arjanwrites.com

Road Notes: H&H Car Wash & Coffee Shop (El Paso, TX)

(Note: I like sharing things that I love on this blog. Those can be songs, books, art, films, and also places that I think are worth recommending. It may seem insensitive to refer to travel during a time of a pandemic, but please note that I write from a place of hope, looking towards the future. These places are going to need our support three-fold as soon as they open back up.)

Every town has a place that serves the best local and genuinely authentic food with the greatest care. It's the closest thing to a homecooked meal. Usually, it's not a white table cloth establishment. Most often, it's just a simple hole in the wall diner, cafe, or truck where the cook cares about preparing a great meal for customers from all walks of life.

In El Paso, TX, that place is H&H Car Wash & Coffee Shop. Since the 1950s, the Haddad family has been running this car wash and adjacent cafe that has been become a city staple. The concept is simple.  Get your car cleaned while enjoying some delicious food. The cooks at H&H serve up timeless American breakfast favorites along with some tasty Tex-Mex dishes with a regional twist.

It feels like time has stood still at H&H, which adds to its friendly and familiar appeal. The walls are filled with old movie posters, family photographs, football jerseys, and other sports memorabilia. Take a seat on the counter to watch the cooks do their work, or sit on one of the few tables if you're in a larger group.

Local favorites on the menu include Chile Relleno, Chile Colorado, and, of course, classic tacos that come with a side of Spanish rice and black beans. Top it all off with home-made green tomatillo sauce, and you know what El Paso tastes like. Yum.

Escape To The Great Outdoors With A Seven-Hour Train Ride (From Your Living Room)

While many of us just got ordered to "stay at home," I've been trying to figure out all week how to make spending required time indoors more tolerable. I know there will come a time we're used to this by finding new things to do and adjusting our expectations.

One of the ways I've been trying to cope is by bringing the beautiful outdoors to the great indoors. I stumbled on this video from Norwegian broadcaster NRK that chronicles a 7-hour train journey from Bergen to Oslo.

A camera is attached to the front of the train to give you a front-row view of the entire journey, for, yes, seven hours. It follows the track passing through snow-covered mountains, green forests, quaint little towns, and sun-sparkling lakes.

I've been watching the video on my Apple TV and use it as a screensaver. So while I'm working, I can look over my shoulder at the television and enjoy the raw beauty of the Norwegian outdoors. It has been incredibly soothing, and with 7 hours of footage, it won't get old soon.

If you're looking for more Slow TV videos to find an escape, head over to the NRK website. It features marathon-length videos of other train rides, a cruise voyage, a salmon river expedition, and many others.

Share your ways of how you're coping during the pandemic. I'm always looking for new ideas.

Rare Invader Exhibit in Downtown Los Angeles

I ventured out to Los Angeles downtown arts district to see the new Over The Influence Gallery. The space is currently hosting a rare Invader exhibit. Invader is a french street artist who plasters fun, playful and unique 8-bit mosaics on buildings in cities all over the world. I’ve been obsessed with finding invader mosaics in cities i go to. Tthere’s an app where you log all the ones you find and score points. I’ve found them in Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles, Hong kong, Tokyo and Daejon, Korea. This exhibit is a greatest hits of some of Invader’s finest work and is a reminder that art can be fun.

Taking A Left-Turn: Driving from Arizona to West Texas

Heading east on the Interstate 10 in Arizona (Photo by me)

In recent years, I’ve taken advantage of the long, end-of-year holiday break to head out of the country to far-away spots in Asia. It felt freeing to pick a place remote and be completely immersed in a foreign culture to get a break from the L.A. hustle.

For the most recent break, however, I opted to stay in America and find a travel challenge closer to home. I’ve lived in the U.S. for 20 years now and I’ve come to the realization that there are so many places in America that I haven’t seen yet. I have traveled to all major cities but I haven’t wandered off the beaten path and seen parts of this country that make it so unique.

Following a trip to Phoenix back in November, I decided I wanted to go back there to explore. I picked to head to Sedona for a couple of days to explore its many trails and vistas. From there, I planned to roadtrip all the way down to West Texas to Marfa – an outpost of artists, writers and other bohemians. I’ve read about Marfa over the years and I figured it would be the perfect place to check out and see a part of America that’s off the grid and pretty much a perfect place to get a break from Los Angeles.

My West Texas Adventures: Blue Origin

Note: I have been missing blogging so much. There are so many ideas and observations I want to share. I intended on archiving this blog and just let it be. Meanwhile, I've tried Medium, Tumblr and, yes, even Wordpress as a potential new home to share my writing. But there is so much to proud of here. I started this TypePad blog in 2002 and this is where I belong. The blog design is terribly out of date and nobody may even check this URL anymore, but the point really is to get that craving to write out of my system once a while. It may not be about music, but I will likely be about my travel, books, interests and causes I care about. Anyways, this is the place where I will put pen to paper and share my random musings with you.

I love rockets. I love space. I love to think that some time in the near future humanity will launch a manned mission to mars. Wow. Just amazing to think we're in reach of making that happen.

During the winter break I ventured out on a road trip to West Texas. Super random, but I wanted to feel off the grid and away from the bubble, and West Texas gave me what I had hoped for. While en route I made a left turn on Interstate 10 at Van Horn, TX coming from Texas Route 54 to head to El Paso. Little did I know that just slightly north of Van Horn, space exploration firm Blue Origin has its launch facility. Slightly bummed I didn’t drive by there to see if any rockets were getting prepared for lift off.

I’ve been reading Lawrence Wright’s excellent God Save Texas, which provides a great overview of the history of Texas and what makes the state so unique (here’s a clue: it’s “rugged individualism”). Wright notes in his book that Jeff Bezos quietly purchased huge amounts of lands in West Texas to accommodate Blue Origin’s launch installation but also build an area that can grown into a hub for space tourism. Because, yes, that’s Bezos’ plan.

Blue Origin has quietly made a lot of progress in its mission and is scheduled to send the first tourists into suborbital space by the end of this year. That’s wild. Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket concept is smart. It features a reuseable rocket (that lands vertically following lift-off) with a passenger capsule on top that boasts extra large windows for optimal space viewing. The capsule will be disconnected from the launch rocket and after a quick whirl in space will fall back to earth and land with a parachute.

Blue Origin is planning a launch of the New Sherpard (as pictured above) early 2019 and if the timing works, I may head back to Texas to see it. I have never seen a rocket go up into space and it’s a bucket list item that’s in reach. It feels like we’re on the cusp of commercial space flights becoming real and that is very, very exciting.

(Image courtesy of Blue Origin.)