...and then we realized we were lost

When I was a kid, my friend Jeremy and I used to fight (because wrestling would imply spandex) and he would always kick my (obscenity) – I could never win. I visited him the past five days in Texas he kicked my (obscenity) again, but in different way. I will be posting my pictures from this trip because I cannot describe how cool everything was. Photo: Jeremy/Color Inverse

The first day I saw him was really just fifteen minutes before going to bed. I had drive in that day from Colorado across New Mexico. New Mexico is charming compared to New England. In New England, as in old England, we keep our animals in zoos. I was heading down the interstate in New Mexico and there was a live Buffalo in the median. I also ran over three rabbits (two babies) and a fox. Also, they have dead plants blowing around in the wind in New Mexico instead of Burger King wrappers to gauge wind direction. It was weird but not as weird as their rest stops doubling as historic markers. New Mexico also has beautiful scenery, which made driving through it easier than a place like Nebraska. You can tell that Colleen is from New Mexico because the beauty is comparable.

The first full day I was in Texas was weird at first. I am always disoriented in the morning when I wake up. Waking up in a strange place is always a trick, every once in a while I will wig out. Despite being in the Central and Mountain times zones for over a month now I still wake up, religiously at five am, Stepford Mean Time. I did not wig out this time but it was strange because I noticed the same posters I have in my room I have in my room at my old Kentucky home and then I sat up (I was on the floor) and saw Jeremy still asleep. I went back to sleep because I figured I was crazy. At a more reasonable hour, it made more sense.

Photo: Jeremy climbing safely down the mountain - I would have died ten times that day if he hadn't been paying attention That first day we went to Hueco Tanks State Park. Hueco Tanks is named after the basins that occur in those mountains (although my dictionary says ‘hueco’ means ‘hollow’ in Spanish). These basins collect water and water collects people. Over the centuries people lived there, because of the water and there is an extensive set of cave paintings from the early inhabitants.

Photo: Me on the top of a formation at Hueco Tanks. Chris to Jeremy: CATCH ME! You can climb all over the North Mountain on your own – there are no marked trails, only guidelines about where not to step. Jeremy and I got to the top of the mountain but really did not how to get back down. We spent an hour climbing up the mountain and goofing off and two hours trying to get back down. Getting up there was easy and we went down another way. I had not seen my friend in a few years and I think this was a trust building activity. “If fatty will follow me down the mountain, he will follow me anywhere.” After making some small jumps and one twelve foot jump, and scampering down one side of the mountain to realize we could not get down that way and going back up and around we made it down the mountain. I loved it – doing out door activities and getting lost doing it was what we did when we were kids so doing it as adults was even more fun. Someone with a degree in Geography (being me) should be able to read a map.

Photo: Saint Elizabeth Hecht Mission in El Paso We also followed the El Paso Mission Trail – owing to my morbid religiosity – and drove through an Indian Reservation. I was disappointed because it was essentially a gated community. I was expecting something other than a carbon copy of my neighborhood. We went to the Mission Trail Museum and then to the Border Patrol Museum – both were free and interesting. I am always interested in ‘free.’ They had a robot, which had no purpose but thankfully, it was armed with a gun.

After eating dinner, Jeremy took his girlfriend and me up on this tram to the top of the Franklin Mountains. It was windy and the tram was buffeted about by the wind, I was not really that bothered until I noticed that stoic Jeremy was bothered by it, too. Then, when Jeremy asked the operator to give us the spiel about the tram that he paid for the operator said, “I can’t, I have to watch the cables so we don’t have an accident.” I was ready to get out of the car at that point.

Photo: The Franklin Mountains: a view from the top. It was wicked windy up on the mountain and there was a great deal of dust so you could not see as much as you might have been able to on a clearer day and then the park attendants did not let us stay up there for the sunset. When they loaded us on the tram to go back down, one attendant had to hold it still so we climb in it at all. Jeremy’s girlfriend laughed at us for white-knuckling the bars in the longest tram ride in memory. In my own defense, I kept my eyes open the whole time and did not cry. I hate heights and said that if I were to die on this trip I wanted to fall of a mountain, dehydrate in the desert or be eaten by a large, wild animal. A tram accident would be weak and insufficiently tragic.

Photo: even missles come with instructions The next day we went to White Sands Missile Range Museum, another free one, and then walked around their missile park/display. They had a restored V2 Rocket, the kind Hitler dumped on London, which I thought was the coolest thing there. They had a ton of missiles, history, and Darth Vader’s head. This was on the way to White Sands National Park.

Photo: Jeremy sledding at White Sands
On Sunday, we were lost in Hueco Tanks. We were never really in any danger because the mountain is tall but it was not as if we could not have used landmarks to find out way back to the car. After skipping the orientation video for White Sands, we promptly got lost in the endless white dunes. We went sledding down some of the dunes but where it was packed down, it was not steep enough and where it was steep, it was too loose. It was fun while the sand was cool but as the day got later and the sun got higher, the sand started to heat up.

Photo: the endless gypsum dunes of White Sands
We ditched the sleds and just hiked the dunes for a while and headed back to the car. This is where we got lost. We had intended to stay in a straight line and just walk up and down the dunes in a westerly direction. On our way back, we could not see the sleds we had propped up to give us a beacon and had to trust our own sense of direction to bring us back to the car. Also, it worked out better to climb some dunes from the side and others head-on, putting us off course. Everything looks the same on the dunes and there are bathrooms and picnic areas in some of the valleys but they all look alike. We did eventually find the car after Jeremy split us up, he sent me up one dune, and he went up another. Using hand signals to communicate he sent me up another dune after the first one did not pan out for either of us and I saw the car.

Photo: the dot is Jeremy I made what I assumed was the appropriate signal to him, turned around again to verify that it was indeed his car, and when I turned back to face him three dunes away he was gone. I panicked. I have lived in the mountains and the desert before; I realize how dangerous it can be. I thought I had given him the wrong signal and he had done something else or went to another part of the desert. I did not know if I should head toward where he was or stay put. I decided that whatever he was doing that I should stay up where I could see. I am not stupid but I know that sometimes I have to trust other people and their skill sets, this is not my skill set.

Photo: There he is! He had gotten my signal but he also saw his sleds, someone had knocked them over and he went to grab them. I had missed his signal on that. I was looking in the wrong direction, scanning the area for him when he bounded into view. He was running up and down everything the whole weekend. I was not used to the heat or altitude – I was lagging behind the entire time. It was embarrassing, but as usual, Jeremy was gracious and pretended not to notice.

Photo: Jeremy to Chris, "Don't put that in your mouth! I learned another important lesson that day: do not put sun block on your forehead. I have had eight sunburns this summer but did not get any the three days I was in the desert because Jeremy was on top of the issue. However, he keeps forgetting I am idiot and let me put sunblock on my forehead. This is not unlike telling your kid not to touch the stove, I had to learn on my own. When we got in the car I took off my hat, the sweat rolled of my considerable forehead, through the formerly waterproof sun block into my eyes. I thought I was dying, I could not see anything, and we only had Gatorade that I was more interested in drinking than pouring in my eyes (especially in Jeremy’s car). Eventually, it passed but I thought I was going to be blind. The parking is excellent when you are blind but they never let you drive.

Photo: I like my beer like I like my friends: there. That afternoon we watched a movie because what we wanted to do ended up being closed, I forget exactly what. For dinner, we went to a local microbrewery where you could taste all seven of their beers for $1.75. I have a friend who reviews beers and I think that has to be the coolest job in the world. Beer is an excellent thing, Benjamin Franklin said that beer was proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Emily took me wine tasting and I pretend to know what was going on but I did know what was up with the beer. That night we made a fire in Jeremy's back yard (we were sober) after frightening his girlfriend with our wood chopping skills and had another beer. This beer was special because we were drinking with my friend’s parents instead of sneaking the beer.

The Aztec Caves: Franklin Mountains State Park The last full day I was there, we hiked up the Franklin Mountains. First, we went to the Aztec Caves which was cool, we forgot to bring the turban and camouflage coat so I could make Osama video for Alex Vance. The funny thing about this hike was that a squirrel was running around in the bushes but the rustling sounded like a rattlesnake – this kept spooking us. Finally, we saw that it was a squirrel and I wished Jeremy had brought his gun (it being Texas and all) to take out the squirrel. We saw a lot of different lizards as well. Yes, Napoleon, the chickens had large talons.

Photo: Jeremy in the Aztec Cave This was the first and only mountain I nearly fell off, this is an accomplishment because I trip over nothing in my classroom and apartment and fall down often. The caves had paintings (which did not stand up to photography) and a spectacular view –which did. Getting down this mountain was harder than getting up because it was so steep. It was worse than getting down Hueco Tanks. Then we did hear an actual animal and had to get out of the valley we were in quickly, I am surprised that I can run when I have to. You do not want the animals, again only a squirrel, to get the drop on you. The low ground is always dangerous.

Photo: Mount Franklin (I think) Then, we climbed Mount Franklin, which is over seven thousand feet. This was the hardest mountain to climb because the path consisted of medium rocks. Those rocks were hard to walk on and were murder on our ankles. The view was spectacular; from one side of the mountain you can see the western third of El Paso and the eastern third from the other. We could also see Jeremy’s house from there. We were feeling big about ourselves after this hike because it was our first time not being lost. On the climb down however we thought we took a wrong turn because we could not see our trail and then climbed all the way back up the mountain to realize that we did not miss our turn, it was just hard to see. Stealth bombers flew overhead, which was neat but the pictures did not come out. Rain clouds and lightening started so we had to run part of the way back down.

Photo: North El Paso from the top of the Mountain Once down the mountain we got more water (I had again, drank all my Gatorade and water too soon) and smelling like we had just climbed six thousand and seven thousand foot mountains went to P.F. Chang for lunch. Fat boy (me) is a sucker for Chinese Food and since we could not smell ourselves, we figured it was okay. You could tell the waiter could smell us and he was not impressed that we looked and smelled as if we had been mountain climbing or hiking that day. We each drank five or six glasses of ice tea and solicited a lot of crazy looks as everyone else dressed up for lunch at PF Chang, we were not appropriate for Wendy’s. One thing I will always admire about Jeremy is the juxtaposition of perfect manners and zero pretension. I, on the other hand, have zero manners and perfect pretension. It was uncomfortable at first to be dirty like that in public, but after a while it was fun. And really, I couldn't smell me.

Photo: I don't know if they are aligators or crockodiles - I didn't get that close. We then drove around El Paso, engaged in the drive-by tourism that Mary and I have perfected in the North East. It was raining. It rains six days a year in El Paso and it would rain while I was on vacation. We saw people who had made solar cars to race frantically getting them back into garages, passed Dubya’s favorite burger place and several absurd statues. Jeremy is also more genius than even I am, he had the idea that since we did not want to park that I would jump out of the car, run through the square and snap the pictures and then run to the other side where he would be with the car. Unfortunately, when we did this I tried to get into the wrong car at first. I felt like an idiot but the person who owned that car was probably more frightened than I felt stupid. I did not tell Jeremy I did that because I did not want the brakes put on the drive-by tourism.

Photo: Jeremy's backyard That night we hiked the trails behind his house, had dinner at his house with his parents and watched television – which was a nice rest because I was run ragged. Jeremy could climb Mount Everest before breakfast but I am not as fit or acclimated to his climate and altitude (yet). He is also smarter than I am – figuring out the features on my computer and camera that had eluded me for years in a matter of seconds, “It’s THAT button, stupid!” Without him, these pictures would be seriously terrible but even with all his genius he could not get a good picture of me so those aren't posted. I am not sure God could do it, either. I won't hold it against him.

I drove back from Texas yesterday, I would still be there, but Jeremy has a ‘job’ and ‘responsibilities’ – which Kipp and I submit are disgusting – and so I had to come back to Colorado. I almost feel asleep at the wheel while driving back to Colorado, which would have been weak considering I survived getting lost on two mountains, an attack squirrel, getting lost in the desert and managed not to insight anyone’s anger into killing me. I tried, Kipp, I tried.

This was the best vacation I have had in years, even trumping my trip to Italy Junior year. The best part was seeing my friend because I do not have many friends from childhood since we moved around so much, and Jeremy really is the most decent and fun person I know. Also, he does not think I am funny and thinking I am funny and friends who concur (Kipp) gets me in more trouble that it is worth sometimes. Its nice to have such a great friend and one who takes me seriously. I cannot wait to see him again but I am sure he is enjoying the break from having me underfoot for four days.

Comments

[Margaret]

I would love to go to New Mexico although I am NOT as adventurous as you are. You had your guide, Jeremy, and probably between the two of you have 1000 times more sense of direction than I. I loved the photos and great memories of your trip. (I am scared of heights too though so I wouldn't have done well on that mountain!)

[golfwidow]

I want that beer thingie.

(Reviewing beer would be a great job if I could get paid for it.)

[Alex Vance]

Turban Oasis?

I can't believe they let you on a missle range.

[Kellbelle]

New Mexico rocks! We go skiing there every winter and love it. Sorry you couldn't make it through Dallas. It would have been great to meet up with you.

[liz]

Sounds like a marvelous time. Great pictures too! And how nice, they named a mission after me. Glad you made it out of the dunes, it would have been a shame to have lost you :)

[Mary]

Looks like a blast! More fun than walking 100 blocks in NYC! :-) I'm glad you had a good time with your friend, I'm busy spending time with my childhood friends this week too.

[Summer Gale]

Wow! What a cool trip! I want to see White Sands now!

[Suburban Island]

Wow. What a great travel enty. I really enjoyed your photos and I got scared for you in the sand dunes. I'd have probably never found my way home. That is not Suburban Island landscape! Drive by tourism is fantastic.

[Sommer]

you were outside way longer than I could ever stand, and that's why I keep my nice pastey complexion and fat cells...

[Amber-san]

San,
Beer is a great thing! Beers is our friend! I especially like the pic of the beer tasting holder display! Where can I buy one of those? You know there are 6 foods on the pyramid and beers is one of them. Me likes the beers. (all writing this while completely sober). Rock out with your **** out! I miss thee, San!