Category: Journal

Our honeymoon “plan” was to pick a couple of must-see places and make a list of nearby spots that might be fun and just kind of wing it. That being the case, we were bound to have a day which didn’t work out as swimmingly as the rest. Today was that day. We did have a nice room service breakfast at the Camino Real and I’m pretty sure I drank all of the coffee in the joint, and we poked around downtown El Paso a little more. El Paso, like San Antonio, is a town that seems to have missed out on the glory days of the eighties. That’s a good thing as most of the old 1920’s and 1930’s architecture remains somewhat intact. The central post office, for example, was a magnificent example of the era. It had a stained-glass domed ceiling, tiled floors with mosaics of famous stamps, rows and rows of old post office boxes, and none of those annoying self-service stations which always seem to take longer than standing in the line. We hit the road fairly early as we had three hours of driving as well as a time zone switch ahead of us. I-10 isn’t the most scenic route by any stretch of the imagination, but at least we made good time even with having to stop at a border patrol check point. There were some lovely mountains, but they were all not only south of the road, but south of the U.S. border as well, so we had to admire them from afar. We got in to Ft. Davis to find our hotel, a combination soda shop, cafe, gift shop, and B&B, closed for the sabbath. Fortunately, the clerk at the hotel next door (a significant chunk of Ft. Davis’ commerce comes in the form of lodging) told us she’d heard that our innkeepers often left keys in the mailbox on the side of the building, and so they did. It was a little surreal entering a closed soda shop from the side door. The store was literally across the stair rail from the stairs up to the rooms. Pictured: Exactly what I just described. We were struck by how cute and touristy Ft. Davis when we drove through on the way up to Balmorhea, but we hadn’t really paid attention to just how little there was there. So, we decided to pop down to Marfa for dinner. We tried the pizza. The pizza wasn’t particularly good. We drove back to Ft. Davis. On the plus side, there’s a neat little organic-ish grocer called the Stone Village Market which had a nice selection and a very laid-back vibe that was missing from what little we’d seen of Ft. Davis. The market is part of a “tourist camp” and it’s likely where we’ll stay should we decide to stay in Ft. Davis again. Which, to be honest, we probably won’t, but never say never, right? Once we got over the weirdness of being the only people in the building, the room is perfectly adequate. There’s a nice view (see the banner image), it’s a historic building with heavy wooden beam floors, and the bathroom is quite nice. It smells a little funky, but the windows open, so there’s that. Decent bed, slept well, ready to move on. -RK

Back in Texas but still on Mountain Time, we’re taking a much-needed R&R night at a proper hotel, the Camino Real in downtown El Paso. We got up early this morning in Alamogordo to catch the sunrise at the White Sands national monument…and then promptly went back to bed for a little more sleep. It turns out the sun comes up very early indeed on the eastern edge of a time zone. We didn’t get to the park until around 8:00, which was still early enough that it was very chilly out on the dunes. (Black and) White Sands. There’s not a ton to see, but what there is is worth the trip. The sand is, as you can probably imagine, marvelous to look at and to feel against your feet. The strange thing was how the whole area smelled faintly of vanilla or something very much like it. It was the smell that dryer sheets try to impart to clothes but never properly achieve. There are only two things to watch out for: Rattlesnakes and missile strikes. There are some rattlesnakes out there, and, since this area is also a missile testing site, you may be diverted from the park due to missile testing. Above: World’s largest pistachio with one beautiful bride. After the sands, we headed back to the north end of town to see McGinn’s Pistachio Tree Ranch, home of the worlds largest pistachio! It was exactly the sort of roadside attraction we hoped to see more of. Did we get t-shirts, post cards, refrigerator magnets, and, of course, pistachio’s? How could we not? Apparently, these nuts only grow in California and in one tiny stretch of land just north of Alamogordo in New Mexico. I have no clue if these were especially good pistachios, but that’s not the point. The staff working there seemed to be having a good time, the tourists were enjoying it, and even the children seemed to, at the very least, be tolerant of their parents’ weird choices in entertainment. If you’re in the Alamogordo area, do take the time to check this out. Be aware, there: There are two pistachio orchards. McGinn’s is the one you want. To make it even more complicated, there are two McGinn’s shops. Eschew the one on Highway 82 as it is an inferior outpost, and hit the much larger on on Highways 54/70. From there, we turned south and headed to El Paso and made it just in time for lunch. We stopped off at a Target for some reprovisioning and then checked the various food review sites to see where we should have lunch. As luck would have it, one of the top picks was in the same parking lot: Taco Tote. Taco Tote is a Juarez-based chain that has made its way into the U.S., but not to where we live, which is a darned shame. Taco Tote would take over most towns I’ve visited in a matter of months if they were to expand. The pastor taco plate and an unknown, very potent, red salsa which I will have dreams about. We both ate far more than we intended to, so we checked into our hotel a little early for a nap. I don’t remember who told me that the Camino Real was the best value in hotels, but whoever they were, I owe them. Or rather, I owe Nicole since she sussed this one out on her own. We’re in a giant room, a little old, but very clean and comfortable, and we’re paying $80 for a night which seems criminally low. Come sundown, we were still full, so we decided to wander around downtown a little bit. San Jacinto Plaza is a lovely public space, the kind of thing that serves no purpose beyond making the city prettier and more pleasant to be in. We got to see a street food festival, some little shops, and after a gallon or so of coffee to help my digestion, we were finally ready for some dinner. We didn’t want to get back in the car, so we picked Tabla, a hipster-ish tapas by way of northern Mexico joint a couple of blocks from the hotel. The only thing that was traditional was the classical guitar player (who was excellent): We tried a baked goat cheese plate, a pear salad, pork pinchos, a mushroom tart, and the paella. They were all good, but the pinchos were, for me, the standout. I’d go back, but I’d probably skip the paella, which was unusually heavy on octopus tentacle. The tentacle was well grilled and tasty, but it turns out I can only eat so much octopus. Come to think of it, I may never eat again. -RK

Nicole is driving so I’m writing this on my phone. Expect typos aplenty. Also, if you’re following along, I’m posting these a day late so this post is for Thursday the 27th. Only three days in to the honeymoon and time is starting to get a little weird. It feels like we’ve been on the road for a week now but I’m pretty sure it’s only been three days.  We’re in mountain time now which only adds to the effect. The first leg of today’s trip was from Balmorhea up to Carlsbad, New Mexico. If you’ve ever driven the Texas panhandle, you know what it looked like: Flat, featureless, unpopulated, and very, very quiet. We bypassed the caverns looking and went straight in to town in time for lunch. Mi Casita had the right look, so we popped in from since excellent green chile enchiladas and queso. This was a very old school joint, with those school plates that make you think of elementary school. Very satisfying. From Carlsbad, we headed out on 82 toward Alamogordo by way of Cloudcroft. This is a drive I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s a gradual climb up the east slope as the cacti gradually give way to evergreens. Before you know it, you’re 8,600 feet above sea level in Cloudcroft. The descent into Alamogordo, on the other hand, is anything but gentle. It’s a step drop through crags and canyons, sloughing of four thousand feet in fifteen miles. If yesterday reminded me of the Scottish highlands, this was coming down West slope of the rockies.  Alamogordo was the biggest city we’d been so far, but out essentially shut down at six except for the Starbucks ( which was inside the Albertson’s), so we decided just get a place to stay and grab a bite. Word to the wise: Avoid the Satellite Inn in Alamogordo.  We thought it’s be fun to stay at a small local motel. We were mistaken.  the Satellite is the reason why the boring hotel chains were able to take over. Dirty, smelly, and skeevy, with no charm to make up for it. We made a very easy call to abandon it and hit up the clean, pleasant, dull Day’s Inn. While the lodging was nothing special, dinner was spectacular. We hit up Rockin BK’s Burgers because the Yelp photos looked so good. The pictures not lie. I had  double burger with bacon and green chile and it was as good I’d imagined. The beef patty (formerly “thing party” because autocorrect) had good char on and the bacon was crispy and fresh,  let’s talk about those chiles. They were freshly roasted and flavorful in way you can’t get most of time   Oh and did I mention green chile cheese fries? Tomorrow, it’s of to White Sands, the world’s largest pistachio, and the the West Texas town of El Paso.  -RK

If you read the last post, you know that it was my most sincere desire to avoid having to do work things on this vacation. That lasted about 24 hours. This morning, I was greeted by a message indicating that something only I had to be involved in was “our highest priority.” Bother. There wasn’t much I could do about it in the morning beyond make some phone calls, so we had a nice chill breakfast at Marfa Burrito (free coffee appears to be the norm in Marfa, making it an even more attractive destination). Before leaving town, we hit up The Chinati Foundation, home to Donald Judd’s aluminum and concrete art-things. The aluminum structures were 100 identically sized milled one-ton aluminum boxes with a wide variety of internal angles. It’s hard to describe, and even harder to describe engagingly. I was skeptical, but it turned out to be a hell of an exhibit. If you’re ever nearby, it’s worth the time. After that, we hit the road north towards Ft. Davis to check out the McDonald observatory and do some sightseeing. I managed to turn off on a what was supposed to have been a scenic wildlife viewing area. It was scenic, but surprisingly devoid of wildlife. After that half hour detour, we made it to Ft. Davis, which was lively and quaint-in-a-good-way. In most of Texas, the small towns are in trouble so it’s nice to see places like Marfa and Ft. Davis don’t feel as though they’re one generation from being ghost towns. The drive up to the McDonald observatory is gorgeous, but it’s slow going and, frankly, we were a little exhausted by the time we got there. The fact that we were at 6,800 feet above sea level may have contributed. If you don’t have several hours to tour the telescopes or stick around for the star parties, it’s probably not really worth it, but, heck, it was still a pretty drive. The real standout was the drive up highway 17 from Ft. Davis to Balmorhea. I don’t have any good photos from that stretch, but imagine the Scottish highlands with less water and more yucca and you’re not far from the truth. It’s a high plain dotted with mountains, mesas, crags, and the occasional canyon carved by little spring-fed creeks. It was absolutely stunning and I’ve never heard anyone talk about this stretch of road. I wasn’t kidding about the canals.   We very nearly drove right by our destination, Balmorhea State Park. It’s a tiny place, but it’s a unique one. The park is built atop cold springs which feed a deep basin, a swimming pool, canals which run throughout the park, and a couple of desert wetlands areas. It is an oasis in the most literal meaning of the word, and as such, it’s teeming with wildlife. There are turtles everywhere and some unique catfish (which we are under orders not to feed), waterfowl, butterflies, and pretty much everything that’s in the desert and really wishes it wasn’t. He is unaware of the restriction against feeding. There’s a motel on the grounds and, for less than hundred bucks a night, you can get a room with a king sized bed. It’s very old-school motor lodge, but it’s clean and comfortable. We decided to grill burgers, a plan which would take some doing as we had no cooking gear at all, let alone burgers. We headed up through the town of Balmorhea and decided we’d try to find a bigger town to do our shopping. There aren’t a lot of bigger towns in this neck of the woods. We wound up on the interstate pointed back to Ft. Stockton. Nicole had the genius idea to walk into a hotel like I owned the place and make use of their business center to take care of my work stuff, which I did, and while it was worth the half hour to get that off my mind, I hated doing that to Nicole. After that, we grabbed some ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, relish, cheese, charcoal, plates, a knife, a tiny spatula, and various other things and headed back to have some very expensive, but very delicious camp grilled burgers. The best part may have been the last: The stars out here are like nothing I’ve seen in decades. At home, I can see the sun, the moon, a few planets, and maybe a few of the brighter stars. Here? Not only can I see more stars than I could count in a lifetime, but I can see the milky way more clearly than I’ve ever seen it before. Something shimmering and white…this photo was taken using a 30 second exposure and 450 ISO on my cell phone because the future is amazing. -RK  

I’m writing these updates in LibreOffice because we don’t have anything close to an internet connection out here. The lack of connectivity is a feature, not a bug. I hope to have some photos to add by the time I post this. We’ll see. Note: We found some stray WiFi on day 2, so I’m going to go ahead and put this up. We waited a couple of days before embarking on our road trip honeymoon just to recharge the batteries a little as we had a long day planned for the initial day of the vacation. The longest drive of the trip, six hours, through some of the least-populated areas in these United States brought us to the sleepy little burg of Marfa, Texas. It’s been nearly forty years since I’ve been I’ve been here and I’d be lying if I said I remembered the place at all, but I’d wager that its changed a little over the last few decades. We’re staying at El Cosmico tonight and, at the risk of overselling it, it’s perfect. It’s not a hotel or motel so much as a fancy campground. We’re staying in one of the reconditioned trailers, but they also have safari tents, tepees, and yurts. They have hammock groves in several areas of the spacious grounds, as well as fire-heated hot tubs, live old-school country music or deejays spinning the same, and just the most chill vibe I’ve ever experienced when traveling. We’d pack up and move here if we could. We can’t, and, of course, the chill vibe is enhanced by the fact that we have no Wifi and we’re on the roamiest of roaming. That could present a problem in the long term. In the short term, though, we had a good enough time that we’ll be coming back for the last night of our honeymoon. The food options after dark seem to be limited, but they’re impressive. We ate at Stellina tonight and it was immaculate. I don’t normally care for communal seating, but it works here, in large part because they don’t pack everyone together. That seems to be a hallmark of Marfa; there’s enough space that businesses don’t seem compelled to maximize the profit from every square inch. Anyway, the food was terrific. The chickpea fritters were the highlight, but it was all good and I’m a sucker for house made pasta any day of the week. We’re back at the trailer now, and it’s dead silent outside and I feel more relaxed than I have in months. It’s the kind of day that makes a guy re-think his priorities. If this is what makes life so great (and it is), then what I am doing spending all my time doing that? Damn fine question, isn’t it? Nicole is brilliant. This was her idea. This is the most “us” place we possibly could have gone for our honeymoon. I love this part of the country. We’re on a high plateau in the desert, 4,800 or so feet, shooting stars everywhere, mountains in the distance, and absolutely no way to contact my office. Our honeymoon couldn’t have started any better. -RK  

…but coming down with a stomach bug less than a week from your wedding is the very definition of “sub-optimal.” On the plus side, while searching the British Library’s archives for images for “doctor” images, I came across a character I’d never heard of but who has one of the best grammar-related super villain names ever: Doctor Syntax! Maybe “super” villain was a stretch… Dr. Syntax was the most-famous creation of William Combe, a former adventurer turned debtor turned satirist. Syntax was a riff on William Gilpin, one of the founders of the picturesque, and as easy a target for satire as one could hope to encounter. I’m sure that to his contemporaries, Combe’s efforts were scathing and, if not hilarious, then at least worthy of a knowing chuckle or two, but from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, “the picturesque” seems an awful narrow scope for satire. It would be like Weird Al doing an entire album making fun of nerdcore. It feels like the joke would get old pretty quick, but Combe produced three volumes of Dr. Syntax. That’d be a great niche, wouldn’t it? Satirizing something really obscure and technical would be, one would think, a pretty sweet deal. You’re not going to have a lot of competition, and so long as you don’t Big Bang Theory it and show no interest in actually understanding the thing you’re spoofing, the chances of success, albeit of a limited variety, seem pretty high. Anyway, yes, I’ve been running a fever and I’m not thinking straight. Why do you ask? I’m off to bed to not sleep and to roll over, ninety degrees, every fifteen minutes. -RK                                                                                                                            

Me at my clickbaitiest! I wasn’t always the financially insecure middle class titan of industry I am now, dining at only the fanciest of counter serve restaurants; I was once a college student. I had to come up with strategies which would allow me to eat and still, well, honestly, eating was about all I had the money for. Some of the recipes haven’t aged very well: Boiling the cheapest pasta they had at the Sack ‘n Save, pouring out the water, pouring generic sauce on to it in the still-warm pot to save having to wash two pots, and then eating it from the pot? Not one of my best. These, however, I still use, some more than others. How to make cheap microwave popcorn palatable: I’ll start with an old one but it’s a good one: Sriracha on popcorn.  If you’ve ever worked in an office, you know that popcorn is contagious. When one person microwaves up a bag of it, pretty soon, everyone is eating popcorn. A co-worker of mine used to but some vinegar-based pepper sauce on his popcorn to make it taste like something other than a slightly more flavorful rice cake. It was delicious, but there was one major drawback: Liquids melt popcorn. It tasted great, but it quickly devolved into a sticky mess. Sriracha does not melt popcorn. You can microwave up a batch, squirt some sriracha in to the bag, shake it up, and serve. Does it taste good with butter? Of course it does. Sriracha and butter are two of the things that taste good with everything, so of course they taste good together. I know that sriracha is in danger of overexposure these days, but this is one venue where it continues to shine. It will make you crave popcorn again. How to make cheap, filling peanut M&M’s even more delicious: As a youngster, I was a purist and eschewed peanut M&M’s in favor of their nut-free cousins. Sometimes being a purist is just stubbornness in disguise, or at least that’s what it was for me with these candies. The balance between the chocolate, the peanut, and the candy shell is sublime. But…they could be better, couldn’t they? The elements are right, but they don’t really mesh. What if you could somehow melt the chocolate without disturbing the candy shell, making a miniature treat related to the s’more family? You can! Microwaves get a lot of grief for not being useful for “real” cooking, but one thing they do well is heat things from the center. That quirk is super useful for M&M’s. A short burst (usually 30 seconds, but every microwave is different) will heat the peanut in the center, which will melt the chocolate, and the shell remains undisturbed. Once you’ve had them this way, you’ll never go back. Unless you do. I didn’t. How to eat ramen every day and not die of salt poisoning: Oh ramen! Is there anyone who didn’t have to live on nothing but those 12-for-a-dollar packets at some point in their life? They’re hard to beat in terms of value, but man, they’re just a little salty, aren’t they? During a particularly difficult financial period, I ate so many meals of nothing but ramen that I seriously considered eating cardboard instead because my stomach turned at the thought of more salt. In order to keep enjoying ramen, I had to figure out a different way to prepare it. The first step is obvious: Take the flavor packet and throw it in the trash. Seriously, it’s just nasty. The good thing about this step is that it allows you to buy whichever flavor is on sale since you’re not using the flavor packet anyway. With that out of the way, you’re left with an 8 cent packet for noodles. Boil those suckers up and use a little bit of decent bouillon instead. I use the Better Than Bouillon organic chicken, which is expensive, but it goes a very long way. When I’m boiling the noodles, I add in some chopped carrots, mushrooms, green onions, and celery. You don’t need very much of the vegetables unless you like mushrooms as much as I do. If you’re feeling really fancy, you can even add some rare roast beef, sliced extremely thinly, at the very end. Without the beef, it costs about fifty cents a bowl to do ramen this way, and it’s something I can eat for much longer periods of time if I need to. -RK

Here’s another one of those things to file under “Wow, that makes me feel old”: The first Gorillaz album is 18 years old now. I caught myself doing a section of Russel’s/The spirit possessing Russel’s/Del’s rap from Clint Eastwood* and thought I’d give the whole record another listen.  Even though some of it sounds like “Unfinished Damon Albarn Demo #1”, it holds up remarkably well both musically and conceptually. In fact, the Gorillaz discography is stronger than I’d originally given it/them/? credit for. The video for Dare, featuring the disembodied head of Shaun Ryder, never fails to delight. I originally figured that Gorillaz were a one-off lark, something for Albarn to do between Blur albums, but I missed the mark pretty badly on that one, and I’m glad to have been wrong. One of the more interesting things about Gorillaz is that they’re a virtual band in the best since of the world. David Bowie was the king of creating characters to inhabit and then discard when they weren’t interesting to him anymore. Bowie never really gave the Spiders From Mars any life of their own, though. The Jamie Hewlett-drawn members of Gorillaz are all equally fleshed out, and, as they are “virtual,” they can exist in any medium and can be worn like a suit by different people at different times. Check out this interview with Russel in PUSS PUSS magazine, an upscale English cat and fashion magazine. Here’s a taste if you don’t feel like clicking the link: Now Gorillaz are all living in one place again, can we expect a new album and if so what are you most excited about?You can expect whatever you like. What is coming will come, whether you expect it or not. Do you like cats? If so what’s your favourite breed and why?I love cats. They’re always the first to spot ghosts in horror movies. I should get one actually. I’m a big fan of the Devon Rex. It’s got these big eyes and pointy ears and looks a lot like an alien. And we all feel like aliens, don’t we. I’m probably stretching beyond what Hewlett and Albarn intended here, but I love the idea of artists creating characters for other people to inhabit and play around with. You wanna be Russel (or 2-D, or Noodle, or Murdoc)? Put ’em on and try ’em out.** Create your own, or borrow someone else’s, it doesn’t matter. Who you really are is as much a matter of choice as it is nature and nurture. Just because you’ve always been “you” doesn’t mean you can’t be someone else tomorrow. It’s all cosplay. All of it. You don’t have to “be who you are” when you can be who you want to be, you know? Speaking of rabbit holes, Nicole and I were talking about hurricanes the other day and she asked one of those questions that sent me scuttling off to Wikipedia and down an altogether different rabbit hole: “Do hurricanes ever hit California?” That’s the sort of thing I felt like I should have known, but I didn’t. It turns out that the answer is “Yes, but most of the time they’re just remnants.” Two tropical storms which were previously hurricanes have struck California and only one of them by direct landfall (Long Beach in 1939). While doing my hurricane homework, I came across an expression I’d never heard before: “atmospheric river.” It’s a narrow band of very high moisture, which is pretty much what I’d imagined. They’re not exactly like terrestrial rivers in the sky, but they are bands carrying huge amounts of moisture (7-15 times the mouth of the Mississippi). Image from the Cliff Mass Weather Blog. Fifty years old and I’m still that kid who learns something weird and obscure and then goes running to anyone who will listen and says, breathlessly, “Did you know….?” I hope I never outgrow it. -RK * Back when the album first came out, my friends and I spent a good deal of time debating what “sunshine in a bag” was. Obviously, we’d never seen “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly” or else we would have known that Clint Eastwood uses that phrase to describe a pouch of gold. ** After getting appropriate legal clearance, mind you.

I’m going to be very busy for most of the next month with travel, getting married, and more travel, so I wanted to get this out there. I’m always tempted to focus my attention on the presidential election, but I’m trying to break that habit this year. The national election is important, and yes, please vote in it, but it’s the local elections where a single vote might, just might make a difference. Alright, even then, one vote probably doesn’t matter but, importantly, it’s at the local level where issues like “policing” come in to focus. I’ve been in contact with the local League of Women voters and they’ve assured me that there are questions regarding community policing on their list to ask the city council candidates. The League of Women voters guide will be published here (and I’m guessing in most places) in about three weeks, and I’m going to be paying more attention to it than I ever have. I know that the presidential election is an unusually distracting one this year, but I’m asking anyone who reads this to please pay extra attention to your local races. The next president won’t have much impact on whether or not local traffic stops end in tragedy or not, but the people you help elect in your city and county elections might. -RK P.S. It’s difficult to write earnestly and interestingly at the same time. As Nicole just said, “It’s like Liz Lemon going between Irish and Jamaican.” Yes it is.