The Adventures of Expatboy

New Rochelle, NY. I step into the condo’s elevator and press "4". I had picked up less mail than I had expected. I had thought 3 weeks of mail would amount to a lot but it didn’t. 3 weeks of packages though, that was a different story. I had to borrow the dolly from downstairs to carry all of them up at the same time. In them were all the items I ordered for the Spyder a couple of weeks back. There was an exhorbitantly expensive set of Husky floormats, there was the Garmin NuVi GPS, and there was the car cover. There were of course bills galore, not that I had to worry about them. All my bills were paid automatically, so there should be no issues there.

What was an issue was the ambivalence that I still felt about the end of the journey. I was back home, back to where I started. 

The next day I took the car for a carwash and detailing. The car wash guys were pretty excited about the car, and these were guys who washed Porsches on a daily basis,
so that felt good. But it was still all anticlimactic I felt. Not that I expected a ticker-tape parade on my return, but I didn’t expect "more of the same".I expected to be.. different somehow.

The next couple of days, I realized it had become different. In the news, Saint Louis was voted "most violent city". That meant something. I knew it to be true because I was there. On a TV newsmagazine, a young black man from downtown Indianapolis was being interviewed, regarding the deteriorating state of his community. I knew what that meant, because I was there. On TV, "Supernatural" was on, featuring the monster-slaying, roadtripping Winchester brothers. I could feel a connection, albeit to just a fictional pair of brothers, because I knew what that felt like. On TV was another one of those dinosaur-extinction-via-meteorite documentaries. I knew what that meant because I’ve seen just how frickin’ big those meteor craters can be! It’s as if I had become more alive, more in-touch with places far-off by the mere fact of physically sharing the same space with them once upon a time.

I think I may have caught the travel bug. Not the fly-to-gay-Paree type of travel bug. It’s the see the backroads of the world, hands-on type of travel bug, with the sun in your face, the wind in your hair, and the smell of fresh grass and cowpies wafting up your nostrils. Crazy schemes come into mind for the next ones.

I’ve already drawn up the map, a journey not for today or even tomorrow, but one of these days. In the meantime, my full route is available here.

In

The Hampton Inn at North Olmstead, Ohio. I had a bad dream this morning. In my dream I parked the car in front of Onjie’s place, which suspiciously looked like a cross between the Bagaybagayan’s house in the ‘Pinas and Onjie’s apartment in LA. I needed to take a dump so I went to the bathroom, but the bathroom was inside their bedroom. No, it wasn’t like connected to the bedroom. It WAS the bedroom. There was a urinal, a sink, and a toilet. There were 2 beds next to it. And dirty water from the urinal flowed onto the floor, partially soaked up by the pillows and blankets laid haphazardly on the bare cement. I quickly lost my urge to take a dump, and promptly woke up. It was 7am, and my alarm was ringing. The sky was still dark outside, but I wasn’t sleepy anymore. I decided to get out of bed and start off early for the next leg of my trip. 270 miles to Centre Hall, Pensylvania.

I stepped out of my room into the hallway. It was a depressing sight. The carpet in the hallway was old and musty. The wallpaper was smudged. I half thought that I could have spent more points on a better hotel. Yet, if I had to pay for the room that I had just slept in, it would have cost at least a hundred bucks. And if I were actually paying for a room, I would probably cheap out even more and get myself a bed at the Best Western or Motel 6 - and man I knew what the quality of those joints were like. So I sighed and was thankful for what I did get for free.

After breakfast of sausage, egg, biscuits, and orange juice (no grits this time!), I took a shower, packed my stuff, checked out, grabbed a bag of fruit, energy bars, and mineral water that all Hampton Inns provide in the morning, and walked out into the early daylight, to the car.

Early model Spyders had a not too uncommon problem of having their pre-catalytic converters
disintegrate and get sucked into the engine, grinding up the insides. This was what was called in the enthusiast groups "pre-cat failure". To check for tell-tale signs of this, I had started checking the oil levels every morning, just to make sure. After driving a Honda for 6 years, I had gotten used to having the engine oil still full and looking clear even right before maintenance, which was every 7500 miles. The Spyder, after 2000 miles had already eaten a quart of engine oil, and it was starting to turn brown. I had been told that this was normal for Spyders, but I had started to think that man, they could build much better engines that this. Still, if these machines could last hundreds of thousands of miles, I should not be worried.

I drove with the top up this time, as the weather report stated that it would feel like 50 degrees for the rest of my trip. I gassed up at the station right next to the hotel, and drove off, draining one of the last 2 red bulls.

Around this time I saw a freeway sign that pointed to "New York". I felt something pull in my stomach, relief and anxiety coming at the same time. "Finally, I was almost home". And, "what, I’m its almost over?"

The leaves had started turning orange and yellow. It was fall already. I was trying to decide whether or not fall had come while I was driving, or the leaves did not turn yellow west of Detroit. It was lovely though. I tried taking pictures but never caught the spirit of the season. I started to think that I should’ve brought someone along as a photographer, but where to put my bags then?

Again, I got lost, and it would not be the last time! I was in Amish country and I saw road signs
warning of horse-drawn buggies. I had to circle back to recover and turned off the highway in what I thought to be a long country farm road. It turned out to be a long, winding residential area for maybe 20 miles, only at the very end turning into farmland. I turned into the parking lot, went into the souvenir shop and got myself tickets for the next tour into Penn’s Cave.

The office had left a couple of messages on my mobile phone, and I couldn’t call them back because of the bad reception, being in the middle of nowhere. I walked out into the parking lot to get a signal to no avail. A pang of anxiety rose through me. I should have answered that call. I was in the middle of nowhere but still. I strove to forget about this issue until I got back to civilization and a decent cell signal.

I quickly realized that all this running around to get a signal almost made me miss my tour! I ran back into the gif shop, out through another exit to where the tour started. I ran down a steep incline, down to the docks where elderly folk had already started gathering. Yes, docks!

Turns out, Penn’s Cave was half filled with water, and you had to take a boat through! Now that
freaked me out. Darkness and cold water? That was like double jeaopardy to me. I tried to imagine what it would be like for the boat to capsize in the middle of the tour, and to lose all light. That would’ve been a nightmare, I thought. Luckily, the water was only 3-4 feet deep, so I wouldn’t have to swim in complete darkness if the boat capsized. Just wade in freezing water in darkness.

The caverns were impressive. There were cavern ceilings that rose hundreds of feet into the air, and there were long stretches where the passages were pencil-thin, barely having enough space to let the long thin motorized boats through. All throughout there were rock formations that, through the hundreds of years that people were exploring and taking tours, that people had named. There were rock formations that looked like a dragon, angels wings, "cave bacon", there was even a formation that looked like an entire farming community.

After more than half an hour, we exited all the way to the other side where there was a small man made lake and dam, with interesting wildlife on the water and by the shore like swans and white-tailed deer.  Then we turned around and went through the cave system again, this time at a faster pace. I managed to capture a video of that on my camera here. As we got out of the boat, I was famished and went back to the souvenir shop cum cafe and ordered myself a hamburger and fries.

The hamburger tasted odd. It had a strange, oily taste. And the fries were unexpectedly firm. Not that it was bad. In fact, it was pretty good. I thought of the way that I found it hard to adjust from Tang  in ‘Pinas to "freshly squeezed" orange juice here in the US. The hamburger that I had been eating was probably slaughtered and ground in this very farm, the fries probably made from potatoes in neighboring farms, and I just was not used to the taste of fresh food.

I checked my watch. It was past time for me to leave. Last stop, New York City.

Detroit, Michigan. No, Anxiety was not my next stop! I was on the last legs of my self-proclaimed "epic" 3300 mile journey from California to New York, and was starting to feel ambivalent about the end of the journey. When I started, I wanted to get to NY as fast as I could. Show my new wheels to Eros and Jon, and try to explain to my folks that I bought a car as a toy. Yes, it was a toy. Couldn’t use it for cargo; couldn’t use it in the snow; couldn’t even use it to carry more than one other person.

I was so much in a hurry in fact, that I didn’t even stop in Phoenix to catch a flight back to work, choosing instead to drive all the way to Oklahoma City, driving an extra thousand miles over the weekend, just to get to NY one week early. Back then I guess, I never thought that the trip itself would be that much of an experience. I skipped Flagstaff, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico, places that I may have enjoyed visiting. Instead I just drove past those cities in red-bull-and-sleep-deprivation induced shivering. Never even took decent pictures during the first few legs.

And now I’m trying to make up for all of that lost experience by trying to fit in additional legs in my journey. There’s a cave complex in Pennsylvania that I was thinking of visiting. That would mean me driving out of Detroit wednesday night, to spend the night in Cleveland, Ohio instead of just passing through. I had started taking more pictures, and spending more time savoring the experience.

And I was already planning my next road trip! Maybe take the northern route from NY to Seattle and visit interesting spots like Sioux Falls and Mount Rushmore. Then drive down from Seattle to San Diego and see all the interesting spots in between. Then take the southern route skimming the border with Mexico and passing through mysterious Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico. Then to New Orleans, Florida, the Carolinas, then back to NY. That would probably be a 10,000 mile trip! If I had a month and a half vacation, maybe. Or maybe a road trip across all the US states? Alaska and Hawaii would definitely be a problem.. Or maybe a road trip on an even grander scale? But how to pay for all those hotel stays?!?

It would be a lot easier, too. I checked UPS and my new GPS just arrived in NY. It had the complete map of the USA pre-loaded, so I wont have to load up the next leg of my journey every night on the road. I wouldn’t even need my laptop anymore, except to keep the blog updated. Gas was also on decline. When I started out, it was 3 bucks plus a gallon. Now its around 2 bucks plus.

In reality, I did not want it to end, not yet. There were too many things to see and learn about this country, and it was worth the long drives, and the 2 gas-ups a day, and grits and biscuits every morning - as long as it wasn’t driving at night.

Saint Louis, Missouri. There was 250 miles of road between me and my next destination -  Indianapolis, Indiana. "Home of the Indy 500", said a subtitle in my mind. I started the first hundred miles driving top-down, as I had the day before. However, the weather was getting cold. The weather man on TV said that it was going to be 40-50 degrees, and my toes were already getting a bit nippy. So at the first gasoline station I decided to put the top up. Top-down driving was no fun anyway in gloomy weather, I thought.

I started listening again to my audio book. It was the 11th book of the Wheel of Time. Man I had been reading that book since college, and now there was still one book to go after this! This installment was 32 hours long and I only listened to it during the drive, yet I was already in the last quarter of the book. Man, I had been driving for quite a while. I saw a sign for a KFC, and I took the exit for it, tens of miles later.

What first tipped me off that this was no ordinary KFC were the billboard advertisments. This KFC had buffet meals! Lunch and dinner! That was a first I mused, but thought no more of it until I entered. I scanned the menu, and almost laughed out loud with what I saw. This KFC in Indiana served the Chicken Liver, Chicken Gizzard, and Catfish value meals! Man, how could I have ever been even slightly embarrased with the 1pc KFC with rice meal?

This is one thing thats good about travelling, is that it broadens your perspective. Not only is it different in ‘Pinas vs the US vs the rest of Asia vs Europe, even in the US itself there’s a lot of variation. People, accents, styles, fast food menu items. Who is to say what is proper or cool and what is not? It’s all relative.

I ate my KFC meal. No I did not try the chicken liver meal. Shortly afterwards I started driving again. In a couple of minutes I reached the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500. I wanted to go to the museum, but couldn’t find the entrance, so I drove all the way around the track before I found the entrance.

Belatedly, I realized that I had just run one 2 1/2 mile lap around the circuit in my car, although not on the track itself. All around the track there were houses and shops either closed or in disrepair. "Blighted" was the word that sprung to mind. Like Saint Louis, this was one of the places in America that had definitely seen better days.

As I drove underneath the track into the museum area, I was suddenly transported from slums to well manicured lawns, and impeccably maintained bleachers. I was driving towards a large building surrounded by trees and grass, built inside the track oval of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway! This was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum. After taking a gander at the surroundings, I paid the $5 ticket and entered. Not a fan of the Indy 500 myself, I still found the memorabilia inside interesting. There were the winning cars from the 100 year history of the track, and it was very interesting to see how the cars changed in shape from the big blocky cars of 1911, getting lower, wider, and more streamlined as the cars represented were from years closer and closer to the present.

After and hour-and-a-half I went to the gift shop for more souvenirs, and I realized that really, the most expensive part of the roadtrip was not gas, it so far only totalled less than $150. It was not the lodging, because it was free. It wasn’t the food, because breakfast was free and I would eat anyway whether I was at home or on the road. The most expensive part were the souvenirs and pasalubong!

It was 5pm EST when I left the museum. I checked the oil in the car. Still OK. The exterior though
was disgusting. 2000 miles of driving leaves a lot of splattered insects on your car. I probably had to get myself a carwash, but that could come whenever. Hitting Indiana made me change time zones again. For a change, I was actually 3 hours ahead of schedule, but still, I had 4 hours of driving left ahead of me before I get into another bed. Next stop, Detroit.

Tulsa, Oklahoma. 9am Mountain Time. Seemed like all Hampton Inns serve grits and biscuits for breakfast. But free food was good food, and I had a long drive ahead of me today, the first of which was the 180 plus miles to Springfield, Missouri.

For a change I would be driving well before noon, and would have sunlight for most, if not all of the drive. I was very pleased at the drive from Amarillo, Texas to Oklahoma City 2 legs back, and was looking forward to seeing the road in the daylight and actually appreciating the road trip itself, not the destinations.. especially since the destinations were almost always Hampton Inns!

I took the time to check the tires, the oil, and other vital fluids in the car before I started, just to have peace of mind. It was a more than 3000 mile trip, a trip which would test any vehicle. I was low on gas, so I would pull over for dino juice the first chance I got.

As I started to drive away, my iPod died on me. I forgot to charge it on the USB port the night before! And I used up all of its charge watching TV shows in the plane from Detroit to Oklahoma. That sucked! I’d be bored out of my wits! But what was I to do? Then an idea. As I finished pumping gas at a nearby station, I decided to put the top down.

Going topless was the best thing I ever did that day. As I zoomed into the triple digits (just for short bursts mind you), I had a smile on my face as wide as Texas, and yes, I know how wide Texas is. I just crossed it the week before. This was what I bought this baby for. To hell with status and image, this car was bought for the sheer pleasure of the drive. For 180 miles the smile never left my face. The engine at my back was at a low steady rumble at 4000-5000rpm. Right smack in the peak of the power band. On the radio, I was switching between 80’s music, jazz, and alternative. That really made me get into it. In no time at all I was waving at the Mercedes SL500’s, Mazda Miatas, and other convertibles on the road that also had their top down that I passed by. And maybe they were waving back at me. But I didn’t really notice. All I knew that at this moment, I was happy. I was in bliss.

Then it got even better. My destination was not the city of Springfield itself, but a farm northwest of it. On this farm was a place called Fantastic Caverns, a large cave system that had become sort of a tourist attraction. And since it was on farmland, the road to it was hilly and winding. The perfect road for a light roadster.

I probably shifted gears more times in those last 7 miles from the freeway to the farm than all of the miles between Arizona to Texas! The road rippled, and quick 90 degree turns were not uncommon. I was between just 30 and 50mph, shifting gears continuously between 2nd, 3rd and 4th. This was almost like a video game I thought. And the views of green grass, farmhouses, and picket fences were gorgeous. Finally, and too soon I thought sadly, I reached Fantastic Caverns.

I parked at the lot and stretched my legs, then walked towards the visitor’s center. I got myself a ticket and maybe after half an hour’s wait, I got myself on a jeep running on propane. Then me and maybe 20 other tourists descended into the caves. The caves were actually large enough for a jeep and a trailer full of passengers to drive through! We went deeper and deeper into the cave system, with the guide narrating about how the cave stalactites and stalagmites took thousands of years to form. At one point we were under 150 feet of rock, and I started getting claustrophobic, feeling the millions of tons of rock over my head pressing down on me. But only slightly. I would not want to explore caves by myself. No way. The cave formations were beautiful though, and was definitely an experience. An hour later we were out of the caves and back in sunlight. As the sun touched my face, the oppresive weight seemed to evaporate like so much morning dew.

I spent a couple more minutes under the sun, enjoying the "ruralness" of it all, if there was such a word. Pulling the top down again, I programmed on to the GPS my next destination, and then drove off. 220 miles to Saint Louis, Missouri.