The medinas in Morocco are the places that time forgot. Once inside the walls, life stepped back, unchanged for the last hundred years. Driving through Arizona wasn't that much different. Surreal, a bit like being on a permanent living and breathing film set. Spectacular landscape, dotted by half hearted settlements that seem oddly quaint. I might be entirely urban, but I am still someone that calls India home. Maybe it's a cultural thing, or maybe it's all the absence of bullock carts that makes me feel this way or the sight of forlorn tumbleweed.
We're in Dolan Springs, and it is nothing but a little village in the true sense of the word, just missing the trappings. Unlike most villages I know, it extends to fill the vast horizon so I'm happy to go along with their definition of small town. Small hick town crowds my brain as we park at the gas station feeling oddly out of costume. I watch the burly man exit the store, baby clamped to his chest while three others dally around, the chimes on the door echoing noisily behind. There's no one on the porch, but I swear they just might have been. It's like the clocks move more lethargically this side of the border.
The van that ought to be coloured like a school bus pulls out, towing a resisting trailer tanker of water. My nose crinkles and I settle for burly dude being a model father, lugging around a port-a-pool for his children's paddling pleasure. Right! Daniel eventually appears with yet another cup of coffee (for a man that drives on average between 300-400 miles a day, yes, A day, he doesn't reek of eau de café), clearly affected by the town's absence of speed and gives us a bit of history. The Springs in the Dolan Springs is more optimism than anything else as they lack a proper water supply. We're not really sure quite what he means. Read the man's lips - there is no proper water supply. Ergo, the pretend port-a-pool being towed around. We are parked in a town with an alleged population of 2,000 bodies and at least 1,000 vehicles in the middle of the worlds greatest rumoured superpower, and they don't have running tap water. Unbidden, I think of DDM's broker and his indefatigable enthusiasm at introducing each flat with a flourish of the wrist in the bathroom/kitchen, "See, 24 hours water!". It does not augur well for the aptly named Washing Well Laundromat....
Daniel the well informed (inhaling weed has many spectacular side effects - such as meeting interesting people of course!), shares the fact that 1 of the 2,000 inhabitants of Dolan Springs includes a mad scientist. Yep, that is correct. A 100% bonafide mad scientist. A brilliant man who has explored the realms of anti gravity amongst other things and has also (as we were reliably informed), been spoken to by aliens on more than a single occasion, and had court cases slapped against him for patent infringement to stop him in his ground breaking research. Naturally, he has been investigated by the FBI, CIA, ATS, DDA, YMCA....
Regretfully, it's time for us to move on before we can run through the roster of the remaining 1,999 inhabitants of this wonderful part of the world. Maybe next time.
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