Take It Easy

Long drive today, started at 6am. Just got up, chucked stuff in the car and drove. Took 9 hours, but the road was full of new and unique events:

14 geological wonders, 1 shit Mexican breakfast, 6 wrong turns, 8 piss stops (male), 1 piss stop (female), 2 outrageously expensive Native American superstores, 9 bottles of water, 2 fuel fill-ups, 3 Route 66 shops, 3 Christian rock radio stations swiftly changed, 2 Christian rap-metal stations changed even faster, 1 painted desert, 1 petrified forest, 325 mentally challenged truckers passed at wife-scaringly high speed, 3 pieces of chewing gum, 0 cigarettes, 1,234 soppy but wonderful C&W songs, 2 African Americans and 0 Elk crashes.

No guidebook is needed for this drive, it is surely deeply etched on any Americana must-do. It’s Route 66, it’s movies, songs, books and there’s a pleasing cliché every few miles. We don’t like to ‘recommend’ stuff, but the painted desert and the nearby petrified forest are not to be sniffed at. The Route 66 shops in Seligman are dangerous, as are the ‘Standing On The Corner‘ ones in Winslow AZ. I will never need another key ring in this life.
Sedona AZ is without doubt one of the poshest places on earth. Makes Mayfair look a little down-at-heel. They even cover the temporary railings in tarpaulins that match the surrounding rock formations. The only place to have ones aura photographed then find a suitable vortex to align my psyche. Welcome to Happy Valley.

Having been tucked up in Happy Valley for at least 20 hours now I have researched the average day for a resident in this heavenly place and here are the basic ingredients:

* Wake when you wake and breathe in the crystalline perfect air.
* Look out of the 25ft picture window and wave to the extremely fit and bronzed joggers and dog walkers – you know them all by name.
* Shower in the “Titanic Room” before your granola and radish juice.
* Have another look out of the window.
* Power walk to your Vinyassa flow class with Starrchild.
* Enjoy a post-yoga everything-free coffee on the Lilac Terrace with your chums Juniper and Persimmon.
* Play a little avant-garde street xylophone.
* Go to Sedona Whole Foods for a few basics: organic dandelion leaves, non-sprouting mung beans, a sourdough ciabatta, one heirloom tomato and a small bag of shelled pistachio nuts. Put the $256.54 bill on your new “ecofreedom” MasterCard.
* Sling the items in your unbleached hemp tote bags, get home and dump shopping on ethically mined quartz countertop for the maid to put away.
* Listen to Kenny G and Matt Venuti for approximately 12 minutes.
* Masturbate furiously for 12 minutes wondering how on earth you ever got here.
* Realise we’re all going to Hell in a Handcart so you’d better get your aura photographed – quickly.

* Realise the whole of civilisation (except Sedona) is doomed so you’d better sign up for a desert-based meditational journey – quickly.
 * Pray for the God of Fags to drop 20 Marlboro on your sun terrace. Now.
* Phone your poetry workshop leader and lie about not being able to make it tonight.
* Shave your toes.
* Try and re-align your chakras.
* Find the bottle of vodka you hid in the garage behind the birthing pool.
* Drink the vodka neat – but with ice – until you shit yourself and pass out.

I love this place.