[Leica] The Adventures of Eric the Red, part 1 (resend)

[Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>]

                 ZEN AND THE ART OF AUTOMOBILE MAINTENANCE

                                    or

                   MARTIN AND ERIC'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

                                    or

                        THE TRAVELS OF ERIC THE RED

                                    or

                       ACROSS AMERICA IN A LONGBOAT

                                    by

                               Martin Howard



It all started on a cold, November night in Vancouver.  Tom Abrahamsson and
I were sipping a glass of Lagavulin overlooking the Pacific Ocean when I
was lamenting the lack of transportation in Columbus (both public and
private) and my complete, total, and utter ignorance in all matters
automotive.
   "Oh, buying a car is easy," says Tom.
   "It is?"
   "Oh yes.  I've owned about 200 of them.  I have two rules: I never buy a
car with fuel injection, and I never pay more than $1500 Canadian."  Being
the complete and utter automotive neophyte I am, I only just grasped the
bit about fuel injection, but I am familiar enough with money and Ohio car
ads to know that 1,500 Canadian dollars for a car was a hell of a deal.
Besides, when I'd arrived at the airport, Tom and Tuulikki had picked me up
in their 1984 Chrysler Fifth Avenue which was every bit of the
over-the-top, V8-equipped, 5m long steel monster that I imagined a real
American car to be, and it had apparently passed Tom's stringent
requirements on both counts.
   "Besides, people try to give me cars for free," he added.
   "What do you mean, 'try'?"
   "Oh, I don't want them.  I already have a car."
   "Great," I concluded, "when the time comes, I'll give you a call."  And
with this we turned our attention away from the messy business of cars,
towards the glorious liquid in our glasses, and exactly what uses you have
for a 15mm lens on a rangefinder camera.

Fast forward to June.  I now reside in the US with the financial blessing
of my home institution and find myself in a position where I can afford to
not only get a license, but also a car.  So, I take two driving lessons
from an instructor called Craig, who was so impressed with my driving
skills that he spent most of the time in the passenger seat telling me of
the driving violations he'd committed in his first two years as a licensed
driver and what he'd seen in Europe as a dental hygenist in the US Army,
pass my test on a Wednesday with flying colours, and spend that weekend
driving the 1,400 miles to and from Boston in a rented Chevrolet Cavalier
to meet with my MIT friends.  They can't quite decide whether I'm Way Cool
or just plain barking mad to drive for 15 hours to attend the "Day after
Bastille Day" party they're throwing.

With that financial blessing came some travel money, so I book flights to
New Orleans to attend the computer graphics conferance SIGGRAPH for a week,
then on to San Diego for the Human Factors and Ergonomics Societies
conference the following week.  I had to buy my ticket late, so I paid a
high price, but was bumped up into first class for free.  I got a nice,
wide seat and cashew nuts instead of peanuts ("tourist only has peanuts: we
have cashews too".)

We flew at dusk over a thunderstorm.  It was probably the most
breathtakingly beautiful sight I have ever seen, to cruise at 30,000ft
above dark clouds that every now and then flash with lightening.  My nose
pressed against the thick, scratched glass of the window, eyes open in awe
at the stupendous magnitude of it all.  Lightening bolts that travel for
miles and miles under the plane; soft, dark, billowing shapes that are
briefly illuminated, stand out in stark contrast and sharp relief, then
lapse into the dim sea of cloud again.  All completely silent.

New Orleans and I didn't get on very well.  It seemed to me that the whole
city was engineered for one purpose: to relieve you of any disposable
income in your possession with the greatest possible speed.  Three times I
was warned, without asking, to not stray from the major streets into
sparsely populated areas.  I even saw an advertisement for some
entertainment establishment that claimed:

   Vultures are outside.
   Vultures like flesh.
   You are flesh.
   Stay inside.

...where they'd happily relieve you of some more of that disposable income,
since they, presumably, were not vultures.  Or something.

Which is a pity, because I recognize that New Orleans is an interesting
city from a historic and cultural point of view.  I'm sure that if I spent
more than a week there, and got to know some people, and preferably didn't
spend that week in a large business hotel, and did something else than
shuttle back-and-forth to a conference each day, I'd see a much nicer and
more interesting side of the city.  But, unfortunately, that didn't happen
on this trip.

Knowing that I was going to be driving from San Diego up to Seattle later
in this epic journey, I decided I needed something to read on aircraft,
busses, and eventually at rest stops.  I found a artsy bookstore in a mall
along the Mississippi where I picked up a copy of Jack Kerouac's "On The
Road".  A few hours later, while stumbling through the French Quarters, I
fell into a wonderful second-hand bookstore where I picked up a $3 copy of
Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test".  Only much later, upon
embarking on the latter novel, did I realize what a superb companion pair
these would make.

San Diego was bizarre.  We flew in at night, so I saw little other than the
sparkle of lights against a velvet black backdrop, which makes any city
look beautiful.  My room had been pre-booked for me by my collegues at
Linkoping, and at the airport, I recognized from the hotel information
board the green octagons along the roof line of the tall towers of the
Wyndham Emerald Plaza Hotel.  I called them and they send a shuttle.  At
the check-in desk, I asked for a room as high up as possible and got a
fabulous view of the city from the 21st floor.

In daylight, downtown San Diego is like Disneyland.  You get the impression
is has been painstakingly engineered, constructed, and crafted to give the
impression of the American Dream and The Happy Life.  Streets are wide and
clean (I don't think there is anything less than four lanes in all of San
Diego).  Colours are bright pastels by day and glimmering neon by night.
Lawns are meticulously maintained, there isn't a hint of graffiti on the
commuter trains, everyone's car is newly washed, waxed, and German, and
police officers look like they're plucked from the show Baywatch.

Yet, I came across more beggars and homeless people in San Diego than I
have in any other place I've been, except London.  On the one hand, I can
understand it.  Hey, if you're homeless, San Diego has a pretty nice
climate and the beaches are soft.  But it's as though the whole city lives
in denial: I saw no hint of social services, there is nothing, anywhere, to
indicate that there is any awareness of this problem, or anything being
done to help these people.  Rather the opposite: everything pointed to
wealth and well-being, to oppulance and optimism.

I spent a day at the World Famous San Diego Zoo, as they call it.  When I
was in Dublin a number of years ago, I went to the Dublin Zoo and had a
blast.  I was five, again, walking around, looking at all the amazing
animals and dreaming of becoming a veterinarian doctor, marine biologist,
or any other of those fascinating professions you see on the Discovery
Channel.  So, I was hoping to be transported back to that time again.

Didn't happen.  Sure, the zoo is large, and the animals well cared for, but
they are so bored our of their brains that I felt lucky I'd spent the
winter as a PhD student in a small flat in Columbus, rather than a primate
on display in San Diego.  The only ones that looked like they had a good
time were the California sea lions, but then they got a fish stuck in their
mouth every time they opened it and flapped their flippers, rolled over,
swam through the water, or "oinked" on command.  If you consisted of 700lb
of flubber, you'd probably also be happy at the prospect of getting fed
that often.

In San Diego I rented a car made by Dodge and shaped like a well-used
bathroom soap.  Long, sleek, and swift, we zoomed up along I-5 the
following day to Universal City outside Los Angeles.  I remember seing a
documentary on the making of the "Terminator 2 3D" ride a number of years
ago and since then I'd made a pledge to myself to go and see it.  Universal
City itself is also worth seing.  It's like something out of a 1950's
musical, with gigantic neon signs hanging only a few feet above your head
along the main entertainment drag in town.  Apparently, it is a city unto
itself, with it's own major, police, and fire department.  I wonder if they
drive their engines infront of a green-screen?

The theme-park part of Universal City is pretty much what you'd expect.
Generally expensive, very glitzy, horrendous queues (but then, I did make
the mistake of going there on a Friday), and a great escape from reality.
"Terminator 2 3D" lived up to the hype, so much that I saw it twice.
Almost lost my lunch in the "Back to the Future" ride, decided I didn't
need the drenching of the "Jurassic Park" ride, took the obligatory factory
tour through the backlots, saw some interesting behind-the-scenes stuff,
peeked into the on-location shoot of a car commercial, and emerged eight
and a half hours later exhausted, about eighty dollar poorer, and with my
head spinning.

I got out of the major metropolitan Los Angeles area along I-5 and spent
the night sleeping in the passenger seat of the car in a rest area that
warned of poisonous snakes.  Tomorrow I was going to be heading north along
California Highway 1 that hugs the coast for the drive up to San Francisco.