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Thursday May 18 2000 I'm going to have a good time on this trip... even if I have to kill you all. ~Jealousy So, I'm going to Seattle. Six people. A dozen maps. A metric tonne of luggage. And a van named "Handbasket".
Something tells me this is going to be a long trip.
Finally everything was packed up and ready to leave. We lost Casper. We founnd Casper. Casper needs to make one final sidetrip that will take us several miles out of our way. Of course we agree to do this, and as a result we get stuck in Toronto's world-class rush hour traffic as we try to make it back to the highway. This is when we discover that Toronto has been taken over by moose. Dozens of them. A stucco moose in Little Italy. A pinstripe one in the financial district. A tie-dyed one in the trendy section. I was tempted to drive all the way up the gay district just to see if there was a rainbow moose somewhere. Or better yet, one wearing chaps. Finally we make it to the highway and to the border, where we are waved across by a border guard who is laughing too hard to even ask us any coherent questions. We are in the USA and embarking on the first leg of out trip. And then we got lost.
Fortress Macross
turns out to be located in a subdivision where
the streets all double back, split up and never seem to be exactly
where you left them. It was with cries of triumph that we finally
spotted the infamous Suburban Assault Vehicle and were able to
untangle our knees from our ears. Tonight we would sleep at Mac's
and in the morning we would be ready to hit the road, with
Crash joining us around noon. After several beers and late-night
last-minute planning, we curled up on the floor and passed out
from pure excitement.
We rolled out of bed... er, floor at the crack of noon, collected Mac's supplies and repacked the van. Then repacked it again. Discovering that our luggage had somehow managed to mysteriously reproduce in the night, Mac dug some cargo bins out of the SAV and whipped a Makita out of his back pocket, and with his assistance we repacked it once again, this time managing to make sure that everything fit. I would like to take this opportunity to categorically state that it was at no time necessary to make any permanent modifications to the rental vehicle in order to acheive our goals. Especially none involving a drill. We lose Sola. We find Sola. Finally with all ready and accounted for, we jumped into the van and Macross mounted his trusty GoldWing, Noah. Before leaving town we stopped for a great breakfast at a Middle Eastern restaurant, cause nothing says breakfast like falafals. We must have made quite an impression, as the cook came out of the kitchen long enough to ask us if we were in a band. Jealousy said no, and explained where we were from and where we were going. Impressed by our complete lack of fear and figuring that we could use all the help we could get, they gave us some free food and sent us on our way. We lose _gwen_. We find _gwen_. Immediately before leaving Lansing, we called Crash again, who informed us that he still wasn't ready, and would be joining us later that night. We drove for a very long time. All that packing and repacking meant that we started out late, so on our first night we only made it as far as Rockford, Illinois. Somewhere in between the industrial wastelands reminicent of Bladerunner and the herds of three-eyed cows, we were able to find a campsite called, with a special dose of the surreal, Love Park. Of course it was closed, since it was now approaching 2AM. Figuring that we could settle up the bill when we got up in the morning, we used the lockpick that Macross produced from behind his left ear and broke in. There were deer everywhere, we saw at least a dozen of them as we pulled into the campsite and drove over the somewhat squelchy remains of at least two or three more. Not exactly a stellar experience on a motorcycle, or so I am informed. Setting up our tents turned out to be a bit of an exercise because there were junebugs the size of Volkswagons bouncing off our gear, crawling across the ground, and getting caught in our hair. Everything was covered in them, including us. Casper promptly hid in the van, and after Jealousy put his tent up for him we didn't see him for the rest of the night. At this point it started raining. This didn't deter the bugs one little bit. It also didn't deter Jealousy, who was determined he was going to sleep outside on his first day of camping. He moved the picnic table under a tree, put his bedding on it, and prepared to sleep there, the junebugs bouncing merrily off what little we could see of his head. About that time we hear from Crash. He still hasn't made it out of town, and will have to catch up with us in the morning. Everybody was just dozing off when we suddenly heard a loud voice yell, "Get the hell OFF me." and the soft thump of something hitting the dirt. Apparently Jealousy was awakened by a racoon blowing in his ear and was forced to defend himself against the amorous procyonidea the same way any maiden would defend her virtue under such circumstances - by giving it a solid clout to the head.
He scrambled into the tent for the rest of the night, and lulled
by the soft pitter-patter of raindrops and chitin shells on the
nylon tarp, we all finally
fall asleep.
I awoke first thing in the morning by being dragged out of my tent by the ankles by a crazed Casper, a few still-struggling junebugs stuck in his hair. A quick slamming of tents and sleeping bags into the van, and we were on the road again. In what was becoming a predictable pattern, Crash phoned us and promised that he would be on the road shortly and would be catching up with us later that day. I had never been west of Madison before, and the best part of the trip was definitely crossing the Mississippi at the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota on the back of Macross's bike. For several miles the highway follows the winding river, with the water on one side and the high rock walls of the valley on the other. It was the most beautiful scenery we had seen so far.
Somewhere in a Minnesota, in a small town called Green Earth, we stopped for food and fuel and came face-to-face with The Jolly Green Giant and the evil mini-JGG. We screamed and ran back into the van. After a couple of minutes of playing paper-rock-scissors, we chose an appropriate sacrifice and tossed Jealousy out onto the pavement. After enough time had passed that it looked like he was going to survive the encounter, the rest of us climbed out and took pictures. Judging by his expression he was already sated for the day. Either that or he had just had an enema. After explaining to the people in the gas station that we were not in a band we pulled out of the town and Green Earth and it was at that moment that the rain that had been looming in the distance for the last several hours finally started. Then the lightning. Then the hail. Macross "Iron Man" Peyre whipped a raincoat out from a pocket in his vest and rode on through the wet for another two hours. When water finally started streaming out over the tops of his boots we elected to stop for a break in the weather and pulled into a tiny bump-on-the-map that consisted of a gas station and a couple of cows. There we bought hot coffee and explained to the woman at the counter that no, we weren't in a band. Water continued to pour out of the sky. Mac finally decided that since he was already completely soaked, we might as well keep going, so he mounted his bike and everybody else got back in the van. We lose Lisiblac. We find Lisiblac. We get back on the road until we finally crossed the state line to South Dakota and there we hit the first truck-stop we could find so that we could all get a meal of something warm. They really go in for big fiberglass animals in this country, there was a huge statue of Buffalo Bill Cody and another one of a massive buffalo. The buffalo was anatomically correct. I can't speak for the Buffalo Bill Cody. The truck stop was an intimidating place, full of, well, truckers. Casper insulted everybody in the room several times. Fortunately we managed to avoid getting into a fight by virtue of the fact that they couldn't tell that he was speaking English. I think they were also distracted by his junebugs. There was, however, a nasty episode in which he kept insisting that he wanted a beer, and they kept serving him Coors light instead. After eating everybody ran outside to go to the local store and fill up the van with cigarettes and beer. As I stood at the cash register waiting to pay, several of the other customers got up and surrounded me. The cook came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a filthy apron. He leaned across the counter towards me and the remaining men in the room stood up, blocking the space between me and the exit. "Are you in a band?" the cook asked me. I looked around the room. Dozens of hopeful whiskered faces stared back at me. "Um... yes?" I said. After signing autographs for all the truckers, I joined the rest of the band out in the parking lot, helped them stuff the beer and smokes into the five inches of remaining space, lose Jealousy, find Jealousy, and we finally head into the closest town - in this case Sioux City - in search of a warm bed and a shower.
At 1AM that morning we got a phone call at the motel. Crash is finally
on his way.
Today I had to ask somebody what day it was. Hot showers and clean dry beds had done a marvelous job of putting us all back into high spirits. Wearing fresh clean clothes and with Casper's freshly-washed junebugs glistening like bronze jewels in the morning sun we scarfed bagels and juice in the motel lobby while we packed all of our gear back into the van. By this time Jealousy had perfected the technique of cramming a vertical wall of luggage into the rear cargo space and slamming the hatch closed at the exact instant that gravity was just starting to notice what was going on. We checked the Weather Channel before leaving the motel, and it promised clear us clear skies for the rest of the trip. So of course the rain started shortly after we hit the road. We were only on the road for a few miles when we noticed a mysterious light on the dashboard. It was an exclamation mark inside a broken circle, a symbol that nobody could identify. Figuring we should err on the side of caution, we looked for the owner's manual. No owner's manual. We pulled over in the town of Humboldt, South Dakota, which basically consists of a gas station and a bunch of horses. We checked all the fluid levels in the van. All are fine. Mac whips a screwdriver out from underneath his helmet and we take the engine apart. Everything is fine. The people in the gas station come outside and ask us if we are in a band. We finally decide to call the Ford company, where they transfer our call to every single person in the factory before somebody finally tells us that it's the indicator that indicates there is something wrong with one of the headlights. We check the headlights. They are fine. This time we lost Sola and _gwen_. Jealousy yelled something at them about "Herding bloody Goths!" and they ran back into the van meowing. From that point on we discovered that if we meowed at people, they would actually hurry up. Go figure. Our next stop was to have lunch outside of a gas station in some place in South Dakota that was even smaller than Humboldt. We ate our lunches sitting on the ground in a parking lot and every person who lived in the area from miles around came out in their pickup trucks to stare at us. I spotted a CW McCall's greatest hits CD in the truckstop and actually got to see Macross bounce. With 30-odd pounds of equipment on his tool belt, this was not a sight for the faint-hearted. For the rest of the trip we played punk rock really loud and drove really fast. South Dakota is the flattest place in the world, and the wind there is unrelenting. Mac had to drive most of the way at a 45-degree angle and we had to keep swerving to dodge the bits and pieces of plastic being ripped off his bike by the high winds. We finally stopped in Rapid City so that Mac could get some rest from the physical punishment he was taking. Crash was a couple of hours behind us after having driven for about 20 hours straight, so we found a brewpub in town where we could drink decent beer and eat bison meat hamburgers. Then we stuffed Mac into the van and forced him to sleep while we wandered the streets and comic-book shops and waited for Crash to show up. Once Crash arrived, looking like, well, looking like somebody who had just driven for more than 20 hours straight, it was back to the brewpub for more beer and bison. The waitstaff asked us if we were in a band, and we said, "Yes. We are South Lebanon." The rest of the evening gets kind of fuzzy. Must have been all those bison burgers.
We hit the road again shortly after drinking the last of South
Dakota's beer, but
Mac and Crash were so exhausted that we pulled off the highway at the
first campsite marked on the map. This turned out to be what was
basically a parking lot for Winnebagos. On the plus side, they didn't
seem to have any particular problems with junebugs. On the minus
side, they were closed. Mac dug a crowbar out of the sidepocket of
his combats, and we broke in and set up our tent for the night.
I woke up in a tent in Buffalo, Wyoming. This was followed by eggs and bacon made over a camp fire. We stocked up on supplies at the camp site office and I bought Macross a postcard from Crazy Woman Creek, which made him bounce all over again. Buffalo, Wyoming has a turd fetish. I'm not kidding. The gas station and general store had shelves of these things called "turd birds" which were basically ceramic shitlumps with eyes and beaks. They also had these dried shit plates that looked like frisbies. It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. Everything in Wyoming is kind of blurred together into one long mass of open green with the occasional gas station by the side of the road. One place we stopped at still had pumps that were used in the '50's. The cash register required the user to pull a lever to open the drawer. We did discover that Wyoming was home to a town called Casper mostly through the slightly disorienting experience of having to navigate via signs that insisted Casper was off that way. One of our few forays into tourism was stopping for gas in in Big Horn, Wyoming and reading about Custer's infamous defeat at the hands of the locals. Some of the decendants of those locals came by to talk to us, I got the impression that we were rather an unusual group for those parts.
It was... impressive. It was damned impressive. After another full day of driving we finally made it through Idaho and into the state of Washington. We knew we were almost there and we were getting a little punchy. We went searching for our last campsite of the trip and ended up getting lost in Spokane Washington, where all the streets are one-way and tend to end rather abruptly. We finally found a beautiful little campsite just outside Spokane Washington on the shore of a narrow fast-moving river with white rapids and overhanging trees. It was closed.
We broke in.
This was our last stretch of road before we hit Seattle, and it was by far the most beautiful. One of my primary motivations for driving to C6 was because I wanted to see the Rocky Mountains up close. I saw the Rocky Mountains up close. It was gorgeous. The highway curved around rock faces that opened up onto new and more beautiful vistas with every mile. I spent almost the whole time saying things like, "Holy shit." "Motherfucker." "Holy shit." I would seriously consider moving somewhere that had views like that. Jealousy had to be physically restrained from leaping out of the van and disappearing off into the trees. The downside was the driving conditions. Travelling for half a day at a 45-degree angle plays hell with an engine. At one point we were passed by a semi with it's brakes on fire. We decided that letting him have the right of way was the better part of valor in that situation. Once in Seattle I managed to get us lost, mainly by virtue of actually trying to use the directions that I had downloaded from the hotel website. Crash called us repeatedly on his cellphone in order to taunt us, since I was busy trying to navigate us back to civilization I could only retaliate by hanging up. After executing several right hand turns in order to get the left-hand side of the road - turns out that Seattle is very similar to New York City in that regard - we finally made it into the hotel. The parking lot was on the same angle as much of the rest of the city, so I put on the parking brake while I waited for the valet. Looking down I noticed the red signal light on the dashboard. An exclamation mark inside a broken circle. Oh, For Fuck's Sake. I'd booked all the rooms under my name, and trying to straighten out who was paying for what with the front desk staff gave both of us a headache. Eventually shota came to my rescue, I got all the keys, and we unloaded enough luggage to clothe the entire cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show for a 16-month European tour. Eventually we got all our stuff loaded up into the room and TSM and Xthlc managed to find us so they could collect their keys and put all their gear in the room as well. We also managed to meet up with some other people we knew would be there - Spider, shota, silentq, Montieth, benton and others - and had our first meal in Seattle. In the process of looking for a restaurant we discovered that we were lodged in the business district. Not a bad place, but there wasn't much out there other than banks. Fortunately walking long distances to get to where you are going is normal behaviour for a Torontonian, as opposed to providing a slow-moving target the way it is in most of the States.
The pre-Convergence event was at the Vogue, which turned out to be a
drag club. The main music was bad disco being
lip-synched by drag queens interspersed with the occasional Goth band.
Eventually we ended up at the bar next door, where the bartender took an
immediate dislike to Casper. They had a decent selection of beer though,
so we hung around there until the world got fuzzy.
After several days in the van we were experiencing a distinct lack of clean underwear, so _gwen_ and I elected to go and do some laundry. We discovered that Seattle is indeed the land of the civilized in that they have a laundromat that not only has food but is licensed to serve draught and has an internet connection. Now that we had clean clothes again we headed back to the hotel just in time to miss the outing to the shooting range. Damn. Most of the rest of the day was taken up by getting ticket packages, wandering around trying to find people and getting lost some more. We discovered Mr Sharkey and Xthlc glued to the floor of the Kiva Han Coffee Hause, their eyes riveted to the hypnotic navels of the belly dancers. A group of us ended up going for sushi with dozens of people in black, including Albatross, our local guide. The majority of the Convergence events were scattered around a central section of town, and I had printed up all the maps from the website so that I could find everything. I pulled the map out to show Jealousy where to find the Elder Bar and then placed it carefully on the bed where I could find it again. Once I was ready to follow everyone there, I went to retreve the map. No map. I looked beside the bed. No map. I looked under the bed. No map. I searched my pockets. No map. I removed every article of clothing and paper from the floor and made sure that it wasn't tucked underneath something. No map. Fortunately there were dozens of people-in-black in the lobby, and I was able to follow some likely looking suspects to the correct location. What I mostly remember about the Elder Ball was that it was hot, sweaty and dark. 50 Ft Queenie bought me a beer - I can't for the life of me remember why - and by the time I had finished it everybody I knew had disappeared.
As always, Convergence means room parties, and by wandering from
room to room in the hotel, I managed to get lost. Then I found
myself. Then Jealousy persuaded Empty to be lost. Shortly thereafter
Jealousy got lost.
This pattern continued pretty much over what remained of the evening
until I finally crawled off into bed at some silly hour of the er,
night.
There were a few extras on the Convergence schedule, and I had signed up for the tour of The Underground. And It. Rocked. The Underground City tour remains one of my fondest memories of the weekend. Our tour guides took several groups of black-clad tourists us through what had been the "sidewalk" of a lower-level street, walled in by the buildings and covered by the walkways of the city above. It was dark and musty, full of rodents and spiders and reeking of history and decayed wood and metal. I absolutely loved it. The main event on the Saturday night was a boat cruise. I had left my ticket for the cruise in my room safely in the envelope I had received from the organizers, and as we were readying ourselves to leave, I fished out the envelope in order to retrieve the ticket. No ticket. I emptied the envelope onto the bed and carefully sorted through each item. No ticket. I picked up every article of clothing and paper from around the bed and the chair where the envelope had been sitting. No ticket. I lost my boat pass. I am the people I complain about. Through the generous intervention of friends, I managed to get my dumb ass on the boat, and we spent the next several hours cruising up and down the Sound. It was a great deal of fun and I discovered that the careful application of alcohol in just large enough quantities will make you sway enough to cancel out the rocking of the boat. The land-lubbers were at an alternate event, and our plan was that once we hit shore Sola and I would pick up beer for the afterparty, drop it off at the hotel room, and then go to join everyone else at the bar. We accomplished the first part of our mission, but discovered that through some psychic link to the universe, all of our friends had abandoned the bar and come back to the hotel to drink the beer instead.
Since this
had been the intended purpose of the beer, all was going well
until a trio of strange punks showed up in our room and
suggested that having a pair of scissors in their possession
was reason to allow them to do whatever they wanted in our
room and with our beer. The residents of the room held a
differing opinion, and presented with the option of exiting
gracefully through the door or somewhat less gracefully
through the window, they chose the former and peace was
once more restored.
By Sunday I'd had just about enough of communal living and spent a pleasant morning browsing through used bookstores all by my lonesome. I stumbled across the rest of the roommates later in the day, and Mr. Sharkey and I wandered off to check out army surplus stores. I also had a very cordial conversation with a local Seattlite who was either an undiscovered genius or a monster raving loony. Still not sure which. Pleasantly refreshed I was able to return to the room for yet more beer, just in time for the hoards to arrive. For some reason, the order of the day seemed to be mooning or flashing the video camera. Sola always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time whenever this was going on, I'm pretty sure she was scarred for life. As I was girding my loins for another night of getting lost, Jealousy pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and consulted it - my map! I immediately created a distraction by throwing a startled nubile at his head and made my way off victorious, no longer to wander forlorn through the streets of Seattle. Seattle was experiencing weather than I am led to believe is typical of England and watching the eyeliner running in the lineup to the club, I remember thinking I was glad that I'm not a high-maintenance dresser. The inside of the club contained just as much liquid, but it was conveniently located in single-serving containers and we did our level best to empty as many of them as possible. Much astonished carrying on commenced when we discovered that the special mystery guest for the evening was in fact, PETER FUCKING MURPHY! Apparently the room party for this night was going to be in our room. OK. Back at the hotel we were sitting around and shooting the shit when people started entering the room. And then more people entered the room. And then more people entered the room. Wave after wave of bodies in black rolled through the door and crested against the walls. Xthlc and I climbed on the bed and perched as high as we could against the onslaught as the walls buckled under the pressure. Sola floated by, clinging to the surface of a dresser. I glimpsed Casper's white hand with the chipped black nail polish, still clutching a cigarette and lifting a single defiant finger towards the ceiling as it went down for the third time.
Then Jealousy walked in the door, said "What the Fuck?"
and threw everybody out.
Monday was our day to leave, and by hauling ass we managed to check out only an hour behind schedule. Several people were dropped off at the airport so they could catch their flights home, and those of us who were convoying went for breakfast, said our last goodbyes, and prepared to be on our way. On the advice of Albatross, we headed north of the city and into the mountains to find some good camping. Macross and Jealousy stayed behind to spend some more time hanging out with our hosts. We ended up on the side of a cliff near Gold Bar, Washington. The site was thick with greenery; trees heavy with sap, dripping moss hanging over chuckling streams. It was a gorgeous and fertile place. The wildlife was thick too, we saw crows, squirrels and signs that advised one what to do when faced with a moutain lion. The place was so plush that even the deadwood was dripping with water - not something we wanted to deal with when it came time to start a campfire. We fanned. And fanned. And fanned. And fanned. And fanned. Lisiblac stubbornly refused to give up, and long after the rest of us were scattered on the ground gasping from exhaustion she managed to coax a tiny flame from the fire pit. Then it started raining.
Macross and Jealousy pulled into the site on the bike some time after
dark and we all crawled into the tents to get dry.
We woke up in the morning to discover that Macross and _gwen_ had been flooded out of their tent, and were subsequently holed up in Crash's car. It was still drizzling, so we attempted to make coffee and warm ourselves up and then went wandering off in ones and twos to go exploring the woods. Several hours later we knew every inch of the damn mountain off by heart and we lit a small explosive device under the car. The occupants climbed out bleary-eyed and grouchy, and after some discussion Macross and Crash headed back to Seattle to perform some esoteric rites involving gun permits. The rest of us resigned ourselves to being soaked and went exploring again. By the time the guys returned, Casper was sporting a thin sheen of green from the mold that has taken root in his hair. Macross pulled on his helmet and his raincoat, the rest of us piled into our vehicles, and we once again hit the road. At a bump in the road called Cle Elum we stopped for groceries for the night's camping. I was curled up in the back seat, and I think I might have grunted once when the others nudged me. They climbed out and went on a hunting and gathering expedition at the local grocery store for food. I was awakened as a muffled explosion rocked the van. The door opened and Jealousy was the first to jump in, followed soon after by Sola and Casper. A flare burst in front of the windshield and I sat up in confusion. "What's going on?" I ask. "Nothing."
We set up our tents behind a windbreak formed by a row of trees that looked completely out of place in the barren surroundings. They did manage to cut the wind down to something merely overwhelming, and by the simple method of chasing after the tents every time they popped their pegs up out of the ground and started walking away, we were able to make camp while Lisiblac grilled up a heavenly dinner of salmon steaks. Casper and I were fascintated by the place, and we went for a walk as the sun was setting. I nearly stepped on a birds nest hidden in the short ragged grass - because of course there are no trees - and tiny chicks scattered everywhere. Casper stumbled over what looked like an ambitious form of cactus and spent the rest of the trip limping.
Given the distinct lack of racoons in the area, Jealousy insisted
on repeating the sleeping outdoors experiment. So after wishing
him a fond farewell we hit the sleeping bags.
Unlike the previous campsite, standing on a pebble was pretty much enough to give one an uninterrupted view of the entire neighbourhood. With no exploring to be done those of us up first were forced to entertain ourselves by retreiving the possessions that had blown into the lake, and chipping Jealousy out of the block of ice that had once been a sleeping bag. When everybody had finally crawled out of bed, completed their ablutions, drank their coffee, eaten their breakfast, put on their makeup, accessorised their outfits, selected their soundtracks, sorted their lipsticks by colour and texture, and otherwise readied themselves for a hard day of driving, the cars were packed up and we were ready to hit the road. The first order of business was to stop at a truck stop for breakfast/lunch and to fuel up for the drive. Casper attempted to chat up a very healthy looking farm girl using his French charm to woo her, but she was too busy hoisting boars into the back of her pick-up truck to be swayed. We were on the road for less than an hour before those of us in the van heard the unmistakable sound of a 300 lb mechanical predatory bird trying to rip the roof off with metal claws. The convoy pulled over and after unpacking and repacking the boxes on the roof we were able to convince them that they were going to stay with us for the rest of the trip. Another hour of travelling later, we pulled over again to refuel the bike. Picture, if you will, Mac removing his helmet and bending over Noah, his attention on the task at hand. Crash's pimpmobile slid to a silent halt at the corner of the gas station lot. A shadow crept over the sun and an eerie silence settled. Suddenly, a shot rangs out across the lot, then another. Macross looked up, startled, and then dove for cover. The car lept forward, a hail of bullets flying in it's wake. A shot creased Casper's side as he vaulted himself backwards into the van. Crash, gwen and Lisiblac sped off into the distance, and as the growl of the motor faded, silence once again descended upon the scene. Well, actually what happened was more like, "You guys are too slow, we are driving on without you." But the effect was very much the same. The remaining members of the convoy stood in shocked silence, then as one lunged for their seats. Macross threw himself back on his bike and with a roar of engines the chase was on. We were now travelling through the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains, and the road was steep and curving. The bike pulled ahead of the van, and after a few short miles disappeared from view. As we drove further into the moutains, a blizzard sprung up. Jealousy guided the van through hairpin turns as the wind threatened to flattened us against cliff walls and toss over over sheer drops by turns. Mostly I just kept my eyes closed. In Butte, Montana we finally pulled out of the weather, and we pulled the van over to take a much-needed break. We were there for only a few minutes when the CB crackled to life - Macross was within range. After peeling his frozen hands from the handlebars we poured him into a hot cup of coffee and contemplated our next move. We were looking over a map and trying to decide upon the best place to set up camp for the night, when his cellphone rang. After chipping the layer of ice from his vest, we discovered that it was our erstwhile companions offering a truce. They were a few miles further along the highway, and after following their directions we were able to get ourselves hopelessly lost. It was pitch black outside by the time we found them waiting sheepishly in a parking lot beside their very dead car. A battery boost later, we stuck Crash on Noah and Macross in the car so that he could attempt to recover from the day's brutal ride. We were pulling back onto the highway when we saw the headlights behind us suddenly swing off the road. The phone rang. "We dropped something in the parking lot. We'll catch up." The messaged was relayed to the bike by CB, and we took our time continuing on the trip. Within a short period of time, the phone rang again. "We just got stopped by the police for speeding. We'll be with you soon." We pulled over. The phone rang. "We just bribed the cop. We'll be caught up with you in a couple of minutes."
We got back on the road and continued driving slowly.
Before long we saw the headlights glowing on the road behind
us, and we began to pick up speed. The headlights wavered
alarmingly back and forth across the road, and just as we
were starting to wonder if the "speeding ticket" came in a
40-oz container, the phone rang again. Our nights travel
was being called to a halt. At the next exit, we pulled off
the highway and into the sparkling metropolis of
Boseman, Montana and stopped at the first hotel with a
Vacancy sign in the window. A set of keys flew through the
window to land squarely in my lap. The truce had ended.
The first day of a new month, and the dawn burst over the horizon full of light and promise. Butterflies flitted through verdant gards and birds stretched their wings and opened their beaks in song. And in Boseman, Montana, in room 16, the phone rang. The call was from Crash, now several miles away in South Dakota. We were on our own.
We could take a hint, so we started sorting our things into piles and stuffing bags, tents and boots into crevices and under seats. Casper threw a CD into the player and as packed we bounced up and down to songs about murdering all your friends horribly and burying them on the side of the road. The motel owner came out of the office and told us it was checkout time. We stuffed sleeping bags in the wheel wells, underwear in the glove compartment and jars of food in Erica's purse. We climbed into the van and headed out towards laundry and breakfast with the motel owner standing in the driveway and plaintively calling out after us that it was checkout time. The next stage of the trip was the insanely long drive through the insanely wide state of South Dakota. As previously observed, there isn't much in South Dakota - it's wide and flat and empty. However, the halfway point is marked by the existance of the small town of Wall. You can tell when you are coming up to Wall, in part because there is an 80-ft dinosaur on the side of the road that interferes with all cell phone reception. But also because there are signs for miles in either direction advertising the existance of the Wall Drug Store to travellers.
There was no need for consultation. We slowly inched our way through the masses of humanity until we were able to reach the reach the road that led out of Wall. From there we continued our journey in the silence and emptiness of the South Dakota highway. We made it all the way across the state before people wanted to break for the night, so we found our way to a campsite called Palisades Park near the Missouri border, broke in, and set up or tents. A few flies lazed around the tents as we hammered in the stakes and people peeled their bags out from under their spleens. I elected to make dinner that night so I fired up the grill, swatted a few flies away from the box containing all the food and started emptying tins into pots. Dammit, I was missing the one primary ingredient I needed for my chili. I swatted a few more flies and hunted in the box again. No jar. I emptied the box onto the floor of the van and carefully sorted through each item. I killed a couple more flies. No jar. I searched in all the spaces around the box. No jar. I opened a bunch of boxes containing boots, corsets, gaffer tape and hair extensions. No jar. I killed another dozen flies. Still no jar. I fianlly gave up and headed over to where the others were sitting around the picnic table. Lisiblac was wrestling with a massive cloud of insects that were trying to abscond with Sola. Casper had thrown himself bodily across the food and another cloud of flies, this one forming the shape of a spatula was advancing on him.
At this point Macross returned from where he had been covering his
motorcycle, pulled a flyswatter out from
his boot and beat the insect predators away from both nosh and campers.
An extremely lame chili dinner was consumed and we retreated to the
relative safety of our tents. Except for Jealousy, who once again continued in
his persistant denial of thousands of years of evolution and technological
development in favour of his weird fetish for sleeping outside.
The rest of the trip is in large part a blur. Meals were consumed sitting on the side of the road while Beetles songs sung in German blasted out of the stereo. We drove through the night, the driver of the van switching off repeatedly. The white lines on the highway blurred together but we drove on, guided only by the vision of Macross "Iron Man" Peyre on the road ahead of us. We stopped briefly in Green Bay again to let Macross sleep in the van for a couple of hours while the rest of us foraged for food. Casper permanently traumatized a teenager who took her life into her hands by making him a sub. The rest of us were traumatized by the discovery that the Moody Blues were able to get a concert date somewhere outside of Las Vegas.
When dawn came we found ourselves at a gas station in Michigan,
eating chocolate bars and drinking thick roadside coffee. I
found a tract promising to explain the plot of the Sunday
conspiracy in the bathroom and received a dollar bill in my
change that assured me that I was loved by Jesus. Macross
appeared to be in some kind a fugue state - we jumped back on
the road and by noon the next day we finally pulled into his
parking lot and fell out of the vehicle.
Macross has no coffee in his apartment. I was the first person awake that afternoon, so I showered and checked my email while I waited for everybody else to wake. Gradually life returned to the apartment by dint of throwing pots, pans and bricks gently across the room. Once everybody was awake, the work began. Macross and Jealousy departed for a store that would sell auto supplies adequate for fixing a van that had been abused on a two week road-trip. Casper departed for a store that would sell coffee supplies adequate for fixing a driver that had been abused on a two-week road trip. I began emptying everything out of the van itself in an attempt to sort out what was staying and what was going. The women checked their email and put on their make-up. Once we were adequately stocked with supplies, the guys began repairing the damage to the exterior of the vehicle, while I took care of the inside. Vaccuums, paint-sprayers, arc-welders, bear-traps and a whole lot of elbow-grease filled the parking lot with a flurry of dust. A lone tumbleweed rolled out from under the back seat and a pronghorn made a break from the glove compartment. The women fixed their hair. By the time we were finished there was a shiney new van in front of me and a full bag of melted chocolate and dead june-bugs at my feet. We repacked the much smaller pile back into the van, coaxed the rest of the passengers back into it, and once again we were on the road. Of course no journey could be complete without a two-hour side trip to retreive lost keys, so we hit the border via Ann Arbor and Crash's house. Then it was back on the highway to hit the Detroit/Windsor border just after dark. At the time we hit the check-point in Windsor it was midnight. Jealousy's plane was leaving at 8AM from Toronto. With a five-hour drive ahead of us, I figured we would have plenty of time. We reached the checkpoint and explained the customs official who were were and what we were doing there. He looked at the van with the six people dressed in black inside and then down at our ID, from two provinces and four US states. "Pull over." he said. We pulled the van over and opened up all the doors so Officer Friendly One and Officer Friendly Two could search through our dirty laundry. As they approached the van pulling on their rubber gloves, we all trooped into the office for questioning. Questioning involved a lot of explaining of how we all knew each other and how we were all getting home. Plane tickets were presented, proof of address was provided, and it looked like Jealousy was going to just make his flight. Then they got to Lisiblac. Lisiblac was in Canada on a Student Visa. Student Visas are apparently expire in April. Renewal requires proof of continued registration - which is provided by the University upon payment of fees. In September. This was June. The rest of the evening crawled by. They called her to the office several times to ask her questions. They called me to the office to ask me questions. Then they called her back to ask her more questions. This went on for hours. In the meantime, the rest of us hung out with the men who who were dismantling our van. We gave them a C6 flyer and talked about music. We also talked with them about the fact that there was some state leaders conference going on in Port Huron only a few miles away, and they had been told to pull over anybody who looked unusual, since they might be on their way to protest. Oops. Many hours later, the immigration department of Canada gave us back our ID and told us that we were free to enter the country.
We had the van re-packed in seconds and were on the road in
minutes. The sun was peeking over the horizon. Jealousy's plane
was long gone.
We rolled into Toronto early in the morning. Casper was the first to be dropped off. He took out his bags, hugged us all goodbye and gently advised us that anybody knocking on his door for the next month would be shot on sight. Lisiblac was next. She piled all her bags at the door of her university residence and reached into her purse. "Here, this is yours" she said, and handed me the big jar of my primary chili ingredient. The rest of us drove to my house and the flat soft comfortable surfaces therein. Jealousy was unable to get lost to his satisfaction, so he compromised by locking himself into a bedroom. Sola and gwen caught a few hours of much-needed sleep on the couch and then piled into gwen's car and departed for New York and New Jersey. I returned the van to the rental agency and watched carefully while they did their return inspection.
The Handbasket passed
with flying colours.
I dropped Jealousy off a the airport and he caught a flight on standby back to Florida. Once home, I sorted through the last of my bags and surveyed the damage. Along with a lighter wallet and a nervous twitch that would take years to clear up, I found myself with some new possessions.
One day I'll go and see the Rockies again.
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Last Updated June 25 2006.
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Everything else in Minnesota, on the other hand, is as flat as an
ironing board, and about as interesting.
By this point we were counting off the states still to be driven
through and cheering every time we made it across another state
line. We stopped in Missoula, Montanna for lunch - as usual,
MRE's in the parking lot - and got our first good
look at some of the mountains we were going to be driving through.
Our late start meant that we were still in Washington when
it started getting dark, so we stopped for the night at a
campsite near some place called
Vantage.In spite of the fact that we were in
the same state, the territory couldn't be any more different.
It rests on a plateau between the two ranges of the Rocky
Mountains, and although the altitude is still very high,
the landscape is completely flat. A fierce wind blows
ceaselessly, and the vegetation consists solely of short
thick plants with spiny leaves. The wind meant that everything
was very dry here, but the fire had to be buried in a deep
pit in order not to be blown out.
First order of business was to pound on the door of the adjoining room and
get everybody awake. Once everybody was decent, Jealousy went off on laundry
duty and Macross, Casper, Sola, Lisiblac and I dragged all our collected
possessions
out into the parking lot and tried to figure out how to get everything we
owned back into the Handbasket. As we stood on the pavement scratching our
heads, the motel owner came by and told us it was checkout time.
We just had to know. So we pulled off the highway at the appropriate exit and
drove slowly through the streets of Wall, the van following Noah as Mac guided
the motorcycle through the crowds of tourists. Small children
clutched balloons and were herded from store to store by dessicated-looking
women in brightly-coloured stretch pants. Plump men with the sickly green
complexion of
the office worker sported cowboy hats and massive belt-buckles in the shapes of
animals. The air was full of their shrieks, laughter, complaints and sobs.
Every flat surface was covered in massive signs offering services to women,
men, children, newlyweds, cowboys and mothers. IN! GREAT! BIG! FONTS!
I awoke to a lovely summer day and crawled out of my tent to find
everybody else eating breakfast. After cleaning up the campsite
and repacking the car, showering, changing, putting on makeup,
changing again, wandering off, coming back, putting on more makeup
and otherwise enduring all of the neccessary daily rituals, we
were finally ready to go. A cloud of flies formed an arrow and
pointed the way to the exit and we were on our way again.