invasion of america - the sun is brighter in texas

Lubbock - Salt Lake City

800 miles

Spiders love Texas almost more than cowboys do. If one actually took the time to count I think that they would find that there are actually more spiders in Texas than there are cowboys. Not that this means much, but I think Texas could benefit from an image change. Perhaps Texas as the Spider state would change the way most people think of it.

In typical Texas fashion, the spiders were the largest I have ever seen. AND... They were everywhere. And almost all of them were speaking Spanish!

I parked by bike in my friend's car port and let it sit there for two days. In that time, the spiders completely moved in and made it the newest spider condo on the block. Normally I wouldn't think much about spiders crawling around on my vehicle, especially if I'm not on it. But if a bunch of little tiny creepy-crawlies all of a sudden came to life while I was riding down the highway and they for some reason felt that they needed shelter from the blistering winds and decided to climb into my helmet.... You can bet that I am going to shit myself.

Texas was great and I had been looking forward to my visit here for over two years. My friends that live here are former neighbors from my days living in Kansas. They are both colorful and enjoyable people to be around and it helps that they think I'm hysterical. I would have liked to spend more time visiting with them but sadly, both of them own businesses and it was hard to find time to socialize. However, I was able to get some tattoo work done, catch up, work a bit behind the counter of their sandwich shop and see Lubbock while I was there. Yes, more tattoos... Can you say... THROAT TATTOO!!!! (f holes on the side of my trachea... hurt like a bitch!)

Lubbock is the home town of Buddy Holly and if you enjoy the rock and roll, then you owe a lot of your appreciation to Buddy and Lubbock. Buddy for making the music and inspiring the Beattles, The Stones and The Who and a lot of other musicians that influenced other musicians. And you have to thank Lubbock for inspiring Buddy to make music. If he had grown up in Dallas chances are he would have made country music and the world would have been a quieter place. Sadly, Buddy's dead so whatever thanks we could offer him it's going to be a day late and a dollar short.

Being from Lubbock, it stands to reason that the Buddy Holly museum would be here. I am not normally one to visit the personal museum of rock stars as they tend to focus to intently on ONE person and that always wears on me. It's really tough when that rock star was only a star for 18 months. You don't have enough time to establish any real musuem worthy items. In Buddy's case; a pair of glasses and two guitars was all they could muster up. As morbid as it sounds, I really enjoyed looking at the glasses that he wore the night he died. I like that kind of thing. These are the same glasses that he wore his whole (brief) career. They were pretty mesmerizing to see. His cub scout uniform... that was a bit odd to see. Other than that... The musuem was pretty bleak. This has to be the most modest rock star I have ever seen.

I said my goodbyes - gingerly, with a bandaged throat and then headed back out onto the smoking hot Texas highway to start the final leg of my trip. It's all north and west from here and it's time to get home. Ahead of me are a just a few must-see stops, a good friend in Salt Lake City and the final show of the tour in Oroville, California (the Colorado and Walla Walla shows both fell out).

The southeastern side of New Mexico is modest desert with high velocity winds(of course they're head winds). The ground is mostly pebbles and sage brush. There is a distant horizon that would be a sight to see if the winds weren't masking it with dust(and huge billboards). It was here that Billy the Kid became famous and it was here that Billy the Kid died. It was also here that Billy the Kid was buried and it is here that Billy the kid-lovers come to worship before their God. He was just 22 when he died, not much of a man, and his real name wasn't Billy, it was Henry and he wasn't even from here, he was from New York. He was a brat and he was forced out west to hide from the trouble he created in New York.

He was a superstar, much like James Dean. He was a young man who's exploits in life echo through time. He'll never die as long as there is a romantic aura that surrounds killers and thieves. Billy did some killing, some thievin' and then was shot in the back when he was just 22. New Mexico looked deep in their hearts and they made a hero out of that killer and that thief. They love Billy so much that they decided to make his grave a must-see state historic site. A killer - is the secondest biggest tourist attraction in New Mexico (for non-lesbians) behind Roswell. His grave is bolted to the ground because people keep stealing his tombstone out of the cemetery. Billy's tombstone is a prize. For all of you "Young Guns" fans, yes - it does says PALS at the top.

After the grave, my plan was to head north to Santa Fe to see the world's wackiest staircase. (Look it up on the web if you want to know more) In fine tradition, the winds picked up and I was forced to change course a bit to avoid... RAIN! Yes, more chubby rain... in New Mexico. This part of the world only sees on average, one inch of rain a year and this storm was dropping two inches an hour. It was looking bad so I had to head due north to escape the heaviest of it. This lead me up onto "UFO highway", so named because of the high frequency of UFO sightings, abductions and photos that have taken place here. It's one hundred miles of Interstate that lays out across the desert from Albuquerque to Milagro. Sadly, I saw nothing and nothing tickled my prostrate, but we don't all get what we want now, do we?

I arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico at 5 PM and I had to race around Lesbian town until I found the famous chapel where the miracle staircase is located. I knew it was closing at 6 and I really wanted to see it... And it was closed. The short little hobbit-dyke at the front door said that there was a wedding there that night and that they were setting up for it and only staff could go in. I begged, I made up a story about my neck and the war and the miracles of Jesus and this staircase, but the little mullet headed bull dyke didn't care. Apparently she comes from that sect of Christianity where the only way you get into heaven is by raising enough money off of Jesus' name(and to act like a cun.... bad woman). I left Santa Fe in a huff, vowing never to return. My blood sugar was low... Forgive me.

Somewhere just north of Santa Fe, the bike started making this lurching and rocking motion which I couldn't explain away. Oh well, I headed on in the dark not sure where I was going to stay but pretty sure it wasn't going to be in Santa Fe (who is Fe anyway? What did Saint Fe do to earn Sainthood? Is she/he related to Saint Cloud?).

The moon was full....

It was a cloudy, windy night....

The roads were curvy and torn up....

There was a lite rain falling...

My back tire was bald...

All around me in the darkness were huge mesas that towered hundreds of feet above me. I could barely see them in the moonlight and most of the time I couldn't see them at all. But then, all of a sudden, one would appear out of the darkness - very suddenly and then it would disappear again. It was a lot like the same feeling you get when you swim in deep, dark waters and you look down into the dark depths and suddenly a shape can be seen faaaar below you, just lurking around in the darkness. You can't quite make out it's shape or what it is or how big it really is, but it's presence is really freaky. The mesas would appear, then disappear back into the darkness. It freaked me out every time. There was no way I was going to stop the bike, even if it broke down.

I pulled into Chama around 9 PM and I was drenched from the storm of the century. In keeping with the streak of luck that I was experiencing in New Mexico, every hotel in town was filled up and there was nowhere to go. Again, one of my main traveling rules: Do not ask anyone for directions or ask for advice in regards to the distance, the time or the costs. You'll never get correct information. I broke my own rule and made the mistake of asking some gas station attendant where the nearest hotel might be and they said, "Dulce" which was twenty miles away in the heart of tempest plagued Apache territory. Which, if you don't already know, is run by a different set of laws, so if anything goes down, it will go down in ways that you won't be able to do anything about. It's a risk that you have to take when the weather, the bike and the spooky landscape are against you...

11 PM, twenty miles later... Dulce. ONE hotel. 80 bucks. Nothing I could do about it.

I bathed away the rough sand and the fear from the day. Tomorrow I ride into history.