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DATE: June 9, 2002 High Temperature: 95 Low Temperature: 75 Meat intake: Pepperoni, Turkey, Italian Sausage Source material: Eat Your Way Across America, emails from Tom Welsh & Ed Ward, Lonely Planet: USA. Miles covered: 450
So there's something I forgot to mention yesterday. When John arrived in LA the other day, he said that his Cooling System Warning Light had come on and he had some problems with spewing coolant. No biggie, I thought, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Well we got to it. For some reason, the car purred through the lower desert of California. It didn't so much as whimper as we sped through Phoenix. The 7800 foot climb to Lakeside was uneventful (except for some elk sightings).
But today, as we drove out of town today, in lovely 75-degree weather, the car started acting up. The bridge that I had so nonchalantly referred to needed to be crossed.The warning lights were going crazy. We pulled over and put a bunch of water in there. We bought more coolant at yet another Circle K (boy, howdy, are there a lot of those in the Arizona Highlands). A friendly officer even pulled over to see if we needed help. We asked what he knew about Audis and he said he didn't know much. We told him we thought we could make it to the next town and we'd figure it out from there. We thanked him and we were off. Well another one of his partners in crime-prevention saw us and pulled John over for speeding. But he let us off with a warning. If you know Tim Hale, you know this isn't always the case. Ask him about his experiences with the Arizona State Troopers.
Enough about the law. We have a day to get through. We awoke to a crying baby at the house we were staying at in Lakeside. Why? Well that's what babies do. We made some breakfast and then John & I went for a run. I don't think I'm built to run at 7800 feet in really sunny weather and high winds. But we did it. Hopefully, future runs will be at lower altitudes.
After that, we just kinda kicked back for a bit. Then we hit the road. blah, blah, blah, overheating, blah, blah, blah. We didn't really deal with the problem. We pulled over in Springerville and tried to deal with it. John made a few calls to Audi and we tried to find a dealer. I had an ice cream so as to not overheat myself. We decided to change course and go to Albuquerque, so we could get the car looked at tomorrow. But after driving to the place where we would've needed to catch a highway up to Albuquerque, we realized we hadn't had a problem in awhile, so we decided to make a run for Roswell. Where are we, you might ask? Read on. Read on.
It was after leaving the Springerville Circle K that we realized that we were not only dangerously low on coolant, but our meat intake for the day was also dangerously low. We got a little panicky. But Sundays in rural New Mexico don't leave a lot of choices for dining. But when we got to Socorro, we found a lovely little brew pub. But when we got in there, we realized that their specialty was pizza, not meat. But we still managed to get our share of meats. Italian sausage and pepperoni were the meats of the day. As well as a little turkey with breakfast. We'll have to make up for our less-than-stellar meat performance today. John told me not to worry as by midday tomorrow, we'll be up to our asses in meat. Or something like that.
I'd love to write more, but we actually covered a fair amount of ground tonight. You see, we are in Roswell. Last night I think I predicted stopping short of Roswell, then coming here in the morning. But there really wasn't anywhere to stop short. So, we're at the lovely Belmont Hotel on West 2nd Avenue. We pulled in and asked how much a room was. The guy at the desk said: "For movie stars like you? $30." I wonder how cheap it would've been if we weren't movie stars? Hmmmm. But Roswell poses greater questions than that. And I plan to get to the bottom of some of them tomorrow. But for now, I have to get to sleep. Just as soon as "Miss Congeniality" is over. The Belmont has free HBO and Cinemax. I should point out that I haven't been able to find a scale yet, so i haven't been able to check my weight. But with running and constant sweating, I bet it's about the same. Goodnight, weary traveler. Good night.
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