From Austin to Las Cruces via Popocatepetl

In 1994, I was in the middle of my doctoral studies in Foreign Language Education at the University of Texas at Austin. I had successfully completed my qualifying exams, although they did not come without the requisite dose of embarrassment. I was the first person in the history of the department to type his qualifying exam on a computer or word processor. As a result, I had submitted 16 pages of qualifying answers, double spaced and printed with the help of a spell check. The professors couldn’t say enough of how much they enjoyed reading a thoroughly written exam that had so much clarity in its penmanship or depth due to someone’s typing speed. However, there was also an oral portion to this exam, a follow up by my testing committee to see how well I really understood these answers. In the words of one professor, “We were really happy with the written part of the exam. As a result, we decided to probe for depth in your answers, and there wasn’t any.”

Most graduate students experience such combinations of ego-boosting and humiliation. To this end, they then tend to get together on Saturday evenings around 7:00 to make tacos, drink margaritas, and bitch about the bad parts. Of course, the compliments and praise hardly ever seem adequate; grad students concentrate so on the negative and blow off the positive, you see. So, after some tacos and tequila, we decided to create our own blues song—The Dissertation Blues. Take any guitar, play the blues progression in the key of A, and you can sing our song. We didn’t care about the melody too much, but we still thought Robert Johnson and BB King would have been proud. Here are some of our verses:

My professors really hate me.

I can’t find the journal at the library.

A Master’s student stole my data

I have to come up with a new idea

My research advisor wants me.

I’m playing office politics again.

Dissertation blues! D I S S E R T A T I O N

I’m going to graduate, but I just don’t know when!

Such is life in graduate school when one is trying to become a doctor. To this end, a number of my fellow students and I decided that if we were to write a manual on how to get through graduate school, we would include the following items. First, we would advise any person to keep exercising as much as possible. Everyone I know in graduate school has thanked their aerobic instructor, their acupuncturist, their massage therapist, their chiropractor, their macrobiotic advisor, and/or their yoga instructor for helping them get through graduate school. Second, we would advise a person to reserve meditation time and time for one’s self--time spent without library books, word processors, or the conversation with other students or professors. For me, this entailed getting in the car and driving to the ends of Texas and beyond. I could drive through the Hill Country into the West Texas desert for hours, not even turning on the radio, watching the lightning, admiring how the hills became mesas and how the mesas became mountains, seeing the sun turn from yellow to orange to red to purple as the day shifted to night, all the while feeling the sun and the wind whip my hair as I sunburned my left elbow as it rest in a V across the open driver-side window. It is during this time that I can solve even my most difficult problems. It is during this time that I can make my most life-changing decisions and be firm and clear about them. It is during this time that I am often most at peace with myself.

One time, during a frustrating, mostly due to relationship bullshit, I hopped in the car and drove northeast. My friend Paul had family in Burnet, and I had always heard about the town my whole life, so I decided to drive there. It was pretty: in the Hill Country, rolling grassy and rocky hills, big live oak trees, and cactus on the side of the road. The town had a nice square in the middle of town, complete with central plaza and yellow granite courthouse, as many Texas towns tend to have.

I enjoyed the trip so much that I looked at my watch and decided I had enough time to drive to Llano, the next town on the map. I opened the window and let the air blow through my hair and I cranked up the music and watched Texas fly by me. Llano looked good, so I went to Mason, and then onto Menard. Menard was lovely, so I saw the sign to Eldorado, and I decided to drive there, too. And since Eldorado is halfway to Las Cruces, and I had been driving for nearly five hours, I decided to go all the way home to see my parents. I arrived at midnight, unannounced, and without luggage. I didn’t have to get back to Austin for four days, so everything was fine, except that I would have to wear the same clothes and drive all the way back. Still, that didn’t seem to matter. I felt so much better!

One such effort of auto-oriented catharsis in May 1994 was my attempted trip to San Diego to see my buddy Carl. A Basque guy I had a mild but reasonable crush on called Jabi had agreed to fly out to Phoenix to meet me, drive to San Diego, and then drive back to Austin slowly on an excursion that would take us through northern Mexico and southwestern Arizona. Well, that part of the trip was to be preceded by my visit to my folks in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I have big allergy problems in New Mexico every May due to the pecan blooms, so the folks and I were going to escape to Tucson, Arizona the day after I arrived.

Well, I took the Texas back roads, as I tend to do. I drove toward Big Spring, where I was going to meet my friend Andy. We were going to meet in the Midland mall where George and Barbara Bush used to hang out and count Texan women with big hair. But I didn't make it. My brown Toyota pick up started to jolt, and I finally had to stop in this teeny desert town called Garden City, and be towed into Big Spring. The guy who towed my pick up agreed to fix my fuel filter so I could get back on the road the next day. And he did. The truck purred, so I was very happy. I went through the towns of Kermit and Mentone--the smallest county seat in the US, representing a county with fewer than 100 people. I bought two cans of juice in Orla—a town with a population of 1-where city’s population, the elderly gentleman behind the counter apologized for charging me 95 cents. When I told him I didn't mind, he said, "Well, then, you must have gone to New York once if you're used to these prices. I mean a can of juice up there could go for $1.50." I smiled and thought to myself, "Huh! On a good day!"

I was just about to Las Cruces when the juice I drank hit me like a ton of bricks. I needed to pee and I needed to pee right there and then. There was the Vado truck stop coming up, so I exited the freeway. Upon reaching the stop sign at the end of the off-ramp, it was clear I just wasn’t going to make it. Therefore, instead of turning left to go toward the truck stop, I dashed to the right, over a cattle guard, and onto a dirt road. I stopped, put the truck into park, and headed for the sagebrush and found a cactus. I wasn't gone for a minute. But when I returned to the truck, a curl of smoke was coming out from underneath the seat. I turned off the engine, grabbed my wallet, and ran to the tool box in the bed to see if I had an extinguisher or just something. When I returned to the cab, huge billowing yellow and orange flames were coming out of the center of the seat and towering toward the roof of the truck. I ran across the road as quickly as I could, realizing that the truck could explode within seconds. Coincidentally, a woman in a suburban drove by almost immediately. I flagged her down and without asking got into her van, asking her to drive me to the truck stop. She apologized for not having a fire extinguisher, but I said that it was too late anyway. I had already lost everything. I called 911 and my dad. 911 told me that I had to return to the scene to talk to the fire fighters.

I walked the quarter mile back to the truck. When I arrived, a group of onlookers were already there, having seen the 250 foot tower of black smoke from the freeway. I walked up to a fellow sitting in his jeep, gawking at my flame engulfed truck. I turned to him said, “So what happened?”

“I don’t know. Some poor guy just lost his truck.”

“Gosh, that’s some fire.”

“Yeah! I’d sure hate to be the guy that owned that truck.”

“I know what you mean.”

Just at that moment, the La Mesa Volunteer Fire Department arrived in an ice cream truck of a fire engine. I smiled at the man in the jeep, excused myself, and then walked up to the ice cream fire truck. They put the fire out as they rattled away in Spanish. One man was taking down notes at the side of the truck, so I went and introduced myself to him.

“Hi!”

“Are you the owner of this truck?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Wow! What happened?”

“Well, I’m not too sure. I had just gone out into the desert, and when I came back, the truck was on fire.”

“What were you doing out in the desert?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was taking a piss.”

The man laughed. Then he closed his mouth to a grin just before saying, “Then why didn’t you just pee on the fire?”

I chuckled and said in a long tone, “Cute!”

“Anyway, I need your name.”

“Eric Dwyer!”

“What?”

“Eric Dwyer!”

“How do you spell your last name?”

“DWYER”

“What?”

“DWYER”

“What?”
“De doble-u i-griega e ere!” I spelled it in Spanish.

“Oh! OK! So, are you insured?”

“Not for spontaneous combustion!”

I had to tell all the fire fighters my story, and they laughed when they heard that I had to pee.

Dad arrived with his best friend Carroll. Dad got out of the car in the middle of the desert amidst the onlookers who were beginnig to dispurse and looked straight ahead at my now blackened pick up truck. The glass of the windshield had melted over the front hood. Puddles of water surrounded the pick up and singed pieces of unburned cloth and charred books were stacked in the back of the truck. Nothing remained. My boots were gone, as well as all my clothes. My cassettes were ruined. My passport was gone. My presents for my father which included a loaf of rosemary sourdough bread was nothing but charcoal. When Dad saw the sight of the truck and a disheartened son in front of it, he gasped in laughter, leaned forward, and gave me a hug. I said, “Hi Dad!” He walked around the truck and picked up the driver’s side door handle which had cooled down with packed sand melted on the inside of it.

Dad said, “Well, thank goodness you weren’t in the truck, and thank goodness you didn’t go to the truck stop to get gas or all the way to our house because you could have blown either to kingdom come.” I guess needing to pee on a prickly pear saved my life and perhaps even the lives of other people that day.

I had to call Carl and Jabi and let them know the trip was canceled.

Well, I was stuck in Las Cruces with allergies. In the travel plan, my parents and I had decided to go to Tucson. So, we still went. It wasn't as fun as I had hoped. I had allergies to blooming palo verde--a common plant in the Tucson area. I spent my time in the Tucson Mall, trying to buy new clothes. I spent about $200 on underwear and a shirt and jeans. But, Mom and Dad were great. They took me up Sabino Canyon, one of my favorites walks on Earth; and they loaned me enough money to buy my clothes and a new car. In Las Cruces, Dad found a cute new two-door car which he thought he could get for a good price. I decided I liked the car, and we went together to the car dealership to haggle. Dad was unbelievable. I learned so much. We nearly walked out of the dealership on three different occasions. And Dad not only got the price we wanted, but got new windshield wipers thrown in. What I learned was that with haggling, I'm weak. Dad got a price about $1500 less than what I would have agreed upon.

So, I came out of the trip, feeling pretty good. I taught some truly fun classes in the summer--one, a beginning reading class--and the other, a highly advanced grammar class. Both were extraordinary. In fact, I don't think I've ever had such successful classes. I liked everyone a lot, and they seemed to like me. And particularly with the beginning class, I saw them enter school at point zero in their English--barely being able to say, "Hi, how are you," and had them reading 30-page short stories with irregular past tense about a girl whose plane crashed in a Peruvian jungle in just eight weeks. I also taught a two-week course to high school students from Oita, Japan in which we practiced going grocery shopping, swimming, and eating in funky little Mexico food restaurants throughout Austin. You should have seen the boys having a jalapeño eating contest. And at the end of the semester, they presented me with a pair of funky gray hightopper basketball shoes; I had admired the pair one of the boys was wearing. He found out that we had the same sized foot, so he gave them to me. And I wear them dancing from time to time.

School and teaching were difficult in the fall, and I survived a hard semester. By the end of December, I was ready to try driving as therapy one more time. This time, I decided to go south to Mexico. A Brazilian friend Andre drove with me, and we went to fantastic places included a mostly deserted mining town in which one has to drive through a three-kilometer tunnel in order to reach the village called Real de Catorce at an altitude of over 9000 feet. We stayed with his friend from Rio de Janeiro who lived with her husband and daughter in the small town of Tepoztlan, just an hour's drive south of Mexico City. The city is shrouded by towering rock spires and bouganvilllas, and we spent three days there.

I left Andre in Tepoztlan and then continued my trip alone, first going up Mount Popocatepetl. According to my guidebook, it was a volcano as accessible on foot as Mount Kilimanjaro or Mount Fuji. In other words, people are supposed to be able to just walk up to the top. In fact, I had actually walked to the top of Mount Fuji in the summer of 1990. Since I had been exercising a lot throughout the autumn, I decided I might be able to walk to the top of Popocatepetl. I was a bit concerned about the altitude, but I thought I would at least try. The road took me up a curvy road to a lodge at about 13,000 feet. There I stayed the night. I spent the evening cooking rice, onions, and quinoa in my rice cooker. I noticed there was a guy who was alone, and I invited him to have dinner with me. His name was Gilberto, and he was an engineering student in Mexico City. It was also his birthday. And I was impressed in that instead of going out partying with his buddies, he decided to climb the volcano. We rented some crampons and ice picks, practiced putting them on, and then agreed to get up around 3:00 in the morning to start heading up the mountain. We woke upt o a full moon and a clear sky that allowed us to both look at the snowcapped peaks of both Popocatepetl and its twin peak Iztaccihuatl and down into the east valley and onto the city of Puebla. By 4:00 we were walking up the mountain with two other guys from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Of the four of us, I was the only one who was living at a low altitude--Austin is about 400 feat while Santa Fe and Mexico City are at 7000 feet. So, they suffered while I slowly took each step while gasping at air. For two hours, we climbed until we reached a resting point called ironically "Las Cruces," a point placed in honor of those who had died trying to climb the volcano. We stopped and watched the sun come up over Mexico's largest mountain, Orizaba, and ate oranges with two other guys from Mexico City who decided to join us. We stayed for nearly an hour before we decided to start heading for the top. It looked like it would take about another three hours to reach it. The altitude was really affecting me, so I had doubts as to whether I would make it or not. But after a couple of oranges, I felt like trying. We had to climb over some rocks. And of the six of us, I again was the last climber. With each step over rocks, a couple of times trying to lift myself over a small cliff, I felt like I needed five minutes to catch my breath. I was climbing far too slowly to be a credible member of the group. At one point, I was standing on a ledge. My backpack slipped off my shoulder, and I couldn't get it back on comfortably. So I saw the next ledge where I was planning to step, and I tossed my backpack over to it. My throw was however too strong, and instead of it landing on the fairly wide area, it bounced off the rocks, and fell into a ravine. From there, it started to roll down the volcano, and roll, and roll, and roll! I thought it would roll clear to Puebla. But it finally stopped after about 30 seconds, about 300 feet from where I was, seemingly halfway back to Point Las Cruces. My crampons and ice pick were in the backpack, so if I wanted to climb up, I would need to go and get it. So, I retraced my steps and got the backpack. When I arrived, I found that I was too tired to continue, so I called out to the others to let them know I wasn't continuing, went back to Las Cruces, and took a nap. About two hours later, Gilberto returned. The snow on the glacier was too hard to walk on, even with crampons, and the angle of the mountain was too severe to continue, so he came back. In fact, no one that day made it up the mountain. One guy even slipped and broke his leg, and the Red Cross had to be called. Gilberto and I walked down the mountain together. We exchanged addresses, and I headed back to my car, feeling pretty good about doing as much as I had done. After all, I had never been over 15,000 high before in my life, and the mountain was a desolate challenge--far more difficult that Mount Fuji, but just as thrilling.

But my car didn't like being at 13,000 feet. There wasn't enough oxygen for me to start my car, and I asked a mechanic who had two batteries to help jump start me. After nearly two hours, I finally succeeded. However, when I finally got the motor running, I found that if I stopped, the motor would stop. Therefore, when the motor finally started to churn, I had to leave my jumper cables with the mechanic--I thought fair payment for two hours' help. I drove down a dusty road and spent the night in the magnificent city of Puebla, where I stayed in a marvellous colonial style hotel and ate like a king, eating Tampico style beef and asparagus soup. The entire drive down the volcano into Puebla, I got volcanic dust on my car and had the volcano in my rearview mirror as the sun went down.

The next day, I read in the newspaper that Mount Popocatepetl erupted ash and 38 pueblos surrounding the volcano including one where the mechanic who helped me jump start my car lived were evacuated.

I drove to the city of Celaya to see my friend Ruth who I worked with at Harvard in 1987. She has lived and worked in Mexico for over 30 years, and invited me to do some birdwatching with a bunch of friends of hers in San Miguel de Allende. I arrived in Celaya and talked with her husband who directed me to San Miguel. I stayed in an old hotel called La Posada de Las Monjas, situated on a hill overlooking a huge desert valley. San Miguel is a small somewhat touristy town where many North Americans had set up shop either to paint or retire. As a result, there's a lot of money and a lot of English. When Ruth saw me and had heard that I had climbed Popocatepetl the day before its eruption, she commented that I had almost become chicharron--Mexican pork rinds.

I met the birdwatchers at 6:30 the following morning and spent the entire day circumnavigating a lake which played home to over 200 pelicans. I didn't know how to recognize many birds, but I enjoyed the walk and the conversation everyone had as they debated which birds were which. In the middle of the afternoon, I had the chance to enjoy a boat ride into the middle of the lake where we could get close ups of the pelicans and do a true count. I was elated while everyone else was disappointed to see 146 pelicans--I had never seen so many; everyone else thought there would be more.

I joined Ruth the next morning for breakfast. We met in front of a church which has posters hanging to its gate, crying out for an end to the conflict in southern Mexican state of Chiapas in which indigenous people were fighting for equal rights against the Mexican government, and read in the newspaper about the possible drop in the exchange rate for the peso as well as the troubles with Mount Popocatepetl. We shared breakfast in a nice restaurant for which we will always remember the men's room. In the urinal, instead of having chemically pink-colored soaps lining the wall of the urinal, there was a pile of limes. Ruth even sneaked a peek.

I left San Miguel de Allende that afternoon after a good solid afternoon of shopping, and started north toward my parents' home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I figured I was about 900 miles south of home, and decided to drive to the colonial city of Zacatecas for the night. Around 6:30, I was driving solo through a desert valley, and enjoyed one of the most spectacular sunsets of my life--a vibrant fiery red, purple and orange sky with mountains in the background and prickley pear cactus up close. I had to stop and take a picture. I watched the sun slowly drop behind the mountains and felt the wind drop the outdoor temperature a good ten degrees.

When I got back to the car, I lifted the latch and the door wouldn't open. I thought, "No problem! I'll just use the extra key I have in my wallet." But it wasn't in the coin container at all for some strange reason. I was locked out! The wind started to blow, and my T-shirt was not sufficient. I immediately ran to the highway and flagged down the first car that would stop. It was a taxi. I explained my predicament to the taxi driver and asked him if he would tell the federal highway patrol that I was in trouble and needed help.

I sheltered myself behind a shrub and watched the sky go dark. About half an hour later, a patrol car stopped and asked what the trouble was. Two officers got out of the car and talked to me a bit. One official called Victor loaned me his sweater while his partner and he went for a locksmith. Another half hour later, the police, a locksmith, the taxi driver, and all their families came to my car with flashlights and equipment. We chatted and held the flashlights as the locksmith delicately attempted to break into my car. After 15 minutes, he was in. The police haggled the price for me, and I eagerly paid both the locksmith and the taxi driver for their help--a grand total of $15. Since it had gotten so dark and I was not on the main roads, I decided to stay in their town overnight and spend lunchtime in Zacatecas the next day.

I went to the town of Ojuelos, a town of about 7000 inhabitants in the northeast corner of the state of Jalisco, the same state that houses Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta. I walked in and asked if I could have a room. I was their only guest, so there was no problem. I went into the room and saw the bed. I was tired, so I jumped on the bed. The air exploded out of my body as I hit the rock-hard bed. I thought to myself, "My god, it feels like the bed frame is made out of concrete. I lifted up the sheets and the blankets, and sure enough found a platform made out of concrete with a paper thin mattress on top. I laughed, breathed hard, and took a nap.

I woke up a couple of hours later and went out for some dinner. I chatted with the woman who was running the place, and asked for chiles rellenos and an apple soda. Another guy asked me if he could move my car in the garage, and I loaned him the keys and explained how to use the clutch on this newer Toyota model. In spite of all of this, the master of the hotel somehow never got the idea that I was speaking Spanish to his family. He smiled across the room at me while eating a jalapeño. He smiled and asked in a loud volume, "Can you eat jalapeño?" I explained that jalapeños were not my favorite chile. Apparently none of my sentences registered because then he shouted at me, "It's hot!" blowing his chile breath into my nose as his 80-decibel mouth was no further than five inches from my face. I thought, "Oh, Brother!" and decided this must be how foreigners feel when they go to small towns in Nebraska where no one has ever seen a foreigner before. But I felt no consternation. It was Christmas, and everyone in that town had been so kind so far.

I did go to Zacatecas the next day and bought cowboy boots, replacing those I lost in my truck fire. I spent the night in the industrial town of Torreon, and called home to explain I'd been in around 8:00 in the evening. I woke up to the news that the peso had dropped severely. I only had a few pesos in my wallet and a $100-bill. I was scared of losing 40 percent of the dollar value at the border if I exchanged it, so I decided to avoid toll roads and drive the back roads home. It was an exhausting day. I couldn't drive on the fancy freeways, and instead went on two-way traffic rocky roads with tractors and old trucks that couldn't make it any faster than 20 miles per hour. There was a lot of stop and go traffic, and I had to take several naps to keep pace. Usually, the two-way traffic roads run parallel to freeways, but when I was approaching Juarez, the last big city before the border, I was faced with leaving the main road and taking the free road to Juarez. But this time, it didn't go parallel to the main highway. I opened up my map, and I was no longer driving north to the States but straight west to the ocean and the sunset. I had only a quarter tank of gas left and I was driving into oblivion. By the time I finally reached a sign pointing north to Juarez, I had driven 40 miles straight west, and then I had to make it up driving back northeast. Since I had so little gas, I drove only 40 miles per hour and listened to Christmas carols as I approached the US. I drove over a hill and could see the lights of Juarez glowing behind the mountains. "I’m going to make it! I’m going to make it!" I shouted to myself with glee. At that moment, my car sputtered and stopped on the narrow right shoulder of the freeway. I was out of gas. I flagged down a diesel truck and asked the two guys to tell the police at the border station ahead to help me. They said they would, and I returned to my car, lifting the latch of my car door, and realizing that I had locked myself out of my car for the second time in three days. I lost my breath screaming. I jumped into the desert so that I could yell and kick sand. I danced around the car in utter self-amazement and inconsolable anger. I had left the lights on so that passing cars would see me, but in the hour that I waited for help my lights started to dim. As the lights grew softer and softer, passing cars got closer and closer, and I in turn prepared to jump away from the car and into the desert in the event that someone should run into my car.

A tow truck finally came. I explained my problem and he said there was no problem because he could tug me into Juarez. But then he noticed that both my gear shift was in fourth gear and my emergency break was engaged. He shrieked, and pounded on the ground. He couldn't pull me as long as my emergency break of engaged. He ran up to my window and started attempting to slide them down with the force of his body. Of course, the handles of the windows were true and he had no applicable torque to offer. We circled the car for five minutes, brain storming. Finally, I stopped him and said, "Do it! Let's break a window." He asked me if I was sure and I said I was. We jumped into the desert, but could not find a rock to break the window with. Instead, he went into his truck and brought out an ax. He gave it to me, but I said that I wasn't going to break the window since I was paying him 150 pesos to help me. He didn't want to do it either as he tapped on the glass. And even though he just tapped on the glass, not even severely enough to scratch it, I yelled. He asked me what the problem was, and I explained that even though I expected him to break my window, I was going to yell as he did it. After four strokes, he finally gave the hatchet enough torque to break the back passenger window. I released the emergency break and put the car into neutral. He towed me into Juarez to a gas station where I paid for the gas with my 100-dollar bill and paid the tow truck driver. Since I left my jumper cables on the volcano down south, I then had to ask each car that entered the gas station if they would jump start me. It took about 15 minutes, but finally someone helped me.

I drove through Juarez amidst Christmas fireworks and police sirens. I crossed the border to the chagrin of two officers who felt very sorry for me. One female officer asked me what I was doing in Mexico, and I said that I was visiting friends and shopping. One other male officer with a deep Texas accent asked me if any of those Mexicans had robbed me. I said no. So he asked me why my back window was broken, and I explained that it was entirely my fault and the Mexican police had helped me. The female officer then asked me if I had anything to declare. I said that I had a bottle of Noche Buena beer I had bought in San Miguel de Allende. She smiled. I asked her if she wanted me to pay a Texas state liquor tax on it, and she said, “Just go home, son! Just go home!” I drove to a Denny’s restaurant, called Dad to tell him I’d be late, and then I drove the US freeway to freezing temperatures blowing through my back window. I arrived home four hours late and had the Christmas duty of relaying my harrowing anecdote to all my family and friends all day long, the same friends and family who lived through my truck explosion seven months previously.

Now, no one will travel by car with me.

Insert La Loncheria