Time / distance traveled since last post: About 7.5 hours, about 600 miles (some making up for a miscalculation of yesterday)
Total time / distance traveled: About 32.5 hours, 2400 miles
Noteworthy Music: Arlington has a christian metalcore station. SERIOUSLY? Also Pantera, since I was in Texas and all.
I write to you tonight from a motel room in Carlsbad, NM, which I procured at about 2AM (I think I'm in mountain time now) from a very unhappy to be awoken Indian innkeeper. Sorry dude, but it's either that or I sleep in my car your parking lot for free. What's it gonna be?
I wrote a bit about how began in the previous post, however I forgot to mention that I had been awoken in the middle of the night to the sounds of a severe thunderstorm. Evidently in Texas it rained, hailed, burnt down and spawned several dozen tornadoes that night. Who knew? Surprisingly, I walked outside to an absolutely gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky and only the smallest puddles left in the shade of the tall hotel. I guess the dry heat took care of everything, which was great considering that I had some outdoor plans for the day.
First order of business became grabbing a burrito and taco from a local joint, whose name I can't remember but whose food was top notch so far as Tex-Mex goes (in Texas... whoda thunkit?). I apologize as I was so hungry that the food was gone before I had the thought to snap any photos.
I saved a couple ounces of my diet coke for my next order of business for the day, which was one of my original goals for this trip dating back to the planning for the post-graduation trip of '09 that never materialized: to pay my respects to fallen guitar hero "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott.
For those of you who are not familiar with Dimebag's story, he was a child-prodigy guitar player who grew up to form the landmark metal band Pantera. Breaking out of the hair-metal cliche of the 80s, Pantera fused the technicality of the burgeoning thrash scene with an unprecedented southern grit and blues influence that proved you don't have to go faster to be heavier. Every single hard rock band on the scene today owes their sound to scaling-down what Pantera brought to the world.
Well, after Pantera disbanded in the early 2000s, Dime created a new band called Damageplan, and toured incessantly into 2004. At one show in Columbus, Ohio on December 8, 2004, a deranged and mentally ill ex marine stormed the stage with a hand gun from the crowd during the first song of the set and opened fire. He shot and killed Dimebag before shooting wildly into the crowd, killing and wounding many others. After the gunman had taken a stage hand hostage, the police arrived and shot the man dead.
Here's the news story of the shooting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oa3vJrBmu8
This, ladies and germs, is why you get a pat down at concerts nowadays.
Anyways, Dimebag's legend only grew after his death, as he was not only one of the most talented people to ever pick up the guitar, but he was also the most amusing and lovable redneck you could ever imagine. Here's one of his last interviews to prove it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfx7Oe8WkVc
Yeah, he was absolutely insane.
A Texas native, Dime was buried in Arlington, and I felt obligated to pay my respects. Now some men would have you to recite a prayer at their grave, some would be happy with a couple of flowers now and again, my father is probably happy with making sure his plot is weeded and bereft of squirrels, but Dimebag would have wanted me to party with him. I went to the liquor store (which was about 10 miles away literally 20 feet across city lines, because the liquor laws in Texas are freaking weird) and got the smallest bottle of Seagram's 7 to mix with my remaining Diet Coke, making Dimebag's infamously favorite cocktail: the Black Tooth Grin. I drove to the cemetery, with Pantera's Cemetery Gates playing in my stereo, and slowly circled around until I saw family markers that resembled the visual clues which I had elicited from YouTube videos as to Dimebag's final resting place. Grabbing my Black Tooth and Nick's acoustic guitar, I walked out onto the path to see the name "Abbott" on a large black marble marker. This was it. I turn the corner to find the infamous "headstone," pictured here (I did not take this picture myself, seeing as there is a cemetery policy against non-family members doing so).
This photo shows the grave much as I had found it, covered in offerings of flowers, guitar picks and 1966 dimes (regretfully I also found the marker scratched with messages from other people paying their "respects" in different ways, ranging from the obvious "You rock" to the obscene four inch swastika, which I was unable to rub-out). I sat down with the guitar and played a couple of Pantera licks, before saluting the man, buried down there in his Kiss Coffin, and downing my Black Tooth Grin. I left behind only my own Eye of All guitar pick in the center of the guitar inlay. In the middle of my service, a friend of Dimebag came by to pay his respects himself, saying he always came whenever he found another 1966 coin. We exchanged a handshake, and then we were both on our way.
After the grave things got a bit more lively. My hotel from that evening was located directly across the street from the new Cowboys Stadium, which is the largest domed structure in the world (host to this past year's Superbowl as well). Being a stadium lover such as I am, I asked for a room on the side of the hotel that faced the stadium, but was told that there were no single rooms on that side of the building. The hotel clerk did however tell me that tours are offered of the stadium every non-game day, and I jumped at the opportunity.
Not being a Cowboys fan, this was done entirely out of appreciation of the architecture and engineering marvel that the absolutely insane billionaire (akin to The Man with the Golden Gun), Jerry Jones, had dreamed.
A modular stadium (capable of being indoors or outdoors via retractable roofs and sides), the outside is all glass, with the inside boasting a pretty impressive sight unto itself. As you can see in the center, Cowboys Stadium is home to the world's largest HD TV (at a price of $40 million alone). Other absurd luxuries in this place include $10,000 a piece players lockers made out of some endangered African wood and Jerry Jones' elevator directly from his parking spot to his private box.
Being who I am, I was the most interested in finding out that this is not, strictly speaking, a dome, but rather a bridge of two parallel arches that support the entire structure:
After an extensive tour (which was a bit too full of Cowboys stories for my taste), I drove about 10 minutes to a skate park which I had found online earlier. Since I've been doing so much driving I've been craving more outlets for exercise, and on a perfect sunny day skateboarding sounded great. The skate park I had randomly looked-up turned out to be the absolute best to which I had ever been, with a wonderful flow of ramps, rails and ledges (and gaps, of which I am none-too savvy since I'm ancient by skateboard standards). I put in a couple of hours before departing, riding west towards my next destination: Carlsbad Caverns!
The ride was 7 or 8 hours, and for the first time took me off of interstates and onto Texas and New Mexico highways. Stopping right before these state highways at a diner, I ate what I hope will be the last truck-stop food of my trip: hash and eggs served with biscuits and gravy (which I refuse to eat out of principle).
Yeah, I think if I'm ever desperate again I'll go to a KFC before another truck stop diner. Matter of fact, there's tons of local fast food chains in the different regions that part of me wants to experience, if nothing else than to see what a Whattaburger or Jack in the Box is like. The problem is that I'm not on some weekend excursion here on which I can afford to let-loose a little, I'm trying to survive a month on the road, and fast food ain't gonna cut it.
On this topic, to all of my north east friends, know that Hardees is alive and well down south, and that Sonic is just like a squirrel: to someone who grows-up without them they seem novel and beautiful at first, but eventually you find that they're more rampant than Starbucks in Manhattan and grow instantly enraged whenever you see another one pop-up in front of you.
The ride through western Texas was beautiful, chasing the falling sun again through a gorgeous wide-open terrain sunset:
As I merged onto the state highways, I found oil pumping machinery gracefully working within feet of the road on either side, and being the only person within a square mile at times (or so it seemed) I seemed almost compelled to admire the machinery as though large, slow animals (Don Quixote, anyone?).
At one point the highway I was on just stopped. The map said that it kept going to Carlsbad, and far be it from me to call the map a liar, I think it only WISHED it went to Carlsbad. I had to back-track and take some other roads, leading me into New Mexico.
I would have taken a photo of what the state highway looks like at night in New Mexico, but a guy named Ansel Adams kind of beat me to the punch.
That guy just may be going places...
So I arrive into Carlsbad with 15 miles left before I need an oil change, and upon seeing the fetid hellhole this place is, I kind of felt like a zombie apocalypse survivor who arrives in a declared "safe zone" only to find it overrun by more zombies. This is pretty much the worst place to which I have ever been. Surveying the motels in the area I almost considered it to be a safer choice to sleep in my car in the Walmart parking lot, but alas folded and bedded down for the evening at a place with free WIFI.
No worries though! As I had said, this trip was going to be challenging at times, and if sleeping with my trustworthy shovel next to me is what will get me through (I'm not kidding), I'll do it!
I now have to hurry and shower so I can check-out by 11am (I'm in Mountain Time now, I guess), so I will hope to upload my backlog of videos sometime today or tonight... We will see!
Stay posted!
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