The flip side
The rain from the night before had soaked in. The ground was actually dry and Filly could wear her soft leather slipper boots. Filly did not hear slamming doors any more. She carried her two small bags down the stairs, treading softly looking at the pools of water by the swimming pool. The name in the book she had been listening to said the character’s name was sloop. Which was pools backwards. Another coincidence…that they wanted to put her near and facing the pool. Were there betting pools? Predictions in the media or things being written?
She noticed a man at the bottom of the stairs going into the breakfast area from the side. She followed him in and noticed that the outdoor workers wearing lime green at the far side of the room were aiming their camera’s at her, not so covertly, taking photos. She ignored them. Sometimes when someone did that she would take photos back of them, really obviously. But she was hungry… so she went to the buffet instead.
She poured in the batter from the plastic cup that she filled up by pulling a yellow lever, into the round waffle maker after spraying it with oil spray. She turned it over and saw the red timer start a countdown accompanied by a beeping sound. She got butter and poured herself some milk. She also got two muffins and an orange and a cup of coffee.
Unfortunately the syrup came out fast, which was a bad sign. Filly had figured out that adding water to the syrup was what some hotels did to “stretch” the syrup. When poured on the waffle, the once hot crisp waffle became limp and soggy. Filly could barely eat half. Disappointing. Tip for restaurants…if you want to dilute syrup, to save money, use Karo, as it is cheap and will not ruin the consistency of the syrup. Water in the syrup ruined the waffle. Pure and simple.
She went out to the truck and noticed people loitering around her truck and under the stairs. Overall not her favorite hotel to stay at. She paid two bills online and started driving and then realized when she was out far from town, that the gas tank was on empty. She had to stop at the “gateway to the grand canyon”… a town with a huge rodeo arena and lots of trailer homes. But she liked the rodeo… being a horse nickname and all lol.
After getting gas, she stopped and was looking at the front page of the local paper, which said Cataract Creek gang rides again.
The book Filly was listening to was running blind. She thought that this was a funny coincidence headline as cataracts make someone blind. But in the book, the camera in the room monitoring, was the thing that was blind. . Creek Technologies (CreekTech) Filly learned, as a possible second meaning was a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business that delivers innovative information technology (IT) solutions,started in April 2007 by four patriots. Patriots… a good word.
Filly went through McDonald’s next door from the gas station to get a sausage burrito. Once at the drive through, she learned that they did not have any available. So she reached in her freezer bag and got out a small tub of avocado, and some corn chips and ate some of those.
Her bible verse for the day was
and he charged them straitly that no man should know it and commanded that something should be given to her to eat.
God indeed has a sense of humor…(no one should know about her two pound weight gain lol) God wanted her to still eat.
Filly saw a lot of “gateway’s” being “advertised” but the locations of these gateways was “suspect” she felt. She was looking at the word gateway as having a deeper meaning and as something on the internet that connects different networks. Filly did not have a high opinion of the city of Portland as a “gateway” (a sign on a u haul)..and lighthouse also had a tech meaning. Portland was supposedly a gateway to “The Lighthouse”.Lighthouse as a tech entity, allows researchers to place their own hardware within the ARC HPC Slurm environment. Layers of meaning. To follow?
And GCNP (for grand canyon national park) also equals global community networking partnership…achieving global interest.
She started driving now with almost a full tank. The truck gas was the most expensive ever at the national park gateway… and only a few miles down the road it was two dollars a gallon cheaper. But she had not known that there would be another gas station. Oh well. She was glad to have gas.
Filly noticed that the landscape changed dramatically after being in Flagstaff. Instead of flat lands with scrub and mesas, suddenly there were rolling hills and pine trees. Filly had seen old cars with Route 66, and signs for scenic route 66 and people with shirts on for Scenic 66 so she turned and tried to get on that highway and ended up on a dirt road dead end with a sign that said that the road was not maintained. So much for scenic driving on 66 lol… and then she found out that it had been the most dangerous highway in 1953 with many fatalities. Now it was dangerous because of the heat…but Filly sang that the “heat does’nt bother me anyway”. There were parts that were dirt or unpaved. The road was called the mother road. OR Filly thought, the mother lode… a place where who knows what you will find, if looking for treasure lol.
She decided to try one more time thirty miles later and while on 66 a part that was paved and she drove through part of an Indian reservation and ended up near Laughlin in a fun city called Bullhead city Arizona. There were big casinos beside jet ski rentals and free boat rides. The weather was hot at 107 degrees and windy but sunny and beautiful. Filly liked that part of the drive.
After leaving scenic 66 she was back on the highway and the drive became tedious. Filly had a hard time staying awake. She tried to wake herself up by stopping at a rest stop and trying to remember all the details of the rest stop.
It was at a place with a rectangular sign that said blue star memorial highway and it was dedicated to all the people who had defended the USA. It had wide sidewalks leading up to a stone building that had men’s and woman’s separate bathrooms and two sets of three picnic tables under ziz zag roofing supported by stone pillars. The rest stop was maintained by a company called Lincoln and the brown metal trash cans had two sections, one for trash and one for recycling.
There were three pay phones front and center. Near the street parking were sparsely vegetated globe willow trees and there was a girl walking her dog. The girl had black hair and really white skin and her hair was slick as if oil had been applied to smooth her long black hair and straight black bangs. She had tattoos and her white dog had one black ear like the dog wishbone had one black eye… But it was a bull terrier.
Filly got out and went to the bathroom and the toilet had not been flushed for at least six uses…she held down the round metal button and the toilet flushed easily, thank goodness. How hard was that? not much. Then she washed her hands and went back to the truck and left it running while she put the seat back and down..as it was a hundred and seven so she could not turn the truck off… and then she closed her eyes, and was instantly asleep. She woke up twenty minutes later refreshed. Back on the road.