12 Another Town, Another Wash

On the map, Lake Havasu looks like a thriving metropolitan area. Not true. Three days has been enough to show that it’s just another Redneckville, expanded by the tourist army that comes to gawk at London Bridge and then move on, perhaps wondering if anyone ever stopped before the bridge arrived.

It’s reached the point in the week where I either have to wash my clothes or buy some more and, believe me, there have been times when that was a valid choice. Not now though, so I need a laundromat.

Despite Verizon’s claims about nationwide coverage with their big red map, something happens as soon as you leave large centers of population. Google Search develops a form of insanity if it can’t find what it’s looking for. Yesterday, a simple search for coffee shops delivered an ice cream shop and a gas station but failed to find the Starbucks where I was actually sitting.

I’d prefer the thing admitted it couldn’t get a hit, or apologized that the nearest is a thousand miles away, rather than this insistence on making stuff up. This time, asking for a laundromat actually finds one – in addition to a local hospice. Technology – isn’t it wonderful?

Driving down the road, the sexy Google voice sends me to a Chevron station topped by a giant wooden sign in the shape of a pointing finger declaring “Laundromat, Gas and Deli.” I’ve decided I’m in love with Miss Google. She always gets me to where I’m going and never loses her temper when I screw up and go the wrong way. The perfect woman, really. I wish I knew her name.

The gas pumps are obvious and the car’s thirsty so I deal with that.  John Wayne’s rule number one was always look after your horse first – or was that Clint Eastwood? Someone with a gun and a mean way with words, anyway. After a circuit of the gas station there’s no sign of the laundromat, nor any further reference to it, just that giant wooden finger.

I have to break a cardinal rule and go inside to ask. It’s not fear of admitting failure, just that experience has shown 90% of people who don’t have the answer will make something up. Very Fox-News.

“It’s right there,” says a chunky brunette, pointing vaguely towards a spot where the corner of the wall meets the ceiling. “The next door around the corner.” Her attitude is one of wonderment and the tingle of irritation begins to climb up my back.

Outside again, I collect the laundry bag and follow her directions to a door covered entirely by a Mountain Dew poster but otherwise unmarked. Is this it? Why the mystery? Why is there no indication of what lies beyond? Why would someone go to these lengths to keep a normal business a secret? It can’t be an accident unless the owners are stupid. Is there a speakeasy in there? Are they distilling illicit whisky or gin?

I’m hesitant to open it and burst in on a surprised threesome having an orgy, but it’s the only door so I do. Inside there’s a spacious laundromat, complete with three large couches and a widescreen TV showing the shopping channel with the volume at a level needed by deaf people. I suppose the couches could be used for an orgy but, at the moment, there’s only an old man draped over one of them in a manner suggesting that he’s dead.

This must be the only laundromat in the whole of the country that has no change machine. In England, where anything that might contain money would be immediately stolen, that’s the norm, but not here. Laundromats, like diners, are an American way of life and generally they do them well, so this is truly surprising.

The only solution is another interaction with the deli brunette, which is also a good excuse to get some greasy food from the deli. Whilst paying for potato wedges and a fried object that might once have been meat rolled in a tortilla, I make the mistake of mentioning that a sign on the laundromat door would have been helpful. It was only a light-hearted comment but, almost imperceptibly, her shoulders rise and her eyebrows furrow like a cat about to pounce on a mouse. “Everyone knows where it is,” she says, as though I’d just insulted NASCAR. “It’s obvious.”

It’s not obvious, of course, but I have enough sense to leave it at fifteen-love. People use that word way too much, usually to describe something that only they know.

It takes half an hour for the wash and the dryer promises fifty minutes, but the TV is so mind numbingly raucous in its attempts to demonstrate merchandise not available in stores that I spend the time wandering around outside, watching the antics of drivers trying to park. It shouldn’t be hard, if they just observed courtesy and used a small percentage of brain, but that seems to be the problem.

A yellow Mustang’s diagonally across two spaces and encroaching onto a third and I watch a guy in his backwards baseball cap and sleeveless plaid shirt, cutting off a minivan to reverse his house-sized truck into a spot clearly marked by a handicap sign and blue curb markings. Is it that he didn’t read, couldn’t read or simply doesn’t give a shit? Probably the latter, but I can’t rule out at least one of the other possibilities.

After fifty minutes, I go to retrieve the clothes, which are hotter than one would expect. So hot, in fact, that I have to vigorously shake each item and then drop it back to avoid losing my fingerprints. It might be possible to cook an egg on the belt buckle and the jeans look like they’d been ridden hard and put away wet. Three tee-shirts are burned with large charred holes – but I can’t face the prospect of complaining to the brunette next door, so I mentally shrug, push everything back into the laundry bag, throw it into the car and drive away.

C’est la vie…

11 The Vehicle Method

Choosing a hotel’s easy when you’re rich or just don’t care about the expense. Choose it by the size, by the big-hair architecture, choose it by the household name or the fact that it appears at the top of all the Google searches you make for five-star hotels.

It’s not so easy when you’re on a budget, or you don’t have a credit card, if your driver’s license expired or you’re on the road for three months and simply don’t want to spend your entire budget on a week’s worth of sleep in the size of bed reserved for first weekends away with the new girlfriend.

That would be me – the one before last – although sometimes the last one’s me too. Not right now though, but that’s a different story.

Consider what you get for spending big. The lights work, it doesn’t smell like bleach, sheets aren’t over-used seconds from Walmart, the sink drains properly, wi-fi doesn’t need a prayer and $2.99, there’s a hairdryer, the towels don’t feel like cardboard, the TV gets several channels without commercials and there’s little danger of being mugged walking back from the restaurant.

It’s all good.

Not the same at the other end of the spectrum though.  All those advantages – turn ‘em around and take your chances.

I spend a lot of time on the road and the cost is down to me, so I’m averse to parting with a lot of money for a few hours’ sleep. It’s all about the trip – not the room.

So – how to avoid the worst pitfalls?

Not easy, but here’s what I do. It’s called the Vehicle Method.

If the parking lot is empty, either the place so despicable no one else can stand it or the only people there can’t afford a vehicle.

If it looks run down and cheap but there are REALLY expensive cars there – the Maserati or high-end Mercedes type – it’s a drug den.

If most vehicles are old, dirty, or wrecks and all have local license plates, it’s used by social services to house their ‘clients’.

The only acceptable state of the parking lot is a mix of vehicles, undented and clean, with a smattering of out-of-state plates.

Of course, there are other considerations – the presence of homeless wandering the premises, couples having verbal fights in the parking lot, a customer yelling at the front desk clerk – but those are no-brainers.

I like the Vehicle Method.

It’s worked so far.

10 Jack App

Despite a work interest level so low it's negative, I'm minding my own business in Starbucks in Joshua Tree, when my fingers go on automatic pilot and bring up DICE.com. I blame Microsoft for their shortcuts.

Wham!

Suddenly, as if the gods orchestrated it, the screen in front of me is filled with a fulltime position available for Jack Henry in San Diego.

San Diego? California? Sun-drenched paradise on the coast? Closest thing the mainland has to Hawaii? Good god. I’ll be there in a couple of weeks anyway. Is this coincidence – or something spooky connected to omens and the like?

No matter how tempting, anything connected with a return to work should not be rushed, so I sit back with another Americano, this time laced with an extra triple shot.

Hmm, let’s see… skillset requirements:

PL/I – check.

COBOL – check.

DB2 – check.

Desire to transition to Visual Basic and learn SQL server database design over the next few years – check, check, check oh yes indeedy, check, check.

Desire to learn? Training? Wow, oh fucking wow!

It says ‘fulltime’. Although technically meaning 40 hours per week and therefore applying equally to permanent, salaried, or any form of contract position, it’s qualified with ‘permanent’.

Permanent doesn’t have to mean forever. It’s all a matter of perspective. After thirty years of contracting, a few years of permanence with training could seem like a holiday. What’s the worst that could happen?

So I decide to apply.

I’m at edge of the client’s site, redirected automatically by DICE, but going any further requires a Jack Henry membership with User ID and password. This is increasingly common in everything, not just job applications. How many people get discouraged at this point?

Happily, the site has no issue with my chosen membership details. I’m required to agree that I’ve seen their policy of non-bias and equal opportunity, then come some ‘pre-registration’ questions. Where do I live? (ha ha ha). Will I relocate?

The first stumbling block is education, which has to be selected from a drop-down list. None of the entries apply to someone coming from England – or anywhere else – and there’s no space to enter anything different. Despite the pretext of equal opportunity, it’s evidently necessary to have an American education – or at least pretend to.

I give myself High School Graduate which is, of course, a blatant lie but it’s slightly better than K-Force in Seattle, who believe I have degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge universities.

The system now requires a complete work history. Even the prospect of training isn’t enough to make me sit here all day and manually enter thirty years of contracts, but an allowable alternative is to upload a resume and let the system generate one. Ah hah!

So I do – with the results you might expect. It calculates that I have a total of nine years’ experience beginning in 2004. The period from 1975 has been expunged and about half of the positions shown began on the ever-so-familiar January 1st 1900 and never ended. Don’t you just love computers? Technology is so wonderful.

A checkbox appears for indicating the correctness of what it's generated, but the list is uneditable. Continuing without confirming its correctness does not work, so I am again forced to lie.

Now there's what seems to be a pointless question: What salary do I require. Doesn’t a job come with a specific range, dependent upon relevant experience? I could say anything, but that would be silly. Anyway, it’s a drop-down list of ranges, so I pick the highest. This is like bartering for a gourd in some Middle East street market.

There has as yet been nowhere to enter my age or date of birth, so that generated section, with its significantly truncated  length of experience, seems to have lopped three decades off my life. I am renewed. I don’t mind, of course, but the gray hair might come as a shock should this ever get to an interview.

I’m waiting for the ability to enter some explanation of my real-life experience or supply a cover letter but it never comes.

The final screen is a warning message indicating that – due to high volume of applications – the company will not contact applicants.

It is up to individuals to log on to check their application status – but the web address is not given. Since I was re-directed here, I have no idea of what it is.

Wonderful.

Well, that was thirty-two minutes of life I’ll not get back.

09 Toe

My left big toe hurts.

Actually, it’s not the toe – it’s the knuckle that joins the big toe to the foot. There’s no sign of injury – no bruise, no swelling – nothing.

It feels like I got run over by a truck that I now don’t remember. When I touch it, the sensation is like a needle being pushed through my eyeball – in the foot.

I keep taking the sock off and squeezing it to see if it’s magically gone away. People in restaurants probably think I’m strange. It’s like having a loose tooth when you’re a kid and you feel all the way around it with your tongue, poking to see if the hurt has gone. Then the tooth falls out.

I hope that doesn’t happen to my toe. How could I count past nineteen?

This is supposed to be a hiking vacation. Hobbling and using the left heel for stability is all I can do. How can I hike on one foot? I’m a mess; a wreck. Self-pity is easy this week.

Sympathy would be nice. So would knowledge – what is it?

If it was broken, it would be black.

If it was dislocated, it wouldn’t move at all.

So WTF?

Do I have gout?

Is my body rejecting me?

Am I the first victim of an alien task force of nano-beings that take over civilizations by invading their extremities?

I hope it’s the last one. That or something innocuous that will cure itself after a few days of inactivity, then I wouldn’t have to face the horrors of the American medical system again.

Two years ago I had a knee issue – ironically, also in Palm Springs. The immense difficulty acquiring attention for what was a minor issue, followed by a billing and insurance fiasco lasting more than a year, left me in doubt about whether even I’d survive a serious problem.

After two x-ray sessions, an MRI and four ‘extended’ specialist visits, I cured it myself with ice and Ibuprofen. That’s what I’m self-prescribing this time.

I don’t think my toe will kill me.

But let’s wait and see….

08 Coastal Betrayal

The Townhouse Motel experience made me feel like I'd just had a clumsy enema. Driving the coast wasn’t the same afterwards. Is this how prison newbies feel after their first male bonding experience?

I didn’t stop much. How many pictures of crashing waves can you take? Towns blended into a continuous memory, each with a biker bar, two gas stations and the obligatory McDonalds.

Stops for gas and restrooms became something to look forward to. San Francisco beckoned.

But then the sky turned to the color of cardboard and stayed that way. Was Seattle chasing me? By the time the odor of dead skunk started to smell good, something had to be done.

Over a few brews in another anonymous bar with good burgers and customers sporting creative facial hair, the decision made itself. San Francisco could wait – it was time to head for the desert. There’s been too much driving, sitting, eating and drinking. My boots were made for walking.

Abandoning the ocean at Navarro River next day felt like betrayal.

Compared to the glacial speed of Rt 1, traffic on Rt 128 flew. Scenery soon changed to fall colors and then vineyards – and blue sky.

Lunch in St Helena was a shot in the arm. Why did I stay so long hugging the coast? Betrayal, as an emotion, is overrated.

A day later, after an interesting Mexican meal where the waitress didn’t speak English and a surprising night in a Motel 6 that could easily pass for a Sheraton, I reached the Coachella Valley.

It was slightly after sunrise and the turbines standing on red-gold mountains spun their arms in welcome.

Time from leaving work to reaching Palm Springs: twelve days. Time from check-in to first steps on a hiking trail: 43 minutes.

These boots were made for walking…

07 Horror Motel

The Oregon coast is lovely. So is a really good IPA but it loses something after the seventh pint. Waves crash, surf rolls. Rinse and repeat; and repeat; and repeat.

Signs tempting bored snowbirds to hand over cash for gawking at something proclaimed to be of interest litter Rt 101. I drive by.

Seal-shaped rocks don’t interest me. Giant redwoods with holes cut out for cars to drive through? Nah. Rugged coastline – yep. Lightning storms – yep. Sunsets or sunrises – yep. You can keep the other stuff. No one ever accused me of being a good tourist.

Oregon gives way to California. Rinse and repeat etc. Then comes Crescent City.

All I need is a clean room at a low price that’s safe for the electronics and the bikes – and Crescent City has a lot of options. The Townhouse Motel looks promising and there’s a bar within walking distance.

A bell sits on the office counter next to a giant box of donuts. Above it, a marker-written sign screams, “No Refunds – No Exceptions.” Danger signals.

The voice inside my head is yelling, “Run away,” when someone behind me says, “Need a room?” A man in a black Iron Maiden tee-shirt has followed me into the office so silently he could be a cat-burglar – except he doesn’t have the physique.

He hasn’t shaved for a while and I can smell that his attention to personal hygiene is somewhat cavalier. Although I don’t make a habit of staring at a man’s tongue, each time he opens his mouth to speak, I can’t help noticing his is the color of a fresh dog turd.

I’m trying to say “No,” but he starts talking about England and his friends that go there regularly and how the rate is only $40 – then he offers a chocolate donut. I don’t accept but, in the verbal confusion, I manage to hand over a credit card and get the key to room 23.

Regret waves through me instantly but it’s too late. What the fuck? It’s the same kind of self-loathing misery that comes when a potential new girlfriend is about to stay the night but I say the wrong thing and she goes home instead.

So I drive across the courtyard and open the door. First impressions count and that’s bleach, followed by the mold it’s trying to obscure.

A dented white microwave sits on the table and the curtain droops from a piece of wire nailed to the ceiling. The mismatched furniture looks like it’s done the rounds of various Goodwill stores and simply looking at the bed makes me feel dirty.

I go outside to see an audience. Folks from across the parking lot are standing outside their doors, watching. These people don’t look like usual motel guests – they look like the kind of folk who live here permanently but not on their own budget. Some of the cars appear to have seen better days too - and they're the best ones.

I can’t stay here. This is the kind of place horror movies are made of. I could wake up tomorrow morning dead – or worse. Fuck the refund sign.

I go back to the office but the manager bozo is nowhere to be seen. Hitting the bell a million times does nothing. Where is he? He knows, doesn’t he. Only down-and-outs stay in this shit-hole, or people who accidentally wandered in off the highway and got stuck. Bastard. Fucker. The asshole shitface is hiding.

Whatever. I have no clothes left so it’s laundry time and there’s a laundromat a mile back into town. This mess can wait.

The 90-minute laundry cycle gives time to reconsider my situation, ably assisted by two 16 oz cans of Colt-45. A sense of unease grows and festers as the washer does its business. There’s no way it’s safe to leave two bikes and a computer at the Townhouse and I feel physically sick at the prospect of walking into that room again.

The solution becomes obvious as I’m filling the drier. There’s no need to confront the bozo. Just walk away. That’s what credit cards are for. Dump the key on the office counter, get the hell out of there and call Visa. Brilliant! Sometimes I think I’m a god.

The sense of release is tangible. I could almost pick it out of the air like a fluff of cotton.

Intent on getting the escape plan in motion immediately, I push all the laundry into the 20 cent Safeway bag and drive far too enthusiastically back to the Townhouse.


The bozo is standing outside the office. “You’re not staying,” he says. It’s a statement. Not even a hint of question.

He doesn’t ask why and I offer no explanation. Perhaps this happens frequently.

Despite the warning sign above the bell, he initiates a refund. The three minutes it takes to go through is the longest one hundred and eighty seconds in the history of the universe.

Then I’m gone.

He didn’t even offer a donut.

06 SADness

Sunshine.

Blue sky.

What a difference it makes – to everything.

I must suffer from S.A.D.S or whatever acronym describes those of us whose mood droops when everything up there is gray.

Seattle’s a good city but it needs to move. Is that possible? Like moving a house?

It’s not the rain, not even the drizzle. Real weather of any kind doesn’t impart the same sense of nothingness. It’s the constant sense of BLAH when the sky’s the color of cardboard that draws the life out of you.

Escape is short-lived. Bright lively coffee shops and bars provide a temporary uplift, but the effort required to get enthusiastic about anything doubles, triples and quadruples. You stay in bed more, sleep more, make more excuses and do less. Life moves slower; sometimes it grinds to a halt.

It feels like your legs are bungeed together, like those dreams where you’re running but don’t get anywhere. Apathy is so overwhelming you’re even subconsciously hoping for rain, so you have an excuse for not putting out the monumental amount of effort it would take to arrange something.

There’s an overriding desire for company and you depend so much more on relationships and the presence of friends, but meeting people in the first place is hard. Anyone who rejects the notion of the Seattle freeze is either a native or living in denial. Or both.

You try everything – vitamin D tablets, fake sun lamps, trips away.  Eventually, you get used to the yearly routine of minimal summers and make excuses for how shitty the rest of the year is but then you’re wishing your life away in the process.

The effect is cumulative. In the beginning it’s only an irritation like an itchy rash you can ignore or scratch, but then it starts to affect your mood and, before long, every day is spent in a semi-depressed state from which the only reprieve comes in a glass. That’s when it’s time to go.

But now I’m in the land of blue skies and sunsets, traveling down the Oregon coast towards the promise of perpetual sun in California.

In another week of this I might be a real person again…

It’s all a bit SAD.