Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 22:33:21 -0700
Subject: Last legs

4:47 p.m. I-10 westbound, just south of Silver City, New Mexico. Lisa's in the back bed, fast asleep. Henry's just crawled into his bunk, demanding a juice pouch, some peanut-butter-filled pretzels and yet another showing of Rugrats in Paris. This gives me approximately 75 minutes to compose what will probably be your final update from the Megabus.

Now, not that Lisa's narrative of Little Rock to Atlanta wasn't brilliant, but I do feel obligated to amend it with one or two salient details she neglected to mention. At a froofy embroidery/junk shop in Atlanta called Granny Taught Us How -- where Lisa DID, in fact, purchase a hand-sewn Victorian tea towel or some such nonsense -- I found a vintage "Shirley Chisholm for President" campaign button for the startlingly low price of three bucks. I snapped it up, of course, then proceeded to wear it ("Catalyst for Change") for the remainder of our time in Atlanta, getting looks ranging from blank to quizzical. Not hostile, though -- this is, after all, the New South.

There. Now we can move on to New Orleans.

The Hotlanta-NOLA jaunt was our first overnight drive of the trip. Having somehow convinced my normally sensible sister Jill to join us for a day in the Crescent City (she's an attorney; she should know better), we all loaded onto the bus around dinnertime Tuesday night and braced ourselves for the nine-hour haul. What's that? Dinnertime, you say? Why, that could only portend a farewell stop at The Varsity, World's Largest Drive-In Restaurant, The Fun Place to Eat -- or, as its motto went when I was I was a boy, "No Food Over 12 Hours Old." (There's something to mull over while you're sucking down a Home Made Fried Pie.) As well-traveled as our driver Arnie is, he has, amazingly enough, never been to this veritable temple of fine cuisine (cough), so I summarily suspend the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet and drag our now-six-strong retinue inside.

To my enduring gratitude, the Greasy V proves essentially unchanged -- a bit more mellow, perhaps (the cashiers no longer bark "Move along!" when you fail to use the Varsity's idiosyncratic food-ordering lingo), and the shocking addition of salads -- SALADS?? -- to the menu throws me momentarily. But an MK Dog is still an MK Dog, a Glorified Steak is still a Glorified Steak, and the sight of my four-year-old son happily chomping on a cheese sandwich with fries and and P.C. warms the cockles of my... well, something.

Back to the bus, and on to Nawlins. After a far-from-restful overnight drive -- bumpy road, kicking four-year-old -- we stagger bleary-eyed into the Omni Royal Orleans and begin our day. (Excellent hotel, by the way; located squarely in the French Quarter, yet just far enough from Bourbon Street so you can't hear the screams.)

We start with the traditional beignets 'n' coffee at Café du Monde, where the decaf tastes just like caf (because it probably IS), and thus fortified, begin three days which pass in a blur of wrought iron, tremendous food, Henry's persistent yowls of "I don't wanna walk" and the tangy aroma of urine. Highlights included:

- the obligatory trip to Preservation Hall, where several patrons got a bit misty at the sight of Henry, perched atop my shoulders with the best seat in the house, vigorously applauding each solo...

- a streetcar tour of the Garden District, where one can do little more than gape in a combination of admiration and dismay at the spectacular homes that people actually live in...

- breakfast at Tally-Ho's, 400 Chartres St., a grim, unclean place which promises the Best Breakfast in Town -- and actually delivers it... pancakes as big and thick as manhole covers...

- a quick tour of A Gallery of Fine Photography (www.agallery.com), where you can see actual Arbuses and Cartier-Bressons and contemplate shattering your bank account to buy one...

- final-night daiquiris on Bourbon Street, along with a non-alcoholic strawberry daiquiri for our four-year-old... then quickly departing Bourbon Street when Henry (who is not supposed to be able to read yet) points to a poster of stripper Chris Owens and asks in his sweet little piping voice, "What does 'She is HOT HOT HOT' mean?"

But we cannot depart the New Orleans phase of the trip without paying special tribute to Mary Herczog, beloved friend and author of Frommer's New Orleans, who was like an invisible angel gently guiding us every step of the way. The book became creased and dog-eared as "What does Mary say?" "Does Mary like it?" and "We'll have to tell Mary about this" became our constant refrains. A spectacular guidebook, or just fun recreational reading. Savvy, opinionated, funny as hell -- not unlike the woman herself. Buy it.

Saturday, we set out for Houston with plans to fulfill yet another childhood dream of mine -- to see the Space Center. And in the words of the hackneyed comedic reference, Houston, we have a problem. It isn't just that the one thing you'd really want to see -- Mission Control -- was closed to tours because of 9/11. Or that the tram went nowhere near the gantry or the Vehicle Assembly Building, which are the other two things you'd really want to see. Or that our drawling tour guide had about as much verve as a guy applying for workman's comp after a severe head injury. It's that the Space Center, city of dreams, repository of every boy's astronaut fantasies, resembles nothing so much as the dreariest parts of the Universal Studios lot. Next town, please. Perhaps the carefully printed sign at our dreary Holiday Inn reading "Exercise Room Temporally Closed" should have warned us that the rules of time and space no longer applied here.

But our next stop, San Antonio, proved to be the perfect antidote. Why aren't people flocking to this city in droves? Why isn't there --

* * *

As Jeff has made himself spectacularly carsick by typing and typing as we fly through yet another Immigration Services checkpoint on our way to Tucson (note to human smugglers: try transporting your cargo in 48,000-pound motorcoaches. Border Patrol never asks to peek inside. And the ride sure beats lying curled in the hold of an empty hazardous materials tanker -- though I'm just guessing here), I thought I'd continue the narrative.

Anyway, as Jeff was saying, San Antonio is a really good-looking, fun city. I was expecting a parched, manila-colored town, with tumbleweeds and some Mexican restaurants. It was the opposite. A very successful downtown preservation project has turned the city's river into a beautifully hardscaped, tree-shaded water canal that winds right through the center of the business district. The banks on both sides are filled with umbrella- and tree-shaded cafes and shops. Even the Alamo was shady and inviting. We happily roamed the town all day before being picked up by Arnie for our second straight-on-'til-dawn drive to Carlsbad, New Mexico. Remember my pre-conceived image of San Antonio? Well, that would be Carlsbad.

Since it has proved impossible for me to sleep on the bus at night (the coolness of lying down on a bed and being pulled feet first at 71 miles per hour through the night is not to be believed), I am, unfortunately, completely conscious at 2:15 a.m. when the bus blows into White City, New Mexico, closest town to the famous Carlsbad Caverns. You know that scene in the X movie, The Unheard Music, where you see the half-wrecked house on a trailer drifting through this unearthly scenery as the title song plays? It gets more and more removed from reality the longer it goes on? This is our arrival at the caverns. I'm staring out the windows in disbelief as this low, ghostly deserted "town" (and I'm being generous here) drifts by. I keep trying to wake Jeff to see the empty blocks of one-story motel rooms going by (there are big signs on posts... Rooms 100 - 124... Rooms 150 - 174... there couldn't possibly be this many people in the vicinity.) Arnie keeps circling at about 10 m.p.h. From my station at the back of the bus, I can't tell if he's looking for his room, a non-terrifying parking spot for the bus, or, possibly, our collectively lost sanity. Finally, the bus stops. I hear the airbrakes and I pass out.

When I wake up, I find out it all was not a dream. We are in a desolate, weird town with one hotel, a gift shop and a really big cave. Which brings me to this: I read Jeff's little dig about the tea towel before I started writing this. Just want to say that since that very brief moment in Atlanta, I have been subjected to an endless tour of the Johnson Space Center, an IMAX theater screening of Space Station 3-D (complete with ridiculous glasses,) and now, a 1.2-mile hike through a very damp, 56-degree cave. Just so you know.

After said hike, we climbed back aboard the bus and made our way toward Tucson. After surviving the sleepless bus night and the elbow-room-free (but novelty-laden) bus shower, we have checked ourselves (and Arnie) into the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, which, up to the moment of this writing, is definitely firing on all cylinders.

Tomorrow, it's off to Palm Springs or environs and then we're home on Wednesday.

Looking forward to hearing from and/or seeing you all.

Lisa and Jeff