The Long Way to Las Vegas:I know I'm having a good time when I wonder what my mother would say if she could see me. I'm in Las Vegas. I've just lost two dollars in Circus Circus and now I'm in a motel room with Marty, sound pollution investigator by day, spelling mistake collector by night. He's phoning reception to ask what happened to the vibrating beds that they used to have here - 50 cents for a seriously good shake. I met him just twenty-four hours ago, so rest assured I'm in another bed entirely, fully clothed, including my boots.
Even before I got up this morning in the rather more gentle district of Bel Air, I knew that today was going to be different. For a start, it was pissing it down. My host had work to do so I foisted myself onto a friend of a friend - a novelist called Wilton with whom I had eaten every dessert on the menu at some Santa Monica deli two days earlier. Now he was going to take me for a walk in the Mojave desert so that I could take the requisite Joshua Tree pics to impress the U2 fans back home.
Both Colin and Deirdre's attempts to hail a cab were becoming increasingly
desperate.
He arrived, late. And with a friend in tow. They were driving two cars. Wilton had to drive straight on to New York (he hated flying), and so Marty would be driving me back to Bel Air after we had finished our walk. I nodded warily. Marty seemed clear of nervous tics, but the cars they were driving kinda matched their personalities - Wilton's a big, loud, sturdy jeep, Marty's surely not big enough to be road legal in the USA.
When we set off it was still raining. Thankfully seated next to Wilton, I joked about having brought the British weather to cover my concern at the un-British lack of camber on the freeway which meant that it had flooded within minutes. That didn't stop Wilton from putting his foot to the floor however, overjoyed at the opportunity to be able to use the car-pool lane, forgetting that Marty, alone in his car, would have to chug along in the selfish person's slow lane, where the un-green languished one to a Porsche. As a result, we lost him somewhere around Bill and Ted's home town of San Dimas and even an hour long corn dog stop didn't give him a chance to catch up.
I had never seen desert before, and I couldn't see it now through the constant sheet of rain that streaked down the window. But we passed through a wind farm by Palm Springs and I did hear that, filling the air with the strange slicing sound of propellers. Wilton and I stopped chatting as we drove by, and I turned to watch what I could see out of the back window for as long as I could. In this landscape that was so alien to me, the endless rows of white windmills didn't seem all that incongruous.
It was more than four hours after setting off that we finally arrived at Joshua Tree monument. Wilton left another message on Marty's silver answer phone and with the warden, then we ventured on to do the U2 bit before the light completely failed.
There we were, in California, in a desert, and I can honestly say that I have never ever been so cold in my life. As I stepped out of the car onto the kind of prickly thing that could only grow in space, my coat was whipped open by a biting wind. There was nothing, nothing to be seen for miles but the spooky skeletons of the Joshua Trees, twisting to the sky against red rocks. Wilton informed me that these trees will only grow above 3,000 feet, but I could have sworn I'd seen one lower, creeping down the valley to dip its twisted roots into someone's hot tub. So I stood with my back against the jeep while I took in the view.
Photos taken, we hit rendezvous spot number 11. Circle K. Had Marty received our message? We scanned the dark car park hopefully for a sign.
We found him at nine. There was nothing for it. Los Angeles seemed years away. We were far closer to Vegas. Marty wavered. Wilton told him that his horoscope spelt outstanding financial luck, and we were in business. Marty had had a lonely day behind the wheel, so I swapped cars.
Driving across the night desert, I realised that I had never before experienced true darkness. Black, black night to the left and the right. The road lit before us in the headlights was the only clue that we were still on earth at all. Marty's car made me feel uncomfortably close to the tarmac, but unlike Wilton's jeep, it did have a stereo. He stuck on some Smashing Pumpkins and began drumming the wheel.
"Watch this," he said, rolling up his sleeves. "When the next song comes on, I'll get goose bumps on my arms. I always get goose bumps when I hear something cool...."
The next song came on. The goose bumps appeared. I pulled my coat a little tighter around my neck. I was in a small and spluttering car, in the middle of the Mojave desert, at night, with the blonde one from Beavis and; Butthead.
Then I saw my first coyote. It ran out into the middle of the road as we passed. Shining white like a ghost dog in the head lamps as we hit it. The car swerved. We just clipped the back legs, Marty assured me. There was no need to stop. I couldn't bear to look back.
On and on. The view never changing. Black night, white road. The back of Wilton's jeep with occasional, very occasional red brake lights.
I was falling asleep to the goose pimply sounds of The Cranberries, when a pothole in the road jerked my head back and my eyes open just before I missed one of the most incredible sights in the world. The horizon ahead, unchanging for years, was beginning to glow as if someone had set fire to a piece of black velvet.
"State line!!" Marty whooped triumphantly.
Slowly, the glow began to split into individual lights, individual bulbs on a great glittering paddle steamer in the middle of the desert. We sailed on through, me, leaning out of the window with my camera, trying to catch a neon sign when it said '$1,000,000' and not 'All you can eat for 90 cents'.
"No time to stop," said Marty, and suddenly the desert was black again.
"How far?" I asked.
"Too far," he sighed.
But half an hour later, Las Vegas was finally within our sights. Wilton, who had left us behind long before State line, had pulled his car over onto the side of the road, and now stood behind it, gazing up into the sky. He called me towards him and I looked up too. If seeing my first coyote had been a disaster, seeing my first shooting star more than made up for it.
Behind us, away from the orange glow of Vegas, the sky had cleared of cloud and was full of a glittering array of stars far bigger than and we would see at Caesar's palace. Standing there in wonder, sure that we never had as many stars over the good old UK, I felt like the cat in a Disney animal adventure film taking time out to contemplate the mysteries of the universe with the Labrador and the Jack Russell who had brought me thus far.
We crashed Marty's car into the back of a Winnebago in the car park. The boys placed bets on whatever I placed bets on because they thought I might have the beginner's luck. I didn't. So Wilton hit the road again, while Marty and I went in search of good vibrations.
Marty puts down the phone. "She says there have never been any vibrating beds here, I'm getting confused with the motel next door."
"Oh well," I sigh.
"But just to make up for it," Marty continues, "tomorrow I'm going to take you to see the biggest thermometer in the world..."
©Chris Manby, 1999