The flight in to Bristol came up as a “nearby airport” when searching for flights in to London. Nothing in to Heathrow with a decent schedule worked out to a price that could be considered a legitimate business expense, and since I had the whole weekend to get to London, I took a look at the flight in to Bristol compared to Gatwick. Since it takes at least an hour to get from Gatwick to central London, I figured a two hour train ride wasn’t a big deal - and it would be far more scenic. And the price worked out to be the best deal of them all. So I got to see Bristol for the first time, including buildings labeled White Friars and, of course, Grey Friars, and scenic Lewin’s Mead, which is named for someone I’m 100% certain we’re not related to. I missed my chance at a MegaBus to London by about five minutes, so hung out at the train station and took the train in to town as originally intended, enjoying the scenic ride despite telling myself that it was an ill conceived plan. After checking in to the hotel I took a nap, then forced myself to wake up to watch the Euro Cup so that I could get my body’s sleep schedule on the right time zone.

Italy v Spain at the pub across the way was marked by a large number of Italian tourists who didn’t really seem to be huge football fans, but were enthusiastically cheering when it looked like Italy might score a goal. Or at least attempt one. Far more exciting was the highly intoxicated local man who was singing the Chelsea fight song - loudly - shushing the Italians when they got too enthusiastic for his tastes, and nicking other people’s beers whenever possible. When the game ended 0-0 I decided I could watch the shootout in the hotel lobby, which I did with a few other Americans, a Dutch guy who took no interest in cheering for anyone now that the Netherlands were out, and one Spanish woman who didn’t seem to care much about the game, but since she was Spanish we all rooted for Spain. Go us. World peace via disinterested football pseudo-fans.

My work week was - well - a work week. Due to the time difference I usually ended up working 14-16 hour days, but I managed to get out of the office before dark most nights. I caught up with our friend Naomi - also from college - who is Assistant Theatre Manager for one of the big west end shows. She was able to get me a comp to see the show on Thursday and we caught up afterwards for a bit. It was good to be able to talk to her, since last time we caught up we were not exactly treating each other well, and now, after several years of hindsight (and probably a bit of maturing on both our parts) we are able to put such ill times behind us and start anew.

I rewarded myself for a week of 16 hour days by getting up this morning and promptly turning my alarm off before going back to bed. My marathon training plan told me that I had a 12 mile run to do today, but I saw no reason to do it at dawn. Seven hours later I woke up at 12:30, shoved some salad in my face, and headed out. While I didn’t need to do the run at dawn, maybe mid day through Oxford street wasn’t the brightest idea. My 12 mile run turned in to a 3 mile run followed by 3 miles of weaving through shopping drones and tourists, then, finally, a lovely 6 miles run, mostly along the Thames. All in all, despite the stupidity of my route, I was only thirty seconds per mile behind pace, and now I know what to avoid when planning long routes through central London: central London. One important observation: twelve miles of running London resulted in a far less grimy Keath than six miles of New Jersey running.

After my run and a shower I swung by Naomi’s theatre again (well, she doesn’t own it, but I don’t know who does, so it’s “hers”) for a backstage tour between the matinée and evening show. I then realized that all I’d eaten since the night before was a handful of salad, a shortbread cookie, and an apple, so when Naomi had to head back to work I stopped in at the King’s Arms around the corner, had some lunch (which was also breakfast and borderline dinner) and have been sitting here typing ever since. Ahhhh. A weekend of nothing to do. It’s been a while. Though I could do without the Annie Lennox playing at the pub.And now my battery is dead. So it is time to go.

On May 10 we flew from Phoenix to Philadelphia, where we spent the night with Keath’s parents before Ceridwen headed up to New Hampshire and Keath to his cousins’ house in New Jersey for respective celebrations of Mother’s Day. A good time was had by all, and Ceridwen hung out with her parents for a little while before joining Keath in Philly where he was working for few weeks1. Thanks to the wonders of social networking websites, we had recently tracked down all manner of friends from yesteryear. We caught up with friends from high school who lived in the Philly area and plotted weekend road trips to visit friends from College.

Our first weekend was marked by heading up to New York City to have brunch with Ceridwen’s elementary school friend MaryAnn and her boyfriend Carl, then hang out with mutual college friends Jeff and Megan and their significant others. Here we learned the important lesson that when hanging out on 33rd Street doing karaoke at a Korean karaoke bar songs like Pantera’s “This Love” should be saved for the end of the night when you’re good and slushy and not going to notice the terrible effect this will have on your vocal chords. Ouch. But a fun ouch. And we fully approve of both of our friends “others” whom we had not previously met. Not that they asked us, or would care if we disapproved, but we like them. So there.

Weekend number two was a trip out to beautiful Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the story of Keath and Ceridwen as a couple began. Our good friend (and Ceridwen’s bridesmaid) MaryAnne still lives here, working for Franklin & Marshall College, where we met and Keath worked for a year between his eventual graduation (from F&M) and Ceridwen’s (from nearby Millersville, which is less offensive). We took a stroll around the grounds and were appalled at the debacle that the campus has become; they’ve leveled several classic row houses and built a Soviet-era looking apartment complex with high-end shopping stores and a restaurant called a brewery (which apparently isn’t) on the ground floor, they’ve closed the cafe in the College Center and replaced it with a commercial fast food joint, they’ve glommed a bistro on to the side of the business center, they’ve torn down some more classic houses to build faux Italian villas in the place they may well look as out of place as any building can, and countless other atrocities. Oh, and they’ve leveled Hillel, which was in a perfectly respectable building, and are building god-knows-what in it’s place. Essentially, they’ve created as many ways as possible to get more money from students who are already paying one of the highest tuitions in the country. There has been one academic building built since we graduated, reassuringly in the same style as the other academic buildings, with money donated by the same woman who funded the renovation of the recital hall I worked at for a few months before we left Lancaster, but they plopped it down on top of the tennis courts and apparently haven’t replaced them. All in all, they’ve transformed the campus in to the one we’d both fallen for enough to attend in to one that we wouldn’t give a second thought to and may not have even made it on the list of places we’d want to visit. Which is probably exactly what the administration wants.

Weekend number three was Ryan and Irene’s wedding! Ryan had tracked us down a few months prior, just in the nick of time to invite us. (They were out of invitations, but had just a few seats left!) It was great to get to see Ryan again, meet the woman he’s going to spend the rest of his life with, and share such a special day with them. They certainly did it up right: they had both the ceremony and reception at Williamsburg Winery, featuring a ceremony run by Ryan’s uncle, the Lord’s Prayer read in Cantonese by Irene’s mother, and good times all around. We need to catch up with them again on a weekend that isn’t their wedding so that we can monopolize more time with them and catch up on the last ten years or so.

Weekend number four was originally supposed to be our trip back to Phoenix, but due to our constantly changing plans we were able to instead hop down to Atlanta to visit Ceridwen’s brother and his family. Abby, our niecee via said brother, turned five that week and had a big party involving water slides, spray-paint tie-dye, and some super-tasty mom-made cake, all tied in to some degree with the “princess” theme of the party.

It was around this time that we also got final confirmation of Keath’s upcoming trip to London for work and had to get to work plotting the upcoming “extra” weekend generated this trip - to London. High tourist season and slow business decision making resulted in tickets being too expensive for us both to go, but we were excited to be able to rejoin family for Father’s Day and Ceridwen would be able to accompany her father on his upcoming canal boat trip.

Weekend five was the aforementioned Father’s Day, where we sadly parted ways again to be with our respective (but far from respectable) fathers. The plan was for Ceridwen to hang out with her parents until Keath returned from London, but the upcoming ocean of separation spurred a last minute change of plans and a MegaBus trip to Philly so we could enjoy our last week on the same continent before truly having to part ways.

And weekend six sent Ceridwen back to New Hampshire and Keath to London, by way of Newark and Bristol. Genius.

1. “A few” being originally defined as “three” weeks.

As I-10 bends north in Touscon, the surroundings slowly go from small desert town to big suburban sprawl. That’s where the RV megastores and big outlet centers spring up. Just beyond that is an “RV SuperCenter,” which, in addition to a service center and large quantity of indoor RV storage, has a big ol’ RV Wash where they do all of the work for you. So, after two years of RV ownership and maybe one or two hand washings, we let the pros hit it with all they’ve got. And they did a fairly good job, too. Aside from some spots on Vantom’s wheels (which may actually be where the road grime has eaten the chrome) and Zoomba’s roof (which is probably permanently tinted to match a Vermont pine forest), the boys are shiny and clean.

We managed not to pick up too much new grime in the short haul through the 95° desert heat up to Phoenix. We popped in to a park in Tempe, settled in, had a tasty dinner comprised of everything left in the freezer or fridge plus a can of tomatoes, and proceeded to pack everything else away for a few weeks in storage. Many people put their RV in storage when they’re not using it, but typically they’re taking it out of storage for a month or two, not the other way around. Ah well, we like our way better.

We slept in for once and left Deming with no further plans that to maybe stop at Shakespeare Ghost Town. When we got off the highway for Shakespeare and fueled up we saw no further signs for the ghost town and had the sneaking suspicion that we’d tried this before and found a fenced in, locked up ghost town. Plus, we realized that we’re not huge history buffs and weren’t super-excited about ghost towns. If they’re there, cool; if not, onwards.

And onwards we went, finally crossing in to Arizona and the continental divide (though continuing to head up hill). Since Arizona has the good sense to ignore daylight savings time we’d hopped back another hour from our original departure from Austin. Good times.

A short side trip to Wilcox, Arizona to visit Crop Circle Winery was sabotaged by them being closed despite huge billboards advertising tasking Wednesday through Sunday. Lying bastards.
We fueled up at our first Flying J in months. It was almost like returning to a home town, despite being a truck stop. They’ve apparently gotten wise and revamped their rewards program to actually encourage people to buy stuff in their store, so we didn’t get the one cent per gallon off that we used to, but they’re still the cheapest gas on the highway.
All other stops being sabotaged, we took a 22 miles detour down to Tombstone. We passed up the half dozen or so museums and high tech pseudo-historical interactive displays in favor of some ice cream cones and street wandering. We didn’t get there in time for any of the OK Corral shootout reenactments, but the charm of Tombstone is really it’s level of success in keeping an old west feel without abandoning a modern day populace. Unlike a ghost town, you can actually go in to the different businesses, even if they were museums and/or selling t-shirts. And unlike Deadwood, SD, Dodge, KS, and so on, the tourism hasn’t outgrown the history to the point where it’s all casinos and chain stored. One could really get lost in time in Tombstone. In fact, we highly suspect that some of the people in period costume weren’t “performers,” but just people who lived there and got a kick out of wandering town in 1870s attire.

We finished our off with a round of drinks at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon (a bizarre cross between old west cowboy saloon and Howl At the Moon / Coyote Ugly theme bars) and wandered the streets aimlessly for a bit to ensure a safe conclusion to our day’s journey.

We finished up in a park outside Tuscon; our first time at an RV Park attached to a dealership. Aside from all the internal roads being named after RV manufacturers, there was no indication of the dealer. In fact, it was a very nice park and we wouldn’t be adverse to spending a longer stay here, should we return to Tuscon.

We hit the gym relatively early before hitching up and rolling out at the insane hour of 11:30. We even stopped at Home Depot for a mouse trap and other assorted crap; who knew how long until we’d find another one? Such lallygagging. Craziness! Who allowed us such luxury?

A short while after departing Alamogordo we found ourselves pulling in to White Sands National Monument. We got inside in time for the intro video, had a brief chat with a Ranger who explained the basics of gypsum sand and how the dunes were formed - it’s that Great Inland Sea again, in case you were wondering. Without it, we’d have a lot less National Parks of interest. The Ranger also warned us that the school group from the parking lot was about to join us, so we braced ourselves for the parade of El Paso middle schoolers representing every middle school clique and stereotype. However, when we overheard the Ranger telling the kids where they could buy sleds, we opted to skip the video and learn more about the whole sledding in a National Monument thing . . .

Yup, you can SLED on the SAND DUNES!

The National Park Service suggests you allow half an hour to drive the eight mile road, see the sights, and frolic. Half an hour later we had just figured out the difference in the friction between sled and sand as compared to sled and snow and how this affects the angle of dunes which can be considered safe. The short version: vertical = good! It’s really tough to hurt yourself on a huge pile of sand - the only injury was Keath trying to get back on his sled mid-dune. (Proper technique is to just crash when you’re parted with your sled.)

Apparently, the gym was a bit of overkill, as trudging up sand dunes is quite the cardio workout in itself. Especially when you are as enthusiastic as a hyperactive toddler on crack. After several runs down the set of dunes preferred by the Ranger’s sons, we headed to a picnic area to eat and rest before hitting more dunes.

When we had finally worn ourselves out (and spent nearly 10 minutes excavating a Goya bottle locked in hard pack gypsum with a pair of pennies) three and a half hours had passed. We learned a hard lesson that the product southern New Mexicans call cherry cider is not cider at all, but rather a lot of sugar, some cherry juice, and seltzer. Yuck. We pulled back on to the highway, significantly sandier, at about the same time of day we used to start looking for a place to spend the night. We slowly worked our way through White Sands Missile Testing Range and up over the Santa something pass.

On a whim, we hopped off the highway following a sign indicating that the Missile base had a museum. Off the highway there were no further signs to that effect - just a long line of cars <i>leaving</i> the base and several warning signs indicating that the military is not responsible for hazardous or explosive materials you may come across if you leave the road - oh, and the road was a dead end. Back on the highway: nothing to see here.
Due to the time spent frolicking in the desert, showers were a must - and we got the thinking that a pool would be nice too. Deming, New Mexico fit the bill.

Apparently, while frolicking, Keath neglected to actually put on the suntan lotion that Ceridwen handed him. In fishing out the aloe, we unearthed all manner of expired medicine1, some of which were apparently expired when we first packed up the van in May of 2005!

24 hours later: no signs of mice. Knock of wood. Or fiberglass. Or something.

1. Lactaid tablets: expired January 2008.
Aspercaine Patches: expired November 2006.
Dermarest poison ivy mousse: expired June 2005.
Bendryl: expired March 2005.
And the aforementioned Solarcaine aloe burn relief: expired December 2004, a full six months before we sold our house, moved in to a van, and selected key medicine cabinet products to bring with us on the road. What the hell?

An early morning jaunt out to Carlsbad Caverns National Park placed us third in line for tickets when they opened, but the first couple in line snagged the last pair for the Left Hand Cave Tour. The only other one, the Lower Cave, wasn’t until 1:00 pm, so we opted to see new things and headed back home to hitch up and head north . . . to Roswell. Lesson learned: when visiting Carlsbad, pre-book your cave tours. We’ll have to come back to exercise that lesson.

We expected Roswell to be much more obsessed with it’s alien obsession than it was. It was both reassuring and disappointing that it wasn’t. There are a half dozen or so alien-oriented businesses around the UFO Museum, mostly selling t-shirts and things shaped like alien heads, save for the Cover-Up Cafe, which is up for sale and closed - presumably until someone buys it.

The UFO Museum is an interesting thing. They are also a research facility and clearly go through great pains to represent what is and isn’t known as fairly as possible while they try to reinforce the value of legitimate scientific research in to unexplained phenomenon that are often attributed to “aliens,” and specifically to the events which occurred outside Roswell in 1947. On the other hand, only so much is known, and new information isn’t exactly flying in to them. So in order to have a “museum” worth paying for (it’s currently about the size of a highway rest area museum, but they are looking to build a bigger Experience Music Project-esque building further down the road) they need to pad it with “research” donated by others (for example, a guy from Rachel, NV that essentially stalks workers at Grange Lake (Area 51) and takes photos of signs forbidding photography), explanations of fraudulent “evidence” they’ve received and how they proved it fraudulent (scrap metal from jeweler in St. George, UT), dioramas of German Foo-Fighters, and X-Files posters.

All together, it is a cool resource, though as a museum goes it is mostly a lot of reproductions of newspaper articles and government documents. Putting all the written material in to other forms (a book that’s not written by a crack-pot?) and distilling the exhibits down to a more logical and engaging progression of “what we know” would certainly help them. And they can probably drop the donation of the guy who theorized that ancient Mayans had space shuttled and could travel around space easily because the universe is neither the Ptolemaic model nor the Copernican model, but his model, marked by sensationalism, poor grammar, lack of explanation, fourth grade science fair poster-board displays, and a vague resemblance to the space-folding techniques in Frank Herbert’s Dune.

We successfully resisted the assortment of alien souvenirs and pulled away from our home-made RV spot in front of the city offices, heading the wrong way out of town but eventually aiming ourselves at White Sands National Monument. Clearly, the aliens built space-time to confuse us.

We rolled uneventfully through the Apache Mountains, enjoying the scenery and two-lane mountain passes (which allows those not towing their homes to proceed at a reasonable speed while we inspected the scenery at 30 mph), grabbed some tasty ice cream at TNTz Sweets in Ruidosio (the craving started in Texas and never went away) and eventually settled in Alamogordo, NM1. The RV Park map had an ad for a Gold’s Gym day pass at 10% off - the gym had disappeared but the idea of buying day passes while on the road stuck. We buy monthlies when we’re staying put - why not day passes? Duh. We found a gym that actually considers a day 24 hours, so we’ll go back in the morning. Clever.

Just before bed we discovered a mouse in our pantry. He scampered away before we could get him, but we double checked that there was no accessible food and wiped down the surfaces in hopes he’d leave for good. Living in an RV is supposed to make us exempt from homeowner woes such as rodents, isn’t it?!

1. Yes, that means “Fat Cottonwood” in Mexican.

Upinzee!

We headed out to Carlsbad Caverns National Park to get started bright and early with our Aggressive Tourism Machismo. The tours with reasonable limits were full so we decided to do the self guided ones at a leisurely pace and save the 75 person tour for the afternoon. Although it was supposed to reopen last month, the visitor’s center is still under construction and will be until June 20th as of the latest claims. (Clearly, the National Park Service needs some better project scheduling software! If you’re reading this, let me know who you are and I’ll subject you to one of my friends in sales…) This left us following a corral of traffic cones around a snow-fenced enclosed construction site to reach the “natural entrance” to the cave - quite a juxtaposition.

To keep people from trashing the cave by touching everything, they kept us corralled to a strict trail. To keep people from slipping and hurting and/or killing themselves or others, they pave the path and crate many switchbacks down the 800 foot descent of the “Natural Entrance Trail” - the result is about a mile of leisurely walking and gawking down away from daylight and in to the hidden chambers of the cavern, over what is probably about a half mile or less of distance for the cave swallows that dart around the entrance.

The Natural Entrance Trail meets up with the Great Room loop at an underground gift shop and snack stand. This is also the point where they dynamited an elevator shaft in to the cavern for those who can’t handle the “strenuous” hike down. It is also the only way out, as the Natural Entrance Trail is apparently one way only. So, due to the construction shutting off all running water in the cavern, this was our restroom break: up 800 feet, pee, down 800 feet. Fun! We were amazed by how many people were in the parking lot when we popped up as compared with when we arrived. By far we weren’t the first ones down, but there were maybe six other people in our entrance group, the hike was fairly quiet, and stopping for photos did not qualify as hazardous.

When we went back down to do the Big Room trail it was far more crowded. There were at least two school groups, many people going many different paces, and an older couple where the man is apparently blind and/or illiterate, as his wife read him every sign, fairly loudly (”Lion’s Tail. Oh, how clever. Look dear, this is called ‘Lion’s Tail.’ It looks like a lion’s tail. Oh! Alter of the Sun! Dear, this is the ‘Altar of the Sun!’ . . . “) We turned around expecting to see a mother with a small child or a friend with an obvious mental handicap. Sheesh.

The Big Room is indeed big. And impressive. But after a while we started to get overwhelmed, as is oft to happen to us when we try to do too much sightseeing in too little time. (See also, “imagine ancient peoples in this valley - the men out hunting animals, the women grinding grains in these stone bowls. If you concentrate, you can hear the children playing . . .”) So, after observing all the observable bits, including the 140′ deep bottomless pit, we headed back up the elevator for lunch and a short nap in Vantom before our 2:00 Ranger Walk.

The Ranger Walk was King’s Palace, a series of four large rooms off the Natural Entrance Trail where you are not permitted without a ranger. Our guide was Rob, one of the largest, most military looking Park Rangers we’ve seen. He looked like he just finished his tour with the Marines and went straight to the National Park Service. He was wicked friendly (what Park Ranger isn’t?!), funny, and engaging - which is good, since there were seventy-five wise ass tourists following him through a cave for the next hour and a half.

Much of what we learned about the caverns echoed what we had already read in the park literature, but it is always more interesting when it is tied together in to an interpretive tour and communicated by someone who enthusiastically thinks this is the most fascinating topic in the world. Rob’s theme was to point out that other caves’ staff claim that Carlsbad is a “dead cave” are false; it’s built from life, full of life, and contributing to life. From the bats that alerted ranchers to it’s existence, through millennia of microbes helping to sculpt the caverns, to the microorganisms recently discovered in the deep pools that could potentially be used to fight cancer and other diseases, he did an excellent job of mixing knowledge of history and science with entertainment and succeeded in erasing our earlier cave overload.

Up the escalator a third time (fortunately they switch shifts often, so there as a different Ranger manning the elevator each time), we checked on our options for the next day (two less crowded tours fill up quickly, so get there early), the gift shop (the “virtual tour” of Lechuguilla Cave, which is closed to the general public, is another bullshit “360°” CD-ROM that they sell in every National Park), and headed on our way. We lallygagged a bit, taking some photos of cactus blossoms and ocotillo flowers, then had a leisurely dinner at the Velvet Garter before heading back in to the park for the bat flight.

The bat flight Ranger Program was great - Barrie was very friendly and engaging and prepped us several times for the distinct possibility that we’d be sent home for our own safety due to lightning. So, after telling us all manner of interesting things about bats, including the magic of bat poop as fertilizer and how scientists used bat saliva to develop blood thinners, while there were no signs of bats, his lightning distance measuring box picked up some distant thunder and blinked the wrong color and off we went.

There wasn’t much heavy rain with the storm, which is a nice bit about the desert, but there were strong winds and hail the size of nickels (according to NOAA severe storm warnings). So, we got home, plotted the next day, and hit the hay.

And then we realized it was Cinco de Mayo. ¡Viva la revolution, Amigos!