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Day 29 - The Handoff
I met Mama Jury in Pipestone, Minnesota this morning to swap out the Taurus for the Spacemobile. We took a nice lunch and a quick tour of a pipestone quarry, complete with solid Native American history, a shifty-eyed guide and a store full of authentic pipes to be purchased for wholesome, non-drug related uses. It was nice to see a little touch of family before she split back to Minneapolis and I to everywhere else.
A four-hour drive through corn brought me to South Dakota’s capital city, Pierre (pronounced ‘Peer’, so as to discourage any suspicions of being associated with the French). My friend Laura lives here temporarily, doing environmental work for the government. Apparently everyone who lives in Pierre does one of these two things – environmental stuff or working for the government – except for those who are there to manage waste dumps in between jail sentences, of whom there are a lot, Laura tells me. The town is all you’d expect from the South Dakota capital. The town motto is “Pierre. The Capital City!” It goes from there. We caught up on old times over a seven-dollar dinner at Pierre’s fanciest restaurant, across the street from one of the town’s many corner-store casinos. I think this is the gambling rule in South Dakota – all casinos must be no larger than 50 square feet, and must also sell gas and bait.
I suppose I should talk about the Spacemobile now that I've finally been reunited with my favorite vehicular abomination, but I feel like I've already spent a fair amount of time on it. Instead a few words for the Imposter, which I now say goodbye to. It started out as a second-choice ride, but the agile little Taurus proved its metal during the 8,500 miles I put it through over the past four weeks. The 6-CD changer was key, the sleeping wasn't too bad at all (though perhaps had certain elements of bad luck associated with it), and I certainly saved at least a hundred dollars in gas money since it gets far-superior mileage to the gasaholic Spacemobile. Not to mention it has a bumper and a starter motor that actually works. It handled like a champ through Midwest, East, South and North again and all the ridiculous loops therein, and I'll miss it. An Imposter no longer, the Taurus has definitely established itself at the real thing.
Day 30 - Motorcycles and the Art of Spacemobile Maintenence
Perhaps I spoke too soon about the Spacemobile... it's doing it again. That thing where the engine shuts off every time you drop below 2,000 rpm. So you can't break or coast without stalling on the highway. But it's not a deal breaker... as long as one arm is strong enough to fight the non-power steering and the other rides the ignition to restart every few minutes. And so we press on. It just gets real annoying when you're circumnavigating Mount Rushmore through fifty-thousand bikers.
I kind of wish the Spacemobile and cars in general would just have all their problems at once and get it over with, rather than misleading you into thinking they'll last a few more years until a vent goes in two weeks and a tire blows in two weeks more. My father once related to me the legend of the Deacon's Masterpiece, a suburbly-crafted carriage in the days when people crafted carriages. It was called the One-Hoss Shay; Shay meaning carriage, and Hoss meaning horse, and it was specially designed by the skilled Deacon so that all the parts would stop working at exactly the same time. One moment you'd be cruising along just fine, your Hoss pulling you and your Missussmoothly down the ol' way, everything working perfectly, and then the next minute the carraige would be in pieces on the ground. Kind of a satisfying ending - no worrying about repairs or anything. Your ride is just toast, and you go buy another one. It seems Mr. Deacon was a man of closure. I suppose this appeals to the meticulous aspect of my nature as well. Or else the part that just likes to see Shays fly apart into little piece with Missuses riding in them.
Amidst all of its other glories, Pierre SD is also located precisely on the time zone line between Central and Mountain Time. So people around the city just kind of pick which time zone they want to be in – most choose Central, though there are some bars and strip clubs that go Mountain for the purpose of being able to stay open a little later, I guess. Just one more thing to add to the madness of living in Pierre.
 I flew across South Dakota as fast as I could because most of the state is kind of boring, though I got hung up a bit at Mount Rushmore and Sturgis because the annual Harley Davidson convention was in town. I've never seen so many bikers. Hogs lining the streets, leather in hot weather as far as the nose could smell and biker-folks doing everything from sight-seeing to holding prayer circles. What happend to the days when bikers just played pool and kicked your teeth in? Still, an interesting phenomenon, so many of one kind of thing all in one place. Like a Vegas Elvis convention or that Hitchcock movie The Birds. If the birds rode motorcycles with chick birds riding around on the back of them.
Local tourism pandering to the bikers did make one interesting point though. "Welcome Bikers - You are a symbol of American freedom," the Schmidt and Stanley's Mortgage sign read. It's true - as much as some might cringe at the idea, our country has always been about freedom, like being able to roam wherever you please, pursuing whatever happiness you might choose, the wind through your hair. Why a mortgage firm I'm not sure - I suppose bikers need to refinance their homes like everyone else.
South Dakota, at least, has the Black Hills, Badlands, Rushmore (which I caught) and Wall Drug (which I purposely avoided. North Dakota has dick. As I've always promised, I picked off the corner and went on my way. I did get stopped for about fifteen minutes at a road work site and had an interesting conversation with Sam, a wide-eyed construction worker who told me he'd been the one to discover a lot of the dinosaur bones in several museums, but gave them to the famous archeologists whose names are now on them in exchange for valuable gemstones. He also told me he'd been there for thirteen hours straight (it was about 99 degrees). I asked him how many days he'd been working there in a row and he stared at me with the widest eyes I'd ever seen and said, in a rather freaky manner, "Without a break? About a month!" I moved on as soon as the pilot car showed up.
Please forgive any sporadic postings over the next few days... as my friend Jeff put it, cell-phoning from Montana and Wyoming "is like radioing from the darkside of the moon". Not much yet can be gleaned about either of these states as I head into eastern Montana for the night, except that eastern Montana so far looks a lot like western North Dakota.   I think the two states are having a war, by the way. Yes, those are bullet holes in both the Montana sign and the North Dakota sign just across from it (I missed the ND one coming into the state so had to get it on the way out). Cell phone problems and tumbleweed aren't the only things that increase as you go further west, I guess.
Day 31a - THE SPACEMOBILE IS DYING
Oh, I’m in trouble now.
What happened today resulted in my ending up in a Motel 6 in Billings, Montana, instead of camping by a lake in the Wyoming mountains as I had hoped. What happened today left the Road Trip somewhat changed, and left me with a terrible terrible sunburn. What happened today will make me several hundred dollars poorer. At least.
What happened today was an interesting combination of bad ideas, good ideas, and things that just could not be helped. Any decisions I made, though, bad or good, did not have nearly as much impact as did the massive forces of fate that are put into motion when the Spacemobile decides to go down.
I woke up in the spacious back seat of the Mobile outside a Casino on an Indian Reservation in Montana (perhaps the last time I’ll do any of that) near Little Big Horn. I rose a little later than I had meant to and decided to forego the 10-dollar admission fee to the battleground and just see the outside briefly before heading out. Probably a bad idea – it would have been the last real stop I had with the Spacemobile. I also neglected to stop for breakfast and recharge my phone (the cigarette lighter in the van doesn’t work - a minor inconvenience until you rely on it for power). Another bad idea – I would certainly need it later.
About ten miles north of the Wyoming border, the Mobile started acting funny. I mean worse than the stalling-all-the-time, no-wheel-alignment, non-bumper-having act it usually puts on. 
It started to smell, and became unable to make it up to 50, a speed even the Blue Beast can usually handle. I pulled over to try and determine what the problem was, which was silly because clearly I know nothing about German auto engines. Maybe another bad idea, because when I started again the Mobile could only get up to 20. Though this may have happened anyway. I tried to get up one last hill and coast gently down into the next town for help. And it was there, near the top of a southern Montana hill, that the Little Engine That Couldn’t just gave up.
I decided to try and turn the van around, let gravity do the work, and cross the grassy median back onto the correct side of the highway and down to hopefully a gas station off the next exit at the bottom of the hill. Surprisingly, this was a good idea. I waited until no traffic was coming and successfully pulled a kind of ghetto K-turn on the wrong side of the highway, then rolling through weeds to the other side and down.
At the bottom of the hill was a sign for the town of Aberdeen, so I aimed for it. Bad idea. Despite being on my map, Aberdeen Montana is not so much a 'town' as it is a 'not-town' –there was absolutely nothing there when I coasted almost a mile down this dirt road that supposedly led to the center of the city. And by nothing, I don’t mean a house or two and a stop sign. There was nothing, not even a single building. Not even one. Just some railroad tracks and a small bridge over a filthy creek. It was here that the Spacemobile took its last step.
 I had to jog a mile and a half up the tracks to find a building of any sort - this little railroad switch house which I guess is downtown Aberdeen. Actually there was a sign that said West Aberdeen, as if to imply that there was an East Aberdeen, or an Aberdeen to begin with. Anyhow for some reason the door was unlocked and there was a phone inside, although it could only make collect calls and had no return number, so I had to call Papa Jury and have him call AAA for me. At one point I was on the line with my dad at work in Minneapolis who was on the line with the AAA dispatcher in Bloomington who was on the line with Ted's Towing in Wyoming who was on the line with their driver coming to find me in Montana. It was all very ridiculous.
As a result of this six-degree game of telephone coupled with the fact that I was parked on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, it took the tow guy six hours to find me. Six hours, during which I sat in the sun and baked my brains out. It was about 100 degrees, and there wasn't any shade to speak of except inside the Spacemobile. And no, there was no sitting in there. Do you have any idea how hot it is inside a dead Spacemobile on a 100-degree day? Someone please remind me who coined this phrase, but “center of the sun” comes to mind. Not just the sun, but the center of the sun.
Instead I drank every liquid thing I could find in the car, including the skanky water out of the bottom of my food cooler and I think some brake fluid.  I did my best to cover up from the sun, but mostly I just succeeded in looking ridiculous. By the end of it I looked like some sweaty cross between a Middle Eastern man and a loppy rapper. I think I'm going to have to change my hiphop name to Arabian White. Because obviously I have a hiphop name.
Finally the dude found me and hauled the Mobile and I all the way back to Billings, doubley redoing any progress I'd made that morning and putting me square in the middle of Montana. I had an interesting conversation with the guy about his days of pulling people out of wrecked cars, which was good because it took us two hours to get back to Billings in this enormous truck going 55 carrying the once-mighty Mobile piggy back.
And that's where I am now. In the middle of Montana, with no car and no one who can look at it until Monday morning. There's a life lesson here somewhere - no matter what plans you've made, something can come up at any moment and just smash the shit out of them. I certainly couldn't have predicted this. But maybe it's a good thing - I was starting to get too much into the destination rythym, just checking off stops. Now I've got to think of something else. And that's the true test - how you deal when the road dead ends on you.
I don't know what I'm going to do. But damnit, I'm going to figure it out. I figure this is a good opportunity to brainstorm some zany strategies, and that's what I sit down to do now. Because nothing short of zany will save me now.
Day 31b - The Options
Sometimes when you're making a decision, it's good to write down all the reasonable options, just so you can see them all laid out together. And when decision regards a roadtrip that will inevitably be read about by others on the web, sometimes it's good to write down all the ridiculous options as well. And who knows maybe one of those will turn out to be the best.
So here's what I came up with at 2am in my motel room for possible choices of what to do now:
OPTIONS: |
COSTS: |
INITIAL INSTINCTS: |
| Hang out in Billings until the Spacemobile gets fixed on Saturday or Sunday, then proceed as planned |
- 1 more night hotel
- Cost of fixing Mobile |
Reasonably attractive – everything is mostly like it was, just pushed back a day or two. Can proceed at leisure, and just get places when I get there |
| Hang out in Billings until the Spacemobile gets fixed on Monday or Tuesday, then proceed as planned |
- 2 or 3 more nights hotel
- Cost of fixing Mobile
|
I dunno – would be expensive, plus would push everything way back. Besides what the hell am I going to do in Billings for 4 days? |
| Hang out in Billings until the Spacemobile gets fixed on Monday or Tuesday, but rent a car in the meantime and check out the Northwest. Proceed directly to California after that. |
- Rental car
- Cost of fixing Mobile
|
Expensive (though worse than 3 hotel nights?), but solves all other problems with previous plan. Would be pretty sweet to have a fourth color on the flash map |
| Bury the Spacemobile, rent Uhaul and go to LA via Seattle. Then fly back to Mpls, returning through the other states in Spacemobile 2. Then figure out some way to get Spacemobile 2 back |
- Roundtrip plane ticket
- Cost of renting and driving Uhaul via Seattle to LA
- The unforseeable financial and non-financial costs of getting Mobile 2 back to Mpls
|
Possible, though this is getting kind of complicated. Main concern is getting Mobile 2 back home again. Plus I doubt if Mama and Papa Jury will let me do it after what I did to the first one |
| Bury the Spacemobile, proceed in Uhaul, altering route substantially to hit all remaining states on way to LA. Then fly back to Mpls for Boundary Waters trip and fly back |
- Roundtrip plane ticket
- Cost of renting and driving roughly one trillion miles in a Uhaul
- Cost of buying new furniture in LA since I will no longer be able to bring out my old stuff
|
This is just plain madness. Go to every state in the western United States in a Uhaul? |
| Put the Spacemobile in the back of a huge Uhaul truck, drive through Seattle to LA and let mechanics there figure it out. Visit Northwest folks in a few weeks on way back out to LA |
- Cost of fixing Mobile
- Cost of renting ginormous Uhaul truck (ginormous = gigantic + enormous; precisely the size it would take to fit the Spacemobile. Thank you Laura)
- Added cost of driving further next trip
|
The Spacemobile riding inside a Uhaul? What kind of aircraft carrier Uhaul is this? Maybe I could put a third car inside the Mobile and have one of those Russian Chinadoll things. At least I’ll never have to worry about being safe when I sleep |
| Just get to L.A. somehow, don’t worry about the rest of the states |
|
Not an option |
So cast your votes. Now, I sleep. Tomorrow, I figure out how the heck I'm going to finish this roadtrip.
Day 32 - Roadtrip-Within-A-Roadtrip
I ran 7 miles this morning – not because I particularly wanted to, but because that’s how far away my hotel was from the Spacemobile. Actually it was only about 4, but Billings has no through-streets so in order to get there I had to run down a highway about a mile and a half out of the way.
As I feared, the guy at the dealership said nobody could look at the van until Monday morning. I also went next door to the Uhaul store and was told it would cost about 350 dollars to rent a Uhaul to Los Angeles, and there was no such thing as one big enough to hold a car inside of it. Damnit. There goes the funniest plan. I could have rented a Uhaul and then rented a trailer to go with it for the Mobile, but that would have been a bit silly having an empty Uhaul truck pulling a full Volkswagen. Plus it would cost about 600 bucks.
Not quite feeling up to a half marathon, I took a cab back to Motel 6 and checked out and sat down to figure out what to do. The votes had come in, and the decision was really not all that difficult when you boil it down. Stay in Billings for 3 days, or don’t stay in Billings for 3 days. Hmm.
I had to call every single rental company in the city before I found one that would rent a car with unlimited mileage to a 23-year old, and even then they hit me with a fat 25 buck-per-day fee for being too young. What the hell is with that, anyway? I’ve been old enough to drink for two years, old enough to get drafted and die for my country for five years, and old enough to drive for almost a decade, but I can’t rent a car? At least I have one more meaningful birthday to look forward to. I can’t wait for that 25 Rent-a-Car kegger. The same dude came back in his cab/station wagon to take me the rental place – apparently there’s only one taxi in all of Billings and he’s it.
The plan is this. Given the uncertainty of my future car situation, I’ve decided to take care of the Northwest right here and now, with a little help from the good people at Alamo rental cars.  By the way, the car they gave me? Out of all possible compact or mid-size cars they could have had – it’s a Ford Taurus. A beige one, but a Taurus nonetheless. No sunroof, but the remote entry works. Somebody is trying to tell me something. The Imposter lives.
The reason I need unlimited miles is because I'm about to drive a ricockulous amound of miles in the next two days. And there’s no way I’m going to make it to Idaho, Oregon and Washington and back on the 200 miles a day they give you otherwise. After than it’s 20 cents a mile, which I imagine would quickly bring the price out the range of ‘reasonable’ into the range of ‘very high’ and then into ‘you've got to be kidding me’. Also, this introduces a new game to the roadtrip, called “How Many Miles Can We Put On a Rental Car In 48 hours?” Perhaps it’s my frugal Lutheran upbringing, but I’ve always been a proponent of when something is unlimited, to take advantage of it. The applies to all-you-can-eat buffets, cell minutes, and admission passes to Universal Studios. Last month I somehow managed to use 2,600 night-and-weekend minutes on my cell phone. In 30 days. Don’t ask me how I used this many – I think some of it was hooking my laptop to the internet and just letting it download over night, just because I could. Had these minutes not been unlimited, I calculate my bill would have been about $1,300. That’s for one month. Can you imagine getting a cell bill for 1,300 dollars? I personally would shit my pants.
So off I go, on an insane mission to go from the middle of Montana through Yellowstone and Craters of the Moon to Washington State and back, in 48 hours. I’m afraid I’m going to have to nix Seattle – all four people I know there are in other places anyway, and it’s really really far up there. It’ll be a lot of driving, but I think I can do it. And it’s certainly a new adventure. Let the Roadtrip-Within-A-Roadtrip begin.
Day 33 - The Northwest. In 2 Days.
 I woke up at Craters of the Moon in Idaho this morning, to this. Ranking right up there with the time I woke up the desert in New Mexico, it took me a few minutes to figure out what planet I was on.
Progress goes well. Last night I made it down through Yellowstone, one of the cooler places there is in this country, if you can get there. Although nature has started to cost money - 20 bucks is the entrance fee to get into Yellowstone these days. It's worth it, of course, but I'd done well not to pay anything for any tourist attractions so far this trip. Nothing. But you have to drive 100 miles just to get to the entry of the park before they let you know there's a price. So they kind of had me over a chair on that one.
I've made extremely good time across Idaho, enlisting a trick from my old days of getting from A to B as quickly as possible. It’s called rabbit-hunting, where you find another car going the same direction who’s willing to drive fast and you can just trail behind. Any turns or obstacles coming up and they’ll slow down, and any police clocking will go after them. It’s a pretty solid method, and I caught one hell of a rabbit going across central Idaho. Actually too much of a rabbit – after following this guy for about an hour, he kept going faster and faster and I began to wonder if he was a safe dude to be behind. When the rabbit started going 115 miles an hour, and I decided it was time to stop chasing him.
In Washington I dropped in on my Aunt and Uncle at Desert Aire in western Washington, which would be like a desert if it wasn't for all the rivers and mountains and vegetation. Like good family they stuffed me full of food and sent me along on my way up to the Idaho panhandle to visit my friend Katie from high school, a fire-fighting environmentalist by day and a regular mountain party girl by night. Everything about the west is refreshing in a way - from the clean rivers to the witty banter of drunk people at quaint western bars. I'm starting to realize I'm excited about moving out this direction.
As I also started learning in Yellowstone and Craters of the Moon, it’s getting hard to record the kind of magic you see in the West with merely a camera. I’ve tried to take some pictures, but it’s as if nature’s full splendor refuses to be contained within a frame. It’ll let you capture little prizes here and there – an old mill, a beautiful road – but these are just birds and squirrels. The big game can be hunted, but never captured. I'm trying, but there's too much subject everywhere and it can never equal the real thing. It's like the garishness of Vegas, or a room full of lingerie models. What do you take a picture of? Guys, chew on that one. Ladies, I apologize for the sexist analogy. Try it with a room full of Austrian Fabio hunks.
Day 34a - Fast Things
I wrote this a few years ago. Seems to apply now.
The engine was hummin’ along nice today – he could hardly hear it unless he listened. The blue hood of his rig seemed to gobble up the black road, a 16-wheel Pacman devouring the dashes in the highway ahead one after another. The quiet mumble of the engine provided a monotone soundtrack to go along with the game. The desert sun beat down off the metal, casting a glint off the metal, causing him to squint through the glare in the bug-stained windshield.
He never even noticed the sound anymore unless something was wrong. Maybe a little rattle, a growling, whatever. He’d raise his eyebrows in concern, cocking his head to hear if the noise kept up. Sometimes it went away on its own – a dragonfly caught in the vent – but other times it meant a stop and a look under the hood a the next truck stop. Any new sound might mean not making distance that day. But today, it was just the hum. And the squeal of the passing air in the window stripping, where it didn’t quite seal on the driver’s side. The rig barreled on down the dusty mountain road.
Black waves of concrete rose and fell in front of him, rolling with the hills. Post card pictures appeared occasionally off to the sides, but that was for other folks. Couldn’t go gawking at the mountains driving a rig unless you wanted to wind up smoking in a ditch. Anyway he’d been up this way probably a hundred times already, this exact route, snaking through the Utah hills, getting to Salt Lake or Denver or Cheyenne or wherever. No time to see the sights. Had to get this oil where it was going, or lumber, or soda cans, or automobiles, or whatever. Fogging up the side windows for the mountains was for tourists.
Sometimes he’d think about what an awful long way he’d covered, there and back, there and back. He thought of his boy, who he never saw, ‘cept on weekends and holidays. But always waiting with a gap-toothed smile, brown-hair mussing in the wind. The driver shook it off. Couldn’t wonder about that stuff for too long – got to keep eyes on the road ahead or you’ll drive right off the side. But there was something nice about stealing a glance in the mirror, just sometimes.
He put on the cruise, about 70. The company paid by the mile, so the faster he could squeeze out, the more he got. Of course, too fast would find the cops. He hated getting pulled over – tickets were expensive, and it slowed him up, keeping him longer from the goal. And cops in these parts loved to hound truckers. 70 would do him OK. 31 cents a mile. Nearly a dollar every 3 minutes. If he kept going, he could make almost 20 bucks an hour, minus gas and stopping. Bills and rent and alimony to pay. And gas was going up. But as long as he just kept trucking, and didn’t have too many breakdowns, he was in good shape. A trucker could do alright, if he put in the work.
He passed a runaway truck ramp, one of those steep gravel inclines ‘case your breaks go out. He’d seen that once – a guy next to him comin’ down a mountain, no breaks, faster and faster. He’d looked over into the cab, seen the driver’s eyes bugging wide, panicked and wild, and his stretched knuckles pulling hard on the wheel as if it was a parachute cord. He’d honked and pointed for the guy to get over, use the ramp, and the driver moved, pulling his giant metal bronco over to the side into the gravel, bouncing up and down, eyes still buggy. Had enough sense to downshift a bit to slow it down, and the gravel hill took care of the rest, cutting the speed and pulling the truck up and away from the main road like that parachuter, cord pulled and caught in an updraft. The hill slowed him down, and the catcher at the end stopped him going only about 10. For once he’d looked out the side window, to make sure the guy was alright, but it hurt his eyes, looking up and into the sun like that. Besides, he almost drove right off the road looking.
The wind was squealing’ loud now in the window strip, and he thumped it with a chubby palm, trying to calm it down. But he kind of liked the sound. Gotten used to it, anyway. It reminded him he was going somewhere, doing something, even if he didn’t always know where or what. That squealing was all he had to keep him company out here. He used to listen to them storybooks on tape, pass the time, but didn’t anymore. Didn’t have anybody to talk to about ‘em. He used to listen to them all, Shakespeare, London, even heard a book from the Bible once. But he’d get home, all excited to tell about a boy or a wolf or two tragic lovers, and his wife would just come out of the porch frowning and tell him that the pickup was busted again. The story would fade from his eyes, and he’d get his tools. The tapes left before his wife did. He was between radio stations most of the time too, but it didn’t matter. He’d heard all the songs anyway, all talking about love and dancing and being somewhere besides on a black, ribbony stretch of concrete in the Utah hills.
Maybe one day there’d be no more trips. He could just sit back and relax and get nowhere all day long. And maybe he’d even be happy getting nowhere. But that was a long way off yet. Meantime there was bills to pay and mouths to feed, and miles to cover. 31 cents a mile. 3 minutes for a dollar. ‘Course the company’d only pay him for up to 14 hours a day – said he had to rest, keep out of accidents. He knew he could go more than that, but pay was pay. So he spent the rest of the time at truck stops watching empty TV, or sitting inside his truck on the side of the road, just staring out the front window. There wasn’t much to think about besides the next trip.
He didn’t always have to drive, of course. But nobody come around much to see him at his trailer, and he come the dark nights with the flickering TV and bug-lights and the soft whisper of the crickets, he'd get bored and start thinkin' about driving again. He might as well be on the road, working toward something. So he’d call up the company, see if they had a job for him. Might as well be making a buck. For what, he didn’t know, but all that time on the road maybe he could think of something to spend all his dough on. The was nothing wrong with a nice bank account. He was savin’ up quite a bit. Maybe a real nice present for his kid when he turned 10 next year. Maybe he could start saving up for a first car for the boy, when the time came. He had the money. Had the money and nothin’ to spend it on, so might as well. Nothing wrong with a nice bank account. Save for the future.
That was what kept him going, he figured. The future. It was almost as big and dark as the highway, as full of full of twists and turns. Might as well save for it - you never knew what you might need some dollars for. He didn’t have anything better to do right now. It was like the haul – it didn’t matter where he was at the time - surrounded by unimportant mountains and trees and scenery blurring by – as long as he knew where he was going. He’d be ready for it, whatever lay ahead. One day he’d realize what he wanted to do, and it’d get him all chilly and excited inside like he used to get when he was a kid. One of these days. Wherever the road went, whenever he got through to the end, he’d be ready. Then thing’s’d be good again. Maybe not now, but later.
He stared at the road ahead. Dark and straight, sloping down into a valley. An intersection was approaching at the base of it. Another truck rolled down it, just as fast, perpendicular. Good thing the other truck had a stop, or he might have to break. Slow down, lose money. Not get where he was going quite as fast. Wherever that was. The other truck wasn’t slowing down. He smirked. Probably one of those chicken games other guys play to keep things interesting out on the tar. One of those stupid games. You needed stuff like that, or you might go nuts. But the other truck had a stop. He kept going. Straight ahead. Had a goal. Had to get there. Didn’t have time to take his eyes off the road, to see where he was now. Didn’t have time to look out the side window, scenery flyin’ by. Didn’t have time to see the other driver’s wild eyes, wide open and buggy, pulling hard on the wheel.
I got a speeding ticket just now. It’s about 7:30 in the morning Pacific time, and I’d no sooner set out on my mad dash back across Idaho and Montana than red and blue lights signaled the death of a goal that had really meant a lot to me. It was a dumb mistake – I figured I could just barely make it back to Billings to return the rental car in time if I kept a good pace, and I failed to see yet another of those small-town slowdowns. It’s just a speeding ticket – which apparently in Idaho is only like 50 bucks – but it’s more than that to me. The money or the record tarnish doesn’t mean anything compared to the symbol it was. A symbol that I thought maybe I could change. I guess I haven’t learned yet.
I definitely wasn’t going to make it back in time now, so I pulled over to reevaluate. The Roadtrip has a way of letting me know when I’m not doing something right – this seemed to be another sign. I’ve had this spector in my mind of swimming in a mountain stream – just splashing around a bit in the fast-flowing ass-cold water. I don’t know why I keep wanting to do this – maybe it’s just having the freedom to do it – but it’s a ghost of something I want that keeps slipping away. First I couldn’t get to the mountains when the van broke, and then I had to race right through them to get to Idaho and Washington on my mad dash. And I was going to miss them again speeding back. You pay for it when you live like this – be it tickets, an ulcer, or worse... Or simply missing your mountain stream.
I guess things have been coming apart a little bit. The Spacemobile broke, the resulting financial repercussions are starting to threaten what money I have left... and now the symbolic speeding ticket. I’m trying hard to keep it together, but it’s hard sometimes. Maybe it’s time to listen to the wind. So I’m picking up the phone now, and calling Alamo and telling them I need the car for another day. Then I’m figuring out the Spacemobile. And then I’m just going to drive – doesn’t matter where, as long as it’s slowly, and I can stop. And damnit, I’m going to find my mountain stream.
Day 34b - Decisions
 Well, this will have to for my mountain stream. And it will do well.
I didn't really know what to do after deciding to keep the Imposter 2 for another day, but some resolutions had been reached. The Spacemobile needs a new clutch assembly, something that is not cheap but can be done in two days. So we're gonna go for it. Uhaul’s stock will not rise. The Spacemobile will ride again, hopefully for more than 1,000 miles this time. Spacemobile 2 will not have to come the rescue, and there will be no more Imposter dopplegangers after I return this one. As for me, I made the calls that sealed the deals from upper Idaho, then realized I’ve got two days before the Blue Beast will be ready, a car with unlimited mileage, and no one else to visit. So I said fuck it. Time for Canada.
 Not that much was done in Canada (for what really can be done there?), but it gave me a change of perspective, a chance to drive in kilometers-per-hour for a while, and an angle to come back into Montana from the top and finally find my mountain stream. Which was indeed ass-cold.
Day 35 - Back on Track
Then, sometimes timing works out.
Without any alarm clock, I somehow woke up at dawn this morning at exactly the right time to drive back to Billings with 10 minutes to spare on the Imposter 2. And then I walked into the Volkswagon dealership just as they were pulling the Mobile around the corner, fixed a day early. Well, as fixed as it was before. So much for my complaining.
So, the roadtrip is back on track. Not that it was ever off track – just in a different lane than had been expected. I got to head south, actually making it into Wyoming this time, the Blue Beast purring like an obese, constipated kitten. It was still stalling every time I let up the gas – the mechanic had said he didn’t want anything to do with that nonsense – but at least we could go. And shift gears. I don’t really know what the alternative plan would have been had the van not been ready – I had no more money for another Imposter or a hotel. I guess to fulfill my longtime dream of being a homeless person and sleeping on a bench in the park. Oh well. Another time.
Instead I had nice little tour of several fine Wyoming cities. Cody came first, the self-proclaimed world-capital of Rodeo (a title which probably goes pretty much undisputed once you get outside of Wyoming. Then Meeteetse (population: 321. Elevation: 52,349. They put both on the sign to make the town sound impressive. And finally Thermopolis and Hot Springs State Park. Thermopolis is Latin for “Hot Town”, as in “Hot Town, summer in the city” as the song goes. Though I shouldn’t really talk – Minneapolis would then be Latin for “Water Town”. Thermopolis boasts the largest natural hot springs in the country, which is pretty cool except for one thing – hot springs are hot because of underground chemical reactions, which involve sulfer. And sulfer smells real bad. So you’ve got Jacuzzi-like streams of warm water running through your town all the time - plus. But you’ve also got a city that constantly smells like omelette-fart - minus.
PS - The answer to the "How much can you drive a rental car in three days?" question? 2,043 miles. And that's after deciding to take it easy for a day. Had this not been an unlimited-mileage car? About 700 bucks. Not as bad as 1,300, but still pretty solid.
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