Route 66 Style
Note: Photo captions are time and place of WiFi connectivity.

May 25th
Two things about trying to get a hotel in the United States during Memorial Day weekend.

1. Use your AAA card - CAA in our case, same thing as far as they’re concerned.  Not only can you, will you, get as much as a 15% discount (today was 10%), you can, will, bump other people who don’t flash their AAA card!  Amazing.

2. I pulled into an EconoLodge on the outskirts of Santa Fe; although I was prepared to splurge a little, downtown rates started at $250 a night.  The EconoLodge, and most of the other motels on this particular strip were sold out: Holiday Inn Express, Motel 6, Hampton Suites… the list goes on.  The young guy at the front desk was sympathetic, but said because of the holiday I’d be lucky to find any motel for three nights in a row (I’ve decided to hang here awhile).  This was the first motel I tried and was conscious of the fact I’d have to spend some significant ’search’ time before I finally found something available.

As I was about to leave and continue my search, this young guy said, ‘Look - let me call around and see what I can find.’  Yeah, could be a really good ‘bait and switch’ scam.  But it wasn’t.  On his third call he found a motel that had only two rooms left.  They were each $89 a night (x 3 nights), and were smoking rooms, but they were available.  Different hotel chain completely.

When I arrived and showed my CAA card, he bumped the other guy in line to the smoking room and gave me his non-smoking room.  Plus he gave me a 10% discount.

So, CAA card and typical American customer service makes for an atypical result.  I like it.

Spent the early morning in Clovis, New Mexico visiting the studio where Buddy Holly recorded ‘Peggy Sue’, ‘Rave On’ and ‘That’ll Be The Day’.  Kinda like walking past the Brill Building in New York City and realizing that this was where the second wave of American rock ‘n roll got its start.  If the first wave were artists such as Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and Bill Halley & The Comets, then the second wave was the likes of Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka and Leiber/Stoller, all of whom toiled under contract for their labels, usually writing songs for other artists before striking out on their own.

In the fifties, and well into the sixties in fact, songs were recorded live to disc, or live to tape if the band had the money, in real time - one take, no overdubbing.  It is said that Buddy and his friends, while recording the final take of ‘Peggy Sue’ late one night heard crickets chirping outside the studio.  It was then he decided to name the band. Buddy Holly and the Crickets were born… in that studio on July 1, 1957.

The importance of that song — and the naming of the band — to the world of rock ‘n roll, especially recorded as it was late at night, cannot be underestimated.  In 1961 John Lennon said, ‘If Buddy Holly can have his crickets, then we must be the beetles.’  Then the Silver Beetles, then The Beatles.  Without Buddy Holly and Peggy Sue, can you imagine ‘A Hard Days Night’ recorded by the Quarrymen…?

Enough history.

Spent about three hours on the old ‘Mother Road’ - Route 66.  Parts of it around here still exist.  Weird being on a once-famous, well-travelled highway that gave birth to the concept of ‘motel’ (motor hotel) that is now rarely if ever used.  You’ll be driving down this narrow, two-lane road with faded yellow line, come over a hill and have it turn into a dirt road.  Or you’ll come over another hill to be faced with a fence and a cliff - it just ends.  Or it veers off only to merge with Hwy. 40 - the ‘new’ east-west connector down here.

Anyway, I’m now in Santa Fe planning some museum tours — the Georgia O’Keefe museum is here! — and some good eatin’ - probably not in that order.

Reporting tonight from Santa Fe, New Mexico