Corolla Nostalgia
I bought a new car back in March (although I only last week received my license plates. Go figger). Now, I love my new car and I seriously needed one. In fact, I had been planning on buying one for oh, about the last four years. But the buying of the new vehicle meant that I was finally and completely finished driving my old car.

In 1989 I bought my first car. It wasn't the first car that I drove, but it was the first one that I bought all on my own; the first one that belonged only to me; buying it was my first step toward becoming an “independent” woman (in many ways that is the only step I’ve yet to take, but that’s fodder for an entirely different essay). It was a brand spankin’ new Toyota Corolla, cherry-metallic red. I made the decision to go Toyota because I wanted a car that would last me ten years. My sister Barbara had bought a Celica in like 1976 that lasted her for freakin’ ever. Little did I know that my Toyota would end up staying with me for thirteen years. And for over 200,000 miles.

The lesson here, kids, is: Buy Toyota.

That car saw me through many a tough time. I often pushed it to what should have been it’s limit and it always came out singing. For a few years I drove around with no side view mirror on the driver's side. This was the unfortunate result of a run-in with a pole in a Pasadena parking garage. I still claim no responsibility for that little run-in, by the way. You see, I was in love with a big jerk at the time and while we were at a bar in Pasadena one night, he decided to be his big jerky self. I ended up leaving rather upset. Hence the run-in with the pole.

In truth, he wasn't a big jerk. Oh, he was a jerk alright, but he was short and thin. A short, thin jerk. With glasses. Nowadays, I'd break him over one knee, but I was young and foolish then.

He had a huge dick though.

But I digress...

I took my Corolla on many a road trip. Back in the day (meaning my younger and totally single days), Barbara (my sister, also younger and totally single then) and I used to take a lot of trips together. One of our first trips was to New Mexico, around thirteen years ago. Basically, it went down as follows: Being an avid fan of Native American History, I wanted to visit New Mexico and absorb a lot of that history. I was determined to go, even if it meant I had to go by myself. Since nobody wanted me to go all by my lonesome, Barbara said she'd go. Her only qualification was that we had to go to Carlsbad Caverns. If I agreed to make that a stop on my trip, she'd go with me. I agreed and the plans were set for October – a full year after I started making said plans. Yes, I started making plans for a trip to New Mexico a full year before I was to go. I get excited about New Mexico. Wanna make something of it?

So we piled the Lyle Lovett tapes in to the Corolla and took off. In fact, I introduced Barbara to Lyle on that trip. She has never quite been the same.

Before we go much further, I must give you this background: Barbara is a fabulous photographer. She consistently has a camera in front of her face and I am more often than not used as her model. Her hobby has a tendency to make her clumsy. She is often far too focused on the picture being taken to watch where she’s stepping. This has left her up to her knees in an unseen-through-the-camera-lens lily pond in Yosemite; it has left her tripping over fallen trees. It has also left her with holes in her pants from falling on her ass.

Barbara’s penchant for art-driven clumsiness encouraged me to give her the following warning as we were embarking on our adventure: Make sure you watch where you’re going. We’re going to be doing a lot of hiking and there are rattlesnakes and other assorted not-very-good-for-you reptiles, bugs and animals and you need to be careful!

Also, Barb has a tendency to have tummy problems when we travel. You know – strange food, an inordinate amount of greasy fast food, irregular sources of roughage. I guess these things affect you when you get old…Anyway, so she packed her prunes and we were off.

You see – it’s BARBARA who is the clumsy one. It’s BARBARA who has bad luck with food.

Our first stop was Flagstaff, Az., a nice little college town in the mountains of Northern Arizona. Of course, it’s also a huge lumber area, so we were kept up all night by the sound of freight trains pulling lumber around to the other states of our fair union, but hey – it was still a nice little college town.

The next day we drove to Albuquerque, after taking a small detour through the “penis rocks” (I don’t think that’s their official name, but if it isn’t it should be) and over to Acoma Pueblo. This is a centuries-old pueblo of indigenous peoples, out on top of a mesa in the middle of the desert. No running water, no electricity. Needless to say, few people still live there full time, but some do. We actually didn’t go up to visit the actual pueblo on this trip – that came a few years later. But the penis rocks were enjoyable.

It just so happened that my best friend from High School, Christine, was visiting her brother-in-law who lives in Alb. at the same time as we were driving through. So we met up with her and her baby and walked around through downtown for a few hours. If you’ve never been to Albuquerque, you should go. Lots of old historic buildings and a beautiful church smack-dab in the middle of old town. Nice place to spend a day. The fact that my best friend from high school is married, now has three kids, has lived in Saudi Arabia and the Philippines as well as numerous places peppering the US map and lives a life completely foreign to me is another subject best suited to a different essay.

Barbara and I then drove up to Santa Fe which is where we would spend the next five days. And where my heart would stay forever.

And this is where our adventure really began.

First off, let me say that this was the time when we figured out there is not a decent salad bar east of the Inland Empire of California. At least there wasn’t then. Advice to future restaurateurs: A bowl full of iceberg lettuce and some emaciated cucumbers and dry carrots do not a salad make.

Our first night in SF, as I am wont to do, I took a shower. I also proceeded to fall out of the shower. I didn’t just slip and fall, which is actually a good thing because I might have slipped, fallen and broke my head open, drenching the hotel’s nice white porcelain in my blood. Instead, I fell out of the shower, through the shower curtain and on to the bathroom floor. My concerned sister heard a big ol’ ruckus and evidently decided that her sleep was more precious than the life of her baby sister, cuz she never came to check on me.

In defense of my own gracefulness, this was one slippery shower. And they had no little skid-free stickers affixed to the bottom so that I wouldn’t fall. Bastards.

My biggest desire on this first trip to Santa Fe was to visit some of the surrounding pueblos. In doing so, we decided that my trusty Corolla was as good at off-roading as any silly ol’ Jeep.

We quickly found something new to us: Cliff Dwellings. It seems some athletic and industrious ancestors of what are considered “modern” Native Americans, called the Anasazi, liked to build “apartment house”-like structures out of rock. These were built in to the face of cliffs. They carved “hand holds” in to the cliff sides and scrambled up and down in this manner. I’ve since visited many such sites which pepper the four corners area and have scrambled up some of these hand- and foot-holds myself. Scary stuff, Maynard.

My point for this little tale is that, somewhere in the midst of discovering the cliff dwellings at Bandelier National Park and the Puye Cliff Dwellings on the Santa Clara Pueblo, I pulled a muscle in my thigh. This led to my limping through the streets of Santa Fe for a couple of days.

So, let’s catch up. So far, I went a night with no sleep in Flagstaff; I fell out of the shower and am now limping through the streets of Santa Fe as if I have a wooden leg. Barbara, meanwhile, is doing just fine and dandy and taking many photographs.

We had a grand ol’ time in Santa Fe. I said before that I left my heart there and this is true. Santa Fe is home for me. Although I do not yet actually live there full time, I visit often. I take everyone I know who shows any interest in going. Some day I will make my real home there. I will, dammit, I will.

There are a lot of stories I could tell you about this trip: Barbi and I getting drunk at the Dragon Room and walking through the streets laughing, Barbara losing her “sense of grammar”; going to what turned out to be a gay bar and only figuring that out after reading the bathroom-wall graffiti (no wonder that waitress looked at us oddly when we asked where this bar was); figuring out that New Mexican chiles are a heck of a lot hotter than any we were used to having in our food; fighting each other to get to the bathroom after eating said chiles in some taquitos…lots of stories.

After Santa Fe, it was time for the Corolla to get us to Carlsbad Caverns. I must admit to not seeing much of this portion of our trip. I was kapooped and the Corolla's comfy seats enveloped me. Somehow we got there.

Then came the food poisoning.

There is one hotel in White’s City, which is adjacent to Carlsbad Caverns. One hotel and one restaurant. I had chicken for dinner. Chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. The fact that my fork could stand straight up in the middle of this gravy should have been my first clue.

I was up all night, sick to my stomach. Oh yeah, plus we had whirlpool jets in our tub…jets that apparently sucked inward instead of blowing out jets of hot water. I had hickies on my thighs after taking a bath, and getting them wasn’t as much fun as it may sound.

I soldiered on, though, and we hit the caverns the next day. Much grooviness to be had in the caverns. We decided to stay for the evening “bat flight”. At dusk, each evening, hundreds of bats fly out of the caverns in search of bugs and other yummies for their tummies. They have a little amphitheater set up and a ranger gives a little educational presentation while you wait for the bats. So we’re sitting there in the back row, all happy; listening to the nice park ranger and waiting for the bats. I then notice that somebody is very close behind me and I hear a scraping sound. Turns out, it’s another park ranger. The scraping sound is him scooping a tarantula off the back of my seat! I was pert-near attacked by a knife-wielding, hairy tarantula!

OK, yes I know that the tarantula wouldn’t have been able to hurt me even had he wanted to, but still…when was the last time a tarantula crawled up your ass?

For those of you keeping score:

Karen: kept up all night by lumber-carrying trains, fell out of shower and on to bathroom floor, made to walk all gimp-like by pulled muscle; food poisoning, thigh-hickies and near-decapitation by mad spider.

Barbara: perfectly fine.

Barbara did have a potty-trauma the next day. Along with her art-induced clumsiness and various dietary needs, Barbara also has a problem in that she requires the use of a toilet approximately every ten minutes. You may think I am exaggerating, but believe me when I tell you that I am not.

I don’t know how many of you have driven through the SW corner of Texas, west of El Paso, along the New Mexican border. Trust me when I say that there is not a toilet to be seen for about a thousand miles. In fact, the only indications of human life are numerous billboards which advertise topless joints. I have no idea where these topless joints are, considering the fact that the only things in sight were cattle ranches with mountains in the background. But they’re out there…somewhere.

Anyway, my point is that Barbi needed to pee something fierce and not only was there no toilet in sight, there wasn’t even a bush; no scrub brush, no nuttin’ behind which she could hide her butt while relieving herself. And while we may not have seen many signs of civilization, we did pass the occasional car with real live people in it. Therefore, Barbi didn’t feel much like just dropping trow in the middle of nowhere and letting it flow freely.

Just when she thought she may have to do just that, we came across a little hole-in-the-adobe-wall diner of some sort. With dust an inch think settling on their candy bars. We know this because we bought one. We bought one out of guilt for using their facilities, then promptly threw it in the back of the Corolla, unopened. I figured it may come in handy as a source of petrol, should the car run out of gas.

Many miles of driving through the smell of slaughter-houses later and we were back in Arizona, where the hot tub at the hotel actually made our body aches worse. Don't ask me how exactly that works.

But the Corolla saw us through, as it saw us through several additional trips. And it came through a serious accident with some little 16-year-old idiot who evidently saw absolutely no reason why she shouldn’t be able to make a left turn from the far-right lane. It went off-roading numerous other times without grumbling, whether in the desserts of Joshua Tree or up in the Lake Arrowhead area of our local mountains. It graciously allowed me to have mediocre sex with that guy in the passenger seat. It didn’t run out of gas when I seriously pushed my luck through the middle of what seemed like nowhere (actually in the Lake Powell area of Utah). And through it all, it continued to get at least 35 miles per gallon of gas.

And it hasn’t yet been retired from duty. I handed the vehicle down to my sister Linda when I bought the new car earlier this year. Yes, the warrior is still in service.