# southwest roadtrip



## Jered (Apr 17, 2014)

Notice: this story has no plot. its kind of pointless but it was fun

So, I left my home in El Cajon, Ca to go explore the country and have some fun. I planned to pay for food and gas busking with my banjo.

My first stop was in Temecula to visit my family and old friends. My brother and I busked old town and damn, nobody gave a shit about “This Land Is Your Land”. Well, I guess that was a waste of time to learn. I didn’t care much though cause I was starting to get sick of the song as well. I did learn an interesting trick when I was down there, this guy in his suit was singing while standing atop of some railing. I thought that looked cool and attention grabbing.

The next morning when my mom went to work she made me leave the house while everyone was away. I guess she thought I would eat her food or something, which is probably true. So, I tried to find some food behind the Albertsons. I saw a bag of cookies on the side of the dumpster and impulsively shouted “ooohh cookies!” and heard someone yell behind a wall “Jerry, is that you?” I left the cookies there for Jerry. I busked out front of Albertsons for a minute and bought some carrots and peanuts. I wanted to stay healthy for this trip.

I met a cool kid before I left town. I asked him if he planned to stay in the area or move somewhere new. He said he would stay in the area, that it’s more about the people than the place. This idea was challenging my motives for exploring the country, but it stuck with me.

After Temecula, I headed up the 215 and did some busking at some big box store at Sun City or some other shitty desert town. An older guy asked me “What about a job?” implying that I should be doing something more useful than entertaining passerby’s for tips. And the manager told me to get out and if I came back she would call the cops lol.

As it got towards evening, I got to Calimesa, a town on the side of the I-10. I found some pretzels in a dumpster, which I don’t like, so I offered them to a man digging in a nearby dumpster. He didn’t want them either, but offered to mildly torture me by talking my ear off for an unwanted amount of time. He talked about collecting lottery tickets in the dumpster and how his daughter is a stripper and he even sung me a song. I need to learn how to tell people to shut up.

The next day I was on my way to Phoenix. I was amazed how gnarly looking the town of Blythe was. I was starting to realize more and more how blessed I am to live where I do.

I met a hitch hiker at a rest stop near the California/Arizona border. If I had just seen him with his thumb out, I probably would have drove right by him because he was kinda sketchy looking. But at the rest stop I got to hear his story and he seemed like a nice guy. He had all these tattoos on his left arm he had done himself. He had one scribbled tattoo on his right arm because he drew it with his left hand. He told me he had spent the last 15 years in Medford, Oregon and was heading back to Charleston, South Carolina to be with his aging mother. He said he was trying anything he could to travel, and that he had spent 13 days on the road. He said he spent over twenty four hours in a train yard but never found a train going his direction. He told me he had spent ten years in prison in South Carolina, fighting gang members on a daily basis and struggling to survive. I dropped him off at the greyhound in Phoenix and wished him luck.

I spent the rest of the day roaming around Phoenix looking for something interesting. I ended up busking in front of some convenience store like a Walgreens. An old Vietnam vet with no legs rolled up to me and asked me if we were in Las Vegas. I gave him my dumpster pretzels and he gave me the most grateful look I have ever seen. We yodled some nonsense lyrics and people walked by us looking disturbed. I asked him why he was in Phoenix and not some beach somewhere and he told me it’s not where you are, it’s what spirit you’re in. This was the second idea I received on this trip that both contradicted my motives but stuck with me.

I drove north up the 17 and stopped at a rest stop overlooking a canyon to sleep for the night. A young guy gave me some money at the vending machines and I told him not to but he insisted. This made me feel good about this particular rest stop, and so I even forgot to lock my doors that night.

That changed the next morning. I went into the bathroom and took off my shirt to wash my armpits. Then I went into a stall to wash up in there. The stall doors were pretty short, and I noticed a man pretending to dry his hands watching me intensely. I walked out of the bathroom and this fucker followed me. I walked to the other side of the rest stop. He kept his distance, but followed behind me. I wanted to stay here and play banjo above the canyon, but I decided to head out because of this creepy guy.

I found a hitch hiker along the highway and picked him up. I could tell right away he was a cool guy. He told me he was travelling with the rodeo, and hit some really bad luck. When he was in Phoenix, he was stopped at a stoplight in his truck, when someone rear ended him, knocking him into oncoming traffic, then got hit in the side. His car was totaled and he was two points above the legal limit and spent thirty days in the phoenix jail. Now he was just trying to get home in Colorado. He was heading to flagstaff, but he told me I was better off going to Sedona first, so I dropped him off on the side of the highway and I headed towards Sedona. I felt bad that I didn’t take him further.

Sedona is beautiful, but it was not too much fun. I spent an hour or two there and decided to head up to Flagstaff. I had heard there would be other buskers in Flagstaff but found none. I headed east on the I-40.

The next day I spent some time busking in Indian country. I had made a good chunk of change outside of a store when an Indian man walked by. He asked for a dollar. I gave him one. He asked for another. I said no. He kept begging and I told him I wasn’t giving him anymore. He tried to steal my tip jar but I grabbed it away from him.

I drove further east and found a walmart to busk at. I played for a while when a guy walked by covered in camo gear walking his dirt bike. I’ll call him Steve for privacy’s sake. Steve asked me if the train was heading towards Albuquerque. I said that would make sense because the train had been going east to west. He said he was following the tracks on his bike. After I got kicked out of walmart for busking, I walked to my truck and saw Steve spanging for gas. I told him I was headed towards Albuquerque and that he could throw the bike in the back of my SUV. BIGGEST MISTAKE I made on the whole trip. I asked him if it would leak and he said no.

We started the trek east. Steve said he was escaping his crazy girlfriend, and had left his truck and everything he owned at the house besides his bike and pack. He was heading to Albuquerque to where his brother lived. He told me about being a self employed tour guide in Prescott, Arizona, bringing tourists to undiscovered haunted houses. He seemed pretty normal at this point in time.

When we got to “burque”, as a local called it, Steve decided to hang out with me instead of go to his brother’s. This was fine with me, he seemed like a nice enough guy. He told me his brother was an asshole. We did parkour over walls and gave strangers high fives. We looked for drums in dumpsters so that we could busk together. We found an egg shaker and an empty propane can. This is when Steve started acting a little weird. He would go up to strangers, shake the egg in their face, and ask for a cigarette. We tried busking a bit, but he could not keep a beat with his drums lol. In downtown burque, we found the down trodden young homeless people. We did not feel welcome and we felt a huge sense of negativity there. We decided to skip town. Steve yelled, “Goodbye Albuquerque!” to people walking on the sidewalks as we drove away. We were now heading south towards a free place to camp for the night.

On this drive, Steve told me of being institutionalized for a year and nine months as a teen. He told me of being diagnosed with schizophrenia and manic depression. He told me he would have intense hallucinations, but that he no longer had them, because he was too afraid to have them. He told me he would do acid and shrooms with his friends and not hallucinate because he had the ability to shut them off. I asked him why do those drugs if he didn’t like the effects. He said because everyone else was doing them.

Pretty soon, the smell of gas from his dirtbike overpowered the inside of my Toyota 4runner. Shit, I guess his bike was leaking after all. Steve said, “ No man, I think it’s just the smell from my pants because I’ve spilt gasoline on my pants”.

We find the camping place. It’s a dry river wash with a ton of rocks. It’s dark out when we get there. We set up our tents and crawl in. I’ve got a ton of rocks digging into my back and the inside of my tent smells like fucking gasoline. I start worrying about brain damage from the fumes. I weigh my options. I end up sleeping outside of the tent, but the rocks still dig into my back.

The next morning I tell him if he wants to travel with me, he has to sell his bike. I’m not putting up with the smell of gasoline anymore. He says he’ll sell it in El Paso. We must have been a site to see driving down the highway with these masks on to protect ourselves from the fumes.

We stop in a small town called Socorro to get some breakfast. Nothing in the Little Ceasars dumpster except this ridiculous sweat shirt that says “New York city boy”. I grab it. We get some Mexican food and as we’re leaving, we see a Little Ceasar’s employee dump 12 or so pizzas. We grab them, leaving one in the dumpster for whoever gets there next, and give one to an old man we spot who looks like could use one. I say “Have a good day”. He says, YA. Probably can’t speak very good English.

Later we spot a lake off the side of the freeway. It’s Caballo Lake, part of the Rio Grande. We find a parking spot where we don’t have to pay for parking, and unload the truck to find out if there’s a gas leak. Yep, there’s a leak on some of my blankets. I grab the blankets and ride on the back of Steve’s bike towards the lake. We wash down the blankets in the lake and go for a swim. Steve is afraid of turtles.

Later that day we get to El Paso. People at the Walmart love banjo music. Too bad I get kicked out after twenty minutes. Steve sells his bike and he rents us a motel 6 room. The motel pool is so damn cold I go swimming in my wetsuit. At this point, Steve starts becoming very reclusive and secretive about his plans. I’m starting to get tired of this kid. He says he’s going to go buy weed through someone in the hotel service and leaves for a couple of hours. After a couple hours not hearing from him, I’m wondering if he’s been arrested. I don’t know what the laws are like in Texas. He comes back without any weed but with a plate of blueberry pancakes.

Steve says his goodbyes the next morning. I ask him where he plans to go. He says to go get a haircut. He forgets a bunch of stuff in my car and it still smells faintly of gasoline even though I washed all my shit at the motel. I guess that’s a lesson learned.

Pretty soon I’m on the road towards Austin. I stop at a few places to do some rock climbing and busking but Texas ends up being pretty uneventful. About this time, I would rather die than eat another piece of Little Ceasar’s pizza and the pizza boxes that we collected in Socorro are stinking up my car. I was hoping to hand them out to some homebums somewhere but I’m at a rest stop and can’t take the smell anymore. I chuck them into a rest stop trash can.

I get to Austin after a couple of days and there is thunderstorm going on with super strong winds. I wander around the town admiring the graffiti. I take shelter from the rain underneath an awning and listen to the men working high up in the skyscrapers. At times I cannot tell if what I am hearing is thunder or the sound of them working. About this time, I realize that I really want to get back to San Diego. I want to get back to my friends, my dad, going surfing, and showers and a kitchen to cook in. I’m tired of being a complete stranger everywhere I go. I feel bad because I told my grandmother that I was on my way to Alabama to visit her and my grandpa, but she says she wants to fly out to Yosemite and visit my dad and me there. I post a couple ads in the Austin library for rideshares back to san diego but no one can leave within the next few days. I wander around Austin all day taking it all in. When the storm clears up, I take a nap on a warm piece of concrete by the Colorado River. I drop my keys and a man returns them to me. It’s awesome when a stranger takes time to look after another stranger.

That night I start my trek back to San Diego. This trip helped me realize the things I enjoy most in my life exist right here in my home town. I’ll probably get itchy feet again in a month or so, but for now I’m going to enjoy being a house dweller.


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## Tude (Apr 17, 2014)

That is quite a trip!! Thanks for sharing!


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## Deleted member 2626 (May 4, 2014)

Good story. I'm the same way keep a distance but know where "home" kinda is.


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## creature (Jun 22, 2014)

freaking cool, man... good excursion...
& yeah.. one of the very best & most unexpected things on the road is when humans do stuff so very different from what we fear..

i can't tell you how *many* time's i've lost *important* shit, only to have it returned...

i'm glad you went safe & had the shitz...

peace


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