Day 17. Mile 4350. Mojave, CA.

I took some time in the morning to wander around Seligman. Although this town has the name of a Jewish lawyer, its character is very different.

Three or four buses were parked along the main street, and the French tourists that they brought were swarming the souvenir shops. I managed to find a shop that was relatively quiet and that also served breakfast, and after eating I went back on the road.

I drove taking very few stops, going back and forth between the I-40 and route 66, until I reached Mojave. The first thing that you notice once you enter Mojave is the insane amount of wind turbines. The second thing that you notice is that the town looks like it gave up, with many of the stores on the main street deserted.

I drove the truck into the parking of the “Best Motel” and asked the shy Chinese guy at the reception desk where I can find the best motel in town. When he was done being confused he gave me a room. I walked around the depressing town for a while.

Then I went to get dinner. There are very few place to get dinner in Mojave. I stepped into El Jefe Baja Grill. Once again, I was the only costumer in the place. The waiter was a tough, Hispanic young man. So tough, he had tattoos on his eyelids. Yes, I’m being totally serious. Tattoos. On his fucking eyelids!

Being the tough kid that he was, and being a waiter in a shitty restaurant in a shitty town, did not prevent this young man to act as if he is working in the fanciest restaurant in Paris, standing tall and contiguously calling me “Sir”. I had dinner and quite a few beers there as I was watching “Chopped” on the big TV. 

Then my phone started buzzing as it was receiving emails and it would not stop. The drama was unfolding in Boston, as the police were hunting down the two bombers, and I was getting  a lot of information in real-time through the Media Lab’s mailing lists, and when I say “real-time”, I mean less than a minute: the Media Lab is only a few minutes walk from where the police officer was shot, and in addition, some people were already listening to the MIT police’s scanner and posting on the mailing list information seconds after hearing it. Some people were actually stuck in the lab since the entire Boston area was locked down. Some of the emails were discussing where to find food in the lab in order to pull through the night. I wanted to point out to them that they can always resort to eating silk worms that  were brought recently the lab’s lobby (yeah, the lab does weird things, like putting silk worms in the lobby), but I decided to wait with jokes until everything calms down. I finished my Carne Asada and my beer, and went back the the motel to get some sleep before the road-trip’s last day.