“We’re back...and better than ever...”

Getting to bed at three in the morning the previous night, we woke up and were on the road by quarter after eleven in the morning. The plan for the day was simple, if not a bit grandiose. After a good night’s rest, we would roll the dice and finish the trip off in style. All the way home, no matter what. Google Maps said 21 hours to Olds from Las Vegas, but be darned if I wouldn’t try to beat that. Climbing up into Utah we watch a massive cold front devour the mountains to our west. Maybe this wasn’t going to be easy like I had thought. The temperature drops all the way to two degrees, and the snow starts to fly in hard pellets. Snow? What is this? Aren’t we in the desert? After the last six months, I’m pretty sure weather just refers to whether you’re going to sweat more than normal, but now we’re plunged back into reality. Do we really want to come back from the sun sand and surf?

The interstates are a beautiful thing, which you can’t really begin to appreciate until you’ve experienced the plethora of speed bumps and toll booths that we’ve endured in the last couple of weeks. The ability to drive, unimpeded, for hours on end, only stopping to refuel the car or ourselves, helps to keep us driving. The kilometres count down, and the traffic begins to dwindle as the last rays of the setting sun fade into the horizon. Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana; one by one the states drop by the wayside as we churn for home. Finally we reach the Canadian border at 3:21, answer a few questions for the red-haired customs officer chewing her gum like a cow, and are officially back on Canadian soil. No time to celebrate, I need to beat the Google Maps estimate. The car rolls into Calgary at 5:55, and at 6:55 in the morning we surprise my mom in Olds. 18 hours and 40 minutes door to door. Theoretically, you could leave Vegas Sunday after lunch, and still make it into work for Monday morning. Theoretically.

Anyway, we’re just happy to be home, and exhausted to say the least. I’ll be happy to not drive for a little while, but we must get back to real world operations here. We’re homeless and unemployed. Maybe the customs official wouldn’t have let us in having known that. The next week we’ll be hopefully lining up a place to rent in Calgary and getting our jobs lined up. It’s been a fantastic trip, but all good things must come to an end, or at least go on to a new chapter. So I bid you all adieu until the next adventure.

Keep fit and have fun,
Tyler.

“Little white fluffy clouds...”

Kilometres roll away like marbles on an uneven table, dropping off into oblivion behind us. Time doesn’t really exist as the scenery slips past through the windows of the car. You try not to pay attention to distances, but instead just sit and let it happen, and slowly by slowly you begin to get closer to your destination. The landscape itself is surreal, like a cartoon, or a painted Hollywood set. I keep expecting the car to smash into a hidden rock wall behind the scenery painted by a troublesome road runner, having passed a couple of dead coyotes already. Little white clouds shaped like soft cotton balls litter the cornflower-blue sky as though produced by some celestial conveyor belt in the distance, while dust devils twirl up amongst the dry sage and cactus. A swarm of grasshoppers make good on a suicide pact and emerge from behind a bush en masse into the windshield of our car.

Twenty hours in a car does strange things to one’s mind. Like a sparrow, guided by the stars, there is a deep yearning to return home, so we press on for as long as it takes towards the bright lights of Las Vegas. Over a thousand kilometres pass before we even reach the US border, with the clock already striking 5 pm. An hour of waiting in the line of cars brings us to the first customs officer whom, after a brief look in the back seat and a couple of questions meant to tease apart any inconsistencies with your recent history, allows us into his country, only to be stopped by the next group of officers for a more thorough investigation. “You’re from Canada? That figures.” What’s that supposed to mean? Partially confused, but relieved to be back on our way, we get into the car and head towards Phoenix, eleven hours in, and only a convenient 666 kilometres left until the city of sin. No jokes, I Google Mapped it.

In between Tucson and Phoenix we’re treated to one of the best sunsets of the entire trip, a nice consolation to hold us over for the next six or seven hours in the car. Pictures taken throughout that day at 80 mph make for some interesting compositions and results. No time to stop and enjoy. My sit bones, as the hippy yoga folk would say, are sore from the extensive drive, and I begin to get creative with some squeezing manoeuvres to keep the blood flowing. I don’t want any driving sores at the end of this trip. The GPS makes itself useful once again as apparently it recognizes roads only on the north side of the border we have just crossed, so traipsing through Phoenix is hassle-free. Now as we head through the desert in the quiet dark the eerie white glow of the headlights briefly illuminate the ghosts of Joshua Trees lining the highway then disappear into the darkness as we pass. You can’t help but wonder what else is out there in the darkness, amongst the trees. How many holes have been dug by the likes of Joe Pesci and Bobby DeNiro. Probably best not to linger. Getting closer now we arrive at Hoover Dam, likely more impressive in the daylight. A brief police check stop yields some wisecracks about the lack of waves in Arizona when they see the surfboards atop the car. The dam itself looks more like some nuclear weapons facility at the height of the cold war. I almost expect to see Russian planes dive in and obliterate the massive concrete walls and pillars strewn about everywhere you look.

We climb atop the last hill separating us from our destination, and the entire city opens up in the valley before us. The lights far down below spread out like a spider web atop the dark emptiness of the desert. Driving along the main strip, the bright lcd screens and flashing lights launch a full assault on the senses, overwhelming any capacity to take any of it in. After all, we have just come from places where it’s not uncommon to go without electricity, or running water for a few days, where you can’t even flush your toilet paper in the toilet. My mind recoils in horror at the sudden overload of visual stimuli. This is far too much to comprehend after 19 hours on the road. We turn around and begin to look for a hotel. I talk Denielle out of the $26 dollar free stabbing at breakfast in the heart of downtown, and we opt for a classier domicile on the north end towards the highway to Salt Lake City, and finally we get to bed after a full 20 hours in the car, only to wake up and do the marathon all over again.

Tyler.

“Escape from Mazatlan...”

The effect of gravity near a black hole is so strong that not even light is able to escape, hence the “black” part of the “black hole”. That’s how I was beginning to feel about Mazatlan today, that we would never be able to escape its gravitational pull. Or perhaps on a less astrophysical sense, one could think of the Eagle’s song, Hotel California, where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. After all, in an eerie coincidence, we checked out of Hotel Mazatlan in the morning, as we had a car appointment at the Toyota dealership to get our headlight put in, so we dropped the car off just before nine in the morning and were soon told that the original time of 10:30 was now 11:30, so we went down to walk the malecon, the boardwalk along the oceanfront, in its entirety and back again.

Upon returning to the Toyota dealership, 11:30 soon became noon before we were told that they could not put the headlight in because whoever had fixed the car previously had done a poor job and nothing would line up. I began to laugh when they offered that we should go back to where we had the work done and have it fixed properly. They joined in on the joke when I explained to them that the work was done in Honduras, and I would rather crash through the US border fence at top speed loaded down with contraband than go back to Honduras. So then they offered they could fix it, but it may take a while. They asked when we were leaving, so as always I told them that we were going all the way back to Canada today. Awkward looks and silence was exchanged, followed by some rapid Spanish on their behalf, and then a quote of 5 hours and 1,500 pesos was placed on the table. Deal. So Denielle and I enjoyed another day burning on the beach amongst a number of potato people (picture Mr. Potato Head, that is to say, people who are really short and fat such that seated on a normal chair with their back against said chair, their feet would fail to reach the ground, and would most likely roll with ease down a hill).

Optimistically we returned to the dealership at quarter after four, hoping that the car may be done early, ha, so we could drive for a few hours towards the border. Four became five, and five became six, and finally after almost losing my mind from watching Spanish Animal Planet and all the female employees dressed as children for National Children’s Day, our car was delivered at 6:30. We signed the papers and hit the road, making a run against the setting sun. I cautiously manoeuvred the streets exiting Mazatlan, knowing our luck with the city would leave us with some incident that would pull us back in towards the dirty core, never letting us go. But we managed to flee the city, and are now quite comfortably sitting in a hotel room in Culiacan, 230 kilometres away. Tomorrow will be an early start, with a destination of Las Vegas, and depending on the mood, perhaps Calgary will be the next stop after that, fuelled by Coke Zero no doubt.

Our time in Mazatlan wasn’t all bad however; it’s just hard to relax when you have already flipped the switch on to “go home” mode. But we had some relaxing days on the beach, buffing up the tans for one last time, and getting some mediocre surf under my belt. I thought I may regret not getting in the water for one last session, but now I think I regret that decision. Strong winds all day had turned my sunset surf session into a 2 to 3 foot high wind chop mess with strong ground swell pounding on my head as I feebly attempted to get out into the line up. I managed to catch 2 waves well on the inside after getting tumbled repeatedly for 20 to 30 waves in a row. Paddle, paddle, paddle, duck dive, hold on, tumble, hold breath, hold board for chance to breath, repeat 20 to 30 times. Anyway, no more surfing, just surfing the highways. May the border crossings be effortless and the highways smooth all the way home. I’m really looking forward to getting back to a regular routine where English is the first language and I don’t have to live out of a bag full of dirty clothes.

Quick update to be elaborated upon further at a later time, we made Culiacan to Las Vegas, 20 hours in the car, and are now shooting for Canada tomorrow. The race is on.

Tyler.