The Flying Machine

When last we left the story, I was in Colorado.

Now, pretty much the worst thing that can happen on a road trip is car trouble. If your car is broke, you ain't goin' nowhere. So when my mom and I started smelling hot grease every time my car stopped, we got a little worried. We'd just left our friends' house in Colorado and were headed into a long, long day of wide open spaces across Utah and Idaho - almost 800 miles - not exactly ideal break-down country. The car was running fine - no idiot lights flashing, no high engine temps. Coolant was fine. Radiator was fine. Oil was fine. There ended my car-troubleshooting skillz.

But the funky burning smell got worse. We eventually got worried enough to get off the interstate in Green River, Utah - the only town of any size for a hundred miles, sandwiched between exit after exit of short off-ramps and cattle guards onto somebody's ranch property, big "no services" signs glaring. Not 30 seconds off the highway I spotted a sign for local melons.

Burning engine be damned, I pulled over and bought 3: a honeylope, an israeli, and a regular old watermelon. La! Fragrant ripe local melons! Unusual varieties! The lady was nice and they only cost me $3 total. When I put them in the car their fragrance mixed with the 3 baby Thai basils and huge spearmint plant that I was hauling out and made things smell lovely. When they weren't smelling of burnt oil and rubber, that is.

Then we went to find an auto repair shop. I think it was fate that we ended up at the Napa place on the edge of town, stopping there after passing several others, because it was there that I saw and interacted with the Sexiest Auto Mechanic Ever.

Seriously.

No, really. He IS the new gold standard.

Here's how it went down:

We walk into the place. I become distracted by a display of air fresheners. Mom talks to an older potbellied fellow, probably the manager. Two other guys appear from the back - the mechanics - and without really looking at them, I lead the way out to the car and pop the hood. I look up. I am struck dumb, gawking. Dude's probably late 20's, tall and broad-shouldered, unshaven, black t-shirt, baseball cap, definitely has the guy-who-works-with-his-hands look. But that kind of description really doesn't tell you much - and the thing that gets me has little to do with the above and more to do with some kind of inarticulate holy-shit kind of sexiness of bearing, moving, speaking that sometimes just really, really works. I don't know. I can't explain it. All I know is that I wished I weren't driving several hundred more miles that day. And that my mom weren't with me.

Anyway.

It took the 3 dudes about 30 seconds to figure out the problem with my car (in case you're curious, it was the CV joint; it had cracked). One of them, a bristly older guy with a fat mustache and a black t-shirt with a huge bald eagle across the chest, asked how far we were going. I said Ontario, Oregon. He grunted, said, my daughter lives there. The portly manager said we could almost certainly make it to Boise for repairs, and the Sexiest Auto Mechanic Ever added in his smooth Western drawl, I'd hate to make you stop your trip. In my head, I thought: there's a couple other reasons I'd like to stop my trip here...

Alas. We pressed on. By this point I was nearly at the end of my rope. No radio signals, iPod dead, finished the Garrison Keillor tape, hours and hours of long straight roads with only mom's continuous state-the-obvious commentary and my inability to manage small annoyances when in a confined space. We blazed through Salt Lake. I decided I wouldn't want to live there. Why oh why must the sprawl be everywhere? Finally, finally, finally, we hit Boise - too late to drop the car off for repairs, so we got a room and got some dinner and passed out until the morning, when we took 'er in, got 'er fixed, and got on the road (well, after a brief stop at TJ Maxx. I got some funky-but-comfortable green shoes and two cutting knives for my kitchen - a Wüsthof for $24.99 is a really good deal!).

Good lord this travelogue is getting long. And I haven't even gotten to the apartment-hunting yet! Ok, pressing onward:

So we get to Ontario. The entire town is strewn with onion skins. Golden brown curling onion skins on the sidewalks, in the grass, in the gutters, in front yards. On the outskirts of town you can see the onion fields, with faded soil and bright yellow-gold onions shining out from under the dust. You can smell them, too. Trucks bearing precarious loads of onions bustle all over town, just like how in Arcadia one sees truck after truck after truck of oranges in high season. Not only are there onion skins everywhere - there are onions, too. On every corner of the major highways in town and out by the packing plants, escaped onions languish and roll. I'm pretty excited, 'cause this means I can have my next few month's onion supply taken care of with one quick Sunday morning bike ride around town with a backpack.

As for the apartments - lemme tell ya. This was an experience.

I called one fellow to get info on his two listed apartments and he said I could drive by and call him back if I wanted to see the places. I thought this a little odd but took a drive by anyway. I understood. The apts were in the worst part of town in a building that looked as if a stray rolling onion could knock it over. It was a dump. I didn't call back.

Next I had an appointment to see an upstairs 1-bedroom place. Cheap. I pulled up, knocked on the door. No answer. I called: Hello, I spoke to you yesterday about your 1-bedroom apartment listing. We had an appointment to look at the place today at 3. Is that still possible? Response: Oh. (pause) I'm at work, and my wife had to go to Boise. How about this evening? 7?

Next on the list: a realtor's quad-plex. We showed up at the arranged time. Waited. Called the realty: She's on her way! Waited some more. Mom wanted me to call again after 40 minutes had passed. I said it was a sign that I was not meant to live in the quad-plex and called the next rentor.

OK. It's time to get some sleep. Installment #2, coming up tomorrow night. Hopefully pictures too. Still to come:

the double-wide
the upstairs place
the good realtor
the yellow house
the other yellow house
the green-roofed house
the decision
the coincidence
clearly, fate
other observations about ontario
my new place
BOISE