Part 5: Raising (my heart rate in) Arizona.

For reference, this is what I look like in the summer time (I’m the one on the far left):

2008: Younger and Darker.

*****

I forgot how many hours we drove that day; I’m pretty sure that it was at least ten, but I certainly remember the

Mesa Verde National Park.

moment we decided on going through the Navajo Reservation in the middle of the night. We were outside of Mesa Verde National Park, parked just off the highway, when:

“It’s getting late. We should probably stop at Cortez, see it’s the last town in southwest Colorado before we hit the Indian reservation. My dad told me there are no rules out there. It’s supposed to be sorta dangerous.”

“What’s anyone gonna do? Pull us over and shoot us?”

“I don’t know but there’re no cops and no laws. Plus gas stations are supposed to be like 50 miles apart so if anything happens to us we’re stranded.”

“Screw Cortez. Let’s go for it and get to the Grand Canyon as soon as possible.” I was a lot more apprehensive about the decision to push the envelope than I let on.

We headed south down route 491. No one drives on these roads. No one lives on these roads. The best reminder of civilization is the occasional gas station and speed limit signs that require you to slow down when passing an Indian Casino. Then the road forked. We turned onto route 160 knowing that we would have to drive deep into the night and that there was no turning back.

The geographical equivalent of a glass half-empty.

We got to Four Corners (the convergence of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah) around sunset on a Thursday. Four Corners was closed during the work week over the summer due to renovations. The barbwire, locked gates, and bright red sign emblazoned with “No Trespassing– government property” made it pretty clear that we weren’t supposed to be entering.

“Ah too bad. Well, we’re here, we sorta saw it. Let’s get back on the road.”

“Uhhh. No way. Look those people are sneaking under the barbed wire…I’m doing that.”

“But what if a cop comes by?” Which was very unlikely because Four Corners is in bumblefuck.

“Nothing’s going to happen, don’t worry. We’re never gonna be here again midas well see it now.”

“Uhhh I’m not so sure.”

I. do. not. have. any. identification.

My wallet is either still in Chicago, in the mail, or at the Phoenix hotel. But it’s not in my back pocket and I’m petrified of trespassing on government property without any form of identification. Knowing all that, I know Veronica would never have let me live it down. So we shimmied under the barbwire into my nightmare.

It’s about a quarter-mile walk from the barbwire entrance to the actual monument. A straight shot, like walking down the plank (I’m of course frantically jogging…HUrry uP Veronica). The actual monument is fenced in and you have to hop a second fence. Then I saw three people– two teenagers and their father– hoping back over the fence after having seen and photographed the monument. I knew they were tourists but when the father approached me I froze. In the span of 20 seconds:

“Can I see some identification?”

My mind is literally blank. I don’t reply.

“Because you look like one of those illegal Mexicans.” (refer to picture of me in the beginning)

I forget that they’re tourists. They’re not tourists. This guy’s a cop and now you’re fucked. What’s wrong with you?

I take off my glasses slowly, thinking that if he sees my unmistakeably Asian eyes he’ll dismiss his accusation (I really think this too).

“Nah nah I’m just screwin’ with you guys. Enjoy the monument!”

I look at Veronica. I still haven’t said anything. And she starts laughing in disbelief.

I. do. not. have. any. identification.

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah…I know.”

“Can we just hurry up and take the stupid picture of us on all fours already?”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go. Oh shoot. I’ve never hopped a fence that big before.”

Fuck.

“Okay I’ll give you a boost up, just hurry up.”

The cost of deportation: a crab walk in the dirt.

We took the pictures and hurried off to hop back over the fence. My shorts got stuck on the fence when I was climbing back over it. Rather than help a flailing fish out of water Veronica pauses when I ask for help, “wait wait hold on, I gotta get a picture of this.” M*therF*cker.

Climaxing.

We made it back to the car– not before Veronica started videotaping my hysteria (where I rationalize my bitching by citing my high school rhetoric of never having gotten a 5 o’clock detention before)– and I wanted to kiss the ground outside the barbwire. We got in the car, brushed off our shoulders, and sped away into Arizona where the Yaris held up but my body did not.

Part 3: Long Island at a Mile High.

Walking around campus, less than 60 miles away from my hometown on Long Island, I’ve spoken to people that aren’t aware of what Long Island is and have certainly never heard of Sayville. In a parking lot in Denver, 2,000 miles away from home, we met a gregarious stranger who probably bought Christmas presents as a kid at the same malls I shop at.

“Hey Long Island!”

Whuh?

“…Oh hey, how in the world did you know we were from Long Island?”

“Because of your license plate–Islip Toyota– I grew up in Huntington.”

“No way that’s crazy.”

“Yeah I moved out here because I love nature. Big hiker. So what brings you guys out here? Whereya headed?”

“Well, ultimately we’re headed for Los Angeles, but tomorrow we’re going to Salt Lake City… to check out the Lake…and the Mormons, I guess?”

“No, no, no you don’t wanna do that. You guys wanna see some beautiful scenery? [Veronica and I nod at each other and the man from Huntington, quietly admitting that my flimsy fantasy to see "where the Olympics was held" could and should come to an end] Got a map? [road map, present] Now go diagonally southwest to Four Corners, that way you’ll see some of the most beautiful nature in the States.”

Sounds good. Maybe we'll make it there some other time...

This guy seems nice. Probably late 20s, clean-cut, informative, but are we going to blow up our whole itinerary because of a chance encounter? So random.

*****

“They bought it! I told them that we got stuck in Nebraska because of a tornado and we can’t make it to the hotel in Salt Lake tonight!

*****

I’m constantly underwhelmed by cities because I compare them to New York, but what Denver lacked in enormity it made up for in fresh, unpolluted air.

 

Denver.

After a brief walk around the city we met up with a mother of a friend of Veronica’s who lived in the area. She took us to a Rockies game where I had my first beer at a baseball stadium.

It was a Bud Light at Coors Field.

Diane and I talked about Stephen Strasburg’s potential and Bryce Harper’s attitude and I think I fell a little in love with a 60 year old woman  for the first time. Sadly, she never friended me on facebook. </3.

The view of the Rocky Mountains from Diane's house.

Well-fed and rested, we left in the morning headed– on our new route– to Four Corners, where I nearly get deported (but not really).

Part 2: Nebraskan Nights.

“I got it, I got it.”

“Are you sure…? Because I could take over if you need some rest. Or we could just check into a hotel for the night…” Veronica offered motherly.

“No. I’m fine, let’s fill up and then keep going. Look there’s a Valero, I’ll pull over right now.”

Past midnight the countryside in Nebraska resembles the ocean after sunset—dark and vacuous, without any ending in sight. I turned off of the highway and parked under the bright lights of the only gas station in view.

I went inside to use the bathroom, but mostly to wash my face and hide my yawns. Exhausted, I washed my face and did my best to rouse some energy from my weariness (Come on, you bitch, you’ve only been driving two hours. Man up, let’s go!). It didn’t really do much.

“Alright, let’s go! I wanna get the fuck outta Nebraska.” Too bad we still had nine hours of cow-country left.

I pulled out onto I-80 and then the rain came.

“What the fuck. We just pulled out and now this.”

“This looks pretty bad, maybe we should pull over?”

“Nah, nah we’ll just drive through it. We’ll be fine.”

“I’m going to look up hotels just in case…”

“Yeah sure, you do that.”

Rain flooded the roadways as I rode the break, going about 40 in a 75. Our car was the only one foolish enough to drive into a tornado warning. The wind battered around Veronica’s Toyota Yaris, making steering an exercise in resistance training.

Lightning illuminated the road in front of us and paradoxically served as one of the few things keeping us safe.

“We definitely should stop,” Veronica said, more forcefully than before.

“Yeah, maybe, where’s the closest hotel?”

“The GPS says it’s the other way, like a few miles back.”

“Fuck that, we’re not turning around.”

I ignored my yawns and hydroplaning until I started accidentally veering off onto the shoulder. I initially brushed it off and reassured Veronica that it was because of the roadwork cones that cut the lanes in half, but I obviously knew it wasn’t just that.

 

“Fine, let’s grab a hotel.”

We got to the Rodeway Inn at 2am. When we walked into the check-in desk to request a room the woman informed us that the stretch of I-80 we were on was called “tornado alley.”

$60 and 6 hours of sleep later we were back on the road, headed for Denver.

Part 1: Illinoise.

Fuck  fuck  fuck.

The cargo shorts I was wearing are from the beginning of high school, khaki-colored with a back-right pocket that’s missing a button. Outside of a porta-potty a block away from Wrigley Field I frantically searched my pockets, patting myself down several times even though I knew it was gone.

“What’s wrong?” Veronica confoundedly questioned.

“Holy shit I lost my wallet.”

“Do you know where you…”

I took off running towards Wrigley Field, cutting her off mid-sentence and retracing my steps. I ran through the parking lot, past Ernie Banks’ statue and back to where we had lunch in front of the stadium’s main gate.

“Excuse me, have you seen a wallet? I’m pretty sure I lost it right here,” I insistently asked a homeless man that was sitting in the same spot where we had lunch.

Sadly, the Cubs were out of town. AGAIN.

“No.”

“Are you sure?,” as my impatience and disbelief mounted.

“Mhm.”

Fuck  fuck  fuck. I bet he’s lying, goddamnit! There’s nothing I can do though- urgh!$*)#@!)(

I dejectedly walked back to Veronica, who was waiting outside of the car.

“Nothing,” I said.

She remained optimistic and persistent (as she always is), suggesting ways for us to magically discover the wallet that had been picked up by the homeless man, but I wasn’t listening. It was the second day of our trip cross-country, with 3,000 miles left to go, and I had just lost the legal ability to drive.

**********

We didn’t find the wallet. As far as I was concerned it was lost forever; I knew it was with the homeless guy. We hit the road, westward through Illinois and into Iowa, en route to our final destination: Los Angeles. I called up my bank and cancelled my credit cards and also phoned the Chicago police department. I received a Facebook notification alerting me that someone had found my wallet on the ground outside of our hotel. He told me I could pick it up any time before 5, I told him I was already in Iowa.

“We can’t go back, right?”

“It’s up to you,” Veronica unconvincingly assured.

“No we can’t go back, with all that traffic it’d be ridiculous. I’ll just have him ship it to me.”

I guess that homeless guy was telling the truth. Man, you can really be a prick sometimes.

Veronica was driving, because I no longer had a license—or any identification to prove that I was a legal person—as I played DJ on the car radio and took far too many pictures based on what Iowa’s highway scenery had to offer:

New York has the Empire State Building, Iowa has:

“So what are we gonna do? Like without me having a license?”

“I don’t know, it’s up to you. Nothing’ll happen to me, or my car, so if you want to drive don’t feel bad that you might get me in trouble,” she said, but not as bitchily as it sounds.

“We’ll see.”

I couldn’t imagine not driving for the rest of the way, partially because I wanted to help but also because most people don’t “remember the time they rode shotgun all the way cross-country.”

After approximately ten hours of the passenger seat I started hinting that I wanted to drive. So, after we ate at a steakhouse in Omaha I took over.

Diligently checking her blackberry, Veronica alerted me that there was a tornado advisory in effect for the county we were driving into.

“Oh please, you know how many ‘thunderstorm warnings’ we get on [Long Island] that never amount to anything?”

“Yeah I guess that’s true, but my dad did tell me that tornadoes are a big thing out here.”

“Eh, we’ll be fine.” Strong-headed, but dumb, as usual.