Roads From the Ashes

by Megan Edwards

  The basic concept was that every day we’d post a new feature on the home page, and then “retire” it to its corresponding department, where it would reside indefinitely. Each department had its own directory, and Bill also installed a search program that could locate any word in the site. We wanted people to visit RoadTrip America every day as vicarious travelers, but since the number of features would be growing at a fast clip, we wanted people to be able to sift through everything as easily as possible.

  The Phoenix One section was designed to attract sponsors. Melissa designed pages that allowed viewers to take a virtual tour both inside and out. With the digital camera, we photographed every major component from air conditioner to water heater and wrote descriptive articles for each. For the inside tour, we included pictures and descriptions of all our mobile office equipment. Every manufacturer became a potential advertiser.

  Suddenly, our course of action for the rest of 1996 was mapped. Unlike the previous two years, where we’d taken for granted the luxury of moseying, we were journalists and salespeople now. Not only did we have to find and write a feature every day, we had to call prospective sponsors, clients and advertisers. We’d been asking for a business we could travel with, and now we had it in spades.

  Stealth Journalism

  One of the first events we covered as RoadTrip America was the “Muroc Reunion,” a car race in the Mojave Desert on Rogers Dry Lake, which lies within the boundaries of Edwards Air Force Base. It was a reunion because back in the twenties, car buffs used to gather at the lake to race where they didn’t have to abide by speed limits. When the Air Force decided to use the lake as a runway, the rallies came to an end. In 1996, the Air Force gave permission for a nostalgic reunion, as long as attendees didn’t bring any alcohol, leave any trash, or take pictures of the Stealth bomber parked nearby. We found out about it from Bob Hyde, who worked at a place where we bought propane. His friends owned a souped-up roadster called “Dad’s Dream.” “I’ll be in the crew,” said Bob. “I can introduce you to everyone else.”

  It was the perfect maiden voyage for a couple of newly-hatched Web journalists, and the perfect event to inaugurate our “Wheels” department. I’d never been to a dry lake before, and I saw immediately why they’re popular with pilots and racers. Mirror flat and rock hard, it stretched for miles, ending at bare hills on the horizon. The surface was white, the sky was blue, and the whole effect was distinctly other-worldly. We joined a row of other motor homes along one edge of what would become the raceway and went in search of Bob Hyde and “Dad’s Dream.”

  We walked to the end of the row of motorhomes, where a bivouac of tents covered commercial displays and classic cars of bygone eras. From there we made our way to “pit row,” where crew after crew were readying their vehicles for the next trials. The race was open to anything with wheels, and entries included motorcycles, antique trucks, old hot rods, slick new “Streamliners,” beefed up dune buggies, and anything else whose mettle the owner wanted to test. Amid this array of automotive oomph, we came upon three men standing next to what I can only describe as a rocket car. One of the men was wearing a white cowboy hat.

  Mark and I, new as we were to journalism, were a bit hesitant about walking up and sticking our notebooks and camera into strange faces, but the man in the cowboy hat helped us out.

  “What kind of camera is that?” he asked as we paused to admire his car. I showed him the digital camera and explained how it didn’t use film. “Well, take a picture of ‘Danny Boy,’ here,” he said, pointing to the rocket car. ‘“Danny Boy’ set the D-Gas record of 315 miles an hour.”

  The ice was broken, and soon we were asking questions, taking notes, and explaining how to look at RoadTrip America on the World Wide Web. Ed Tradup, the man in the cowboy hat, told us how he and his friend Richard Thomason were apple farmers from Brewster, Washington. Ed was a drag racer, and Richard raced motorcycles. When Ed told Richard he wanted to belong to the “200 mph club,” Richard had replied, “There’s no respect for 200. Let’s go for 300.” In 1991, they exceeded their goal at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

  Before we left, Ed shook our hands, gave us each an apple and said, “Just remember, everybody here wants to talk about their cars. You don’t have to be shy about asking.”

  Ed was right. Everybody did want to talk, and, with few exceptions, everybody’s been talking to us ever since. I can’t say it’s always easy to approach a stranger and start asking questions, but when your goal is not to embarrass or expose, but to share and showcase, just about everybody warms to the occasion.

  Marvin wasn’t quite as thrilled by our shakedown cruise to Muroc. There wasn’t a bush or a blade of grass for miles, and I had the feeling that the flat, hard surface of the lake bed seemed like a floor to him, an indoor surface, a surface upon which he was unable to lift a leg. I took him for a long walk, but nothing I could say would convince him that things weren’t going to change, and that if he didn’t bite the bullet and pee anyway, he’d have a very long weekend. We returned, and Mark said he’d have a try. “I saw a bush over near the hangar where the Stealth bomber is parked,” he said. “We’ll aim for that.”

  Half an hour later, they were back at the Phoenix, and Marvin was still wearing a pained look. “We got within fifteen feet,” Mark said, “When a soldier with a machine gun appeared and said, ‘I’m sorry sir, but you can’t take another step closer.’ I explained how Marvin really needed that bush, but he said, ‘Sorry. Back off.’” Marvin was finally able to relieve himself after dark against the side of a portable toilet.

  The next day, the wind, which had been utterly absent when we arrived, kicked up a storm. Racing had to be suspended as little dust devils and tiny funnel clouds darted over the lake and coated everything in fine white dust. Fearing what the stuff might do to my laptop, I kept the Phoenix shut up tight. Even so, it took weeks before the last of Muroc was removed from all the nooks and crannies.

  The Muroc Reunion was a complete success, and a true test of whether RoadTrip America was really going to work. I’d sent stories and images by cellular connection to Melissa, who posted them to the Web. Our equipment had weathered adverse conditions without ceasing to function, and Mark and I had metamorphosed into cub reporters. Even the Road Dog had passed an endurance test and proved he could go the distance. We’d already learned how to live on the road. Now it looked as though we could work there full time, too. We could even have Charles Kuralt’s job without working for CBS. The world was indeed our oyster.

  Chapter 15

  On the Road and Online

  Buffalo Shadow

  Our first personal interview as Internet journalists took us to Jacumba, a small town just north of the Mexican border in the desert east of San Diego. We had an appointment to talk to an old-timer, a prospector named Don Weaver who had scoured the hills for decades in search of tourmaline and gold.

  Our directions were the kind that took us off the map on a dirt road and included large objects as landmarks: “Go past the pile of rocks,” and “Fork left at the big cactus.” With little effort, we were soon lost in the border zone, and it wasn’t long before we arrived at a landmark that caught us wholly by surprise.

  It was a huge wall built of steel girders and concrete pilings. Topped with a thorned crown of razor wire, it was clearly a project with no less a goal than to form an impassable barrier between the United States and Mexico. I hadn’t seen anything like it since I visited East Germany in the seventies.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said as we came to a halt in front of the forbidding structure. “I can’t believe this exists in the same country that spent so much time talking about how awful the Berlin Wall was.” But there it was, and the only difference was that this unsightly edifice, probably because of its isolated location, had managed to avoid the nightly news.

  We turned around in a clearing in front of the wall and headed back the way we
came. A hundred yards back up the road, three men had emerged from a house to take a look at our alien vehicle. We stopped, and Mark asked for directions. All three knew where Don Weaver lived, and, armed with a new set of landmarks, we set out afresh.

  This time, we reached our destination without detour, and a gray-haired lady in a flowered blouse came outside to greet us.

  “I’m Grace Helen,” she said. “Come on up.”

  We followed her up several stone steps to a patio covered by a blooming bougainvillea vine.

  “Don will be right out,” said Grace Helen. “Please sit down.”

  We sat, and soon Don appeared, hobbling painfully on a cane.

  “Hello,” he said gruffly. “If I’d known how to reach you, I would have told you not to come.”

  Taken aback, I said, “If this isn’t a good time, we can leave.”

  “No, no, you’re here,” said Don as he lowered himself into a folding chair. “It’s just that I slipped yesterday and landed on my hip, and I’m just not doing very well. But you’re here, so tell me what you want to know.”

  This was our first serious interview, the first time we’d called someone up, identified ourselves as being with “RoadTrip America, a feature magazine on the World Wide Web.” We didn’t find ourselves speechless, but we were hardly seasoned. Since Don Weaver was a prospector, it seemed only reasonable to start out asking questions about rocks and mines and ore.

  It didn’t take long before our conversation had gone beyond pegmatite dykes and quartz outcroppings. As Don relaxed into story-telling mode and realized his audience was genuinely interested, he told us about a rock crushing mill he built in 1951 at a place over the border called Dos Cabezas. He used the now-defunct San Diego & Imperial Valley Railroad to ship white limestone to roofers in Southern California. The railroad had been completed in 1919 at enormous expense by the

  Spreckels sugar dynasty over terrain so treacherous it was called the “impossible track.” It took 16 major tunnels and 21 trestles to complete the run from Mexico to California, and the wooden span over Goat Canyon still holds the world record for length and height.

  “It wasn’t easy to use that railroad, but it was too hot to use trucks, and the road was too bad,” Don said. “It was hard to keep workers, too,” he added. To make things a little easier, he invented and built a portable mill that he could move from location to location.

  Don went on to tell us about other businesses he’d owned and prospecting he’d done all over the Southwest. He told us how he’d discovered gold in Arizona, and sold a lucrative option on his claim. “They never did anything with it, though,” he said. “The gold’s still there. I could take you right to it.”

  By this time, we were all feeling more comfortable, and I asked Don about his childhood. His eyes immediately took on a faraway look.

  “I was born on the Cimarron River in a plum thicket,” said Don. “Renegades were chasing my parents. After my mother had me, my father said, ‘Leave that little spotted pony for Don. He’ll catch up with us.’”

  The story progressed, and before our eyes Don Weaver, the prospector, disappeared. In his place, a new personage emerged, a regal, powerful one. Where just a few minutes before an ancient prospector had sat crippled in pain, we found ourselves gazing upon Buffalo Shadow, the Delaware Indian chief. Suddenly he rose, and with vigor he hadn’t possessed when we arrived, he disappeared into the house.

  In a few minutes, he returned with two long wooden cases. He opened the first and removed a long peace pipe carved from smooth dark wood. “This is my chief’s pipe,” he said, “My calumet.” As we admired its exquisite craftsmanship, Buffalo Shadow opened the other case. “And this is my jewelry,” he said, holding up a heavy necklace made of carved bone, beads and polished stones.

  “Can you put it on?” I blurted. I looked at Mark nervously. Was that a rude thing to ask?

  But Buffalo Shadow didn’t seem to mind. He fastened the heavy necklace around his throat and sat down.

  “My nephew made this calumet out of rare native woods,” he said. “It’s the only one of its kind in the world.”

  The conversation flowed now, and suddenly we realized we had been transfixed for three hours. “We must go,” Mark said at last. “You need to rest, and we’ve taken too much of your day.” “Wait,” said Buffalo Shadow rising, and once again he disappeared into the house. He returned carrying another calumet in his hands, a beautiful thing made of light wood and decorated with beads and feathers.

  “This is for you,” he said simply, and our protests went unheeded. “I’m glad you came,” said Buffalo Shadow as he placed the calumet in Mark’s hands. “Have a good, safe journey, and perhaps our paths will cross again someday.”

  We were both silent as we drove away. When we reached the highway and headed east, Mark said, “Did you notice how his voice changed when he wasn’t Don Weaver any more, but Buffalo Shadow?”

  “He wasn’t sick any more, either,” I said. “When he put the necklace on, it seemed to clothe him in youth and strength.”

  We were quiet again as we crossed California on Interstate 8. Our day had been such a surprise, such a memorable initiation into our new role as journalists. Watching Don Weaver metamorphose into Buffalo Shadow reminded us that people and places are never one-dimensional, that everyone has a story under the surface, a role beyond the visible mask.

  A few days later, Buffalo Shadow astonished us once more by proving that, properly motivated, just about anybody could find a window to the World Wide Web, even in 1996, even if they were eighty-one years old, knew nothing about computers, and lived off the map.

  When we left, we’d promised to send the chief a print version of the story we would write for RoadTrip America. It wasn’t something we wanted to form a habit of doing, but the Web was still new to many people, and we were afraid that Buffalo Shadow might never see his story otherwise. Jacumba was isolated, after all, not the sort of place you’d expect to find the latest in communications technology.

  Before we had a chance to print and mail a copy of the story, we received a telephone message. Buffalo Shadow had seen the story online, he said, and thank you. And thanks for coming, and safe journey.

  “Looks like Buffalo Shadow caught up with us,” said Mark, “And we didn’t even leave him a spotted pony.”

  You Can’t Tell a Cybernaut by His Coveralls

  The week after the story appeared on RoadTrip America, we received an appreciative e-mail message from the chief’s niece in Colorado. We had an invitation to visit a nephew who lived on the Olympic Peninsula in a bear preserve, and another to meet the artist in Tucson who made our calumet. Not only did this unexpected and far-flung response reinforce our belief that the interactivity of the World Wide Web imbued it with connective powers we had yet to fully appreciate, it shattered an assumption I’d hit the road with.

  Without giving the subject second thought, I had assumed that people in isolated places would be the last to find connection to the Internet. Buffalo Shadow was my first inkling that the opposite might be true. Just as you’re more likely to find an airplane parked next to a cabin in Alaska than beside a suburban split level in Chicago, I soon learned that the appeal of electronic communication was stronger in the boondocks than it was in Manhattan.

  Before we left Pasadena as RoadTrip America, we’d emblazoned the Phoenix One with new graphics heralding our Internet presence. On both sides, we included that mysterious and cutting edge code, our address on the World Wide Web. For most of 1996, we never saw another URL on a vehicle, and ours attracted attention wherever we went. It’s the primary way we learned never to predict who was wired and who wasn’t. In those days, a power dresser with a cell phone could easily be an Internet illiterate, and a rube in a straw hat might be a cyber pro.

  We pulled into a campground north of Seattle one afternoon and parked across from an old traile
r with rotting wheels. A man of indeterminate age and weathered countenance emerged to look us over. He was wearing a torn shirt and faded denim overalls, and he had a large bottle of malt liquor in his hand. He sized us up for a few silent minutes and then vanished inside.

  An hour later, we went outside to take Marvin for a walk. When we returned, our neighbor greeted us.

  “I took a look at y’all’s Web site,” he said, “And I liked it. I specially liked y’all’s game. I guessed mosta them gizmos right on my first try.”

  “Uh, thanks,” I said, suppressing the urge to let my mouth drop open. We introduced ourselves and spent an hour or so with Will, swapping computing tips and even some recipes.

  “My favorite drink is Guinness and espresso coffee, mixed half-and-half,” he said. “A big ol’ glass o’ that and yer buzzed and wide-awake at the same time.” I haven’t found the right occasion to try the drink yet, but Will convinced me on the spot that I risked serious offense if I relied on preconceived notions to identify Web surfers. He proved beyond a doubt that you couldn’t tell a cybernaut by his coveralls.

  Even armed with this knowledge, we risked offense at every turn. In Arizona, shortly after our meeting with Buffalo Shadow, Mark went into the public library in a little town called Ajo. We had printed postcards announcing RoadTrip America’s debut, and libraries were beginning to install Web browsers.

  “I might as well let them know about us,” Mark said, and I took Marvin for a stroll around the town center while he went inside.

  He was back before we’d covered two sides of the square.

  “Brother,” he said. “I’m lucky I got out without being arrested.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “Did you talk too loud?”

  “All I did was go up to the counter and ask to talk to the librarian. I showed her the card and explained that we were currently posting stories about Arizona. I said that if the library had a Web browser, her patrons might find our site interesting.