As I drifted off to sleep in the airport parking lot, I reflected on Ecuador to date.

    Immediately upon entrance, after I helped the girl at Immigrations with some English practice, Ecuador offered an unmistakable gift – four-lane roads, two in each direction.  Back home we called them “interstate highways” and it seemed much longer than one country since I had seen them.  That extra lane made all the difference in the world going up and coming down hills, which did not stop at the border.  The landscape never, ever changed at the border.  Borders are only important to humans.

    Otavalo was lovely.  And the ease of driving which had first greeted me was emblematic of a general sense of greater ease in this country.  Life seemed to move more slowly here, people seemed less driven, women were less made up.  Ecuador seemed more indigenous and less interested in and affected by current worldly things.

    My lasting memory of Otavalo was the garbage trucks, which were equipped with speakers that played the sweetest little tune you’ve ever heard.  Where I’m from, hearing that sort of tune sends the young at heart scrambling for cash for the ice cream truck nearby.  I wondered if American children visiting Otavalo were similarly fooled.  One could only hope.

    I drove two hours through varying amounts of rain to Quito.  I caught up on writing, then made the sobering realization that, as the crow flies, I wasn’t yet halfway to the end of the road.  I whimpered, then took a bus to Plaza Chica and wandered around the old part of town, spending most of my time focused on the Basilica de Voto Nacional. I shot this beautiful church from far and near, and paid for a tour of its towers. Amazing staircases, exterior ladders.  Dodgy, wonderful. 

    I continued meandering for hours, until the rain came.  Then I was off, to pick up some laundry, then to the airport.  I had a 5am flight to Bogotá for U2’s first concert ever in the country.

    I found a good, safe spot under a light, packed for Bogotá, stowed things out of sight, put up the curtains, and set up for bed. It was such a strange, wonderful sensation, doing it all in such a public place.

    Ready for travel and for bed, I headed into the airport, where I ate dinner and brushed my teeth.

    It was a short night of intermittent voices, luggage rolling, and car doors, trunks, and alarms.

    I hadn’t seen U2 in concert since just six weeks after 9/11, when I came down from my apartment in The Bronx to see them at a stop on their Elevation Tour.  Strange, sad days.  The concert was therapy for me, for all of us lucky enough to be in Madison Square Garden that night.

    I had been a fan since their second album, War.  It was years before I was able to grasp the moody beauty of much of their third album, The Unforgettable Fire, but there were some easily accessible classics on that one, too.

    All that changed with their fourth album.  They crashed the big-time party with The Joshua Tree, an album of pop, anthems, and ambience.  Filled with blues, gospel, and rock and roll, most fell in love with some of it, and some fell in love with all of it.  There were love letters to America, but many missed the stinging B-sides that included indictments and condemnations of U.S. foreign policy.  I cannot name an equivalent album that at once made such a drastic leap musically and immediately catapulted a band so forcefully from the alternative shadows into the brightest of spotlights.  

    I am hardly objective, but I consider it to be a damn near perfect album, one that should be listened to in its entirety, preferably on a roadtrip, preferably in the southwestern United States.  But any dry area will do.  Any roadtrip will do.  Any time will do.

    That album was right on time for me and for many others.  It has provided the soundtrack for many memorable hours of driving, but I will never forget hearing it live with a few brothers and 40,000 other fortunate souls.

    Big Trev – from Mexico and Belize fame – met me at the baggage claim in Bogotá.  I knew it was him because he’s a mountain, but also because he held a sign that said, “El Dave.”  I laughed and thanked him for picking me up, to which he accurately responded, “Hey, I was born in Montana.”

    I had bought four tickets while in Granada, months ago.  We met up with Juan, a local friend of Trevor’s, and Juan’s friend Steve from Boone, North Carolina.  He had done well with storage units back home, which afforded him to live like a king down here.  He was crazy, and to me and Trev quickly became, quite simply, “Boone.”

    My OCD appreciated the band’s adherence to chronology as the concert started with “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” then “New Year’s Day” off of War, then “Pride” and “Bad” off of The Unforgettable Fire.  And then they played The Joshua Tree in its entirety.

    We screamed.  We sang.  We were shredded.  The boys smoked joints.  We had to stop Boone from crawling under the fence and heading down onto the field.

    I spent another night at the airport upon my return to Quito, then… rested and caught up on writing amidst the mist of the Bella Vista Cloud Forest Reserve; met my first bicycle warrior – dumbfounded and impressed by such a trek – as we camped at 15,000 ft at the foot of Mt. Cotopaxi; was moved and mesmerized by a procession during the Fiesta de la Virgen in Baños de Agua Santa; and took a bus into the hills outside of El Tambo to visit Ingapirca, where the Cañari people had first repelled, then befriended the Inca… with two encores, lights, screams and lyrics fading, me wondering whether or not...

…I still
haven’t found
what I’m looking for