Tired of driving and thirsty for a vodka and grapefruit, I deferred the driving of Duke to Mike and hopped inside The Camera Van for a stint at passenger travel and a cocktail. All I recall for certain is that somewhere just west of Sierra Blanca, Texas, I was forced to chuck three-quarters of a liter of Absolut out the window when Harrod panicked on approaching a well-lit vegetable quarantine station. Bang! Absolut zero. From groovie greyhound to grapefruit grey, and a gross waste of pricey, medium-grade vodka. It was the old molotov-cocktail-out-the-window thing, and it apparently damn near blew Ronnie off the road. I had tied on a healthy buzz before that panicky prohibition, so details of the rest of the night are vague at best. The vodka eviction was the only casualty of the trip for me, but just a harbinger of things to come for Harrod.

That night we rolled into Sierra Blanca, a tiny nowhere town quite by itself in the long stretch of I-10 between El Paso and Ft. Stockton. We secured a couple of motel rooms and shared beds to cut down on the cost. Somehow I wound up sleeping with Rotten Ronnie. What didn't seem all that odd to me at the time became a subject of much joking around the next day.

At some point, Philo and Joanne Northrup had joined us in the Truck in Flux, a movable, evolving shrine to Elastic Symbolism. They had had transmission trouble way back before the L.A. overnight, and had taken awhile to catch up. Philo would later take on the task of organizing the next two art car caravans, no small task. And together with Harrod, he would launch the highly successful Art Car West Fest.

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Last update April 1, 2004