One of the lures of road travel is the final rest at the end of the trail in some off brand or low rent motel room. Maybe the hotel is not always so off brand, but by the time you figure in bad paintings, cheap bed coverings, leaky toilets, amorous neighbors and questionable surroundings, no matter how much or little you pay you sometimes have the makings of a poorly written gumshoe short story or a bad night's sleep.
There is something to be said of the joys of solitary travel. As much I like to have the time pass with a passenger by my side or with my family in the back of the car, I know when I get on the road all by my lonesome I can stop where I want, look at what I want, pop in music that I fancy and play it as loud or soft as I want to. Moreso, when I am tired and worn I can pull over and sleep when I need to. I know that I couldn't very well put my family through a night nestled up next to idling diesel trucks in some Nevada/Oregon border gambling town with a sky threatening of snow, no more so than I could take a lover on the road and expect her to snooze the night away in the passenger seat in some ominous rest stop high in the Cascades or out on some very dark and spooky desert byway. See, I can do it because it's only my hide, my comfort, my saftey I have to worry about.
Same applies to my "hotel" rooms of choice. Sometimes I splurge and get a room in a place that has three or four floors, a buffet breakfast, a pool, all that, yet the last time I did that my room was spacious, filled with light but had no ironing board or working fridge. I stayed in a thirties era motor hotel in Tehatchipi once on my way down south for a funeral, and the digs were just fine for the emotional content of the trip. The room was spartan but furnished in a way that made me feel that hundreds of equally tired and non-discriminating souls had passed through that portal before me, and that those equally tired folks gave as much of a damn as I did that the art was strange, that the paint was coming off the wall in places and that the liquor store was a three minute walk away. The latter was probably a good thing for most of them. It certainly was for me.
But no matter where I stay when I choose to land, be it a nice four star hotel or noisy highway Motel Six-gun, I want a television that comes with a boat load of channels. That is another reason why I don't mind traveling alone at times: I want to be the man in charge of the remote. I don't have cable at home and for years have had poor to little or no reception. Watching television, then, has become a sort of lost art, a cultural oasis that I occassionally dip my water bag into, an adult pasttime that I hear about, read about, skirt around, sometimes wonder what the hubbub is all about but for on the most part just walk on by.
But when I find myself tired and alone and off the road at the end of the day I love to flip channels. The more channels the better, the more off the wall the more enjoyable the job becomes. And sometimes it's just that, another one of the perks, the hazards, the joys of the road. I look at that channels surfing as part of the journey. What the channel selection ends up being is a reflection of local tastes and cultural norms. Heavy on the religious channels says to me "farm belt". More ethnic? I'm back in the city. Lots of movie channels? Close to a university or major metropolitan area. Or maybe just a reflection on my taste of hotels for the night.
One of the side effects of all that channel surfing is that I continually bump into movies that are generally already in progress. My latest road trip had my bisecting 300, The Sixth Sense and the Bourne Ultimatum. In some ways this a good thing. I'm usually so beat and full of road food that a full flick is usually out of the question. Those partials also make for a full viewing plate, a nice topping on the mixed buffet of offerings I'd tasted along the way to finding them. Sometimes I find that getting just a taste of a movie means that I have MUST find it once I get back home. I found that to be the case with A Bronx Tale. Walked into the middle of that one as I made myself ready to head off to a keynote speech at conference. Had the same thing happen with Domino. Stumbled on that one while resting inbetween cocktails with vendors and a WLA conference dinner.
But I must admit that my fondest partial was far and away from the US of A. It didn't even involve a road trip, least ways, not a traditionally thought of one. I was part of the crew of the USS Blueridge at the time. We were doing a "show the flag" tour and landed for a spell in Busan, South Korea. I was sharing a room with a paid for stranger and we needed a bit of diversion after our sochu and kimchi fueled rumpus. The local channels were more for her enjoyment but then we stumbled on the local US Army network channel. Humphrey Bogart's Sahara was playing. First time I had seen it in years. Found that moment to be far more memorable than the woman's face. What the heck does that say about the experience?
Partials. I do them even without being on the road. More times than not I find myself watching movies into the late of night. Once I get to my third or fourth one I tend to drift off, park it, ready it for early morning or next night viewing. The only disconcerting thing about that is that they tend so sneak into dreams, sometimes color locales or moods or tempraments of those late night mental plays. Strange, moreso if sleep is helped along with a bit of help by Bacchus. My latest partial was Hombre, which wasn't a bad way to drift off as Paul Newman was easy on the eyes back in those days. The locale wasn't too much different than some of the places I've been on road trips. High desert, lots of stars, terror or adventure lurking behind every rock.
All the same I prefer my movies whole, just as prefer my rooms on the road neat, orderly and quiet. No bullet holes in the walls, shower curtains just so, paint uniform and intact, please. I do like, too, to have other diversions in those rooms other than channel surfing, believe you me. Someday, when all the wandering is done, when this soul searching of my fifties is over, maybe the remote will play less of a role in my life. Let's hope so. But for the time being surf I must and surf I will. Partials, here I come. Just leave me with the titles in the morning, please, so I can watch them in their entirety once I get home off the road.
Action!
