A forced stop on the Great Trek of America – lost (or was I relieved of) my International Travel Card on the road east at Albuquerque, New Mexico.
What followed was, as should have been expected, a long, tiresome exchange with First National Bank. Needless to say, as should have been expected, it was only after I behaved badly (Necessary Process) that I am now assured the card is on its way. It should be delivered 48 hours after being sent but, as should have been expected, it took 48 hours to get the card to be sent, so 96 hours later…
Things might have been speeded up if the FNB helpline phone worked, but I’m too wearied by battle to go there.
Travellers be warned, it’s not in the fine print.
So, whoopie doo, four whole days in Memphis and, no, I’m not going to Graceland. But it gives me a chance to catch up and smell the Big Muddy. Flowing outside, just down at the end of the corridor. Great, hey?
Coincidentally, with me going on about the great US roads, I learn from my opiniated (yup, they can be) map book that it is the 50th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower signing the Federal Aid Highway Act to fund the National System of Interstate and Defense (says it all) Highways. And there really is nothing like the interstates to cover ground.
Had a bit of panic about the amount of distance still to be travelled and hit the Interstate 40 east. It took the Great Reliever of International Cash Cards to bring me to a stop, take another look and count the days, or I might have woken up on the runway of Newark Airport eight days early, thanks to I-40.
But you come across roadwork everywhere, roads being repaired, roads and bridges being rebuilt, on the interstates, on the backroads, even in the parks. All orderly, well marked, well controlled. In many places where there are stop and go signs, pilot vehicles guide the traffic, no speeding, no chasing. Tough on lunatics on bikes and in BMs.
But the number of trucks (and I mean leviathans, not baby 3 or 5 tonners) is unbelievable. They are on the roads, every day (Saturdays, Sundays, same same), all day, thousands and thousands of them. Oh man, and oh so pretty. Every colour and combination imaginable. Great, big, shiny, enamelled boys’ toys.

All along the majors routes there are truck washes, like baths for elephants. Don’t know what a washer charges (from about $3 for a car) or how he does it. Broom and ladder?
Now if the Americans could just build cars that had the same unambiguous presence, there wouldn’t be a gap on the road for all the Nissans, Toyotas, Hondas and Hyundais, which would solve a lot of problems for Ford in particular.
There is still a great piece to be written about the state of the art of the automobile, but I need to collect a bunch of pictures to make it work. It’s up there, all in my head, if it doesn’t get trammelled by issues with First National Bank.
I just look at all the trucks and wonder – what is in them? Why don’t people manufacture what they want where they are? What is all this carrying backwards and forwards? The costs must be astronomical, let alone the consumption of diesel. How do the oil wells keep up?
And the trucks move fast. No Nissan 2 litre in their pants. They go at 70 mph (that’s 120 kph), uphill, downhill, laden, unladen – keep up or get out. What kind of engines are driving them?
Saw a truck stop (just the memory of it makes me want to go back and see that my eyes weren’t lying, a mirage of sculpted metal) which seemed to be a 1 000 miles in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave desert, a corral of giants. Even at rest, their power is immense and palpable.
It was a major intersection in nowhere, traffic lights, stop lights and all, and trucks jammed in, flank to flank. And why there? No pneumatic Anna Nicole Smith bursting out of a rubber boob tube (or at least from what little I could see). Just a swell of trucks, fenced in by the desert.
And they exude purpose. Blast off. Slow down. Stop. Turn. Right. Left. No doubts, no existential moments. Hulking heterosexual machines.
You can understand why an oil squeeze would stop America dead. Its whole gigantic economy is in the backs of all those trucks.

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