Day 9 Halloween Van Horn, TX to Tuscon , AZ

Chamizal National Monument, El Paso, Texas


bird man


boundary


what's he see?



tenacious d on the rent-a-car stereo

Day 8 Saginaw to Van Horn, Texas

Saturday October 30

Fort Concho - Buffalo Soldiers - Spook House - Rectal Dialators


not just for your crotch anymore!


i see you


rectal dialtors on DISPLAY - they let kids in this place!


read this very carefully


that's a pisser

In Barnhart, Texas, Zac popped into a store ( the store, apparently) and the lady behind the counter told her that she left LA at her husband's request after 9/11 to move to Barnhart, where they would be safe.

A fellow apocalypse-wary refugee...

Day 7 Thrift Town and Mimie's

Friday October 29th


thrift town!

We went to Thrift Town ,where we didn't find anything- donated some of Tops' clothes, then over to Mimie's. We used the mini-disc to record her stories. Gave her some Popeye's red beans and rice. She liked it. Ate some pecans from her tree. She gave me a shredder. We then went to d's- he showed off the deck he built. Had pizza and beer with d, Jen, and Jen's sister. Nice time.

Day 6 Saginaw, TX

Thursday October 28th

didn't do nothin'

this is a vacation, too, you know

cable tv, the cats, the dogs, the election coming up...



Wal Mart, Saginaw TX

Thanks to the liberal Texas gun laws, I couldn't buy a weapon for the coming post-apocalypse national freak out, because I'm from California. Thanks alot, Texas. You suck.

Day 5 An eclipse! Saginaw, TX

Wednesday, October 27th - Saginaw, TX

Just when I think we're overeacting, our muckracking friend Matt Drudge delivers this little gem this morning:


XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX WED OCT 27, 2004 12:42:01 ET XXXXX

ABCNEWS HOLDS TERROR WARNING TAPE

**Exclusive**

In the last week before the election, ABCNEWS is holding a videotaped message from a purported al Qaeda terrorist warning of a new attack on America, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda.

Read it here.

Is this the OCTOBER SURPRISE? What if the October Surprise is that there is no October Surprise?

We''ll be going to the Log Cabin Village and Joe T. Garcia's today. Ahh, Joe T.'s- a great place for a last meal.

Update: Toured the Fort Worth Stockyards instead of going to the Log Cabin Village.


BIlly Bob's, Stockyards, Fort Worth, TX




Did go to Joe T's though.


Joe T's

When we came out the restaurant, holy crap-for-crap! An eclipse!


Didn't I say I would freak out if there was an eclipse? If the Red Sox win the World Series, surely the Horsemen are next.

Day 4 VOTED Saginaw, TX

VOTE!!!!!!

We filled in our absentee ballots today. It felt good to vote for John Kerry from inside the State of Texas.


Dude, that's a big flag.


Where we mailed our ballots from, Saginaw, Texas.

After we voted, and drove past the new Wal-Mart here in Saginaw (Always, Low Wages!) We went to get a coffee at a new coffee shop.

Our total came to $6.66. No kidding. Zac laughed and said "Huh, the Number of the Beast."

Then we noticed the magazines (Victory!) and the music playing (Christian Soft Rock) and finally, the shelf containing:


The entire Left Behind series.

Don't get behind in your Left Behind reading! Enjoy a latte and re-read Tribulation Force (the book is better than the movie!)

Suddenly the $6.66 total didn't seem so funny- and we wondered if the proprietors might be looking at us a little differently. Did they know?

"What's the video for?"

"Oh, we just got the new camera and we're still trying to figure it out, mumble mumble mumble..."

By the way, what should we make of that total, $6.66? Sign of the apocalypse? If there's an eclipse or something, I'm going to freak out.

Day 3 The Great Big Cross- Santa Rosa, NM to Saginaw, TX

I wonder what kind of reception that thing gets?


"Can you imagine how big the Jesus would be?"

Yes, honey, I can.

This thing is just off the highway near Groom, Texas. It's part of great big Jesusy compound complete with the 12 Stations of the Cross, the tomb, replica of the Shroud of Turin, and a memorial to the unborn.


I bet this is what the bathrooms in Heaven are like.


Christ holding a fetus


Thank You, Knights of Columbus!

A stranger pointed out to me that Jesus got skinnier as the stations progressed. I was so nervous about being on the Lord's turf that I wasn't sure if he was making a sacreligious smirky joke, or a poignant observation of Christ's suffering- his rapid weight loss under the Centurion's whip.

So I didn't know how to respond. "Yeah... how about that" I said, and moved on.


Um, who's the other guy?


Leela the One-Eyed Cat tried to get in between Jesus and the Roman soldier, but I told her it was no use. Jesus had to die for our sins. She's a good Kristian Kitty.

Day 2 Meteor Crater, Arizona and the Petrified Forest-Winslow, Arizona to Santa Rosa, New Mexico

Dodging...



Meteor Crater, AZ.


At the museum, Meteor Crater AZ. In keeping with our theme.


crater



Remains of an apocalyptic event. The first thing I thought when I laid eyes on the crater was “it doesn’t look THAT big.” What’s wrong with me?

the all blonde Bush family in their cargo van- i felt a little angry with them. that's not good...

there's the remains of a crashed plane at the bottom of the crater. creepy

nobody died, though. not so creepy. again, what is wrong with me ?

Must say that the avuncular Wilfred-Brimley-Clone tour guide was, perhaps, too avuncular.

AZ-NM

Need some wood?

Petrogylph, Puerco Pueblo, Petrified Forest NP

The Puerco Pueblo ruins. Made me realize what we would miss if we DID die in a nuclear armageddon: a big crater, and a bunch of ruins.



foot

Day 1 - Oatman, Arizona after dark...

Los Angeles, CA to Winslow, AZ

Last night Brendan called, sort of out of the blue, and asked if I'd ever been to the website www.nuclearterror.org. You can enter your zip code, and the site will tell you how close you live to the nearest likely nuclear terror blast zone.

Yep, we're leaving town. Kinda creepy that Brendan would call the night before our mad dash out of TARGET LA to hep us to a site that sort of CONFIRMS OUR WORST FEARS.

Left Los Angeles, a little later that we wanted to, around noon.

Is the 15 to Vegas always just messed up? It always is when I want drive on it...

Got to Oatman, AZ after dark- everything was closed. Except for the bar at the Oatman hotel.

Had a Bud and Wild Turkey shot. The bartender was wearing her "Bikers Against Terrorism" t-shirt. Someone has kidnapped a baby burro from town.(The town is known for its’ pack of roaming burros, the descendants of the mining burros left to fend for themselves when the mines were shut down.)

From what I could tell in the dark, Oatman is an old ghost town that is now a tourist destination- lots of gift shops and such. Reminded us Mendocino. Looks like the kind of place long-haired freaky people of all different stripes end up, mingle, mate, shoot at each other, and know each other’s business.

But it was mostly shut up tight as a drum, so I didn't get to sample the Freedom Fries at the Olive Oatman Restaurant. And I didn’t get to explore all of the strangeness of a tourist trap named for a woman whose claim to fame is her unique tragedy and suffering.

We'll have to return and see the place in the daylight.

It was this time of year that we were refugees from Manhattan in 2001. Our 9/11 story involved having to drive to Texas during the no-fly period for a family emergency. We left New York and headed out into America.

Here we are now, dodging the end-times, during the heated last phases of the election. Again we're getting our news from right-wing talk radio. Somtimes I get a shudder of that feeling right after 9/11. What's next... what's next... what's next...

Escape From LA

I changed the name of the blog today- and the template.

We are actually going to try and dodge the Apocalypse.

My wife is scared that terrorists are going to strike Los Angeles before or during the election, either with suicide bombers or the big one- a nuclear weapon.

So we're going to leave town for the week before the election.

Are we nuts? I ask myself this, but then I start to think...

We were in New York on 9/11. We know terrorism happens. We saw it with our own two eyes. Out our window. We didn't suffer directly like a lot of people. But we were "terrorized." We were in a city under attack.

So if we feel like timing a well-earned vacation with an Orange-alert, who can blame us?

The crazy thing is, we're going to be in TEXAS for the week running up to the election.

Am I fucking insane? We will be staying in the home of a Fox-Watching Dittohead, too.

I AM fucking insane.

(Disclaimer: this Dittohead is otherwise a great guy. We believe he might have a brain tumor that has altered his personality.)

I will be biting my lip IN HALF in those sure-to-be intense FINAL DAYS.

Anything can happen in this election. This group of ReaganNixon-ite Jesus Freak Neo-Con Death Jockeys have BALLS. The bad kind of BALLS. Not the "Let's Roll" kind of balls, but the "I ain't showin up for my physical. What are they gonna do? My daddy's George Bush, motherfucker" kind of balls. The DUMB kind.

Sure- they'll steal it again. Actually, what ever they are going to do, they've already done. People started "early voting" today. On those touchscreen machines.

Poof. There go all the Kerry votes. (DELETED! -Strong Bad.)

We'll be going to Meteor Crater, AZ. And Oatman, AZ, named for Olive Oatman, a poor woman whose family was murdered before her eyes by Indians, was sold into slavery, and who was disfigured before returning to her people. So of course, they've named a tourist-trap roadhouse after her. (She never even lived in the area.)

And the meteor crater? Well why not- let's see the footprint of a previous apocalyptic event. The footprint left by an ENORMOUS EXPLOSION.

If we're right, and all of our friends die in LA, and we have to keep on living, in Texas, in the America that dawns after that horrific moment...

Am I fucking insane?

There And Back Again