Category: Travails of a Guidebook Author

February 29, 2016

Farewell Brain Dump: Everything I Know about Renting a Car

Hell on wheels, Malta-style

As I said two weeks ago, I’m shutting down this blog. This is my last post ever! Thanks for reading, lo these 12 long years.

As a guidebook author, I have rented a crazy amount of cars, in lots of different countries. Two of my most popular posts ever were about renting cars in Mexico.

I’m sure I still don’t know everything. But here are the basics for anyone looking to get a better deal.

1. You probably don’t need to buy extra insurance…except when you do.
[NOTE: the following applies to rentals made via US websites, using US-issued credit cards. I can’t vouch for what rules apply to Europeans.]

You’ll get pressure to buy insurance. But if you’re renting with a decent US-issued credit card, one of its perks is probably rental-car collision insurance (covering the damage you might do to the car). Most MasterCards come with 14 days’ coverage; Visas usually offer 30.

But don’t take my word for it! Definitely check your card’s terms before your trip. Also ask whether the coverage is primary (you can claim on it first) or secondary (you’d have to first claim with your personal car insurance, if you have it). Once you have that sorted, you can confidently “decline the CDW” (as the collision coverage is usually abbreviated on contracts) at the rental counter.

Note that you can go without collision insurance completely (at least as far as I know re: US and Mexico; laws may be different in other countries). That means you’re taking all the risk yourself, and of course you have to be OK with that risk.

If you decline the CDW (whether because you have coverage through your credit card, or you’re just a risk taker), the car company will want to guarantee you don’t wreck the car and never pay up. So it will usually put a hold for several thousand dollars on your credit card until you return the car.

As for the other key insurance, liability insurance (what you might do to other cars/people while driving): it is required pretty much everywhere in the world.

In the US, most states require the car companies (not you, the customer) to pay for the liability insurance. This is called primary liability insurance, and even if it’s included in the rate, the staff will probably try to sell you supplemental liability insurance at the counter; you can safely say no, thanks (unless of course you are genuinely concerned about your liability risk).

But in some states, car companies are not required to pay for the liability insurance. In these states (California is the biggie), you must pay primary liability insurance at the counter (and, nastily, it’s not usually flagged up in the rate you’re quoted online). However, if you own a car in the US, your own personal car insurance will probably cover your liability, and you can “decline the LDW” without worry. (Again, check before your trip.) If you don’t own a car, alas, you do have to buy liability insurance in the states it’s required.

As for other countries, most also require rental companies to pay for liability insurance, but there are exceptions–such as Mexico. And there, I learned, some companies (such as Hertz) carry the insurance themselves, while others don’t, and pass the fee on to you. But even if they provide primary liability themselves, they will cheerfully try to sell supplemental coverage–so you need to read the fine print. See here (point #6) for more.

2. Start your search wide.
Run a quick search at Kayak.com to get an idea of the range of rates for the trip you want. Target the lowest prices from the international chains (Hertz, Avis, etc).

Avoid Enterprise where possible. They nickel-and-dime to a sometimes excruciating degree, in my experience. Although in smaller cities, they are sometimes the only option, and can be perfectly great.

3. Join the club.
Whatever company you’re considering renting from, join their frequent-renters club. It comes with automatic 10-15% discounts.

You can also set up preferences for airline discounts (below), and also request not to be given the insurance hard sell when you pick up your car.

4. Get discounts from airlines.
Most airlines–and Amtrak–offer significant discounts at car rental companies. For this, you have to book through the airline’s engine or get a code to punch in at the car-rental website. (For both, go to the frequent-flier part of the website, look under ‘earn miles’ then ‘car rentals.’)

Try a few different ones–they vary a lot depending on the time of year and where you’re renting. (It’s easier to just try the search with the code/engine, rather than parsing the fine print and deciding whether the rules apply.)

I usually check American, United and Amtrak. And because I’ve signed up at a couple of different car companies’ clubs (step #2), I can store the discount codes there.

5. Try an off-airport location.
Some airports charge crazy fees for car rentals. Going to a “suburban” location in the same city can save a ton of money, more than the cost of a taxi to that location. And there’s usually no added fee for returning the car to the airport (but double-check).

6. It costs nothing to cancel a car reservation.
If you see something good, book it. You can always cancel it later, with no penalty.

(Obviously don’t book the prepaid option!)

7. Rental rates change all the time.
After you make your booking(s), check back a few times before your trip. You will probably be surprised, horrified or indignant about how much the rates change, and often for the lower.

Console yourself by feeling smug when you book the new, better rate.

8. Choose prepaid only close in.
When you’re within 4 days or so of your trip, and you’re pretty certain everything’s a go, then you can choose a prepaid discount, if you see a good one.
Now’s also the time to check www.hotwire.com, which does “blind booking” for car rentals, where it shows only the price, not the company. If you see a crazy bargain here, be sure you’re checking the price with all fees and taxes. If it’s still lower than what you have lined up, then go for it.

Honestly, I barely mess with prepaid deals, because it makes me feel all jinx-y about my trip! But sometimes I’ll check the day before I fly and switch to prepaid if it’s better.

9. It’s fairly easy to claim on insurance, if you need to.
I’m not saying you should be a cavalier driver or anything, but at least don’t fret too much if you do damage your car somehow. The paperwork, in my experience with both Visa and American Express, has been pretty easy, and the settlement happens within about four months.

If you do have some kind of incident, don’t move your car without making contact with your car-rental company. It will send an adjuster to document the situation.

10. If your car needs towing, don’t call the rental company.
Well, OK: if you car has some kind of mechanical failure, then yes, call the phone number on the rental agreement. This is the car company’s responsibility, and they should deal with it first.

But if you, for example, follow bad GPS directions and wind up stuck on a sandy forest road, don’t call the car company. In this case (as the tow-truck guy advised me), you should look first online (if at all possible) to find the closest (physically) tow-truck company. Call them directly.

Towing companies charge starting from when they start driving toward you…wherever they are. (Keep this in mind when you hear the hourly rate.) That’s why you want someone close.

And your car rental company charges a service fee ($75, in the case of Hertz) to connect you to a local towing company. Which is why you don’t want to bother getting them involved.

I haven’t looked into it (but probably should), but of course AAA is an option. Even if you don’t own a car, membership may be handy if you rent a lot.

11. Don’t take your car on dirt roads (if you can avoid it).
Car rental companies tend to think this is so blindingly obvious, they don’t mention it. But often they have clauses that say the insurance is voided if you’re on a dirt road. (Check with your credit card’s collision insurance too.)

Happy, cheaper driving! Any questions? I know I said I’m killing off the blog, but of course I’ll answer comments!

May 1, 2015

Book News

Oh, hello there. I briefly forgot I had a blog! But the electronic record must show some exciting developments in the realm of words printed on paper.

Tiny hint of what might be on the cover, maybe

1) ~~The Crimson Sofa~~ All Strangers Are Kin is delivered and accepted, as they say in the biz.

(In the biz, this also means I finally got PAID again. Writing a book is the most nonsensical “job” ever. Happy May Day, everyone!)

So that means (because this is printed on paper), publication date for my travel memoir about why it’s worth learning Arabic, despite the grief it can cause, is June 2016. Yes, that’s more than a year from now. No, I cannot tell you why it takes that long.

But production is moving along at a rapid clip (copy editing is in process; I’ve seen one cover mockup already), so there will be more news soon.

2) Moon Santa Fe, Taos & Albuquerque is out in a new full-color edition!

OK, maybe not at this moment “out” in stores, but I got a big box of them the other day, and they look lovely. If you’re planning a trip to fair New Mexico, pick one up.

(If you’ll go farther afield, remember there’s also Moon New Mexico, also now full-color, and only a year old.)

3) The beautiful New Mexico Farm Table Cookbook is out.

I have nothing personally to do with this except that you’ll see my name on back under a very excited blurb. It is a beautiful book! And, to quote myself, it does go way beyond the classic red and green chile dishes. Beautiful photos, and recipes from a huge variety of restaurants all over the state.

Try out the Los Poblanos Pork with Modern Soubise (p122), would ya, and tell me how it is?

I can’t do it myself now because I’m off to back-of-beyond Greece for a couple of weeks. Much needed hiking trip, because…

4) I’m updating the Lonely Planet USA guide.

Not the whole thing, just the NY/NJ/PA chapter. But even that involves a ton of driving and a lot of road food (hence the need for hiking). Man, America. You gotta get with the program on vegetables!

(Welcome exceptions: Moosewood and Stonecat Cafe. In a perfect world, I’d have a whole post about eating at Moosewood, finally, after living out of one their cookbooks for so long in Egypt. But I gotta go pack.)

I’ll be heading up to the Adirondacks and out to Long Island when I get back from Greece. More news then…

January 1, 2015

2014: The High- and Lowlights

This whole past year, I have been considering retiring this blog, and I still am. But…it is a helpful memory bank.

See, I’ve been mentally concocting this post for a couple of weeks. And it was not positive: 2014 felt like Groundhog Year, because I had to massively overhaul my book, despite having made special efforts in 2013 and even earlier to avoid such a thing (gnash, gnash).

But scrolling through this year’s blog posts, I see that some other things happened–and some of them even represented progress, of a sort.

Granted, it’s not a great sign that two of my posts were cranky rebuttals: one telling Marc Maron to lighten up on his cast iron, and another telling a New York Times reporter to lighten up in Mexico.

But then there’s something genuinely good: The new edition of my Moon New Mexico book came out–in fabulous full color! It reminded me that, in eleven years of working on these Moon books, I’ve learned a lot about photography, and I now have a body of photos that I’m proud to see printed in color. The writing ain’t bad either, if I do say so.

This reminded me of a couple of things that didn’t even make it to the blog. I wrote another story for the New York Times, “36 Hours in Santa Fe,” which turned out well. I can even call myself a published poet now, because the entry for Ten Thousand Waves includes a haiku!

And, perhaps my proudest accomplishment of the year, I wrote an article for The Art of Eating on a couple in New Mexico who are making traditional balsamic vinegar. I’ve been thinking this would make a good story since I first heard about the Darlands, at least five years ago; I learned a ton; and The Art of Eating is an excellent magazine. Writing the story was a great experience all around, especially in the editing, which reminded me how helpful and inspiring that process can be.

The majority of my 2014 posts were dedicated to my trip way back in January, when I went to Rwanda and Ethiopia (and then Thailand, for frequent-flier-mile reasons too dull to go into). It was fantastic, and I am so glad I went, but Peter and I came back fried. Too many destinations, not enough time in each and certainly not enough alone time. I still haven’t quite recharged–I have never wanted to travel less in my life, which is unsettling.

[REDACTED. There was some more blerghy complaining here, but we’re all pretty tired of that, aren’t we?]

In 2015, I am taking the advice of a thirteen-year-old friend, who recently said, with the wisdom of an eighty-year-old, “Consider it a hobby, and it will be less troublesome.” He was talking about something else entirely, but still.

Not coincidentally, this is one of my favorite photos of the year, from the Itegue Taitu Hotel in Addis Ababa.

Bad art? Refresh by rotating 90 degrees.

Hello, 2015. May you be different and perspective-altering.

July 2, 2014

Another Book Update: Moon New Mexico

Hey kids–the new edition of Moon New Mexico is out! Check it out if you’re planning a trip around the Land of Enchantment. I covered thousands and thousands of miles last year, in a dinky rental car, to bring you all the news.

There’s a new section on the bootheel of New Mexico, way down in the southwest, and a lot of other nifty little finds. I love that, ten years in to working on this book, there are still new places to explore in the state.

That link above leads to Amazon, which is not the greatest, I realize~~, especially now that Perseus, which owns Moon, has been acquired by Hachette~~. Consider the link for info purposes only–hit up your local bookstore instead.

Speaking of local bookstores, I will be at Bookworks in Albuquerque on August 17, at 3 p.m., to talk about the goodness of the guidebook, show some pics from recent trips, and generally answer questions. Mark your calendars!

June 30, 2014

Book Update

“Can’t wait till your book comes out!”

“Let me know when your book is out!”

“Hey, when’s your book coming out?”

This post is for all my friends and acquaintances and great people I met while I was traveling, to answer their ever-optimistic questions.

First, the book (working title: The Crimson Sofa) is now scheduled for publication in fall 2015.

That seems a long way off, yes? This, alas, is the way book publishing works. And, you’re not imagining it, it has gotten further off since I started this whole thing. Thanks in part to my own failure to grasp how book publishing works. Despite having worked in the industry off and on for more than fifteen years.

Two pro-tips (which, in the spirit of all pro-tips, are screamingly obvious once you write them down and look at them):

PRO-TIP #1: In your proposal, don’t just guess what your word count might be.

It’s hard, right, that you have to say how many words a book will be, before you write it? And there’s no straightforward way to find out how many words there are in other, comparable books?

I understand, the publishing people have to do their own math, according to some arcane formula which mere writers don’t know. So when I first started writing, I emailed my editor as soon as I realized my estimated word count was way too low. Because I had, yes, just guessed in my proposal. (“Let’s see…Peter wrote a book that was 60,000 words? It could be longer than that. But what if nothing happens on my trip? Better be conservative… Um, 70,000? Yeah, that’s the ticket. 70,000.”)

Turns out, that was a problem. Turns out I should’ve been more careful at that stage.

Anyway…

PRO-TIP #2: 150,000 words is way too many words.

OK, I know it’s too many words. I mean, obviously some needed to be cut. I just didn’t know it was omg-my-head’s-exploding-I-can’t-even-deal-with-this too many words.

Which is a totally inaccurate paraphrase of my editor’s reaction, but an accurate depiction of the fallout. In order for my editor to be able to deal with my book, I had to cut it massively. My pub date got bumped, from next spring to next fall.

I spent the last few months alternately gnashing my teeth and cutting every fourth word of every single sentence. (Reading this post, you can perhaps sense how that kind of cutting would be possible, yes? Buh-bye, “just,” “really,” “perhaps,” etc. Buh-bye, parenthetical asides. Buh-bye, rhetorical questions.)

I spent a fantastic week in southern Utah, with no internet. I rode a train. In the end, I emerged with 92,000-ish words, which I just submitted today.

Which is crazy to me, because I eat that many words for breakfast. The last Lonely Planet job I did, just the Cairo chapter of the Egypt guide, plus some front matter, was 82,950 words. (Maybe I should have considered this, at the proposal stage!)

So, long story short, the draft is on my editor’s desk. I have no idea if the short version is really tenable as a book. I’ve been stuck in the swamp of it so long, I hate nearly every word of it, and I can no longer remember what the point of writing it might have been.

I’m hoping a couple of months off, updating my Moon guide to Santa Fe (approximately 98,000 words), will restore some perspective. Time usually does that.

Which, I suppose, is the silver lining around book publishing taking so long–you need that time just to love your book again. And I hope you’ll all still be around, still asking about the book, when it does finally come out. Thanks for all the support, over this long haul.

December 30, 2013

The 2013 Highlights Reel

The last few years, I’ve really enjoyed doing the end-of-year wrap-up. This year…it’s a tiny bit of a strain.

That’s not because 2013 sucked. It’s because I stayed home a lot, with my butt in a chair, staring at a computer screen. (See previous post.) The “writer” part of “travel writer” was the main thing going this year.

To that end, Highlight #1: I finished my $%#$#$%#$–I mean, fabulously stupendous and thrilling!–book draft. It was a little anticlimactic. One imagines triumphantly running laps to cheering crowds. Instead, one presses ‘send,’ then turns to all the other crap that has piled up in months of neglect.

(Does this mean you will very soon see my book on store shelves? No. Getting a book into book form takes a good long time. Anticipated publication date is February 2015. Please keep your breath bated till then!)

I wasn’t in NYC for the entire year. I went to New Mexico several times, which yielded some great moments. Highlight #2 was doing one of my dream stories, eating my way around Silver City, New Mexico. Thanks to the New York Times travel section for publishing the results! The story was, for a thrilling moment, the seventh-most-emailed on the NYT site, and someone hated on me on Twitter for it! You know you’re coming up in the world when you’ve got a Twitter hater…

On my second trip to New Mexico (why so many? Because Jet Blue started direct flights to Albuquerque!), I camped out at my mom’s for a while and wrote, and then, Highlight #3, Peter and I spent a few days at Los Poblanos. This may very well be my most favorite hotel in the world, and believe me, I never thought I’d be saying that about anything in my hometown. They have the cutest damn goats. And a lovely restaurant. This is the first time in my life I’ve done what felt like a grownup resort vacation. Paid real money. Lolled around the pool. Drank wine with our friends. Visited the goats. I wouldn’t want to do it alllll the time, but I can see the appeal, when it’s somewhere with taste as good as Los P’s.

Then, Highlight #4, Peter and I traveled overland and car-less from Albuquerque to Vegas to California. Why? Just to see if we could. We took Amtrak to Williams, AZ, then took the tourist train to the Grand Canyon. At the Grand Canyon, we hopped on the return flight of a scenic-tour plane to Las Vegas. We were the only people on there with luggage, and top in my little file of smug travel moments now is the one where the pilot was like, “What? You flew one-way? You don’t have a car?” and gave us a thumbs-up. That made up for walking around Vegas in record-high temps. Then we flew to SFO (sorry, no snazzy workaround there), attended a wedding by bus due to the BART strike, and finally, took Amtrak to Los Angeles, on the fab Coast Starlight. The whole thing cost marginally less than if we’d rented a car, so that’s also in my file of smug travel moments. On the other hand, it costs a damn arm and a leg to travel in the U.S.! Now I know for sure that our trips to Thailand are in fact cheaper, including airfare.

Highlight #5 came on my third trip home (yup, on JetBlue), when I went waaaay down to the far southwest corner of New Mexico. That’s all in a post here. NM is my mainstay guidebook title (new edition from Moon coming in the spring!), and it’s great that there are still spots I haven’t seen. And they’re so damn beautiful.

After the last NM trip, I buckled down at home. Strangely, that was Highlight #6, writing–a very distinct thing from Highlight #1, which was finishing. In fact, the actual writing should be Highlight #1, and being done with writing (for now) should go farther down the list. After I managed to get myself focused and settled down, I really did enjoy spending a good six or seven hours every day messing around with words.

And my industrious fake-office-job schedule meant I had the evenings free, so I managed to do Highlight #7, painting my living room. My friend Amy picked the color, and it is beyond fabulous.

Benjamin Moore Venezuelan Sea, if you’re curious.

(I also finally finished painting the dining room–astute readers of this blog may remember the Bollywood dining room as a highlight of, er, 2009.)

Oh, and Highlight #7.5, because this isn’t a design blog, but we got a new dining room table and chairs. The chairs I bought in Raton, New Mexico, and shipped home and still paid less than anything here in NYC. More and more, my guidebook jobs turn into shopping trips.

That’s about it for 2013. Today, as this posts, I will be on the way to Rwanda, followed by a few days in Ethiopia. Switching gears entirely.

Happy new year, and best wishes for all new destinations and ever-more-comfortable home bases!

December 16, 2013

One Crazy Trick for Working Productively at Home

Freelancers! I finally cracked it!

And it’s the most boring thing in the world:

Pretend you have a real job.

These are the images that come up when you search for “office job.” Coincidentally, they are the same images that come to mind when I think the phrase “office job.”

Starting time is 10 a.m. You get a lunch hour–that’s when you do all your fiddly errands, like running to the frame store, or looking at rugs on eBay. (Ignore the unfairness that, in a real office-job situation, people don’t relegate eBay searches to lunch hour.) You knock off around 7 p.m., and spend your evening painting the living room, reading books, whatever.

I KNOW. The whole point of being a freelancer is so you don’t have to do this crap. But…it works. At least it worked for me for the last critical two months of finishing my book draft. (It’s done! It’s done. 150,000 words, give or take. Now: the long wait.)

But, of course, fooling yourself into thinking that your writing is as important as a regular office job, and that you absolutely have to show up for it–well, that requires a whole other bag of tricks. Such as:

1. Clock in with Toggl.
Usually I use Toggl to make sure I’m earning an OK hourly rate on low-paying jobs. For the book, I just used it to make sure my butt was in my chair for at least seven hours every day.

2. Clear your schedule.

Like this, for instance. Note the absence of holidays as well.

For a freelancer, saying no to work is the most painful thing in the world. But you’ll have to do it until you get this one thing done. You know how you tell yourself that you work more efficiently when you have a few projects to play off each other? It doesn’t work when one of those projects is massive and genuinely requires all of your time.

3. Be married.
It’s nice to have someone to pay the bills and cook meals, in the background.

4. Don’t be married.
Regular human interaction, such as giving and receiving love, is just too distracting. Also, another human in your space who keeps different hours from you can be too distracting.

5. No, wait, be married.
What am I thinking?! Of course you need love and human support. What would I have done without Peter? Then again, it did help that he went to Australia for ten days. That was when I could really set up a regular work schedule.

6. Embrace electronica.
You need low-key, nonstop music. No lyrics. I like SomaFM: Deep Space One for mornings, Earwaves for afternoons. Def Con Radio occasionally, because the weird motivational samples make me feel like I’m at a different job.

7. Log out of Facebook.
Some people resort to turning off the Internet, but I found that if I just logged out of Facebook, I quelled the urge to visit it all the time, because logging back in was a hassle. All my other time-wasting strategies are relatively harmless (except for those eBay rugs…). If you do need something stronger, Concentrate is a good Chrome plugin.

8. Eat an easy breakfast.
If you are, for instance, waking up hours before your partner (and not because you’re one of those oh-I-can-only-create-in-the-cold-clear-light-of-dawn people, no sir, but only because said partner sleeps till noon) and you want to get right to work with a minimum of fuss, you must dispense with all morning food creativity.

To this end, I have started every day since, oh, October 2012, with two slices of a particular Swedish-ish fruit-nut bread. The indomitable Cristina Topham, aka The Wayward Chef, gave me the recipe, in a slightly more Swedish form.

I cannot praise it enough. It’s like granola, but granola you can spread butter on. It keeps you full until noon, when said partner may awake and fix you lunch.

This is what comes up when you search for “Swedish office job.” Don’t they have heat in Sweden?

Freelancers Breakfast Bread
This bread may actually be the one crazy trick to working productively at home–many thanks again to Cristina Topham.

I buy all the ingredients in bulk and keep the nuts, rye flour and seeds in the freezer, so they don’t go rancid. The original recipe used dried figs and hazelnuts, which is excellent, but hazelnuts are often rancid before you even get them home, so I most often use pecans. Don’t ignore the flax seeds–they have a nice slippery quality. I made it without them once, and it was meh. [BUT a note in hindsight, in 2018: flax is very high in phytoestrogens, and so are (to a lesser degree) rye, oats and pumpkin and sunflower seeds. This is excellent if you want to adjust your hormonal balance–if you’re doing seed cycling, for instance–but if you don’t want to…don’t eat this every day.]

For a denser, more sour bread, you can shift the flour more toward 2:1 rye:AP. If you use a kitchen scale and go by weight, it’s easy to tinker with this proportion. In fact, a scale is much easier all around, as it leaves you only the bowl and liquid measuring cup to wash.

And note the long bake time: You must make this on one of your free evenings, not in the morning.

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix together in a big bowl:
1 1/4 cups (195g) rye flour
1 1/2 cups (195g) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups (150g) rolled oats (regular, not quick-cooking) OR quick-cooking steel-cut oats (these make a fluffier bread, but they must be the quick variety!)
1/4 cup (35g) flax seeds
1/4 cup (35g) pumpkin or sunflower seeds
1/2 cup (70g) nuts (pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts; first two, break up by hand, no need to chop)
1 cup (150g) dried fruit (cranberries, cherries, apricots, figs; for latter two, better to chop roughly or cut with scissors)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

In a measuring cup, combine:
1 3/4 cup buttermilk (or regular milk with the juice of half a lemon squeezed in; or yogurt thinned with milk)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup molasses

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir. Every time I make this, it’s a different consistency, but it tends toward super-thick, like glue. Don’t make yourself crazy stirring in the flour–if there are a couple of dry spots, it won’t matter too much.

I bake this in two smaller loaf pans, so I can freeze one; you could also use one large one. Either way, butter it or line it with parchment paper. Squash the batter into your loaf pans and smooth the top with a wet knife (that’s the Cristina Topham pro-tip right there).

Bake on the bottom rack for between 1 hour (two small pans) and 1 hour 20 minutes (one large pan). Let cool on a wire rack. Slice thin and eat with lots of butter and pinch of crunchy sea salt, plus very milky coffee, which, Cristina tells me, is the Swedish way.

November 11, 2013

New Mexico: Vintage Motels

You know I have a thing for old hotels. Not just olde historicky hotels, but what I call vintage hotels.

One of the “rules” I have about vintage hotels is that they can’t be renovated to be old-timey–they just have to be that way. But after this last trip around New Mexico, where I spied some exceptionally good old motels, I think I have to lighten up a little bit. The people who are working hard to preserve them–which also involves some renovation, because they’re so far gone–deserve some credit.

Tucumcari, on the east edge of the state, is a great little outdoor Route 66 museum, starting with the Blue Swallow Motel. It may be the oldest surviving motel on Route 66 in New Mexico, and the owners make sure it feels like 1939, right down to the old black phones. Previously, this place was owned by an electrical engineer who fixed up the neon, and before that, it was owned by the same woman for something like forty years.

Just across the road is the Motel Safari, from a slightly later era, also very nicely re-old-vated.

I especially like how the old sign has been redone to mention Internet and flat-panel TV.

And down the road is the Historic Route 66 Motel, which to be honest, I was only able to peek out through cracks in the drapes, because no one was in the office, but I dig the floor-to-ceiling windows.

And just to give you an idea what the alternative is, let’s take a look at some of the motels in Tucumcari that haven’t been treated so kindly. Restrain your sobs, if you can.

That last one might be the worst, just because it was aiming so high. The Taj!

Raton, up on the northern edge of the state, is also a hot spot for great old motels. (What is it about border towns?)

First, of course, there’s the Melody Lane.

I wrote about the Melody Lane before, but the gist is: steam saunas in the bathrooms!!!!! Dreamy.

Less dreamy: the iron-fisted owner (required of a good vintage hotel; and actually, she was very nice, just intense about cleaning) retired, and sold the place to a new crew. No idea if they will keep the place up, but I am suspicious because their eyes did not light up when I asked about the saunas. They more like frowned, at the thought of how much maintenance they will require, and how many annoying people will roll up asking about them. On this visit, I left the place heartsick with worry.

But then! Just down the road, on the south side of Raton…is the delightful Robin Hood Motel.

It’s lovely and lemon-yellow, and has lovely flowers planted everywhere and a teeny-weeny pool and a woman who’s run the place for ages.

And then and then, even farther down the road, is this place.

I almost didn’t stop. I was pretty done with Raton by then. But something made me turn around and drive in. Here was the office:

Look at that paint job. Look at how orderly those little cactus pots are! Good signs.

I rang the bell, but no answered. I walked around the corner.

Aaaagh! I might have done a little dance right there in the empty parking lot, to release the overwhelming cute-oldness that was squeezing my heart. But it didn’t work, because then I turned around and saw these screen doors!

(Please note how the *hose* is even color-coordinated!!!)

I felt a little like I was in a fairy tale when I went over and peeked at the screen doors. The inside doors were open! To let in the fresh breezes! I could see right into the rooms, and the beds were covered in powder-blue chenille spreads. And I’m practically crying while I write this. Everything was so intensely perfect, and not museum-like or kitschy-retro. I felt like if I’d opened up one of those doors, and walked in, I might never have gotten out of 1958.

But no one was around. I scuffed back to my car, got in, and drove away. But! Just as I was turning onto the highway, I saw a truck pull into the driveway of the motel, so I made a loop-de-loop back.

“Are you the owner?” I asked the guy in the truck breathlessly. He was old and weather-beaten and wore overalls.

“Yes, it’s my place.” He spoke just enough to let on that he had a German accent. What? Who comes from Germany to run an ancient motel? There was so much I wanted to ask him, but I just got the prices and went on my way. Kicking myself now. Planning my return trip soon, to sleep under one of those blue chenille bedspreads.

Thank you, Maverick Motel owner. You made my trip.

November 4, 2013

New Mexico: The Southeast

This trip, I made a beeline for the southeast quadrant of New Mexico, just to get it out of the way. Historically, let’s just say I haven’t been bursting with enthusiasm for this part of the state. There are tremendous natural attractions out here–Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands–but a whole lotta nothin’ in between, and if you go too far east, it’s like you’re in Texas, in a bad way (i.e., it smells like cows and oil).

BUT, lo and behold, it turns out that if one goes to the southeast first, when one is full of pep and vigor, and one’s eyes haven’t yet been dulled by hundreds (nay, thousands) of miles of scenery whizzing by at 70 miles an hour, then the southeast has a lot to like.

First up, Tucumcari. Which is barely southeast. It’s on I-40, not far from Texas, and the billboards all say “Tucumcari TONITE!” It’s one long strip of old motels, and honestly, I had never stayed the night there before. This time I settled in at the Blue Swallow Motel (more on this later), and chilled the heck out.

At the Blue Swallow

It was the golden hour, so all the ruination of Route 66 was looking immensely scenic.

Note the warning: You toucha my truck…I breaka you face.

(The person who did up this truck used to have a junk shop in a repurposed restaurant–the sign said Doofnac Xemi. Alas, it’s shut.)

I had some chicken-fried steak for dinner, garnished with a piece of kale. Yes, kids, there is still a part of the country where kale is just a hardy decorative green thing. If you want something green, have some Jell-O. Though to be fair, there is a farmers market in Tucumcari, and it was hopping.

Some of the farmers selling at the market also own the Odeon on 2nd Street.

“The Heat” was hilarious.

Before cruising out of town the next morning, I happened to see the world’s most wonderful murals on the wall of a public pool.

There’s a baby burro with a floaty mat around the corner.

Next stop, Fort Sumner, where maybe the guy who did the WPA mural in the courthouse could’ve used a little bit of that lighter touch from Tucumcari.

What is going on here? I just don’t know.

Hotsy-totsy.

In Clovis, I visited the Norman & Vi Petty Museum, commemorating the work of the producer behind Buddy Holly. It was all about the tubes.

Mmmm, those are some darn fine knobs.

And with my not-yet-road-damaged eyes, I could really appreciate this excellent example of bank architecture.

Bet they still give Dum-Dums to the kids…

Portales, peanut basin of the Southwest, has redone its movie theater.

But why it’s called the Yam, I could not tell you.

In Carrizozo, Roy was still mixing chocolate ice-cream sodas at Roy’s Gift Gallery, and my favorite sign in all of New Mexico was still there.

Now improved with an old truck and a donkey.

Up in Cloudcroft, I drove the Sunspot Highway and looked down on the wasteland of southeastern New Mexico. Not too shabby.

That white streak across the middle is White Sands.

October 28, 2013

New Mexico: The Bootheel

This year was the third time I’ve updated my New Mexico guidebook. You’d think I would’ve gone pretty much everywhere by now, since New Mexico is not a heavily paved state and there are only so many roads to drive.

But in fact, there was a whole stubby little bit of the state I’d never set foot in–the so-called bootheel, which sticks down in the southwest corner. The closest town on the interstate is Lordsburg, which might explain why I’d never driven down there. Lordsburg is a pretty dismal ex-railroad town, with so much chain-link fencing that it kind of saps your strength to drive farther.

On my guidebook research trips, I try to put a couple of roadblocks in my schedule, to force myself to slow down and take a periodic break. So I booked two nights at the Casa Adobe, in Rodeo, New Mexico.

I wish I could’ve stayed a week. The house was lovely, and there’s no cell service in Rodeo, and no internet at the house.

And the light…ahhh.

Rodeo is just a mile or so from the Arizona border, and Cave Creek Canyon, which is famous as a great birding spot. I mean, famous in birding circles. There is something uncanny about the Arizona border–somehow the instant you cross it, the scenery gets better than what was on the New Mexico side. I’m not sure how they pulled that off. These mountains, just on the Arizona side, were freakishly lush and vibrant.

The trade-off, though, is you have to deal with Arizonans and their immigration panic:

(My New Mexico is such a hippie New Mexico that I didn’t even realize until the government shutdown that NM’s southern district had elected a Tea Party wackadoo to the House of Representatives. So the immigration panic isn’t limited to Arizona, I now understand. It’s just NM doesn’t have any warning signs on the highway…yet.)

On the second day, I drove back up to near Lordsburg and visited Shakespeare ghost town, which is open only once a month or so. On the way I stopped at the gas station, and saw this critter:

Imagine my thumb next to him for scale. BIG dude. Locusts! In little coral-colored bikini tops, they kinda look like.

Shakespeare is fascinating because it’s really nicely preserved, but it also has this layer of more modern history, of the family that has owned it for a few generations. One woman taught dance classes there for decades, and one cabin is lined with recital photos–worth the price of admission.

Quiet moment in the lynching room…anticipating the gun fights later.

Also at Shakespeare, I learned that the freakishly colored locusts are actually perfectly adapted to a landscape made of volcanic rock and mine tailings.

The really nice thing about being in Rodeo, in the middle of nowhere, for two whole days, is that I appreciated Lordsburg a bit more when I came back. There are a couple of good cafes, after all, and some choice neon. And the museum has a really good exhibit on German WWII POWs interned around here. And they were practicing roping at the fairgrounds.

If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I went to be a cowgirl in Rodeo…