: :The road to Sedona: :

Well, two weeks in the land of opportunity and, until last night, I had not had a shower (it’s ok, there was a bath) watched television or been picked up by the police…and then I got to Flagstaff, Arizona.
A famous town of the Wild West – cowboys (on their Chevy horses), injuns (bumming cash for booze at the Greyhound bus stop) and saloon bar (closed at midnight).
Twenty Six hour commute to get there? Yep.
Missed bus and stuck in downtown LA? Ditto.
So I finally get to Flagstaff at 3am, it’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit, nowhere to stay. So I skate down main street – yes folks, that’s Route 66 – with bags on board, snow and ice everywhere, looking for a place to crash until dawn.
Siren, lights, damn. Eventually had a laugh with the copper, let me off with a warning— skating without a permit? Kept rolling.
Hotel run by Indians (sub-continental variety) lit like a beacon up ahead. $30 bucks— with cable. Happy as a cheerleader, slept like the dead. Up earlyish, check bus times to Sedona.
No bus.
Thirty miles in cab - $50. Bags back on board, ride to outskirts of town (its illegal to hitch, apparently) make a sign and thumb it. Hours – and about a thousand cars – pass me by. Paranoid hicks, me thinks, thank God for the Ginger Nuts Jennifer gave me before I left. Warm in the sun, freezing out of it.
The desert. Tumbleweed says hello. Late afternoon, 'bout to give up, and who picks me up? Stewie from Beaumaris. Typical. He LOVES the Ginger Nuts. Nuts about 'em. We're NBFs. Left Oz 5 years ago for a broad from Phoenix on matchmaker.com , I think to avoid child support payments. I forgive him, we drive. He works as a cable guy (he says computer tech) and drops me off half way to Sedona, in the middle of downtown nowhere.
Cheers.
Even takes photos of us at some grandish canyon – not that grand. Getting late, dusk approaching. I ask him to send the photo to Mom, tell her I’m sorry…then Stewie gets a rush of national pride (and possibly guilt) and offers to take me all the way – after fixing some cat’s cable in a gated community somewhere ‘over there’. The house had seven (7) TV’s, a fat kid not unlike Ozzy Osbourne’s progeny, and every labour-saving, fattening, depressing mod con available.
Stewie thinks he’s da bomb.
I go for a walk. Scenery exceptional, houses like the Truman Show !goes native, not another soul to be seen, except security. They take a long look. I take a long look back.
Absolutely still, absolutely silent.
Back in car, part company with Stewie; Hello Sedona!— home of the famed spiritual vortex, Indian spiritual grounds, and a whopping dose of spiritual consumables.
Whopping— and definitely consumable.
Every New Age crank and crook seems to have made their way here, and – magnificent rocks/cliffs/scenery notwithstanding – have sold the lot to the passing cavalcade of the desperate, demanding soul-searchers on their RV trek to anywhere else. Land sales have everything but the race on horseback (now on credit card) to the point where tour maps tell of mystical places – that are inaccessible due to private land. My arse, me says, they’re just over this fence…
See y’all in NY. ssr.