Alex Bell - fantasy author

Well, perhaps not stranded as such, but I am in a Marriott in a little town called Kingman when I’m supposed to be in Flagstaff by now in the Monte Vista.

This morning we went to visit a little ghost town called Oatman. http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/az/oatman.html This was the highlight of my trip so far. I liked Las Vegas, but a person can only take so much of all that glitz. Clark Gable spent his honeymoon with Carole Lombard in Oatman. And if it’s good enough for Clark Gable then, by heck, it’s good enough for me. We had lunch at the haunted Oatman Hotel where the walls of the bar area were entirely covered in dollar bills. We worked out that there must have been several thousand dollars worth there.

After having a wander around, we set off along Route 66 for the three-hour drive on to Flagstaff. We’d been on the road for a while, and I was sat in the back, happily engrossed in Best Served Cold when, suddenly, the car went over a stone and then started making this suspicious rattly noise. We pulled over, and confirmed what we all dreaded - we had a flat tyre. Not a big deal, usually, but no one wants to get a flat tyre when the view from the side of the road is this:

Not only that, but we hadn’t seen another car for a very long time (not counting the rusty, abandoned crashed one we spotted halfway down the cliff). And none of us had any mobile signal whatsoever. Mild panic ensued. Especially when, for a horrible few minutes, we thought there was no spare tyre. Finally, through a gargantuan group effort, we discovered a tyre shaped thing underneath the car. It took another lengthy period to actually get to it, because you had to lift up the drinks holder inside the car and then unscrew the floor, geez, it was like some sort of Chinese puzzle box.

In the meantime, a lovely American family came along in their car and stopped to help us. We did look quite helpless and pathetic, with all our luggage piled up on the side of the road. This is one of the reasons why I love America. Everyone always seems so friendly and ready to help you. It took about an hour to jack up the car and get the spare tyre on but they stuck with us and didn’t leave until we were all set to go. Before they left, they checked our other tyres. This was fortunate as it turns out that there’s a bubble or something (hey, I ain’t no mechanic) in one of the front tyres that makes it unsafe to drive very far on. They said we’d need to get a new tyre at the nearest town.

In the meantime, my Mum was almost killed by a jumping cactus. Well, not almost killed as such, but the prickly little thing attached itself to her leg, and it looked quite horrible. Luckily the American ladies helped us out with that too. Jumping cactuses. Who knew? My brother’s girlfriend pointed out that bad things come in threes. We went to get back in the car, and instantly discovered the dreaded third thing. It was the Ding Dongs. We’ve wanted to try one since watching Transformers. All over New York and Washington we hunted last year, trying to find this elusive chocolate but to no avail. Finally we located a packet in Las Vegas, and had them in the car with us to sample later. Unfortunately, in all the panic and commotion, someone had put the Ding Dongs on my seat before folding the top part down, effectively squashing them flat. They’d also melted, seeing as they’d been in the car in the searing heat for over an hour.

Once we were on the road again, we attempted to salvage the Ding Dongs from their packet, but this endeavour turned out to be what can only be described as a complete debacle. A fair amount of melted chocolate mess was involved, and we were finally compelled to throw them away when we stopped at Kingman to try to get a new tyre. Unfortunately, it turns out that the tyre place we stopped at doesn’t have the tyre we need. Hopefully it will be there at 8am tomorrow morning. Otherwise we may be stuck in this place for some while. And I want to get on to the haunted hotel at Flagstaff, not to mention the white water rafting in Colorado.

Tags: Holidays