buzz

Aug. 28, 2009

Bees swarmed my face, the occasional flying kamikaze into my head net. Our Albuquerque hosts through warmshowers.org—a bicycle touring organization—raise honey bees. Bree and I took turns helping Andy tend the hives. We removed one wooden slat at a time from the top of the boxes and monitored the state and size of the combs adhered to each one. Our reward: a golden dripping slice of heaven straight from the source.

In an attempt to skip the desert between Albuquerque and Flagstaff, AZ, I posted a ride share notice on Craigslist. Though I’m a connoisseur of online networking sites, I’d never crossed the line of “getting into a car with a stranger (online-style).” A man taking his motorcycle to the West Coast left me a voicemail. Bree and I both listened. Our intuition said: ok, go with it. Judging by his accent, I thought he was a middle-aged Native American. When he was late picking us up, Bree joked he must be Latino. The truck and trailer pulled up to the house. A slightly less than middle-aged, sandy blond, stunt double with dimples emerged form the cab.

Along the ride, our conversations ranged from traveling mishaps to how to relate to the respective people in our lives. It was a one-at-a-time therapy session. Had I not spotted our dinner location, we might have blown by it. But at Cracker Barrel we partook in smothered potatoes and beef, before heading to Dairy Queen for Derrik’s first blizzard (which his sophisticated palate had no appreciation for).

Pulling into Flagstaff after dark, our Couchsurfing hosts were at a concert and said to let ourselves in. Thinking we’d found the house, we approached with flashlights. Nope, wrong one. We got away before the cops showed up. A couple blocks down, at the correct house, Derrik helped us unload our things. We gave him our blog address, and said “until next time” to the Native/Latino/middle-aged stunt double.