10th of September 2007: Money Worries and Dangerous Group Cooking
The plan for today is to get to the motel, get our gear cleared out before checkout time, then Gadget will return to the hostel (he's decided to stick around a few more days) and I will get a bus out to a suitable hitch-hiking point and begin heading towards Houston. Frankly Hagey has recommended I come back to the hostel too and use the net to trawl for Burners or others heading that way and willing to provide a lift, but with three days to go I'm feeling really antsy to get moving and I'm afraid of how long it may take to get a lift. I need to be in Houston by Thursday in order to meet my fellow santas Tonya, Kelly and their friends, who are taking me to the Austin City Limits Music Festival at the weekend. With this in mind Hagey drops us to the transit centre early (he's an early riser and has been up for two hours) and we get the bus back to downtown.
We get all our gear packed and out of the motel room just in time as the manager comes knocking to tell us we should be checked out, hand in our keys and move on to Quiznos for breakfast/lunch, in my case a Peppercorn Beef sandwich on a soft toasty white bun, easily one of the best subs I've ever eaten. Once we have a moment I spread out a map of the state which Gadget has given me, and begin planning a hitching strategy, but it quickly becomes apparent that this is going to be a nightmare to hitch. Repeating a mistake I can't seem to stop making, I've drastically mis-estimated the journey time - it's going to take three days to get to Houston even with the best hitching I've had. The roads all go in the wrong directions and I'm going to be really stuck trying to avoid the freeways. In short, it's a pretty near impossible hitch.
Frustrated, I look at my options. Gadget recommends Amtrak, and although initially I balk at the price as I have before, I recall that I did reckon to take Amtrak at least once on my journey and this trip might be a good time to do it. The office is closed for lunch and we wait at the station for half an hour with me getting rather twitchy at the time being lost. When the staffer returns the news is bad - Amtrak from Reno to Houston would have to go via L.A. and would cost over three hundred dollars.
Next option: My old friend Greyhound. We walk out to the station to find that Greyhound to Houston is also very roundabout, will cost $177.00 and take almost two full days. Not appealing. Finally I admit that Hagey was right and I need to try rideshare first. We stop into the cafe and I place entries on Craigslist and the Burning Man forums requesting a rideshare to Houston or somewhere on the way. All there is to do now is wait and return to Hagey's, which is actually a real relief after this stress.
However, on the way out I go to take some cash out of the ATM, and get the response "Temporarily unable to complete transaction". Panic. I walk up the road to a corner shop and try a different machine - same result. We walk back to Virginia and I try a casino ATM on a different network. Same thing. I'm really scared now - could I have miscalculated so badly that I've drained my account already? I would have to be thousands of dollars out...
I walk up to Bank of America, thankfully a lot closer to downtown than banks usually seem to be in North America, and the teller, although unable to check my status with Visa, kindly lets me use their phone to call Barclays' Lost and Stolen Card line - I'm beginning to get an inkling that the same thing has happened as in Niagara Falls. I wait for a full half hour on hold for what should be an emergency service, and begin to suspect that something larger has gone wrong at Barclays, when the teller returns to tell me they can't have me on an international call any longer but if I come back tomorrow I can try again.
Still deeply worried, I walk with Gadget back down towards the transit centre, but remember that in Niagara my card would still work at point-of-sale - this would be a test of whether the same thing has happened again. I stop into a grocery store and buy a few bits, and to my enormous relief find that the card works. We return to the station with just enough cash between us to cover our ride back to Sparks, and James comes to pick us up and bring us home to the BRIBH.
Back at the hostel a shopping trip is being arranged for dinner ingredients - James does most of the cooking and is winding up for a big pasta, salad and stirfry project. I decide that if I'm going to be here another day or two I want to be able to pitch in with a contribution, so I decide to go along to get ingredients and make scotch pancakes for everyone in the morning. It's pretty daunting since I've never cooked for more than four people before but it's an exciting challenge too, and a chance to cook real food for the first time in a long while.
I go along with Lore and Pickle, two guys who've been packing up the city for several days and have just returned. They're fanatical about food too, and they, James and I have a great multiway discussion about the virtues of meat, fast and slow cooking, baking vs cooking and other fun topics. Fully equipped we return for an immensely enjoyable group cooking effort with at least six people at all times chopping vegetables, slinging things in and out of the oven, waving red-hot pans about and generally endangering each others' safety at every turn, accompanied by passionate discussions, mostly around food.
We get all our gear packed and out of the motel room just in time as the manager comes knocking to tell us we should be checked out, hand in our keys and move on to Quiznos for breakfast/lunch, in my case a Peppercorn Beef sandwich on a soft toasty white bun, easily one of the best subs I've ever eaten. Once we have a moment I spread out a map of the state which Gadget has given me, and begin planning a hitching strategy, but it quickly becomes apparent that this is going to be a nightmare to hitch. Repeating a mistake I can't seem to stop making, I've drastically mis-estimated the journey time - it's going to take three days to get to Houston even with the best hitching I've had. The roads all go in the wrong directions and I'm going to be really stuck trying to avoid the freeways. In short, it's a pretty near impossible hitch.
Frustrated, I look at my options. Gadget recommends Amtrak, and although initially I balk at the price as I have before, I recall that I did reckon to take Amtrak at least once on my journey and this trip might be a good time to do it. The office is closed for lunch and we wait at the station for half an hour with me getting rather twitchy at the time being lost. When the staffer returns the news is bad - Amtrak from Reno to Houston would have to go via L.A. and would cost over three hundred dollars.
Next option: My old friend Greyhound. We walk out to the station to find that Greyhound to Houston is also very roundabout, will cost $177.00 and take almost two full days. Not appealing. Finally I admit that Hagey was right and I need to try rideshare first. We stop into the cafe and I place entries on Craigslist and the Burning Man forums requesting a rideshare to Houston or somewhere on the way. All there is to do now is wait and return to Hagey's, which is actually a real relief after this stress.
However, on the way out I go to take some cash out of the ATM, and get the response "Temporarily unable to complete transaction". Panic. I walk up the road to a corner shop and try a different machine - same result. We walk back to Virginia and I try a casino ATM on a different network. Same thing. I'm really scared now - could I have miscalculated so badly that I've drained my account already? I would have to be thousands of dollars out...
I walk up to Bank of America, thankfully a lot closer to downtown than banks usually seem to be in North America, and the teller, although unable to check my status with Visa, kindly lets me use their phone to call Barclays' Lost and Stolen Card line - I'm beginning to get an inkling that the same thing has happened as in Niagara Falls. I wait for a full half hour on hold for what should be an emergency service, and begin to suspect that something larger has gone wrong at Barclays, when the teller returns to tell me they can't have me on an international call any longer but if I come back tomorrow I can try again.
Still deeply worried, I walk with Gadget back down towards the transit centre, but remember that in Niagara my card would still work at point-of-sale - this would be a test of whether the same thing has happened again. I stop into a grocery store and buy a few bits, and to my enormous relief find that the card works. We return to the station with just enough cash between us to cover our ride back to Sparks, and James comes to pick us up and bring us home to the BRIBH.
Back at the hostel a shopping trip is being arranged for dinner ingredients - James does most of the cooking and is winding up for a big pasta, salad and stirfry project. I decide that if I'm going to be here another day or two I want to be able to pitch in with a contribution, so I decide to go along to get ingredients and make scotch pancakes for everyone in the morning. It's pretty daunting since I've never cooked for more than four people before but it's an exciting challenge too, and a chance to cook real food for the first time in a long while.
I go along with Lore and Pickle, two guys who've been packing up the city for several days and have just returned. They're fanatical about food too, and they, James and I have a great multiway discussion about the virtues of meat, fast and slow cooking, baking vs cooking and other fun topics. Fully equipped we return for an immensely enjoyable group cooking effort with at least six people at all times chopping vegetables, slinging things in and out of the oven, waving red-hot pans about and generally endangering each others' safety at every turn, accompanied by passionate discussions, mostly around food.
Labels: amtrak, black rock international burner hostel, Burning Man, greyhound, Nevada, reno
posted by Mark at
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