Highway CHILE

Jimi Hendrix had either an album or a song titled Highway Chile, but pronounced in his own particular unintelligible manner, it really meant Highway Child...

These were taken during the wee hours as I drove through the night back to Santiago from the wilds of Villa La Angostura...
Listening to a motley collection of Tango, electronica, Sumo, U2, Quilapayun, and Groove Armada.. anything to stay awake (not to mention 6 red bull/battery energy drinky sort of liquids.

I like driving late into the night, and watching the sun rise on the road. Though I like it more heading away than coming back. There are still times in my life when I am glad to have a single solid place on the map to call my own. I have experienced the nomadic lifestyle, and it is beautiful, but roots pull you in.

Me acuerdo de un viaje que hice con Axel Sr, alias big daddy, de Florida a Montreal, manejamos horas que se convirtieron en dias. Pasamos la zona del carbon en West Virginia ,donde todas las radios hablan de Dios y donde el carbon pasa por encima de la carretera desde los negros rincones donde bajan la parte superior de los Appalachians a algun feo sitio industrial donde cargaran los trenes que van rumbo a las plantas de energia fosil. Es una gran experiencia viajar con tu padre tan lejos.
Paramos a repostar el super Hyundai (15% rust) ya que el micro estanque de combustible tiene ese programa que parece lleno casi todo el rato y en un par de kilometros compensa la realidad y te muestra que en realidad, si, los Hyundais tambien gastan, y no te queda suficiente para llegar al proximo mega freeway filling station. Nos salimos por un exit cualquiera, llegando a una luz en la noche. Una bomba..
Llenamos, 10 gallons, sumaba 10 dolares creo, una cifra ridicula al menos para Chile... 37 litros (en octubre en Punta del Este ,esa cantidad me costo 50 dolares!).. bueno, fui a pagar, pero no habia nadie. Gritamos, tocamos la bocina, golpeamos la puerta de vidrio.
Zip
Nadie
Estuvimos 10 minutos dandonos vuelta. Nadie.

Only in America.


I remembered a road trip with Axel Sr. alias big daddy... driving from Florida (where I had flown in from SCL) to Montreal. Hours on the road that turned into days. We drove through the coal belt in West Virginia, where all the radio stations were preachers and where big cable cars pass high above the highway laden with coal, from the razed mountain tops of the Apalachians to some ugly industrial site where they probably load the coal onto trains bound for fossil fuel energy plants.
It´s a great big experience, road trip with your father such massive distances. We stopped on the road to refuel the superHyundai (now he´s a Volvo man) composed 1/8 th of rust. It´s tiny fuel tank had one of those guages set to show full tank for hundreds of kilometers then suddenly drop to reality when there is not enough gas to reach far strung freeway mega filling stations. We went off on the next exit, very late into the night, pitchfork hour in parts of Virginia they say ( see movie ¨Children of the Corn¨Isabel, remember?). Eventually, a little light in the distance on the B road became PJ´s Gas and Chickens. In went ten gallons of regular (remember this is an Excel). I went to pay the tenner... but the lights were on and nobody was home. Tok tok, beep beep, hellO! nothing.
No one
10 minutes later, not a flicker of life.

Solo en Estados Unidos