The Chevy HHR

The Hopelessly Horrid Rental

If you ever have the opportunity to rent or drive one of these...don't.

Actually, I must retract my statement about the lights. There is an interior light. It's this wee little LED that casts a ghostly pallor over the gearshift, so you can at least change gears, if not eat, in the dark. Lovely. What will they think of next?

Let's take a stroll down to the engine room, shall we? Oh, wow! A big burly-looking plastic cover. Those bulges must make room for all the serious machinery under there, right?

Well, maybe not. I think the cover is there as a kind of fig leaf, just to keep the car from being embarassed by itself. :-)

Yes, this is a small windshield. So small, that when I stopped at traffic intersections, I couldn't see the signal lights.

The Chevy HHR. I drove it, so you don't have to.

Extra! Extra!

Yes, that's right. I am an official movie extra. This weekend in Pahrump, they were shooting the party scene with the local "elite". (Umm...more on that whole "elite" thing later.) I got to be part of the background and help out with the movie's product placement obligations. (Corona, Cervesa mas fina!) I can now officially scratch "being in a movie" off my list. So, here it is...my debut on the silver screen.


Wow, exciting and glamorous, eh? Yeah, not really. It was COLD! If you squint really hard you might be able to see my goosebumps in the movie theater. ;-)

So, on to other news in Pahrump... A genuine storm came through on Thursday/Friday and dumped a heap of white stuff on Mt. Charleston. I have decided I should visit it in the near future, preferably via the dirt road on the west side of the mountain, which would build much more character than the convenient paved roads on the other side!


This here is the World's Tallest Ice Cream Stand.


They make some gosh darn huge banana-splits. (No, it isn't photo-chopped.)


Rumor has it that someone in the household prepared a Filet Mignon dinner, complete with wine and cheese starters, a fancy-shmancy salad, steamed and lightly seasoned broccoli, those fancy little red potatoes, topped off with vanilla ice cream and homemade strawberry sauce. All in all, it only required a hundred pounds of kitchen utensils and plates brought from home, but it was worth it for an entirely Pahrump-free dinner!


And of course, what's a dinner date without a movie? Problem is, the nearest movie theater to Pahrump is in Vegas. Conveniently, a midnight sortie to Narnia across 60 miles of desert is no problem when you stay up all night! We tried to make it a double-feature, but the projector broke 5 minutes into Indiana Jones. :-(

I think I should note that the limos in Vegas are getting just as obnoxious as the hotels. I wonder what it would cost to rent this little gem? I'll bet there's a basketball court in there, or something.

Sadly, Monday evening came far faster than we expected. My car was getting antsy, and wanted to go for a run. See it sitting there? It's saying, "C'mon, c'mon, let's go! Can we go? huh? huh? I wanna go play! Faster, faster!" If it had a tail, it would be wagging it.


My plan was to wait as long as I could until all the other Memorial Day travelers had already gone home. I made some excellent speed through the remote parts of the drive. (Gosh, how did that happen? Those numbers must be kilometers per hour, yeah, that's it.) You can see that my eager steed and I met some resistance about 1-1/2 hrs into the trip.

As a favor to the motoring public, I think you should join me in writing our senators, insisting on the removal of the agricultural checkpoint. They did nothing but wave drivers through, and in the process made a bumper-to bumper line of cars nearly 15 miles long.

And then there was night...

DMR production switches to nights, and so do Ben & Sara! I rolled into Pahrump about 11:30 Friday night, and nearly rolled right into the movie. I filled up at the gas station 20 yards from the set, and proceeded to make horribly loud beeping noises with the gas pump. When you watch the movie, listen carefully, and you might hear me entering my PIN number during this scene. ;-)

Now, the real reason I drive to Pahrump every weekend is not so I can hang out on a movie set, meet minor celebrities, or even search for meteorites. I go to Pahrump because I love my wife. And now a moment of practical marriage advice from Ben: Three ways to keep your wife happy and in love with you...

...make her car excruciatingly shiny, fill her refrigerator, and buy her flowers. It works every time! So, aside from all that, our weekend was packed! Too much going on! Too many good pictures!

Sara started working nights...

..while I searched for meteorites, turned my sleep schedule inside out, spent hours on set, took a day off from work, and drove home in record time. Together, we went to Vegas, downed pints in an Irish pub, watched some crazy sunsets, took in a movie, and slept gloriously past noon. We found time to take 172 pictures this weekend, so sit down and get comfy! Here's what I think are the best of the lot...

Crystal Lake Bed (and my car) at dusk.

Just how long has this bottle been here?

A lonely end for someone.

Volcano or sunset?

Out on the desert.

Out on the town! (Ironman was awesome!)

Before this gets TOOO long, I ought end this blog the same way my weekends do...on the road.

Things that make you go "Hmmm..."
(A special blog entry from Sara)

Most people, when asked about Pahrump (assuming they’ve ever heard of it) know the place for one of two reasons…and no, “its charm” was never one of those reasons. It’s either known for having the busiest Wal-mart in the country, or for the fact that prostitution is legal here. You see…it’s a winner either way. Locals here live (or so it seems) by the motto “if it makes sense, it’s not how it works”. You could argue that that applies to most things in life, but I feel that here, they’ve really nailed the concept.

I will remember it always as the place that continuously makes us all go “hmmm…” - why you ask, well, here are some of my favorites:

Contrary to popular belief, this was not staged…this is, in fact, a very serious member of the Pahrump Library Security Team (PLST if you will). If you don’t believe me, just wait for the Dolby version of his walkie shouting out “Shhhhh!"

Three Comments... First, what kind of art could they possibly display, and furthermore, do you really want to see it? Second, I'm guessing there's a reason why it's the "only one of its kind in the world"...anyone have a theory? Finally, if you really missed the place by driving 20 minutes in the wrong direction...well, maybe this just proves that people are so desperate for something to do in Pahrump that they'd be willing to drive back "for a good time".

Like 30 miles ahead…Did anyone mention to the townsfolk that this is a ghost town…no joke…oh wait, there are no townsfolk to mention it to.

Clearly, "Lovin' it."

The kids, not so much.

Comment still pending...

Creepy - I know you were thinking it too...


The local BBQ...known for their food...and not so much their taste in décor.

Owned by Heidi Fleiss, the laundromat has a back room... so when the lady asked me if I wanted full service, I really had to stop and ask what that meant exactly.

What better way to advertise the entrance to the nuclear testing grounds?

"Automatic" + "Pull to operate" = Manual

Remind me why my cell phone jumps ahead 2 hours when I go into Area 51? And back again when I leave?

Neither does Pahrump

Sharks

So, I admit this post isn't about my travels. It's about the travels of sharks. I've been considering working on some more open water swimming lately, and admittedly, my mind wandered to the poor shmoe that got eaten in Fletcher Cove. I'll be racing there in July. And believe me, I'll be checking this website before the race. At least I'll know where a few sharks are!

http://www.topp.org/species/white_shark

Get This Widget!TOPP.org

Pahrumpin' it with Mark
This weekend, I had the inestimable pleasure of traveling with Mark, my brother. At times, he enters levels of conciousness that prevent normal cameras from capturing him correctly. I tried anyway, and this was the best I got.

The first stop on this trip to Pahrump was Silurian Dry Lake, about 25 miles or so north of Baker, CA. It was windy, to say the least. We had footraces with and against the wind. Running into the wind felt like running in a pool and sticking your head out of a car window at the same time, while sprinting downwind felt sublimely quiet and the closest to freeway speeds I've ever approached on foot. I loved every second of it.

Objects in windshield are much further than they appear... Lake beds at night have a way of messing with scale. You can drive at 20 miles an hour and it feels the same at 80, or vice versa. Much of what we discovered about dry lake beds this weekend boggles the mind. Whether by their age, size, or their sheer silence at two in the afternoon. -- We also discovered they generally aren't very easy to get to. This video shows Mark and I trying to get my car as close as we dared to the Stewart Valley Dry Lake. I ended up parking it here, after scraping my rocker panels on a few rocks, and bouncing my exhaust off a few bushes.

Just look at that ground clearance! 4.25 inches of off-roading goodness! Why did I drive my car into the wastelands, you ask? I'll tell you...for meteorites! Yes, we were on our very first meteorite search. Meteorite searching generally involves finding the most god-forsaken life-inhibiting piece of desert you can imagine. The odds are stacked against you, but hey, at $25 a gram, it just might be worth it. So, here's the odds. One meteorite falls per square mile per thousand years. You have a chance of finding that meteorite IF you happen to walk directly to it, IF it falls in a place where plants or water or leaves won't bury it, IF no one has looked there before, IF it didn't rust into a million pieces and disappear, and IF you don't mistake it for another ordinary rock. The one thing you have in your favor is that most meteorites are ferritic and stick to magnets. It's pretty easy, really. All you do is find a good place to look, and then locate the dime-sized piece of metal that God dropped somewhere in several square million miles of desert. How hard could it be?

They're out there, I know it! Quick, Mark! Not a moment to lose! I'll take the three square miles on the right, and you take the three square miles on the left!It turns out that searching for meteorites isn't exactly what you might call, um ... thrilling. There weren't very many magnetic things on this lake. We found...drum roll please... a benchmark placed in 1918, a rocket part/transmitter-thingy from the Vietnam era, and a bullet.

And yes, I drove my car into the wilderness and walked 3.5 miles for that. I'm still pretty sure it was worth it...I think. The lake bed is an amazing, other-worldly place, though. It's so quiet, you can hear passenger jets flying by when they are up at cruising altitude. Mark and I spoke to each other with normal indoor voices across nearly a hundred yards.

I hear that there are more than 200 large dry lakes in the Southwest. The one we walked around on is about 6 square miles. I figure that during our 2.5 hour search, we covered about 0.5% of its total area. That means, well, that means there's A LOT more looking to do. But rather than ponder these odious numbers, we returned to Pahrump. Once there, we accomplished a few firsts. There was my first on-set experience for a movie (where I hope my gravel crunching didn't ruin the shot), and my first party with minor celebrities. Sadly, I don't have photographic proof of either of these. What I DO have photographic proof of, is this...

...our trip to Red Rock Conservation Area. I also have a picture of my wife with Joshua Tree unmentionables in her mouth. I find it rather amusing.

On a more serious note, this place merits further exploration. It might be a little too close to Vegas for comfort, but it does have redeeming features such as exceedingly deep and narrow canyons...

...and garishly red sandstone rockpiles worthy of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote.

Maybe I'll get there next weekend... :-) But now, I'm going to bed. Later, folks!