Tucumcari and beyond..

Tucumcari was kind of an interesting experience this time....  Renting the room was from the same gal that had the bad cold at Christmas time when I went thru town...

She was still full on with a head cold...   She even left her snotty kleenex laying on the counter between us....   And handed me a room key card with the kleenex in her hand...

I went immediately to the room and washed my hands and the key card in scalding hot soap and water....   Then I went to the store and bought a jug of Purell...  I brought it back and went over the room by squirting it in a washcloth and wiping everything..

I stopped at the pizza hut in town and had a small personal pan pizza, and while I was waiting a fellow pulled in with a 53 lime green Pontiac....  A straight eight two door with the lighted indian chief hood ornament....  He first got my attention while he was waiting for his take out pizza...  He was wearing bright green shorts with a pinkish red shirt, and penny loafers.....  Without socks...

Remember Tucumcari is on the mother road Route 66... and many of the motels and attractions are themed from the 1950s...  So this fellow was dressed to play the role...  And his car that started and ran like it was only 10 years old, not 60, fit that role as well....  Its just that you don't see folks driving old cars like that for a daily driver....

Back in the room after stressing over the cold germs, I was settled into watching the Canonization of the former Popes...  It was about 11 PM by then and the wind had picked up even more from earlier...  My door faced the outside and West...

The wind was rattling it in its frame...  It was blowing in hard enough to swing the curtains on the inside of the window....  The concrete block building fairly shook with the gusts....  I wondered how I would sleep...

Well in about 30 minutes, that wonder had a new element, as somewhere the power lines must have been blown together and things went slowly out.. First with low voltage like a brown out and then totally gone....

Looking out the window confirmed that the entire street as far as I could see was dark....  My laptop was on batteries, but the internet connection was gone and so was my mifi...

After a long while, the power did come back on so the lights were back..   But then the desk phone began to ring, and ring, and ring.....   Answering it didn't stop it ringing...  Still no cell phone or wifi or mifi...  And the TV would run but the programming on their cable system was gone...  No TV either...

None of these things rectified themselves for the rest of the night...  I pulled the phone wire out of the wall, and the alarm clock was one of those that flash a bright light on the ceiling to wake you up...  And I couldn't get it to stop or reset either...  So its plug was pulled as well...  So I and the 50 mph wind spent the night as it rattled the door on my room.....

Sunday

The lady with the cold was gone from the office the next morning, but a 30 something fellow had replaced her...  He looked as though he was up all night when I was checking out at 7 AM...  He told one fellow that when the electric went out and all the communications, it was time he went to bed anyway..... Nice..!

I grabbed some breakfast items from the coffee bar and hit the road...

I didn't see much of Texas...  Just a brown out dust storm....  At times I had to pull over and wait along the shoulder of the road because the visibility went down to zero...  The tumbleweeds were whipped up into a frenzy along with the dust... Some of them were small trees that had been broken free..  When they are so large, I try and dodge them as well...  Hitting them a 65 will leave scratches in the paint...

If I thought the wind was bad on Saturday, the wind on Sunday was much worse..    I arrived at the Wichita airport at 3 PM to haul the Honda home with the Jeep...  That will be the next post.

Retired Rod