as far as Mesquite, NM, by the border, where I left it and my little buddy Flash the ferret with friend Miguel. Miguel, who once chided me in a friendly way for my inability to keep up with his powerful tolerance for tequila, was now six months sober and delighted to unload the last few shots of some high class tequila on us before driving us to the bus station in Juarez. Thus fortified in true Mexican-style, we boarded one of Mexico's unbelievably plush Mercedes buses for the 24-hour ride to Guadalajara. [TO BE CONTINUED..!]
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