I want it to be about travel experiences--not postcard scenery--and how these tie in with history and society in general. Enough will be revealed about me, but only indirectly.
But since I know this critic to be capable of intelligent insight, maybe he/she was partially right. So today I will reveal a dark secret that lurks in the hidden recesses of my own twisted and tormented heart. It certainly isn't something that you would expect from an RV boondocker who frequently camps alone on public lands. I blush to reveal that I've always had an urban fantasy.
But that is getting ahead of the story...
Today the dogs and I bicycled into Flagstaff by a different route. It is great fun to hack your way through towns on a bicycle. Bicycle trails usually come to abrupt endings, and then you must improvise. With each semi-illegal maneuver you take another step back to being a 10-year-old-boy anarchist who is trying to find a shortcut to a drugstore for some baseball cards or ice cream. Maybe you didn't even know that he was still in there. It's the sort of experience that makes me feel decades younger.
But the bicycle doesn't get all the credit. It helped that some of the route was along a busy railroad. I thought of the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? Remember the hobos riding the train, and the "Big Rock Candy Mountain" song? Thinking about trains and hobos caught my imagination and helped to carry me off.
Soon we were in Flagstaff, proper. We were surprised to be "attacked" by one of the most amazing little dogs that I have ever seen. His owner said he was half Eskimo dog, half poodle. Whatever the case, he was 100% pure fun--a riot in the heart embodied in a bag of fur.
We went to the Sunday morning farmer's market and then hit "cafe life," as did this dog who thought that the planter box made a great bed.
Sometimes it is more interesting to walk the alleys rather than streets.
But the real issue here isn't just the things that I agree with or have a fondness for. It is so pleasant to experience a city that is different...different from the bland, look-alike ugliness of American cities.
I had enjoyed Friday night when it seemed like the whole town is downtown, promenading, eating out, watching a free movie in the plaza. Downtown stores were even open. Do these people think they are living in Mexico?
I walked around, taking it in. What about these windows above a store, across from the plaza. Did someone actually live there?
From a window like these you could watch these goin's-on every Friday in the summer. You could have a front row seat in a real community.
In one of Bill Bryson's travel essays, he recalled an experience living in London. He said that all of his life he had wanted to step out of his house and actually be somewhere. I confess to having had the same fantasy.
