Road Trip I: Arizona
A dispatch from my All-American Industrial Road Trip...
This is Part 1 of my All-American Industrial Road Trip series. You can find Part 2 here.
Dry Heat
Phoenix rises suddenly out of the ashen desert like, well, you know… the sprawl is infinite, the terrain both consistent and nonexistent. From the plane it is obvious to see water is a luxury here, not by any apparent scarcity but rather by how ostentatiously it is flaunted by the wealthy. The most luxurious neighborhoods have comically big pools wedged behind every house, and I even see one cul-de-sac with an artificial lake connecting all the driveways in a closed loop. When we land I see a Honeywell plane on the tarmac inscribed with ‘THE FUTURE IS WHAT WE MAKE IT’ on the side.
Yannan and I rush through the airport and make it just in time for our connecting flight to Tucson. Stepping out into the gateway I am immediately grateful for both Cambridge and California… it is hot, 85 degrees here even in mid-winter.
The flight is short and uneventful. I chat for a bit with a girl sitting next to me about Neil Gaiman, her job as a pharmaceutical assayist, having moms who were teachers, and growing up in Tucson. We reach the city in less than an hour. It’s a more mellow town than Phoenix somehow, rolling hills still green from recent rains. Little boxy houses dot the floodplain and extend out into the countryside, parking lots sit mostly empty outside strip malls and gas stations. We land smoothly, pick up our bags, and head to the hotel.
Our Lyft driver is a cheeky man named Mohammed who insists there isn’t enough room for all of us as he loads our bags into the trunk. At first I am confused by how much he’s doing the bit, repeatedly telling us it’s not going to work, someone has to stay behind, over and over while he opens the doors and adjusts the front seat. I pick it up eventually. Why don’t you stay behind, and we drive ourselves? He laughs. Sure, why not? Just fill up the gas.
The drive through Tucson is slow, and warm. Alien saguaros and vintage hotels pass in a languid sunset haze. Sitting at an intersection, my eyes droop lazily in the heat. I watch a man picking through a dusty lot and unscrew a brown glass bottle. Mohammed is telling me a story about how he moved from Michigan but I’m not quite listening, something about how the sun here is holy, how warmth is beauty, how he stepped off the plane in December ‘99 for a business trip, called his old boss and quit on the spot.
Proving Grounds
The tour starts early the next morning, and we gather at the hotel lobby 20 minutes before sunset. Despite getting no sleep, I feel a pleasant goodwill towards my classmates as we climb into the bus. The rising sun restores color to the desert as we head south. In the vast expanses of blue-green scrub it is strangely easy to forget where I come from; easy to imagine how quickly I’d die out here. An alabaster church gleams at the foot of a distant mountain, and relieves the fugue.
We eventually arrive at the Tinaja Hills Training Center. CAT tests their heavy mining machinery at this site, and giant mobile cranes sit like proud yellow dragons along the ridges as we drive in. The whole visitor complex has a dusty southwestern Jurassic Park vibe… smiling attendants give us hard hats, name tags, and safety goggles before leading us to an auditorium for a welcome video on the amazing feats of Caterpillar engineering.
The morning passes in a series of meetings and presentations, most of which I sleep through; I finally stir when I hear everyone getting up and filing out of the visitor center. We’re excited to be giving you this behind the scenes tour, someone says over the speaker system. This is our ‘Area 51’, so absolutely no pictures! Guess I’ll have to use my incredible powers of description…
We don our hi-vis vests and are split into three groups. My group is led by a baby-faced giant wearing dark blue jeans and tiny glasses under his safety goggles. He is flanked by a shorter man who reminds me a bit of a trucker Billy Bob Thornton — silver goatee, blue lives matter hat, and a sort of jittery flamboyance that would make him well suited for the stage.
Think of a mine like a rock factory, explains Billy Bob as we walk alongside a series of enormous hydraulic mining shovels. It needs to produce a continuous flow of minerals, and the shovels don’t like when that’s disrupted. The shovels hold an ominous organic power, all hulking masses of sloped steel and coiled necks waiting to pierce the earth. Flor whispers in my ear, They remind me of war.
We then head into ‘Building X’, an 85-foot-high steel enclosure arced with girders and bundles of yellow wire. The warhorses sit silently inside, awaiting testing. Some workers sit at a nearby table, too, eating Takis and watching us from under the shadow of the machines. I imagine they have quite a lot of fun when we’re not around; I overheard them singing a Phil Collins song in the lot outside, and I notice one guy has a shrimp cocktail tattooed on his right arm. A sign by their table also reads ‘No Lloydering’, which surely means it happens all the time. My classmates ask a variety of intelligent questions about the equipment — cost per ton calculations, replacement timelines, relative engine torques — and the baby giant smiles after each one, wide and toothless. I love a good question, he lisps and gives us the scoop.
Finally we are loaded back onto the bus and sent on our way. The mood is jovial on the ride home, and we head out west to LA. The sun sets, the jagged cliffs recede into darkness, and I say goodbye to the desert.
great post...
wow what a speedy turnaround