Yeah, the title sounds like one of those superhero battles from Marvel Comics in the 1960s and ’70s. Actually, Dennis Kinch, who is walking west on Route 66 for the National Pain Foundation, met in Vinita, Okla., with Steve Vaught, who is walking east on Route 66 in an effort to lose weight.

Vaught and Kinch met at the excellent Clanton’s Cafe on Route 66 in Vinita. Vaught’s journal (scroll down to the Nov. 29 entry) doesn’t mention this, but I’m hoping that Kinch gave Vaught some good advice during their meeting. Kinch endured dark nights of the soul while dealing with his chronic pain years ago, and he emerged from it. Perhaps he can help Vaught deal with his problems.

Vaught says in his journal he’s about to depart the Sooner State, and he’s not celebrating it, either.

I have to admit that I will miss Oklahoma and its people. I was surprised at the people in this state because I never thought that they would be as great as they are. I want to say thanks to all of those that I have met along the way and want you to know that whether I mentioned you on the site or not I have not and will not forget the experience that you provided me with.

Meanwhile, Kinch is in Claremore. He will meet and greet health specialists and chronic pain sufferers at the Pain Evaluation and Treatment Center at 5801 E. 41st St., Suite 1000, in Tulsa from 10 a.m. to noon Friday.

Some folks are beta-testing an online travel guide called World 66. If nothing else, the name proves that Route 66 has some cachet. It’s an open-sourced site in which users are the contributors of the content, like Wilkipedia.

It’s a long, long way from being as comprehensive as Wilkipedia, though. Tulsa, a pretty good-sized town, merits just four paragraphs and no photos. Meanwhile, tiny Grants, New Mexico, gets three paragraphs and one photo. Springfield, Ill., has one paragraph. Ditto for Springfield, Mo. The lively Route 66 town of Tucumcari, N.M., has no mention at all.

There are better online travel guides out there.

The Pontiac (Ill.) Daily Leader reports that the town of Chenoa is receiving $300,000 from the Illinois Department of Transportation for the Chenoa Route 66 Prairie Trail.

This is part of a bicycle trail that eventually will be set up along the length of Route 66 in Illinois, as previously reported here.

Darned if I can find many Route 66 references. But nostalgia is a significant part of the Route 66 experience, and the Ephemera Now Web site contains it in spades.

In fact, it’s the best nostalgia Web site I’ve seen. It describes itself as “the museum and gift shop of mid-century advertising art and illustration.” The links to artwork and photos are listed by Cars, Wagons, Photos, Trucks, Decor, Advertorium and Christmas. The colors are so vivid, they fairly explode when popped up on the computer screen. New material for the site is detailed in a blog called Pastelogram.

It’s hard to pick favorites because so many of the images are wonderful. This illustration of Interstate 70 passing by Lambert-St. Louis International Airport came from less-complicated times (this stretch was a bypass alignment of Route 66). This congestion-free image of Interstate 5 in Los Angeles in 1960, which bypassed Route 66, would make modern-day Southern California drivers envious.

And this 1960 image foresees fast and simple highway-making. If it really were that fast and simple, the widening of Interstate 44 in Tulsa would have happened by now.

Steve Vaught of thefatmanwalking.com strolled into Vinita, Okla., Sunday night after dealing with severe winds all day. At least he didn’t have to deal with the tornadoes or wildfires, although a 40-foot-tall sign at the hotel where he was staying blew down (the pictures are at the bottom of this page). You can read his latest journal entry here (scroll down to the Nov. 27 entry).

Joe Queenan drove from Albuquerque to Las Vegas, most of it on Route 66, seeking vintage motels. He tells about it on this 30-minute audio link from the BBC. He paid particular attention to wigwam-type motels, which no doubt include the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Ariz.

Hat tip to Ken Chambers of Surrey, England, for the link.

A blog, Oklahoma Wine News, reports that Summerside Vineyards and Winery on old Route 66 in Vinita, Okla., won a silver medal for its Pensacola Dam Red wine and a bronze medal for its Route 66 Red wine at the recent Wines of the South Competition.

While surfing on Summerside’s site, I also found a Route 66 White wine.

Unfortunately, I’m not much of a wine drinker. But if someone opens a Route 66-themed microbrewery near Tulsa, I’m there.

The St. Petersburg Times has a long article about Albuquerque’s Route 66 district. Earning prominent mention are such 66 stalwarts as the Aztec Motel, 66 Diner and Nob Hill. No mention of the endangered El Vado Motel, though.

Aroll Gellner in the San Francisco Chronicle explains why Route 66 aficionados eschew the interstates when possible and sticks to the old two-lane roads.

Charles Kuralt, the longtime “On the Road” correspondent for CBS News, once observed that “thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.” Since Kuralt made that comment a generation ago, things have only gotten worse. Nowadays, instead of not seeing anything, we just see the same things over and over, no matter where we go.

Although the interstate system crisscrosses some of the most splendidly varied landscape on the earth, it has also helped make traveling that landscape an experience of unparalleled monotony. It matters little whether you’re on the left coast or the right, on the Canadian border or in the Deep South: As long as you stay near the freeway, you could be anywhere or nowhere. …

The pity is, you wouldn’t know what was lost unless you had seen what came before. Motor down what’s left of Highway 97 in Northern California, or Highway 1 along the New England coast, or the legendary Route 66 that once spanned Chicago to Santa Monica, and you can still get a vivid sense of what it was like before modern freeways.

On your own time, you traverse a landscape reflecting America’s kaleidoscopic variety, each town unique in its geography, lifestyles, industry, food and pastimes. This colorful pageant of Americana is what the interstates and their environs deny us. In its place, we’re fed bland cultural pabulum for mile upon monotonous mile; a landscape strategized, formulated and set in place by indifferent strangers in a far-off boardroom instead of by the locals in their own front rooms. …

But in paring off those few minutes and miles, we’ve also doomed ourselves to miss that hoagie, that cheese steak, that spiedie sauce, or that slab of Flint’s barbecue, not to mention that clunky cup of MJB served by a waitress named Dot whose greeting comes from her own head instead of some corporate manual, and who reminds us that the real America is still out there, beyond the off-ramps and down the road.

Read the whole thing. Kuralt would agree with its sentiments.

Apple’s QuickTime site has released a new teaser trailer for the Route 66-themed movie, “Cars,” from Pixar Animation Studios. The movie will be released June 2006.

There also are some big honkin’ high-definition files of the trailer if you really want to test your bandwidth.

(NOTE: This requires QuickTime 7.0 to run the file.)

Here’s a story in Newsday about Mark Cundy, who not only has walked Route 66, but has nearly circled the planet in an effort to raise money for cancer research.

There’s not much Route 66 content in the story except for this:

“I had this romantic idea of walking Route 66 the whole way, but in New Mexico, it becomes a dirt path at one point, so I switched to the interstates, which didn’t always make the police too happy,” he said.

Mark “Worldwalker” Cundy’s site is here. He has a photo gallery of United States sights, including the Cadillac Ranch, the Grand Canyon and the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

The Dallas Morning News has just published a long story about Steve Vaught, the obese man who’s trying to lose weight by walking across America, including on Route 66. The story is here. Steve’s thefatmanwalking.com site, which I’ve referred to often in the past, is here.

Thanks for the sentiments.

A few weeks ago, I found a tidbit in the Holbrook (Ariz.) Tribune-News about a new program to develop property that once had old underground fuel tanks on them. More details about the program have emerged today.

Through a partnership with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), the EPA has decided to test a new program along Route 66 in Holbrook, Joseph City and Winslow. The Route 66 Development Initiative in Navajo County will be a pilot program to determine whether it is appropriate for other towns along Route 66.

Considering that many old stretches of Route 66 remain blighted because developers are too skittish of those old remediation sites, I’d say this program is long overdue.

The Quay County Sun in Tucumcari, N.M., has featured a semi-regular feature about tourists passing through town on Route 66. This week’s includes Allen and Kathy Priddy of Idaho. You can read about it here.

Incidentally, Allen Priddy is a cousin to Emily Priddy, eastern vice president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association. They met about a week ago at the Rock Cafe in Stroud, Okla.

The new owner of the historic El Vado Motel in Albuquerque, Richard Gonzales, said this during sworn testimony in a recent Landmarks Commission hearing:

I conveyed that to Mr. Boles and I can’t understand why they’ve taken this posture that I’m going to demolish the El Vado. It’s just not what I wanted to do. I’ve never conveyed that I would knock it down.

So how would Mr. Gonzales explain this quote on Oct. 13 to the Albuquerque Tribune?

“If I don’t get the zoning, that doesn’t stop the project,� he said. “As far as demolishing it, nothing will prohibit me.�

Steve Vaught of thefatmanwalking.com has his latest journal entry. Go here and scroll down to the Nov. 21 entry.

The Animation World Network site has a few more tidbits about the “other” Route 66-themed animated film in production from DreamWorks, titled “Route 66.”

It sounds like details are sketchy, however. One site I’ve found lists Harland Williams as the director and screenwriter, while AWN has none listed. This site has 2010 as the release date, while the other lists 2007.

But there is this plot line, which I’ve not seen before:

ROUTE 66 is the strange tale of Mulligan, a giant golf ball statue on the side of legendary Route 66, who sets off to find his beloved Betty, a giant blueberry fruit stand ad, when she is carted off one day.

Here’s another tidbit from AWN:

SHREK 2’s director Vernon wrote the script with Harlan (sic) Williams from a pitch by Vernon, Williams and Rej Bourdages, the head of DreamWorks’ story department.

I’m going to print an e-mail I received from Michael Taylor, program manager for the Route 66 Preservation Program:

El Vado’s status is still very much up in the air. The more people that fill the rooms at the upcoming meetings, the better. I think it would be especially important to get Albuquerque residents to appear at the meetings in favor of El Vado’s preservation. If you can’t make it, more letters are needed.

Ed Boles, Preservation Planner for the City of Albuquerque, updated me on the following aspects of the situation as it stands today (some of this probably many of you are already aware of):

********************************

The Landmarks Commission deferred a decision on the application until its December 14 public hearing. There were procedural reasons and a need for more information than was presented in the application and analysis. Some public testimony was heard, and it was dominated by people who supported the owner’s assertion that he was considering leaving a small portion of El Vado standing to be donated to an unnamed party.

Anyone who wants the Landmarks and Urban Conservation Commission to recommend that the City Council designate El Vado a City Landmark should appear and speak, if possible, at the December 14 hearing. If that’s not possible, writing the Commission and its chairman, William Dodge, is advised. The Commission’s address is c/o City of Albuquerque Planning Department, 600 Second Street NW, Suite 300, Albuquerque NM 87102. (Editor’s note: E-mails can be forwarded to Dodge through Public Information Officer Deborah Nason at dnason@cabq.gov or Sherri Hines at shines@cabq.gov)

***************************

There remains the owner’s application to re-zone the land for a residential use. That would harm prospects for preservation.

Anyone who wants to see El Vado saved might best make reasoned arguments on its merits as a commercial property to the Environmental Planning Commission and as a City Landmark to the Landmarks and Urban Conservation Commission. (The Planning Commission will meet on December 15, a day after the Landmarks Commission Meeting.)

It may also be useful to communicate with Mayor Chavez (e-mail: mayor@cabq.gov) and incoming City Councilor Isaac Benton, whose commitment to the place will be essential to a good long-term outcome. (Editor’s note: Benton can be e-mailed at isaac@benton4council.com)

Kate Nelson, a columnist for the Albuquerque Tribune, weighed in a few days ago about the condition of El Vado Motel:

Thick adobe walls and lovely old vigas can’t counteract the lunch-gagging stench of the El Vado Motel - a place where the ghosts of meth addicts, prostitutes and worse seem to wander even now, weeks after the rooms were cleared of residents and a new fence was chained shut and bolted tight.

Tree roots claw into the foundation. Jerry-rigged wiring laces in and out of windows. An open sewer features . . . well, what you’d expect.

Strange. Albuquerque Tribune reporter Maggie Shepard paints a much-different view of the motel’s condition on Oct. 19:

The rooms, none larger than 20-by-15, seem sleepy. But they are neat and don’t smell 68 years old.

The carpet is vacuumed, the teal and mauve bedspreads crisply tucked beneath thin mattresses. The bathrooms are clean, although the original black and white mini-tiles have dulled.

Most of the beds rise two feet off the ground, some tipping at slight - or not so slight - angles. The 19-inch televisions are cable-equipped and every phone works.

Kathryn Sloan of Sydney, Australia, stayed at El Vado this year, and had plenty of good things to say about it:

There was no ‘gagging stench’, there was no ‘prostitutes’ hanging around, an open sewer … not that I saw.

When we stayed – our room was clean – it smelled fresh … it had all we needed for a place to stay … the manager was friendly and helpful and was tending the gardens and clearing the courtyard while we were there.

Emily Priddy, who was in Albuquerque last month to testify in front of the Planning Commission about the motel’s proposed rezoning, saw a motel that was well-kept and clean.

I know of another Route 66 fan who stayed at El Vado the final night of its operation as a motel, and he said it was fine.

So what happened? Is someone lying, or is the new owner of El Vado not maintaining his property as he should?