It was the end of my first year as a graduate student, and my personal stock had risen somewhat due to long hours of hard work. Now a fabulous opportunity came in the form of a research project in the mountains of north in a town known as Haypress Creek, which fell into my lap as a result of shifting academic fortunes. The type wretch had been scheduled to go began an academic tailspin despite the initial enthusiasm generated in the department for its excellent undergraduate degrees. Meanwhile, my long hours of diligent work that first semester, in contrast to undergraduate grades that had not only failed to generate enthusiasm among the teachers, but was reluctantly admitted in a test situation, captured in the slot. Good school, had graduated from an all or nothing proposition when everything was standing to make a success of the first semester.

I turned northwest of Fort Worth in my bright blue 1973 Dodge Charger, slipping past the lush green meadow to Amarillo. The charger has been with me for over five years since it was raised from what amounted to an open grave where moldered under a tree in the courtyard of a biker-type. Purchased in California in the army, which had made several trips across a field with its new engine, and had little doubt that it would make the trip from Texas to California. Moreover, as poor graduate student, had not actually forced to use the resources at my disposal. The character of the country changed when I went to Amarillo, waving green grass replaced by dust in the air. Mexican migrant workers shuffled along the road, tied handkerchiefs over their faces to protect against driving wind laden sediment, in a scene reminiscent of the Grapes of Wrath. The dust storm cleared, revealing layers of red, beige, white and sandstone and scrub grass, announcing my entry into New Mexico. The desert slipped endlessly colorful as the hot sun beat down. Given the extent and uniformity of the landscape, not a fixed point on the horizon seemed closer. Objects on the horizon seemed lateral current draw, making it look as if it were simply sitting on the road with the engine running. The thermometer read 105 Avocet my watch, but continues to look at the temperature gauge did not reveal any impending doom under the carpet.

After making the detour to the Grand Canyon, passing close to spending half a day to see him, I resumed the journey to the west on I-40. A point of Kingman, signs of needles again reminded me of the Grapes of Wrath, but my road led northwest across the Hoover Dam. Fantastic rock formations, representing massive landslides eons past, took to the descendants of torque in the modified concrete canyon, through which air is channeled hot desert. Crossing the dam, with the distinctive four towers that stand intake what appeared to be a short distance above the surface of the tank on the right, denied the vertiginous cliff on the left. The 318 snorting and shaking the steep slope, trying to push the steel body of the late magazine in Las Vegas. Dusk, darkness, guided by the loader descends along the busy street, nervously growing well above the speed limit, but the car I was flowing like water around a divergent stubborn rock in a stream. My plan was to spend the night in Las Vegas, where it was rumored that the good hotels are cheap. A casino hotel signs of the urban fringe of the road, but to my dismay, I could not find the way to the entrance and could not reach what was in front of my eyes. Frustrated, he continued to the northwest, determined to find a motel that requires less sophisticated navigation techniques to arrive. With nerves tired, worn out after a long day of driving, the miles after Indian Springs were like sleep deprivation torture, but finally waved a motel sign.

In the morning, much cooler, which began early in the hope of making a detour through the Valley of Death. As in my brief detour to the Grand Canyon, I felt I could not pass as famous as a place of Death Valley without seeing it. The thermometer in the visitor center shows 100 at 10 hours, and snaking north through the park. Whether due to high temperature or higher air pressure at this point low charger indicator of the temperature began a steady climb, inexorable. I watched nervously as the needle faded orange sun rose an average and reached the second-to-tick high, and then began the final offensive in the short distance involved to the last mark. Every extra bit of work required by the engine to climb the small hill, was compared with a corresponding increase in the temperature gauge needle. On the descents, rolling in neutral at rest forced a withdrawal of the instrument problematic. Up the final hill, the needle attached to the top mark as I gently urged the early 318. I waited until the clouds of steam coming to the boil under the hood, but none came. At the crest of the ridge of the mountains Funeral, which immediately went into neutral and slid down the long slope in Beatty, relieved by the rapid corresponding decrease of temperature gauge needle.

Now my spirit soared and my destiny seemed within reach of a day. Hawthorne waves through the memory of a previous visit to the army depot located there, which I had visited six years earlier. Finally, regardless of Yerington and the short distance to I-80, and I was really familiar territory. While in the Army in Monterrey, California, who had traveled I-80 so many times that the route was memorized. I turned west on I-80, now crossing a stretch of road that was very familiar. Through Reno, who was the famous Circus-Circus that had always attracted my interest on previous trips. Here is some overlap with the past, as he had once stayed at the Circus-Circus, while traveling by the Army. The hotel was also the last landmark I remembered from my old by 1964 Dodge had thrown a rod in the center of Nevada, in an attempt to return home for the Christmas holidays about six years ago. After Reno, I relived the experience of crossing into California, with pine-covered slopes facing the interstate. At last I came to Truckee, where she had stopped even during my first trip to California. In a déjà vu, as the experience, I found myself facing the same hotel I've stayed in that initial trip. It made me think that the story was somewhat repeated, as if two lives overlapped, present on the past. Although the places were the same, the circumstances were certainly different. On that first trip, which had been traveling for my first permanent station in Monterrey Army service, fresh out of high school and running a small town ends. My experiences in the army I was motivated to go to college, then graduate school. Now, here as a graduate student, I felt that I had in the words of several degrees from the first time he had crossed the Sierra Alta.

Years later, I have reason to return to Reno. This trip, nine years after the summer of fieldwork in Haypress Creek, reflects a steady increase in my chances. In the years that have followed in college and acquired a doctorate, and this trip was not carried out with an underlying sense of desperation in an old car that requires continuous observation of the gauge cluster. This trip was all expenses paid, performed with a cross-country flight and rental car at the airport. But in another episode of deja vu, I was in the Circus-Circus Reno! The temptation was too great to resist, and pointed to the west of Truckee hire, north to Haypress Creek. In any case, the area seemed even more primitive, the roads narrow. But after working in the Rocky Mountains and the Andes, the peaks did not seem so tall and strong when I had seen the.