Jananas

I know that I’m still behind on my promised travel blogs, but I wanted to post a quick blog about my current knitting project. Its actually pretty top secret as its a gift for a friend, so all wip photos have been posted to ravelry instead where I can drool over my progress in relative peace.

Instead, I leave you with an image of what I first saw when I came downstairs this morning. Interwebs, meet Romeo. She’s a lovely, cantakerous old lady with congestive heart failure. If sleeping in my knitting projects makes her feel better, then so be it.

On our road trip so far we’d been through two countries (Canada & the US) and to the west coast. We thought it would be a great idea to hit up a third country, and take a brief detour through Mexico so that we could add the full continent to our list of things we’ve done. Initially we were talking about heading over from El Paso, Tx and killing a few hours in Mexico. After our later than anticipated start from Tuscon we would have shown up after nightfall, which didn’t seem like the greatest idea.

On the drive through New Mexico, we decided to be adventurous and headed from Deming, Nm south towards Mexico. We crossed at Palomas and it was one of the easiest crossings ever. So easy in fact, we didn’t even need to stop the car or show any id. This was quickly balanced by the sandbag enclosures and Mexican army officials with machine guns standing around.

Thankfully my mother had sent us with an actual book of maps, which we used to navigate the two roads we needed to get from Palomas back to the crossing at El Paso. I quite enjoyed the little shrines (I believe) along the roadside. The highlight was being stopped by the federali twice and briefly searched once. We were both very aware of the found $100 bill burning a hole in Jason’s pocket. If nothing else, at least we were able to bribe our way our of the situation!

The entire drive through Mexico was about two hours long. We didn’t pass much along the way (besides the shrines), so there was a grand adventure of peeing on the side of a Mexican highway. The downside was getting my shoes covered in burrs, which I spent the next few days picking out of the passenger’s side carpet. The rest of the drive looked a lot like this.

After two hours, we were back in a big city and on our way to finding El Paso. This part of the drive consisted of trying to not freak out, while navigating a city and not speaking/reading any Spanish. Somehow we managed, and after a quick stop for some coke (the drink!) we made it to the border. The border had some difficulty understanding the idea that we drove through Mexico for two hours for no reason other than to say we did (and to buy $2.50 worth of soft drinks).

I do think that our favorite part was driving in Mexico, next to the border mostly because the gps isn’t that precise and for most of the drive told us that we were in the US. It might have been any early sign of some of the future gps problems we’d encounter down the road.

When coming back into Canada, we neglected to tell them that we’d been to Mexico. No need to add to the hamthrax scare.

One of the neatest things about driving around the States was the realization of just how large the country is and how much the landscape changes as you go. After driving our particular route, I have to admit that I’m more partial to the northern badlands/desert landscapes than I am to the southern sand-based deserts. Regardless, here are some nice shots of gorgeous blue skies.

Somewhere in Arizona we started seeing signs for the Thing! We were in intrigued, and of course had to stop off to see what this particular road side attraction was about. For $1, how could we resist?

And for $1, how bad could it be? We followed those suspiciously big yellow footprints on the ground through several exhibits. The first was full of signs like the following…

Groan! Yeah, but at least the old cars were neat to look at. We kept wandering through, enjoying the bad old museum feel and having fun looking at stuff in display cases. What I didn’t understand was what is up with all these weird carved sculptures. I found them rather creepy.

In the end it was a nice excuse to get out of the car. And for $1, how can we complain? I will admit to purchasing a shot glass to commemorate the occasion. We did also get a flattened penny with “The Thing” on it, because I’m a tourist like that.

After leaving Phoenix, we headed towards Tuscon. We’ve developed a habit of hanging out until the evening and then driving for a few hours before finding a motel and crashing. It makes driving the next day a little easier and less daunting. But yes, Tuscon. On the highway on the way there, Jason noticed an intense vibration in the steering column. We guessed it had to do with the car work we’d had done earlier that day, but couldn’t do much about it. Luckily it isn’t very far from Phoenix to Tuscon, so we camped out there for the evening.

On the drive, however, Jason did spot a $100 bill on the ground at the door. We went inside and asked the clerk and two patrons if they had lost any money and none had. So it was ours! However, I definitely felt really guilty about having it (mostly because it felt karmically wrong), so as much as we could have rationalized spending it along the way we decided that we’d both rather donate it somewhere instead. It was a relief that Jason agreed, and in the end it went to good use!

The next morning we woke up, found another Jiffylube (thankfully it was a few miles down the road). They said that the work had been done properly and they didn’t see anything wrong, but suggested that we might need them balanced. So we headed off down the strip to a tire place. They fit us in. Turns out that he has one bent rim and when the Jiffylube rotated the tires, they put the bent rim in the front so the vibrations were more intense. They re-rotated the tires, putting the bent rim in the back where it’ll have less of an impact until we have it dealt with. They rebalanced the tires. They also noticated the the brakes pads were wearing thin, so we had those replaced as well. Blast!

Although, continuing in the trend above we found $10 (two $5′s) outside a gas station door and no one had lost any money. This time, we used it donate to a museum we visited a few days later.

Overall, all the car work put us behind schedule a bit which wasn’t great, but as such things are bound to happen we didn’t stress too much.