So if I were hip and young and focused on enjoying life, thrills would be rattling my spine and anticipation would be firing my imagination. Instead, I’m imagining fear and loathing, Mexico style.

When at first I obtained gainful employ, I was treated with a lunch among the “team.” Yay, team. Whilst enjoying a French-like ham and cheese sandwich in the Croque Monsieur or Madam tradition, I heard about “the retreat.” As in, our team is retreating to build team spirit and strategically plan and otherwise focus on all sorts of work-y, grinding fun. Only that wasn’t the lunch-time chatter, not the working, strategically planning shit, nope it was about it’s being a trip to Mexico.

In other words, next week I’ll be slipping south of the border, first to Mexico City, then to a mountain artsy, spiritual, resort-ish town called Tepoztlan. From what I can gather on-line, Tepotzlan has a lot of the same groovilicious art colony vibe and market quality of maybe Provincetown off season. Tucked away from the mainstream, but still able to get clogged with visitors on the weekends.

Oh, it’s also home to a pretty good amount of UFO activity, if you were to believe in such things. Probably, that activity is due to it being adjacent to the alleged birthplace of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec serpent god, who, of course, came from the sky ad brought technology and all sorts of shit, if you were to believe in such things. You know, like them aliens do.

It’s also where there’s the Pyramid of Tepozteco that honors Ometochtli-Tepoztécatl, Aztec god of pulque, which apprently was a key Aztec psychedelic booze and some kind of fermented cactus juice that is still around. He’s also the god of fecundity and harvest and bunnies, ‘cuz you like get all drunk and shit and that leads to making stuff, like babies and bunnies and I guess whatever crops come from fucking.

In theory, I should be excited by this little trip. New on the job and getting my expenses paid to an exotic locale and all. Only, I started looking for portents, and right now I’m not feeling good about the address of the Mexico City hotel where we all will be staying at first. It’s on Edgar Allen Poe street (only it probably ain’t “street,” because they wouldn’t use that word). Fucking POE. Scary.

Then there is my out and out phobic fear of work-related travel. Awhile back, in the hell job that preceded my last hell job, the one that made me leave Boston. Well in that olden job, we all use to march right off to an annual Washington, DC-based professional development junket, wait I mean meeting. Right, a meeting, one in which my director annually packed a giant bottle of Cuervo 1800 or convinced whoever was running the “hospitality suite,” aka free booze room, to stock up on various Jose flavors.

Believe me, nothing puts the fear in ya for work travel like seeing your overly coiffed, awkwardly aging, Italian Stallion, twice married, slime-coated, height-challenged, hirsute, philandering boss, doing body shots of tequila off of some chick you just met and accidentally pimped out to him, just by bringing her around.

One meeting hurt or stands out for me, or maybe it was two that have melded in that weird way in which trauma just piles up on you and becomes one giant memory. At a meeting, or maybe two, I had to share a room with a co-worker. One night, she didn’t come back to her bed, choosing instead to wake me up at dawn in a classic, horrible, college dorm scenario of hysterical “guess who I just fucked last night?” Suave director man got a bit beyond the body shots that night, and I spent the next few months dreading what my co-worker might tell me on any given day, when the occasional bumping ugly continued.

The possible same meeting, or maybe the next, brought more tequila and another female contemporary to myself (therefore a good decade or two younger than the director Lothario) falling for his charms (ones thankfully to which I was impervious). This time I had the misfortune of bumping into the fun-loving meeting attendees as he carried/dragged her legless chubbiness off the elevator in the direction of his room.

A month later, she had moved to Boston from Chicago and was declared our new boss.

I have it on excellent authority he tagged team the chicks around me for several months, while his wife gave birth to their youngest child, and, eventually, the native Chicagoan returned to the Midwest a sadder and wiser woman.

After that, I stopped traveling on business. My professional self just wasn’t developing, and my personal self was a tad stressed.

Piled on that is my last year’s lesson in never, ever, ever, ever, fucking ever, ever trust people at work ever again.

Yay me! I’m going to a remote village, where I can’t speak the language, spending hours and hours with co-workers I barely know and want to keep that way, and can expect at least wine at dinner in play, not to mention it’s being the land where fucking tequila was born. Holy shit, I’m quaking in my boots.

Another weekend, another adventure for M. and dee-rob. This time the setting was Monterey (again) and Big Sur. M. finished his first half marathon in the very lovely and scenic Andrew Molera State Park, which pretty much has the vistas that made this whole Bay Area thang famous. Ocean, cliffs, hills, valleys, farms, dunes, trees, birds, flowers, lizards, the whole enchilada, view-wise.

Here are some pics.

The important one is my baby trotting out of the woods a mere 2:56 hours later. Not a bad time for a trail run that changed elevation from sea level to about a half-mile up with no smooth pavement on a day that hit ~85 degrees.

He’s like superman or something.

My journey west has been a huge success for me, and that success can be summed up in one word:

OTTERS!

When I was little, like second grade maybe, I wrote a million reports on the wonderful and adorable sea mammal that uses a stone as a tool. Now, I’ve seen them live and in the wild frolicking in the kelp on the beaches of Monterey.

I’m seriously happy about seeing them.

There’s something great about getting to bear witness to a little, little kid dream inside of you.

So I really got in late Friday night. But, I had trouble sorting out some email shite, so I emailed the family and the seriously worried friends some time on Saturday.

Now it’s Sunday. I’ve seen my new digs, but we haven’t moved in yet. M. picked out a rental with just the right mix of space (to keep my junk from overpowering us) and little details to keep me amused for a while.

I have a couple of pictures, which I will post some time soon of a couple of my favorite amusing details. Chief among them is the built in display-type china cabinet in the dining room. Handy and functional, yes, but ripe with kitsch in this case. The owner of the place, who’s an immigrant from the mythical island of Greece, saw fit to tart the cabinet up a bit.

He used those mirrored tiles from the 70s decorating boom. You know the ones that you could stick anywhere and had lovely, lovely flecks and marbleized zig zags of gold? Any one out there who knew Pat in the 70s knows exactly what I’m describing. She went nuts back in the day sprucing up our tiny bathroom. The net effect was a creepy band of mirrors in which you could keep a close eye on your privates as they did their private business.

The mirrors work better in a curio cabinet. And, the slightly broken Virgin Mary Hummel that Pat had rescued from the big fire will look positively mid-American beatifying vision in it.

Then, there’s a ton of stuff that is how I have always been and grown up. Possibly upscale, but a tad askew in the actual do-it-yourself delivery. Like the bathroom sinks (yup, plural, two toilets and moving on up). Anyway, I’m pretty sure the bathroom sinks are both marble, but the caulking and grout around them are distinctly not decorator but homemade (well home-done).

I think we’ll fit in pretty well there.

Meanwhile, I think we are back to Ikea again today after thinking about a couch and enlisting his friend with a van. Good thing they didn’t have one of the places back in Massachusetts when I was there. With the price/funkiness ratio I would have been redecorating far too frequently.

The place is going to be a tad spartan for a bit, since we need most everything furniture-wise, but it will be fun building it up.

I’m typing this shite on M.’s computer. I made it to California in one piece.

And, on the 12th day, she slept.

I think my everso thin, not very convincing, veneer of hip and cool is beginning to crack and give way to road weary. Maybe I’m just saying that because of the enormous zit on my cheek, probably a result of too much moisturizer and stress.

I’m just about ready for this show to end. Good timing on my part, since I’m pretty near the California border right now.

Although, I have one last marker to mark. One I have mixed feelings about, in a way. (That last bit is grammatically annoying to me, but so it goes.)

Anyway, I have never seen dry, hot desert and so I must see what I can of the Mojave in Southern Cal. (I was considering Death Valley, but I would be detouring out of my way and ticking more time away from the goal of San Jose and M. and our new digs.) It shouldn’t be too hard a target to hit, since pretty much all of Southern Cal. should be a desert if it weren’t for irrigation. (Everything I know about California water rights can be summed up in one word, Chinatown.)

The mixed feeling is over my fantasy and the likely reality. I want dry and dusty and desolate and impossibly dead but yet living. However, they say this year is a legendary one for blooming wildflowers and cacti and all manor of flora thanks to heavy rains at the right time and prevailing temperatures this winter.

So, instead of death, I will have to try my best to enjoy a display of life.

And, after reading up on it, I also realize that some of my assumptions about allergies might be a bit off (sorry, Liz). It’s wildflowers that can stay dormant without water that are blooming like shit. I’m crossing my fingers, though, that the foreign, previously uninhaled species of pollen won’t fuck my head up so bad that sneezing impairs my driving.

Today’s main question is how much driving do I do? Once I see me some poppies and lupins and cacti do I hammer it all the way up North to San Jose?

Fortunately, I’m getting an early start thanks to the most meager of “continental breakfasts” I’ve had to date. No reason at all to linger over plain donuts, mediocre coffee with fake creamer and Tang, or maybe orange Koolaid.

I spent the day at the Grand Canyon have almost nothing to say about it. It’s just too amazing and vast to describe adequately. The whole time I was there, I was looking out and thought it looked more like a giant movie screen, something in 2D, than reality. It was just too much for my brain to process.

I’ve been to Yellowstone and to Crater Lake, and I don’t remember feeling the anxiety over the hugeness in front of me. Yeah, I was nervous, edgy whenever I looked out at the canyon. I think it’s unnerving to have to face your puniness.

And, my poor, weary dogs are barking after all of the hiking I did. The downside of not having a manservant available to meet my every need is the long, long walk back to retrieve my car. (The one I deserted early and spent the day walking further away from it.)

After strolling a long haul on the southern rim of the canyon (and a little way down into the basin), I decided to shortcut back away from the rim along the road through the surrounding forest. Apart from see a shitload of Ponderosa pine (just like “Bonanza”), I was rewarded by having a group of deer walk across the street right in front of me.

I’ll upload many pics from my puny, unworthy perspective when I have a decent Internet connection.

I’m still awake, even though I plan to get up early to see the wonder of wonders called the Grand Canyon. Not the OK Canyon, the Pretty Good Canyon or the Fucking Fabulous Canyon, but the “Grand.” Breaking it down that way, as GRAND, I wonder if Holden Caulfield would have thought the canyons neighbors phony.

My sleeplessness is my proximity to the wilderness, here somewhere in the mountains where the motel is. (I don’t know why, except, of course, ignorance, but I was surprised as my car rose in elevation as I drove here. In my head’s world, vast canyons somehow sink deep into the earth’s surface, taking elevation from 0 at sea level to a negative number. Stupid brain. Turns out the bottom bit where the water flows is the bit that’s leveling out to the sea. Outside the canyon, I’m at 6,000 feet.)

The woods make my heart palpitate and muscles tense in fear.

In the city, I am at ease walking after midnight alone and confident. In the woods, I’m twitchy. Really twitchy. I saw some lights flashing overhead as I took in a sky loaded with stars, and I thought of UFOs and abductions and danger.

I think of blood-thirsty and poisonous animals, bears, spiders, asps, scorpions, I think of serial killers, I think of falling 6,000 feet, I think of the Bates hotel, I think of all manner of wild destruction. Here I am vulnerable.

My peace is the certainty of crime and danger in the city. I know what to expect, I can anticipate. Here I am without tools or weapons. I know nothing, so everything scares me.

Although, free-floating anxiety aside, I am still pumped about the trip and what I have and will see. Perhaps the nervous edginess is the first crack of road fatigue.

Trusting this shit more than all of the other shit (well, this combined with USA Today and Palmone), I’m voting in Wednesday. I left home a week ago Tuesday or nine days ago.

Nine days of thinking, writing (a bit, but not enough), looking, watching and driving. Just driving. Easing between the mostly white dashes on the road, easily passing and moving on and on.

My life has been subsumed by my driving self. I know this sublimation, this change, as truth, because all of the signs are there. Signs of me and my badass driving. How else to explain that Arlo Guthrie singing “City of New Orleans,” an ultimate railroad traveling hobo song, was the hold music as I waited for AAA to say they could yank me from the mud? How else to explain that this morning I jumped into the Beetle, tuned the radio and heard the Dead’s “Truckin’?”

But even as I feel more comfortable driving, I feel like a visitor taking notes from another world, another galaxy. It’s hard to explain, but with everything assaulting my eyeballs and registering slowly in the gray matter being so incredibly different from my physical reality, I cannot be anything but an interloper.

Like this:

By the way, after looking at the next picture hours after it was taken, I have to wonder. Wonder why Georgia O’Keefe did so many of those suggestive flowers evocative of female anatomy, but she never got above the waist.

Today I saw things that were not of my earth. Not of the rolling hills and predictable colors of granite and grass and deciduous trees that my eyes say are this planet.

Fittingly, I have also lost all sense of time. I’m sitting in a motel outside of the Grand Canyon (tomorrow’s adventure), and I got an email that said Happy St. Patty’s Day. “Is it the 17th?” I think. Then I check my computer clock/calendar. It’s telling me it’s Friday, March 18, 2005.

I thought it was Wednesday, March 16. But, now, I don’t know.

A rising sense of panic, and I grab the USA Today out of my backpack, which I remember throwing there this morning. But, was it this morning? How the fuck should I know. By now, I’m on road time. I am gathering no moss. I removed my watch, like Peter Fonday in Easy Rider and left conventional society. My life isn’t measured neatly in sweeps of analog hands or sheaves of calendar pages.

Seriously, I’m not sure what day it is. This statement is not melodrama, it is a disconcerting, kind of, uneasy, sort of, truth. It doesn’t really matter, but somehow it does.

My Palm Pilot and newspaper say Wednesday, so I will believe in that. I will hold Wednesday dear, until I know otherwise or more dearly if I am right.

(I’m hitting update on this post, because it will be my arbiter. Let’s see what date and time WordPress gives me.)