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| I had decided not to join this year's West Coast Art Car Caravan. Albuquerque (the overnight stop nearest me, and where I met up with the caravan last year) is actually quite a ways out of the way for me. Plus, from Albuquerque they were planning on taking three days to reach Houston. I was bent on attending the Out-of-Towners Party this year--which meant I'd have to make it in two. Consequently, Whip It! was traveling alone.
Coming into El Paso, there was a traffic jam. At first I wasn't happy, but the traffic jam had a purpose, apparently: up ahead I spotted an art car I hadn't seen before. It had a couple of mountain peaks mounted on it. When traffic finally broke up, I slipped in behind the Mountain Mobile. I figured I'd just join the caravan & see how long it took them to figure it out. Answer: about twenty miles. When they finally saw me we had a little roadside reunion. (Scott, owner of the Alien Bug is the one who took us to Candi Strecker's garage sale at WestFest last year; riding with him was Kelly, owner of Leopard Bernstein, which didn't appear at this year's Art Car Weekend). Kelly rode with me for about thirty miles to the next gas station, where I departed the caravan because I needed to make time. They were still two days from Houston; I hoped to make it to next day's Out-of-Towners Party. Little did I know my journey would be more like the The Out-of-Towners MOVIE! But I'm getting ahead of the story. The Mountain truck turned out to be operated by Mona & Anne, a couple of cool people from Telluride, which explains the mountains on the truck. (It even has working waterfalls!) Because the truck has a high profile, it was being swept around the highway some by the strong Texas crosswinds. When we stopped for gas, I asked, "Is it hard to keep straight?" "WHAT?" they both asked. I repeated the question. Again, they asked: "WHAT?" I thought the question was offending them or something. "The truck," I said. "Is it hard to keep straight?" "Ohhhh," they said. "Yeah, a little." I thought, whoops, I really pissed off those lesbians! [They weren't lesbians; I just thought they seemed taken aback by the question. (Turns out they hadn't heard the question at first.) They both got a kick out of the story when I told it to them in Houston later that week.] |
Then I saw the Alien Bug right in front of it. This was what remained of the caravan (sadly, I wasn't this year's only defector).
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