PART 2
BISBEE TO MESA
22 MARCH 1996
I awoke today and said good-bye to Bisbee. I took an early morning walk around town and took pictures. Talked for several minutes with the woman who checked me out from the Bisbee Grand Hotel. The Hotel was built in 1906, along with the Post Office and pretty close to 50% of the rest of downtown Bisbee. "That's when everything happened," she said. Her name was either Colette or Colleen, one of the two. Pardon my inaccuracy.
In the morning, I was the only person wandering the sleepy streets of Bisbee. It was, after all, barely past 7 a.m.. I considered getting a big breakfast at one of the breakfast places, but I was anxious to get on the road. I had a conference call at 11:00 and I wanted to be near a phone. Looking at the map showed a place where the could be a phone that I would reach right at 11:00 -- this was Paradise, Arizona.
I drove down and around US-80, a highway that goes South, North, East and West several times and not because it is curvy. It actually is U-shaped. I drove down to Douglas and out 80 into New Mexico. Upon entering New Mexico I said hello to the Danny's primary home and Simon's home #45. US-80 drives up the west edge of New Mexico. Paradise sits in the middle of the Coronado National Forest, nestled in the Pedregosa Mountains. To get there you must leave 80 and drive west on a county road to Portal.
Shortly after Portal you learn the ugly
truth that the next several miles of your journey are on utterly unimproved roads. I drove
into the forest, on my mission to get to Portal. Through most of the forest the speed
limit is about 15 mph. This is okay, because anything faster would destroy your
automobile. So I was tooling through the forest -- which was thick and definitely an
oasis. Lots of water and wildlife protected by a mountain range in the middle of
inhospitable desert. The road through the forest was windy and often close to impassable.
But I ventured on. It was a rental car, after all. I came around a corner, after not
seeing a soul for about 30 minutes and there was a man carrying a motorcycle tire -- just
walking. It was hot and dry and generally not the greatest conditions to do this -- so I
had to stop and pick him up. It would have been inhuman not to.
This was the third hitchhiker I had picked up -- the other two were while riding in the cars of Carolyn and Heidi respectively. Carolyn picked up a guy between Fairfax and DC several years before. I recall she said, "Should we pick him up?" Roger said, "HELL NO!" And we did. He sat next to Roger. The second, oddly enough, was several years later after Heidi and I had dropped Carolyn off at the AMTRAK station in a small town in southern Washington. Heidi and I were headed back to Portland and she stopped to pick up this guy. "Wow, thanks for picking me up," he said "I knew you were good people. You know, I sure love Jesus! Do you love Jesus?" "No," Heidi replied. "Oh, that's okay," he went on, "there's room for all kinds on this earth!"
So all my previous encounters with hitchhikers were through them. This was my first solo venture. I asked him where he was headed and he said, "Wilcox." I was amazed and showed him a map. "Wow." he said. I told him I was headed for Paradise and showed him where the trail was to get there. He ended up being from Yakima, Washington. Which is the closest place to the desert you'll find up here. Apparently he through a chain and completely destroyed his rear wheel back near Portal. He asked what I was doing out there and I said, "As stupid as it may sound, I'm looking for a pay phone because I have a conference call at 11:00." He told me there was a payphone back at the store in Portal, but now I was committed to getting to Paradise. He told me it used to be an old ghost town -- or so he thought. I had visions of being in that Ghost Town from The Brady Bunch -- you know the episode, the one where they tried to be like Scooby Doo?
I dropped him off at the cutoff where I had
to head back to Paradise. I went down a steep grade and the road deteriorated even more. I
was crossing streams, going through washes, etc. in my Nissan Altima. It was not built for
this type of punishment. After Lewis and Clarking my way down this road, I arrived in
Paradise with 15 minutes to spare. Unfortunately, the ghost town of Paradise was more like
the enclave of a few people. There were four or five houses -- no store or bed and
breakfast or saloon or anything that would have a payphone. There was one house that said,
"Friendly visitors always welcome" but I thought that arriving and using the
phone for an hour would not make for a friendly visitor -- so I did the rest of the loop
(the short side) back to Portal. That side was in equal disrepair. Everyone you pass
waves, though. Mucho friendly. A hapless mountainbiker was trying to make his way -- he
looked tired and frustrated, but managed a friendly wave as well.
I got to Portal and went to the region's only pay phone. 11:01. I called only to find out that my administrative assistant didn't make the reservation for the conference call. So I missed out on the bragging rights of calling in for a conference call from Portal, Arizona. Instead, I ate lunch. Now, I have eaten in many greasy spoons in my life, but the Portal Restaurant beats them all. It was greasy spoon, knife, fork, plate, table ... There is no non-smoking section. There was a sign on the poster board telling people that they could RENT DALE AND A CAT. Dale had a Bobcat and could dig dirt or dig a ditch or even just drive around and entertain you. It had a picture of Dale and his Bobcat. They seemed to be on good terms.
After leaving the restaurant, I drove north
through western New Mexico. Upon reaching Road Forks, New Mexico, I called my parents and
let them know I was coming for a few days. Then I tried to get ahold of Heidi to arrange
dinner sometime during my stay in Phoenix. She wasn't home. I then drove up I-10 to SR -70
and went back west towards Globe. I tried Heidi again and this time she was there. I asked
her if she wanted to do dinner and she said, "Sure." We couldn't come up with a
place though, so I gave her my number and told her to call me back when she found a
suitable place.
SR-70 was a big disappointment after the incredible drive through SR-82 and SR-80 the day before. The differences were pronounced. Globe, likewise, was not what I was expecting. Many people had told me it was a great place and after Bisbee I was really excited to see more great places in Arizona. Globe, however, seemed a lot like Kearney, Nebraska, or Fort Collins, Colorado. In other words, it didn't seem too unique.
I pressed on through the mountains, but the traffic was getting fierce. I had to stop for a long delay for construction (about 20 minutes). Heidi called and said that, upon reflection, she really didn't want to have dinner with me because our previous encounters had been "too negative". I said that I didn't think that was the case and I had been delighted to see her at my housewarming party, but I really didn't want to pursue it so I said good-bye.
Then I was given a gift of lots and lots of
time to reflect on this by more construction that brought all traffic to a standstill for
45 minutes. It was rather annoying because I wanted to just say, "Okay" and
leave it at that, but sitting with absolutely nothing to do in the desert gives you no
choice but to reflect. Reflection still brought no evidence of negativism, so I was left
to second guess her motivations -- which is a crappy thing to do, rarely yields a useful
product and is stressful.
I was doing some heavy wishing that I was back in Bisbee.
After the forty five minute sentence was up I was left with my thoughts and the uninspiring drive on the Superstition Freeway. Regular, but well spaced trips on the Superstition are a game in and of themselves. It's basically a game of seeing how much of the open desert has the oozing metropolis of Phoenix has overtaken. A few Home Bases and Home Depots and Home Parking Lot-o-Ramas together with their Circuit Cities and Capacitor Counties and Diode Dominions and Tons of Consumer Electronic Outlets, had marched out a few more exits. Big NOW OPEN signs flapped in the breeze.
Then I arrived at my parents place in glorious Dreamland Villa -- no, I'm not kidding, someone woke up one day and said, "I'll call it Dreamland Villa!" The rest of the evening was spent just chatting with my parents and relaxing.
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