Tour Diary 6

Tour Diary 6.  Thursday 31st March

With the wonders of technology.. my son Keren in England let me know by e-mail in Aztec New Mexico that my mobile phone was found by a lady in NYC in a taxi.  (Our stuff really makes the rounds!)

I'm not sure why I have a mobile phone as it is never switched on, much to the dismay of all the people trying to contact me, so I actually had no idea I had lost it!!

The kind lady who found the phone had phoned the last number dialed on my phone - got Keren and he then let me know I had lost it.  She is in NYC and so she will mail it to my friend in South Carolina to await my arrival there in June

There is something about inanimate objects, which travel with us, which want to go off on journeys of their own!

Luckily we had bought a phone to use just for here in the US, as yesterday instead of spending a lovely day walking through the ART DECO-ish town of Tulsa we were at a busy junction making lots of phone calls to get assistance for a blown out tyre. Without the phone we would have been in a real pickle.

The tyre eventually got replaced and today we have to spend part of the day getting a proper tyre as this replacement one from the boot is only a doughnut.  I wish they wouldn’t give things names which equate to something you are very familiar with, because although the repairman said it would be fine as long as you don’t go over 50 m.p.h. which means on a motorway with a limit speed of 55 m.p.h we could be pulled over, but I keep getting images of all the jam squishing out and it going flat again!

A lost day again then, once the tyre episode was fixed we had great difficulty locating a hotel, which was acceptable to Steve, the one he had chosen was actually on a motorway I think – under construction.  If it wasn’t actually on the motorway it was as near as I have ever seen a building to a motorway.

By the time we had located one it was 5.30 and we were too tired to go out again exploring.  Steve went off to find food, which is the mans job, and I asked for a tiny salad if he could locate one, with most importantly a bottle of wine so that I could chill.  The wine was fine and went down lovely by the side of the Jacuzzi bath… divine… but the salad… well… it could easily have feed 6 people.  I ate for at least an hour and then Steve said.. ”When are you going to start eating your dinner?”

I gave up and left probably three-quarters of it, which we had to throw away this morning.  I hate waste!.. I gave it some thought and decided that America is actually a land of giants, hence the huge appetites, however the DNA structure of their physical bodies haven’t cottoned on to that fact yet, so the bodies are still normal sizes.  I hope the one catches up with the other soon.

Steve can manage all the stodge as he loves cakes, biscuits, bagels, etc, but I like to eat really lightly so I think I will become a fruitarian…  As I have already put on about a stone in weight in just a week, I cannot afford to carry on at that pace, or we will not get all our roaming suitcases AND me in the car.  As it was, I offered to get out of the car whilst the wheel was being fixed as I was scared the car jack wouldn’t be able to cope with me in there as well!

Today we move on to Eureka Springs to catch up with Reece. Steve has not seen his son for 15 months now.

Hotel prices double at the week-end which is a bit steep and we note on our bill that there is a Occupancy tax.. how weird surely in the business of supplying rooms to clients you would want them to occupy them, why would you be taxed for something that is actually the focal point of the business?

We seem to be hit with taxes no matter which way we turn. 

The best snippet yesterday was that Steve was told in the Off License when he tried to buy himself a beer and a wine for me, that the state law forbids selling of cold beer and wine.  They are not allowed to sell it out of a fridge.  Now who could have thought up such a law, was it to make you find your drink so unpleasant that you wouldn’t buy it again?   How do these laws get passed, surely there must have been many thousands more people who like their drink cold than the one or two who are deciding you should not drink?

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy…

The best bit of the day though was when we had stopped at lights and a little old lady with a white bucket was asking each driver to give some money to …God…  She was so polite and continually evoked gods blessings on us all whether we gave money or not.  I wanted to get out and ask how she got the money to God, what means of transfer did she use, but Steve wouldn’t let me out the car.  However, as we passed her and I smiled she blessed our car and THEN I wanted to ask her.. ‘Where was she when the tyre burst!!”  We should have met up with her sooner and maybe the day would have gone differently.  I wonder how much she makes for her maker every day?  What an unusual career choice ..

I think last night I got my first full nights sleep, I must be getting acclimatised to the energies in the room.  Usually my dreams are so jam packed with picking up the energies of everyone who has slept here that I wake exhausted.  It reminded me of a story my brother told me when as a Buddhist they had put up a very sweet old Buddhist Lama in the basement of their complex building.  The basement was reputed to be haunted.  When they asked him if he had slept well, he replied that he had, but he had been very busy, politely greeting each ghost and energy as it passed through his room!  Bless…

On to Eureka Springs, it is so cold and wet here that I have to keep reminding myself that I am in the US, I look out of the window see the grey wet day and say “Hang on, where’s my lovely little garden gone,”  then the ping comes in and says ‘It is the USA and that blank wall you are looking at is the general décor for the outside of all the Great Western hotels…”

Much love to all

Annie