8 June, 1999
A few weeks ago I e-mailed my sister, Laurie, the URL to Godfrey's Mojave Desert Phone Booth site. She wrote back:"wanna go there? i've never driven thru the mojave before..."
Of course I wanted to go! I just wasn't sure when, or how.
Laurie realized, when visiting Godfrey's site, that she'd already met him. A few years ago, she'd driven to the San Francisco Art Car Festival with her local art car crew, and Godfrey was there with "Whip It!", his own "Herb Alpert Whipped Cream and Other Delights" art car.
Soon after this exchange, she and I began planning our camping trip in the High Sierras over the 4th of July weekend. Since Laurie's coming from Telluride, Colorado and I'm coming from NYC, we needed to find a rendezvous point. She suggested that she drive to Las Vegas, I fly to Vegas, and we drive together to Northern California from there.
It was a plan.
It was around this time that Chuck, having also seen Godfrey's site, called the Booth and was horrified to find the number busy. He and Steve then made their own journey to the phone. They drove out to the desert with one mission: to hang it up. On the day of their trip, I programmed the MDPB number into every speed-dial in the house and tried to reach them in the desert. I never got through: the phone was Out of Order.
Nevertheless, when I realized that the Booth was actually only 75 miles from Las Vegas, I asked Laurie what she thought of us making the Mojave trip before or after High Sierra.
I e-mailed Chuck, I e-mailed Godfrey, and Laurie and I finalized our travel plans. I'm flying into Vegas late in the evening of June 30th, and the next day we're driving out to the desert.
I'd asked Godfrey if he'd any idea of the farthest distance anyone had traveled to make a call from the Booth. He remembered a woman who came from Louisiana and got a call from New Zealand while she was there. I think we can top that. Our distance is greater, and we hope to get calls from as many countries/continents as we can. (As of this writing, I think that we have Canada, England, France, and Australia covered.) And we won't be alone out there! A few friends might make the trip from Vegas with us, and Godfrey himself may meet us at his beloved phone booth!
I just hope it's fixed by the time we get there...
You can help! The repair number for Pac-Bell is 1.800.332.1321. Call them and request that the service to the Mojave Desert Phone Booth be restored!
(The number for the phone requiring service is 760.733.9969 -- they'll need that information.)
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11 June, 1999
It's working again! Full speed ahead, Laurie. ;-)
Thanks to a barrage of calls to the Pac Bell service line by me, Godfrey, and who-knows-who-else, the Booth now is fixed.
It seems we're going to be joined there by not only Godfrey, but quite possibly Chuck and Steve as well, the two crazy daddies who went on the mission to hang it up last month!
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13 June, 1999
Since I've never been anywhere near the desert, I ducked into the Strand bookstore here in NYC yesterday to see if I could find something interesting to read about the Mojave. I wanted to bone up, so to speak, on the subject matter. Oh, did I score:
"The Mojave: A Portrait of the Definitive American Desert", by David Darlington. (If you click through to amazon.com and buy it, you can sleep well knowing that we'll make about $.02 from your purchase, and that those funds will go directly into the dusty maw of the Mojave Desert Phone Booth, in the form of the many dimes we'll be feeding it on the 1st.)
This book is amazing. The writing is just wonderful, the author's voice so full of romance and poeticism... it makes everything about the Booth and our attraction to it make perfect sense.
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15 June, 1999
Something strange and interesting is going on. From my reading of
A few weeks ago, my feelings about this trip were along the lines of, "Hey, wow! We're gonna see the Mojave Desert Phone Booth! (Dude!)"
Today, I'm seeing the Booth as an excuse -- as a reason d'etre -- for the trip, and am realizing that this journey to the desert is really about something much larger:
My respect for this land, this strange, strange place, has grown exponentially. My eyes have been opened to see something I never knew existed. The Mojave is so far removed from everything that is New York City that until now, it never even registered as a real place to me. It might as well have been the moon.
Standing on the shore of the ocean is one thing -- you can always look back over your shoulder and see buildings, a beach, your car. I lay awake nights now, imagining what it's going to feel like to look in every direction and sense the actual curvature of the earth. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I get goosebumps.
I anticipate experiencing something so beautiful, so profound out there. In short, I will experience the closest thing to infinity I have ever known. If it sounds like I'm expecting to find enlightenment out there, I am. And I have no fear of being disappointed.
I'm such a city girl in almost every aspect of my life. The rhythms, the tensions, the scale, the mass of New York City (the "mettlesome, mad, extravagance!", to quote Uncle Whitman) have suited me perfectly. Anything else feels uncomfortably alien. And yet... I look forward to this experience with such anticipation and excitement!
What began with a frivolous invitation extended to me by my sister has grown into an event whose impact is threefold:
Laurie and I get the chance to share a road trip. She and I are separated by so many miles, by such different lifestyles, and that we will spend this time together doing something so special, so memorable, is the starting point. That our destination is the heart of the Mojave Desert has prompted me to become nearly obsessed with research and wholly consumed by the anticipation of seeing it for the first time. My mind is saturated with thoughts and images of the desert, nearly every waking moment. Finally, the significance of the internet in all of this cannot be ignored or underestimated. Everyone I meet out there -- all of these crazy and wonderful strangers -- is someone I already know from the 'net. The irony (and utter appropriateness) of our gathering at this lone Booth (not a T1 for miles and miles) is something I treasure.
When I learned that Godfrey would be joining us there, our plan seemed to have reached perfection. It would be like going to Oz and finding the Wizard holding wide-open the gate to the city.
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23 June, 1999
It's going to be such a study in contrasts! I've just returned from a long weekend with Laurie in Telluride, Colorado. My first and strongest impression of the place -- aside from the unbelievable beauty of it -- was the hulking mountains that surround the valley and the town. It's almost claustrophobic, and Laurie said that when the locals go on vacation during the off-season, they usually head to the ocean or the desert: a place with an actual horizon.
I've been getting so many wonderful e-mails from visitors to this site! Most of them are from people writing to say that they wish they could come to the booth, too, and that they'll call us on the 1st. All of them have been supportive, and so encouraging! Many people in the west are writing to reassure me that the desert is going to be just as amazing as I'm imagining.
We got some desert advice, too, from "old Gammy", a self-described
Now, girls, some sound advice from your old Gammy, an old desert hound.Word's come from Godfrey, too, that a friend of his is bringing -- get this -- a camera-bearing rocket for some aerial photos of us at the booth. Words cannot express just how cool I think that is! Combined with Steve's obvious photographic talent, this will be a wonderfully-documented trip.
Oh, yeah, have a GOOD TIME!!!
- Wear sunscreen!! (we've heard this from others)
- Take lots and lots of water. A big bottle, plus extra milk jugs full of water in the trunk of the car.
- Get your sister to put a heavy duty cooler in the car loaded with sacks of ice, if you're not going to take food, at least take some energy bars--you're only 30 or so miles from Baker and FOOD, but,..
- Take a bed roll and pillow, just in case--it gets cool in the desert at night, in case you decide to camp out.
- Wear long sleeves & long legged pants and a hat--yeah, yeah, I know...
- If you feel uneasy about any situation there, bail out earlier rather than later.
So now it's one week away!
When this whole idea was hatched last month, I imagined that it would be just Laurie and I out in the desert alone for an hour or so, calling a few friends from Godfrey's booth. I can't believe what an event it's grown into now!
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27 June, 1999
And to ensure we find this elusive and mystic Booth, I've just acquired a GPS unit. (35.17.130 N, 115.41.054 W are the Booth coordinates, more or less.)
It all started (as it seems so much is this summer) with something on Godfrey's site: He's got a link to Alex Jarrett's "Degree Confluence Project", and after spending just a short time looking around there, my imagination and enthusiasm were going wild.
Alex's brilliant idea is to document every latitude and longitude degree integer intersection in the world. For every crossing of the lines on the map, a photo and a story to document it. A snapshot of the world.
For obvious reasons, a GPS is infinitely helpful in this endeavor. For equally obvious reasons, I questioned the practicality of owning one in NYC. So I did what any quick-thinking, modern girl would do: I checked eBay.
I found one for a song. For half a song, in fact. I'll have it in time for this trip, and whether or not we're able to reach any confluences this time, it's sure to inspire a few more adventures in the coming months. And that is Alex's goal -- "to encourage people to get
outside, tromp around in places they normally would never go, and take pictures of it."
Again, it's all about the 'net, because it's all about people. Take away the banner ads, the commerce, the Alleys and Valleys full of 25-year old millionaires... and you have what it was meant to be in the beginning: Everyone connected.
I've grown so uncomfortable with the term "real life" (used derisively or not; used to differentiate online from offline relationships). This is real life, folks. This is people connecting with one another.
When I met my now-husband in early 1994, I was embarrassed for people to know that we'd actually first met online. At that time, people still thought that only pasty, anti-social freaks used the internet... and it was so difficult to explain. Now, of course, everyone knows someone (who's met someone) "in person" they'd originally met online. I cannot count all of the wonderful people in my life who I met initially on the 'net. I'd never have met them without it, and my life is certainly richer for having them in it.
Who can dispute that this is an amazingly good thing?
How many people read about the Booth on Godfrey's site and are moved to smile at the delicious silliness of it, to write him an e-mail thanking him for it, or to head on out there themselves?
How many people will it take to even begin to complete Alex's dream of documenting the planet?
So, I just might be a pasty, anti-social freak, but I'm certainly doing a lot of tromping around in places I normally would never go.
What a wonderful world.
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29 June, 1999
OK, I'm really excited now!
I've come almost full circle, as throughout the day today, I kept thinking, "I'm going to the mojave desert phone booth!!! I'm going to the mojave desert phone booth!!!"
No, my expectation of enlightenment in the desert hasn't faded... in fact, it's growing more intense by the hour. And having enjoyed a few weeks' worth of e-mails with some of the people I'm going to meet out there, I'm feeling like I'm going to see some old friends for the first time.
Laurie's arrived safely in Las Vegas and will be picking me up at the airport when I arrive tomorrow night. I'm grateful that there's plenty to do there, because I'm sure I won't be able to sleep the night before we hit the Mojave. (I wanna ride that skyscraper rollercoaster!)
(I also picked up my GPS today, but wouldn't you know, it can't be initialized unless you're in an area "away from any large buildings or tall trees". How ironic.)
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30 June, 1999
And I'm off!
I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow!
(go back up to the beginning of this section, or
read about our day at the Booth on the foreground page.)