Frozen

We are frozen, our fluids are all frozen, stuck to the ground and it's well on the way to -10 or worse.

Watching

There never was enough time to reflect, never enough time to get things done, never enough of anything. I wanted this journey to be over before I had even begun it. I was willing the time away, pushing on it to pass, longing in some way for the strong sense of having a life that is actually moving forward. The romantic notion of the noble drifter, the compulsive traveller, the seeker exploring the far horizons were no longer attractive or desirable. A few days and a few nondescript adventures, some dust, some beer and bad driving had worn me out to the point that it didn’t really matter. Inside I smiled at the new maturity that had come upon me so quickly and unexpectedly. This feeling, this smug glimpse into the future and middle age would not last. A second smile eclipsed the first.

There were a selection of fine people in this town, working, walking, hiding and observing. I too a par time job in observation and headed down from breakfast. The chef cooked tinned sausages until they sizzled and split, hens eggs with golden yolks and blinding whites were added to the sizzling oil. Lastly a slice of rough and possibly ancient bread was thrown into the black pan absorbing the oil like a rusty sponge. It was served with a blizzard of pepper on china plates that clattered across the wooden table top as they were unstacked. Tabasco was added by some of the tougher and more valiant diners, I settled for a pinch of salt and black coffee. Fortified by the meal I began my exhausting duties of watching and waiting.

A day lost

I had that feeling that I was missing a day. Perhaps in my inarticulate descriptions f these bandit encounters, guns fights, kidnappings and other peculiar and unrelated badlands events I’ve given the wrong impression. One that says that Ernesto and I are quite familiar with the concept of being caught up in such shenanigans. Nothing could be further from the truth. We represent the young, lower middle class in Argentina, both still somewhere in our studies and likely to be life long at the present rate. Ernesto is still training as a doctor and is in his third year, he is most interested in tropical diseases and respiratory problems. This is due to his mother contracting TB when he was a teenager. He has decided that. As part of a year away from the college and formal studies he will travel the country, this great dusty landmass and reconnect with the people and culture(s) - for no fee or reward whatsoever. He is also, in his heart committed to Claudia but that’s another story for another paragraph.

My career plan is quite different, first of all I do not share any of Ernesto’s social concerns. The noble peasants, workers, administrators, politicians, students and passengers that make up this land are all the same to be (and not in a socialist sense). They are items and baggage passing along in some surrealist carousel known as “life”. I do not pretend to understand it but for no good reason I remain interested in observing and documenting some aspects of this absurd and dangerous sideshow as it trundles by. I also respect their noble path and their stoical determination to try to improve “things”. You may see that as an naive and selfish approach to living and knowing better would expect me to grow out of it. Well to be honest I wish I could but every time I think I’m about to turn concerned again I hear some self serving politician or arrogant General spouting forth on the TV and go back to my dismissive and defeatist views. So, in this self destructive mode I will observe, possibly document, marginally interact and occasionally have a good time bogged down in this Latin and European contaminated mire. Meanwhile Ernesto will fix it, if he can stay awake or away from Claudia long enough.

Our chosen mode of transport is a Ford Cougar, it was all we could find. Well; it was passed onto me in part payment for a longstanding gambling debt. I’d resigned myself to never seeing the money and the offer of the car seemed like a decent deal. I had considered selling it but at best I’d only have gotten a few hundred dollars for it and when the road trip idea was born one drunken night, the Cougar seemed (almost) perfect. We’ve done some maintenance work on it and had (well had almost) grown attached to it’s idiosyncrasy, lack of fuel economy and relatively high standard of comfort. It also seemed quite tough and I considered that it could be another valuable surreal experiment and challenge to see how long a highway car would last for in the rough terrain of the mountains. At the moment it is still with us and healthier than either of it’s regular occupants.

I had a beer hangover. That dry mouth, fuzzed head, concrete brow and bloated stomach thing. Mornings should be my time of creative mountain climbing, my rested brain in it’s strongest and most agile position of the day, ready to pour forth wisdom and document observations critically and pointedly interpreted. Sadly most mornings are dull affairs, trudged through in this pathetic and crippled mode. The sun pouring in through the slats of the blind only made it worse, tiny sparkling beams of solar brilliance alight with life countering my head’s dull, almost clockwork thud and the black hole of alcohol induced brain death I sat amongst. As I looked around I realised that we were still ensconced firmly in the bosom of the backpackers hostel. The good news was I was alone and could begin this day, whatever it’s name was, in personal slow motion. I resolved to do that and so became a time traveller in my own way.

Shambolic

The tyres were drumming some relentless beat and the white line was running under the car like a conveyor belt. As the landscape on the other side of the glass grew into a grey desert I had a sense of the road and it’s welcome smoothness was coming to an end. Despite my expectation it was a shock when it eventually did. It ran into an small town but stayed their, refusing to leave on the west side and allowing only a poor imitation of itself to struggle against the rising ground that led into the mountain foothills. At that point I stopped whist Ernesto reminded himself of the local geography by folding and unfolding a map and thumbing across the road atlas. “We are here”, he pointed and grinned. I was tired and looking for a soft clean bed somewhere.

The clean bed was in a trekkers boarding house. Dirt brown and slightly shambolic, boots and walking sticks in racks outside, no obvious threat of anything being stolen. Chalk boards advertising cheap meals, continuous soup and stew options, local guides, buses to places and woollen hats help onto wooden racks by paperclips. The bed was two dollars, the soup was one and a bottle of beer was two fifty, a hunk of stale bread was free or buried in a simple but confused pricing structure. We did the eating and drinking and regardless of time or the sun’s errant behaviour slept.

Dreams are far more interesting than reality and reality is far less real than dream. I stayed in the dream for what seemed like a long time and then left it, showered and walked out in circles around the straight streets of the anonymous village. Rucksacked students sat smoking outside the one and only café, desperately growing beards if they were male, desperately pleating hair if they were girls. Each one sucked coffee and blew blue smoke and sprouted more wool garments. The car had been parked at an odd abandoned angle next to a waiting donkey and a bicycle. The primitive line up was completed by some straw bales, a clump of battered beer barrels and a pile of rubble. From a certain viewpoint this band of items and materials formed into a linear composition that was pleasing to the eye. I took numerous photographs and joined the students for banter and caffeine in no particular order.

Ernesto joined us as we discussed the mountains and routes, walking strategies as opposed to driven ones and alternate travel plans built precariously around irregular brightly coloured buses and their parrot passengers (we never did see any despite an intensive search). We then speculated about a journey in which we stumbled upon a witches coven (or was it oven) and Indian burial grounds blown over by great sandstorms. I ordered two fried eggs and they duly arrived, Ernesto was hungrier than me and breakfasted on a large steak of an unknown origin. I couldn’t help but notice the donkey was missing.

Hellcat v Zero

And so it was that after a surreal pillow and gun fight we fled the premises whilst the remaining bandits snoozed or discussed philosophical matters to the nth degree. I for one was happy to be back behind the wheel and quickly fell back into by rusty driving style using a larger than usual font. The rev counter never lies and soon it was time to move through the various options afforded by the slick gear box. We were cruising in every sense of the word except the oceanic kind and the miles melted away and as usual I resorted to my normal bad habit of day dreaming while driving. This time I was making a rather nicely coloured coloured, spicy curry from scratch or at least minimal processed ingredients. The story goes like this:

First I took a large saucepan and poured in oil and turned on the flame. Then I began chopping up the onions, two large ones, I chopped them crosswise and unevenly so they were rough and as I finished the first I added it to the hot oil, then the other, the onion pieces curling and sizzling as I stirred them into the bubbling oil. I patted them with a wooden spoon a crunched pepper and rock salt into the mix. Then I picked up the chillies and cut and crushed them deciding to add them seeds and all to the pan, more stirring and a few moments waiting and appreciating till it was time for the curry paste. I couldn’t resist dropping in a glug of wine just to lubricate the ingredients into a thinner consistency and filled a glass for myself as a brief accompaniment to the cooking chores. The chicken breasts were then removed from the fridge. As the pan steamed and spurted I snipped the meat into small pieces, sprinkled them with oil and herbs and spooned the chicken into the onions and paste, stirring and binding the mix and watching as the meat turned from pink to white and then took on the browns and oranges from the paste and the herbs. I placed the lid on the pan and turned the heat down to allow a simmer to take place, looked up at the clock and noted the time, as a reward I finished the glass of wine…

The daydream petered out and once again the dry strip of road ahead took over. Around then I became aware of a 1982 Lexus Soarer in the rear view mirror. We were on a long straight at the car was quickly catching up, it was gold and the sunlight flashed across it’s front grill and bonnet, dazzling. Soon it was right on our tail as if attracted by some kind of giant magnet in our boot. It did cross my mind that it might be driven by and contain some of the bandit types we had encountered a short while ago and now following a hot pursuit they were upon us and seeking some terrible revenge for whatever it was we had done or not done - perhaps. As I observed in the mirror (and Ernesto slept on) I could see that the driver was female and alone. A good combination and vastly preferable to the other possibility that I had considered. She sat on our bumper, it was like a Spitfire versus and Messerschmidt.

It was like a Spitfire versus and Messerschmidt apart from no hiding in the sun or machine gunning or any of that sort of thing, the unsafe but more civilised practice of tailgating. I though about the situation a bit more and decided that it was more like a Hellcat versus a Zero due to respective marques being driven and their countries of origin. She was still hooked onto the back of my car as we zipped along at a steady 75mph over the shining desert road. I sped up a little and so did she, I caught a glimpse of a smile as she pulled alongside and then the Soarer soared by in what I thought to be a rather disrespectful manner. I often feel disrespected when overtaken. I couldn’t be bothered to follow her and settled back in the seat, lifted my foot a little from the accelerator and settled back to the steady 75.

Put those guns away

They had put their guns away when I regained consciousness but my hands were tied. The edges of my vision blurred and I tried to shrug off the idea that this was some parallel universe I’d fallen into, it had all the hallmarks and few of the smells (not something that all travellers would pick up).We were in a bar but nobody seemed to consider that Ernesto and I were prisoners was in anyway peculiar, in fact we seemed to be a part of the company, propped and trussed as we were on a wooden bench at the rear of the establishment. A sweaty looking Indian in a buckskin top came over, cut the cable tie on my wrists and passed me a bottle of warm beer. “Drink and be strong!” he whispered. I drank whilst Ernesto slept on, pressed against my back and the wooden bar wall.

Over at the main part of the bar the bandits were smoking dope and passing a guitar from hand to hand. It was an old shiny Guild, slightly out of tune but no one seemed bothered. Each man would take his turn to pluck out a tune and sing in a Spanish/Anglo language based on MTV exposure and radio listening. Their efforts seemed earnest enough but none of them were able to recall all the words so songs petered out or verses were repeated in that awkward way that lifts any meaning out of the song and rendered the performance pointless. I was hoping that I could finish the beer unnoticed and then snooze while they sang and then perhaps some escape opportunity would open, particularly if they got drunk and silly. That didn’t look likely as one bandit made eye contact noticing I has come round. “Hey, you city boys play us a song or we get more angry!” I grunted and rubbed my head and mumbled about not being a singer, I added with what little enthusiasm I could muster that I was enjoying their music. “We want your Cohen songs!” cried the bandit, assuming that I was a player of some kind and that I could perform that kind of material. I may have passed out at this point.

Some far away place in the centre of my head I realised, or at least came to terms with the sad fact that within my repertoire there were no Leonard Cohen songs. I could remember some of the lyrics to Suzanne, whistle a few odd tunes and had various mental pictures of the great man but my knowledge was lacking. I was ashamed of my shallow experience, my missed opportunities to live and learn and more importantly listen. I simply hadn’t tried and perhaps (and this was the most difficult point to confess to) I’d secretly avoided bothering to get to know his material. A classic and perverse situation, remaining aloof and disconnected for some secret purpose trapped in my psyche and hidden from my wandering mind. All around me were bathing in the musical and lyrical warmth that he exuded and I was refusing to jump in, frozen in the changing rooms, unchanged. What had I missed? How much more of a rounded and fulfilled individual would I been had I just bought a few albums, even a greatest hits and sat down and listen to them. I could’ve avoided so much radio shit by just slipping on a CD in the car and opening my concrete ears. On one level I felt that my life had been wasted and I was now relegated to some lower league in life due to my serial ignorance and indifference.

The weight of my situation pressed down, my conversations were still-born, words came out from my lips but hit the carpet. There was no mutual pick up from my friends or the others around the bar. Even the alcohol’s fervent lubrication could not pull the right dialogue from my rapidly drying mouth. I was out of step with my own world. No mature and proper Leonard Cohen appreciation led inevitably to a doomed spiral of social exclusion and a deeper psychosis battened down with more alcohol. I felt like I could never return home nor hold my head up in any respectable musical or poetic company. I also expected to be hit at any moment.

The digestive system is both simple in principle and complex in how it operates. It can also move from passive to active in a very short period of time, mine is the typical, standard model. I woke again, this time I was being sick, a combination of stress, beer and one or two unpleasant and unwelcome knocks on the head. I was none the wiser on the Leonard Cohen material either, the good news was that the bandits (or whatever they were) had slumped into some kind of cartoon stereo typical sleep across the room. I nudge Ernesto, he was already awake but grunted.

Cat

MOT done, new springs, new shocks, higher emissions just make it. Now the cat's gone so time to make a few phone calls.

Replacement

As the great grey ghost of ongoing fiction and random South American adventure and courageous lies is asleep, the real Mr Cougar is laid low. An offside spring, a track rod end and a shock absorber are the uncounted costs but their added value will soon be known. All these parts were damaged by the ungracious and poorly maintained West Lothian roads. It has been a difficult two days.

Tomorrow a new day dawns and I'm hopeful of a reunion and then the return of the replacement. The Cougar should be back, silent and stable on the road and demonstrating decent and legal emission levels along with at least 53 weeks of MoT. I hope.

No1 in a series of 1

Wine 2.5 Cougar parked in Jasper, Alberta.

Cougar Street

Inexplicably we are on a break, the threads will be picked up, the debris collected, meanwhile I have to explore.

Bonanza

We take more breaks, a caravan sits by the road side. A white body of faded painted signs and a dusty board with a blown away menu. Travelling is looking out of the window, peering through the windscreen dust and swallowing the unchanging dry air until the next meal stop arises. We take two Coca Colas from the wrinkled owner and sit on a plastic chair under the solitary parasol. The flat plain stretches over to a blue tinge of distant mountain, maybe fifty miles in the haze. The Coke hit’s the spot and our eyes close in the heat as we respond to the inner cooling. I feel that somehow I should urinate by the heat and sweat make it a rare occurrence, I feel like I’m drying out from the inside, desiccating and warping with leather intestines and a canvas stomach.

My eye twitches open as I sense a movement. Armadillo. It shuffles across my line of vision about forty feet away, big armoured back oblivious of us and starts to dig at the edge of the parking area. Claws grabbing the dirt, searching for grubs, fleeting and hungry and wild in a dull place. The caravan owner comes out and he is carrying a shot gun, the breaks it’s back and plops in two cartridges ready to blast the Armadillo, “bastards!” he cries and takes a shot. The ground explodes beside the poor animal and Ernesto and I jump to our feet. “Is that how you deal with everything here?” He ignores us and drops the gun barrel while looking out across the landscape.

The sky is a straight ahead blue with those fizzy white edges but in the east is a cloud, a cloud no bigger than the fist of a man. My eyesight is remarkable or am I just imagining this tiny cloud as some kind of pattern piece on the plain background of the worlds ceiling. As I stare at the cloud it grows, coming nearer, spinning and forming a shape. I focus on it’s wandering and vaporous heavenly signature. Now it is also making a noise, that’s because it is a Beechcraft Bonanza, flying low and looking for all the world like it’s about to land on the plain behind us.

I can see the caravan man looking at the oncoming aircraft. He stares at it like it’s a Zero at Pearl Harbour and to my horror lifts the shotgun to his shoulder. He gathers the aircraft into his sight and follows it’s line with the barrel. The Beechcraft angles over a little as the pilot struggles against the warm, rising air. Ernesto and I are frozen, dry mouths aching to shout, tired limbs aching to move.

No shots are fired, thankfully and the aircraft lands. Who are these people?

Escape

The police were rough and unsympathetic, a man was dead, the bar and café were trashed, the locals had scattered and there were two strangers corralled out in the car park. We explained ourselves, showed our papers and pointed at the parked car. The police shone torches in the dark and threatened us with questioning and being transported somewhere else for identity confirmation. The café owner was also part of the melee, complaining about damage and custom and reiterating that he had no idea who anybody was. At one tense point the seemed to be blaming us but then shifted in his version of things to Pete who appeared to be some kind of itinerant and opportunist criminal type who arrived and operated from here a times.

My head was sore and I was still trembling, I was sitting on a box by the entrance, the waitress who had plugged me appeared with a tray of drinks, somebody had had an idea to make amends, perhaps covering for all I knew. We accepted the whisky (as it turned out to be) and began to discuss where we could spend the night. The waitress (Rosa) pointed to the bunkhouse and mentioned a price. The police liked the idea of us remaining by the crime scene so we hobbled over hoping to find some rest. As we entered the door the lights of the ambulance arrived and Pete’s body was carted out and away. The police remained for a while as we lay on the rough blankets and stared at the light patterns on the ceiling. Sleep eventually came disguised as loss of consciousness and the cumulative effects of drink, both piled down on me bringing a selection of film noire dreams and dark corridors, none of which led anywhere.

Morning came as a shock and the dream time and recent murder blended into unreality. Through the grimy window I saw how the car now sat alone in the dusty car park but the tin chimney on the café was spouting white smoke into the dawn. There wood some coffee and food and those little glimpses of civilisation might help our self inflicted and bullet ridden headaches.

In the café we ate a steak breakfast, the owner personally preparing it and assuring us that whilst shootings were rare these days (and this one had been exceptional) there was no need now for us stay, the police had all the information they needed. I also assumed that they had the contents of Pete’s wallet and that was most likely a big help to them in deciding on how to proceed with the case. We thanked the owner and tipped him a few dollars and decided to put as many miles as we could between ourselves and the village, San Pedro.

The road from San Pedro was a long and featureless straight. Red trucks and tractors headed East on the opposite side but we seemed alone in our intent to head West. The telegraph poles counted down a hundred miles or more without any of the monotony breaking or revealing any aspects of the land’s secrets.