Whoot. The journey has begun.

day 2
April 18
kilometres: 1376
At 8am we climbed out of our sleeping bags and shook the sleep out of our hair. Macross and TheOneTrinity woke up long enough to wish us good travel, grumble about the hour and go back to bed.

From Detroit, we drove into Indiana and headed south, making our way around Indianapolis, and into the area where Anmar's tree ranch is located. It had been four years since the last time we had been in that area, but I started recognizing landmarks. We finally found the dirt track from the road that led to his property.

He'd installed a gate since we were last there, but he'd sent me the keycode, so we entered and drove up the path. He met up with us at the car and we spent the next couple of hours being shown around. We got to see where he was building his new underground house in the limestone ridge on his property, which was pretty cool. And hauling butt up and down the hills was good exercise for having been in the car for a couple of days.

After walking around in the woods and catching up on some gossip, we said our goodbyes and headed out. We made it as far as we could in what remained of the day, finally agreeing to settle in for the night at a campsite on Rand Lake called the Wayne Fitzgerrel State Park just outside of Ina, Illinois. I'd never heard of the place before. Neither had anyone else. Which is why we were unaware of the fact that it was located right next door to the Illinois State Prison. We pitched our tents with the aid of the lights that shone permanently from the guardtowers.

day 3
April 19
km: 2378
In the morning, we packed up our crap and headed for Missouri. When you cross the bridge into the state, you enter the heart of St Louis. It's marked by a massive arch that represents "the Gateway to the West". Axel started playing Johnny Cash to commemmorate the occasion.

We stopped in St Louis to have a look at the Arch. It turned out to be a lot bigger than we thought. It was also made out of metal, which surprised me. It looks like concrete when you see it from a distance.

We had to back up for several blocks before we were far enough away for Axel to take a picture of the whole thing. While wandering through the streets, we also stumbled across the International Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum. Now that's something worth taking a picture of.

St Louis
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While driving through Missouri, we kept seeing signs along the side of the road advertising the Meramec Caverns. We figured what the hell, and pulled off to have a look.

I'm really glad we did, the caves are incredible. They turned out to be an extensive underground labyrinth that the Jessie James gang had once used to hide out between robberies. They were full of gorgeous crystalline structures. Most of them were now protected by sheets of plexiglass because people kept touching the rocks, and the acid from their hands was causing obvious structural damage.

The final piece on the tour was a massive crystalline "curtain" that covered the entire wall of one cave. The tour guide played a recording of some Valkyrie-voiced woman shrieking "God Bless America" while he frantically flicked the lights on and off to create a light-show. As the song reached it's final crescendo, he hit a light switch the projected a gigantic image of the US flag onto the wall.

There isn't much you can follow up an act like that with, so we wandered back out to the car and hit the highway. But not before Astrid picked herself up a crushed penny and a Jessie James sliding pen.

Meramec Caves
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We figured out pretty fast that Oklahoma is a flat place. It also has great big billboards next to every "adult" store near the highway that says in 6-foot-high letters, "PORNOGRAPHY HARMS CHILDREN", "PORNOGRAPHY DESTROYS FAMILIES" and "PORNOGRAPHY DESTROYS LIVES".

From Oklahoma City, we drove to the home of Metamorph and her family, who showered us with hospitality and Easter chocolates. Many Guinness and brocolli salads later, we fell onto our sleeping bags and passed out.

day 4
April 20
km: 3539
Today was Easter, and we woke up to many chocolates and stuffed rabbits. Spooky! We still had far to travel, so after breakfast and goodbye hugs we headed out.

We had heard from friends that there was a great big cross in Groom, Texas that could be seen from the highway. In actual fact, the thing was big enough that we spotted it from several exits away. It wasn't terribly clearly signed, so we ended up getting off at the wrong exit, which was how we discovered the leaning water tower of Groom.

The leaning tower of Groom, Texas
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Like most things of the things I was seeing in this trip through America, you really had to get up close to the the big cross in order to appreciate the scale. The thing was massive, towering over the very flat landscape around it. It was pretty impressive looking -- until you got up close enough to realize that it was made out of aluminum siding.

The cross was circled by a series of bronze casts representing the stations of the cross. One of the stations was an elevated platform with just under life-sized replicas of the three crosses, another was a cave containing a bronze angel with a truly horendous white patina.

There was also a building that contained a replica of the Shrowd of Turin along with articles debating it's authenticity, and several structures still under construction. Evidently the plan is to add more tourist features, quite possibly including a penny-crushing machine and a sliding-pen kiosk.

The big cross
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From as far away as Missouri we started seeing billboards proclaiming "FREE 72 OZ STEAK" at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas.

The Texas Steak Ranch is a huge restaurant wildly overdecorated with anything Western. Animal heads line the walls and the booths are decorated with saddles and spurs. We tried the rattlesnake appetizers and ate massive quantities of some of the best food of the entire trip.

The story behind the 72 oz steak turned out to be that if you could eat the whole thing plus trimmings (salad, potatos and appetizer) in under an hour, you got the meal for free. They had a table set up on a small stage complete with digital timer for those who wanted to try their luck, and a board listing those who had succeeded. Complete with the person's weight and their comments like "Ow" and "I can't believe I at the whole thing." They also had a wrapped up sample of the meal. The hunk of meat was bigger than my head.

There was also a hotel next door that I thought was pretty cool in the cheesiest fashion imaginable - it was divided into sections, which each section bearing a different Western-themed name. The brochure also assured me that they have a Texas-shaped swimming pool.

The Big Texan Steak Ranch
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Cadillac Ranch is just outside of Amarillo, Texas. A series of spray-painted cars are half-buried in the dirt in a very flat field by the side of the highway.

Just the layers of paint on the things is impressive. I can picture generations of teenagers clustering there after dark with their illicit Lone Stars and their spray cans. Of course we announced that the "Spread Eagle Tour 2003" had been in town.

Cadillac Ranch
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After Texas we passed into New Mexico. This was the first genuine desert I've ever been in, and I was completely impressed and fascinated by the mesas and the five billion different kinds of cactus. The ground is red, rocky and utterly barren -- we drove for miles and saw almost nothing outside of the highway that denoted any kind of civilization whatsoever. It's beautiful.

I assume it's a side effect of the fact that there aren't very many people there that New Mexico just does not signpost anything. If you aren't local, what the hell are you doing here? Our first attempt to find a campsite ended with us driving the car around in circles for a good hour and finally ending up on a dead-end goat-path in the middle of the desert. We finally managed to track down Red Rock State Park -- so named because the site sits between two massive dark red mesas -- and set up there for the night.

The Red Rock State Park was a beautiful place during the day. In the dark it was freezing cold and they lock their bathrooms up at night. This mystified me, given that there wasn't anything else around us for miles. So I had to go pee in the desert, after doing the appropriate amount of stomping around to scare off any rattlesnakes and scorpions that might have been lurking in the area.

They did, however, have an incredibly friendly German Shephard puppy who spent a large part of the morning hanging around our tents and begging for attention while we were packing up, so that almost made up for it.

It was also around this time that Axel managed to put some kind of a smudge on the lense of his camera, making his pictures look like we were being followed by a ghost for the rest of the journey.

New Mexico
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day 5
April 21
km: 4026
Hot shower, doggie petting, breakfast and Arizona in that approximate order.

Arizona is the one state we drove through that struck me as having the most variety of landscape, going from scrubby desert at one end to mountains and canyons as you drive north.

We hit the Petrified Forest National Park fairly early in the day and spent about four hours there -- I had no idea it was so big. Many of the lookouts give you views of miles and miles of canyons, mesas and desert, all of in the most fantastic colours. The rocks were brightly striped in red, orange, yellow, black, white -- and the most startling, purple and blue. The Blue Mesa has high levels of magnesium in the soil, so the landscape is completely barren of plant life, and brightly coloured in shades of purple, blue and white. It was surreal, alien, and incredibly gorgeous.

A feature in the desert is an old adobe building that at one time was a hotel on old route 66. They were working to preserve the building and it was operating as a souvenier shop and museum.

This was also where the Raven showed up. We saw him for the first time sitting on a fence near the hotel, and we saw one -- and only one at a time -- every day for the entire time we were on the road.

Painted Desert
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I hadn't realized it before we got there, but the Petrified Forest is a part of the same park system. A large section of the park was once tropical rainforest, and the fossilized remains of gigantic tress are all over the park. In the parts where we were able to walk around between the fossils, the ground was a carpet of what looked like wood chips, but was actually rock. The most impressive part was the crystal forest, where the wood had been replaced by coloured quartz.

There were signs all over the place warning you against stealing the rocks. At one sign it claimed that they lose 40,000 tons of crystal to theft every year, and that 80% of the rock was already gone. I can't imagine how impressive the place must have been before.

While we were wandering around an elderly couple stopped us to tell us how beautiful we all were. The woman in particular was very excited to tell us about a festival for people like us that she had heard all about -- in the north of England.

We blinked. "Whitby?"

"Yes! That's it!"

Well, that was unexpected. We assured her that she would love Whitby and that she would look absolutely smashing with purple hair, then continued on our way.

Petrified Forest
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Our main goal was to get the the Grand Canyon that night, with some vague idea that we would actually set up our tents while it was still light out, and maybe spend some time relaxing in front of a campfire. So we went charging off nortward through the highways of Arizona.

To get from the Painted Desert to the Grand Canyon, you have to cut through Flagstaff, Arizona. So we did. Incongruously, given all this desert, Flagstaff is on a mountain. The drive there is gorgeous and the road is surrounded by trees -- something I hadn't seen for days.

It was also cold. The temperature started dropping like a rock as we gained altitude. We eventually came down out of the mountains far enough to lose the trees, but we must have still been pretty high, judging by the temperature. I suppose I should have expected that, but what the hell do I know? I'm a tourist. I thought, "Arizona. Yeah, that'll be warm."

Anyway, the final stretch into the Grand Canyon turned out to a surprisingly small highway winding it's way through a coniferous forest. I've driven through Algonquin Park enough times to know the unmistakable sign of wildlife -- a row of cars pulled over to the side of the road and people getting out of their cars with cameras, eager to get their asses disembowled for posterity. So I pulled over and Axel was able to take a picture of his first elk, North American variety. From inside the car. We also saw a deer at one point, idly munching by the side of the road and completely ignoring the vehicles careening around him.

Once inside the park, we headed to the campsite with a few remaining spaces. The system for choosing a site was to tear a numbered tab off of a list -- the sites without a tab had been reserved ahead of time. We grabbed #27 completely at random, drove into the park, got horrendously lost, drove out the exit, then headed back out to the entrance and started over again.

Then started the adventure of choosing a campsite.

After many episodes of moving the car and taping little pieces of paper back onto the list, we agreed on a site that had the best defensive capability and set up camp. Astrid and I went and picked up groceries -- they have a supermarket on site, who knew? -- and some drinks at the cost of many hundreds of dollars.

Dinner was marvelous. Enjoying a few cold beers out of the cooler was marvelous. Sitting around a campsite knowing that we didn't have to be any place was utterly marvelous.

The weather was freezing. Slightly less than marvelous.

day 6
April 22
km: 4373
The next morning it snowed.

We had originally planned to spend two nights in the canyon so we could relax and do a whole bunch of sight-seeing -- and a whole bunch more of the sitting-around-a-campfire-and-pulling-beer-out-of-the-cooler -- but when we realized that the tents were covered with real, honest-to-God snow, for fuck's sake, we simultaneously announced, "Fuck. This." and started packing up site.

Once we were packed up, we went to have a look at the Grand Canyon itself. After getting really really really lost driving around the tourist lodges for a while, we finally found our way to the road that follows the top of the ridge and went exploring.

It's big. Oh My God, is it ever big.

When you are faced with something beyond the senses ability to comprehend what they are preceiving, they get to a point at which the brain just stops trying, and I hit that point pretty early on. I have a horrible phobia of heights and the part of my brain that is in charge of being scared just yelped, went full-fetal and never bothered me for the rest of the day.

Our raven followed us around, landing near the car whenever we stopped. There are a number of trails that run to the bottom of the canyon, and we climbed down one for about a quarter mile. Going down was easy if you don't count the sheer rock face with the narrow steps carved into it and the sudden drop at the side. Going up, however, we sounded like the emphysema ward coming over the hill. I felt a little better about my utter lack of ability to move without huffing like an overloaded freight train when I realized that we were something like 8000 ft up.

We finally exited the park at the souvenier shop, where Astrid bought herself a crushed penny and a sliding pen.

The area around the southern end of the park is owned by the Navajo, and as you drive along the highway there are tons of roadside stands selling local crafts. We stopped at one lookout point to check out a not-as-big-as-the-Grand-Canyon-but-still-damned-impressive sized gorge over the Little Colarado River, and admire the silver jewelery, then wandered into the town of Cameron AZ looking for something to eat.

The most obvious place in Cameron for a visitor to pull over is the Trading Post, so that's where we ended up. It was some of the best food we had on the entire trip, full of fresh greens and flavoured with chilis and in quantities to feed a small army. The walls of the restaurant were hung with gorgeous Navajo rugs, most of which cost more than the car I was driving.

Grand Canyon
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A big priority for that night was warm. I had a theory that we should start off by looking for a place with low altitude, and that is how we ended up in Black Canyon City.

As soon as we saw the name we knew this was going to be a great place. On the highway into town I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting a Peccary.

The only chain we saw in the entire town was a Shell station - no McDonald's, no Super 8 and no Walmarts. We ended up at the Mountain Breeze Motel, which sports split-rail fences and massive cartoon-style cactus. Most importantly to us, it was dry and it was warm. We sat on the sidewalk in front of our rooms, drinking beer and watching the locals cruise by in their golf carts.

day 7
April 23
km: 4735
We had breakfast at the local greasy spoon before we left, and we were probably the only people there under 60. Axel was enchanted by a real live cowboy in spurs and a 10-gallon hat with a revolver on each hip. The ancient waitress with the giant bouffont hairdo was enchanted by Axel.

Our next stop was Sahuarita, Arizona, home of the Titan II Missle Museum. Its an old de-commissioned missle silo in the middle of the desert. It was pretty fascinating looking at the old technology. I felt like I was on the set of a 70's disaster movie.

Titan II Missile Museum
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That killed most of our afternoon, and from there we embarked upon the real purpose of our mission. The secret agenda. The sacred task which with we had been entrusted.

We were here to kidnap the Raphrat.

Well we had to find him first. We had an address and some MapQuest directions, so after much driving around we were able to find his apartment. There was no answer, so we called him on his phone - there was no answer there either. But there was a mysterious message on his voicemail leading us to the Hotel Congress.

We went to the Hotel Congress, a funky place in downtown Tucson where apparently John Dillinger had once holed up. Whatever lessons had been impressed upon them in those stays were pretty well learned, while the man behind the counter was willing to acknowledge that he had heard of Raphrat, that was pretty much all we were able to get out of him.

We were finally able to get ahold of Raphrat, and came to meet us at the hotel. It turned out that he had booked us a room, so we checked in and then spent the rest of the evening sitting on the patio and shooting the shit while waiters brought us drinks. We talked. We cajoled. We guilted. We threatened. And we finally made our point, he WAS coming to Convergence.

Apparently the room he had picked out for us was the most haunted one in the hotel. We are all pretty excited by this, but we were also so exhausted we fell fast asleep almost the second we laid down. So the ghosts had a pretty crap audience.

Tucson
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day 8
April 24
km: 5395
We had a day to kill while the Raphrat was at work, so Axel and I decided to do some wandering around town. We passed a bookstore and picked a few things up, then our feet took us into the "El Presidio" district, which is apparently a big tourist section. We did find a tourism centre, but it was closed. Then our wanders took us past the Tucson Museum of Art and we decided to go in.

I wish now I'd taken some pictures, even if they did have thumb prints on them. I'm really fascinated by modern art, and this one had a really nice modern section. They also had an extensive collection of modern art by Native American artists, which was a really interesting hybrid of traditional and experimental styles. Really fascinating stuff. I know absolutely nothing about the genre, but the brochure specifically mentioned Fritz Scholder, Dean Narcho, Emmi Whitehorse. Mario Martinez, and Kay WalkingStick. The museum also had a recreation of a stockade that we could wander around in. My overall impression was "dusty".

Anyway, we stayed there until close and then hauled our sore feet back to the hotel. We sat on the patio drinking coffee until Raphrat showed up with his bag slug over his shoulder. We squeezed ourselves into Maria and hauled ass towards Vegas.

The sun went down long before we were anywhere near the state line, so we didn't get to see anything of the desert. And when I say dark I mean pitch-black-darker-than-the-deepest-pits-of-hell dark. There are no cities in most of the area, so there is no ambient light at all.

The stars, on the other hand, are stunning.

The approach to Vegas from Tucson takes you over the Hoover Dam. We crossed it at night and I was concentrating on not driving over the side, so I didn't get to see a lot of it, but the sides were lit up with floodlights. We could see enough to tell that it was damn big. There was also a checkpoint that we had to pass through, a State Trooper shone his flashlight into the car and then waved us on.

Driving into Vegas itself, you can see the glow for miles. When we finally topped the hill that overlooked the southern end of the city, the glitter and colours opened up in front of us. A gigantic beacon glows straight upwards from the peak of the Luxor, and you can see it from anywhere in town. We played the Dead Kennedy's version of Viva Las Vegas at top volume.

We had decided that the official hotel was a bit too expensive for us, so we had rented a bunch of rooms at a place called Terrible's. At first glance, it seemed to cater mainly to bus tours for seniors groups. Second glance pretty much confirmed that. We also were later informed by a cab driver that it was the casino that most of the locals play at, because the odds are so much better than anywhere else in town. All I know is that Morris Day and the Time were playing in the main room as we checked in. Playing Jungle Love. No shittin'.

The official "unofficial event" was being held at a vodka bar called the Red Square in the Mandalay Bay casino, so we offloaded our crap and ran to catch a cab. We arrived in a packed place full of people we wanted to talk to, people we hadn't seen in years and people we had never met. Macross and Miss Janette, and Xthlc, who was also staying at Terribles. I ordered a beer which turned out to be stupid expensive, and immediately thereafter switched to vodka, which was cheap and strong.

Red Square
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We closed the bar, and immediate plans were made for continuing the party at another casino. Axel and I followed the posse as far as the train shuttle to the Excaliber and then elected to walk back to our hotel instead. I was still buzzing from the long drive and a bit overwhelmed by the crowd, and I wanted to show some of Vegas to Axel.

So we walked back along the main drag. It was over an hour before we got to Terrible's, but we weren't hurrying. We looked at the extravagant design of the Luxor and Excaliber and wandered inside the Monte Carlo and the Paris hotels just so we could marvel at the posh interiors. We looked at the sights and were impressed by the lights, noise, glitter and excess.

Las Vegas was going to utterly dwarf Convergence.

day 9
April 25
We hooked for breakfast up in the morning (where "morning" means "when you get out of bed" as opposed to "the time period after midnight and before noon".) and once again I forgot that while in the south, one must order the smallest portions available. I've got to start remembering just how much food they give you there.

We then walked over to the Flamingo Hotel to hit the meet'n'greet. This took a lot longer than we expected. Everything in Vegas looks closer than it really is because everything is so big. The sign that looks like it's just over on the next corner is the size of a small apartment block and is actually three miles away.

The meet'n'greet was in a state of utter chaos when we got there. Registration records were sorted by number, and of course nobody had brought their receipts with them so the numbers had to be hunted down by hand from a printout. Macross and Fross began helping out just to get the line moving. I decided that I was going to get comfortable and hang out until the line dried up a little, so I wandered into the bar area and grabbed myself a drink.

There was a kareoke stage set up in the bar and there were various people doing some gawdawful renditions of pop songs. The boys from Bella Morte were there, and Andy rescued my ears by doing a completely over the top enthusiastic rendition of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song - followed by a Spice girls song.

I was standing and talking to a group of people at the bar, when the reason we had been given the sacred trust of getting Raphrat to the weekend suddenly became clear - TSM walked up to me and said hi.

Meet'N'Greet
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We spent the rest of the day hanging out and talking to people. I ran into The Evil Chemist, who told me about winning some large amount of money on the slot machines. We finally got our packages, and when they kicked us out of that room we moved on to the bar. The Flamingo was really expensive for drinks so when it started getting late we headed back to Terrible's to finish drinking in our rooms. TSM was staying at the same hotel, so he travelled back with us.

While hanging out and drinking beer out of the cooler, we gradually got ready for the nighttime event. We had to split into two groups to get cabs over there. The cabbies in Vegas are incredibly chatty and friendly. I figured out pretty quick that they make strictly an hourly rate, so a large part of their income is dependant on tips. Drivers that don't acheive a good raport with the customers in the five minutes they have them in the car just don't make as good a living.

The venue turned out to be way the hell out off the strip and in a neighbourhood that looked a lot less shiny and pretty. The venue itself was dirty - nothing seemed to ever be cleaned between nights. The barstaff, however, were great.

I felt bad for the bands who spent most of the night playing to an empty room. There was no smoking inside, and the bar was in the lobby rather than in the venue, so that meant that most people gravitated towards hanging out either in the lobby or outside the doors. I tried manfully to catch at least a part of each show, but with so few bodies inside the music was painfully loud. Eventually just I gave up and spent the rest of the night hanging out outside where all my friends were smoking.

Getting back also turned out to be problematic. Given that the shuttle bus travelled only to the Flamingo and then we would have to make our way back to our own hotel anyway, we had decided that we would just cab it directly from Terribles. Taxi's, we had been assured, were plentiful in Vegas. Technically, this was true, there were tons of them on the street. However, unlike a lot of cities, taxis in Vegas don't "cruise", they pick up their fares at designated locations like the airport or specific hotels. In fact there are often security cameras at the pick-up and drop-off points. This makes being a driver safer in Vegas than it is in a lot of cities, and in fact I met more woman cab-drivers than I have ever seen in any other city.

So what this all means is that if you aren't at one of the big hotels, it is really really hard to get a cab.

We tried really hard to get one called for us, but the bar staff were so busy it just never happened. A homeless guy who hit us up for change told Casper that a few cabbies had been robbed in the area, so even if they got the call a lot of drivers would not come out that way. Casper turned on the French charm, and the homeless guy disappeared, assuring us that he could get us a cab -- and returned a few minutes later with an actual cab in his wake. We dumped all the shiny stuff in our pockets into his hands, thanked him, and headed back to the Flamingo.

The Flamingo had been supposed to open the meet'n'greet lounge for us for after-hours parties, but when we got to the hotel, the doors were locked tight. There were a number of other people there, so we decided to hit the restaurant and get somthing to eat.

There was a long lineup of people-in-black at the restaurant. The host refused to sit us all together, or at the same time - he seated only a group of six at a time, and spread us out over different sections of the restaurant. He also made us wait five minutes between seatings, even though we were the only customers. A group of people got pissed off and left to go elsewhere just as we got to the front of the line, but Axel was practically falling over at that point, so we elected to stay along with some other hypoglycemics who could not be delayed. The group had been effectively broken up by that point anyway, so after eating we headed back to Terribles to crash.

day 10
April 26
We got kinda a late start the next day.

Axek and I had originaly made plans to go to Quark's Bar the following day with a group of people, but since Raphrat and TSM were not a part of the group, they wanted to go today. We ended up finding ourselves swept along with the group.

Raphrat bounded into the place like a puppy, exclaiming, "This is the happiest place in the world!" He ran up to a Borg who was wondering between the tables and demanded a hug.

The Borg eyed him dubiously. "For what purpose, Human?"

"To assimilate you! With looove."

"Negative."

Raphrat tried again. "Pictures?"

The Borg acquiesced. "Proceed."

Raphrat hugged the Borg and pictures were taken. As Raphrat released him, the Borg looked over and said, "Seek a girlfriend, Human."

Much to my surprise the food wasn't half bad. Raphrat ordered a Warp-Core Breach, which was a gigantic steaming drink served in a fishbowl and with straws for everybody at the table. I started with the Romulan Ale and then gradually started working my way through the fermentation products of every other race in the galaxy. Periodically people in costume would come over to talk to us. We saw three Klingons, a Ferengii, and there was a Vulcan in another part of the bar. Casper offered to arm-wrestle with the Klingon woman - with the loser sitting on the winner's lap. Given the size of her, I wouldn't have been surprised if she could have given him a good contest.

We did some tooling around in the museum and store before we left. I picked up K'Bear to take home to BC, and Astrid got herself a crushed penny and a slidey pen.

Some people wanted to buy clothes or something, and it turns out there is a gigantic fuck-off mall inside Ceasar's Palace so we headed there next. I got completely distracted by the toy store. It had a three story wooden rocking horse that you could walk into a gigantic diorama of village life featuring stuffed animals with moving parts. I was particularily fascinated by the butcher monkey sharpening his knife in preparation of killing the animal-pig in front of him, while only a few feet away anthropomorphized pigs were taking part in a choir.

We found some clothing stores which were very elegent and tasteful and smelled like money. I'm not sure if anybody actually bought anything, since they didn't seem to have any crushed pennies or slidey pens. We found ourselves in some type of central court, with a giant aquarium filled with coral and colourful fish and surrounded by statues of Roman Gods. There was a diver in the tank feeding the fish in front of a rapt audience of children. I spotted a red EXIT sign so we headed toward it to try and get out.

The exit turned out to be into the parking lot behind the casino. We followed the road around but somehow managed to make a wrong turn and ended up at the service entrance. There was no way out other than walking all the way back around, so we decided to hop the fence.

The fence was made of styrofoam. And spray-painted to look like cement.

Only in Vegas.

The fence hopping brought us out next to the walkway around Bellagio's pond, which is actually the size of a small lake. We therefore were treated to the sight of the water opear - the fountains move and jet in tune to a piece of classical music that is played over loudspeakers.

Only in Vegas.

We were all sore of foot by this time, so we headed back to Terrible's and had a small room party in Casper and Astrid's room. We had enough beers to rebuild the buzz we had got at Quark's and walked off at Caesars, and then Casper, Astrid and Raphrat headed for the club. Xthlc, TSM, Axel and I went for food, and then Xthlc headed off to the club. Axel, TSM and I contemplated the hassle of getting a cab there and back, and then contemplated our aching feet, said "fuck it", ordered another beer, and then went back to our rooms to watch television and crash.

day 11
April 27
I got up early the next morning since we hadn't been out the night before, and Axel and I went out and got breakfast together. Then I went to the gym. I was heading back to our room just as everybody else was emerging. As they went to get food, I showered and changed, and then Axel and I collected a weeks worth of dirty clothes together and went to find a laundromat.

Our housework taken care of, we hooked up with the rest of the group, who were planning a trip to Treasure Island to check out the pirate show.

For the uninitiated, Treasure Island is a hotel and casino that has big pond in the front with a couple of mechanized pirate boats. They hire actors who do a pirate show - a choreagraphed battle which (I am told) includes people leaping off of walls and projectiles whizzing about. Signs all over the patio strictly warn about getting up out of your seat during the performance. One of the mechanical boats is designed to "sink" during the show.

We grabbed a couple of tables out on the patio and shoved them together. A waitress with a voice that only dogs should be able to hear took our orders, which focused rather heavily on pina coladas. Somebody ordered something that cost $12 and came in a gigantic skull-shaped glass mug, and then everybody else started ordering their foofy rum drinks in a skull. More people showed up, including silentq and Peculiaire. We shoved together more tables. More drinks were ordered, and we greeted the waitress with an enthusiastic "ARRRRRRR!" whenever she returned. More people showed up, Moses and Stuart among them. The show was delayed due to wind, so we consoled ourselves with more human skulls full of liquor. The show was delayed again. We ordered another round. The show was cancelled as the wind wasn't dying down. We yelled, "ARRRRRRRRRR!" at the waitress and ordered more drinks.

So yeah. Treasure Island was fun.

Treasure Island
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Once we decided we were sufficiently liquored up, we all headed back to our various hotels. Xthlc, Will, Axel and I were hungry so we went hunting for non-Terribles food. We found ourselves an Ethiopian restaurant that wasn't too far from us and had some of the best Ethiopian food I think I have ever had. It was amazing. It was also quiet. I hadn't realized how much the constant racket of slot machines was getting to me until we actually got to sit in a public space that didn't have any.

From there we ran back to the hotel to clean up and then out to the venue. We didn't make it in time to catch Frankenstein, which disappointed me, all reports said they were the best band of the weekend. Went through the usual hassles with taxis and the bands playing to a big empty room. Once again I found myself regretting that I hadn't sprung for the shuttle ticket, I would have if I had known that transportation was going to be such a huge pain in the ass.

But technical issues aside, it was still a fucking blast. I had a fantastic time hanging out with people. And girls hit on me! What the hell!

Band night
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After the venue everybody went back to the Flamingo. The lounge room never did get opened, but the hotel turned a blind eye to the whole gang of freaks taking over the jacuzzi every night, so that is where everybody ended up. A bunch of people had brought bathing suits or just hit the water in their underwear - including Axel - but I elected to sit on the sidelines and shoot the shit with people. By the time I staggered into the hotel to try and get a cab back to Terribles, the sun was well up in the sky.

Jacuzzi party
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day 12
April 28
Monday had the usual wasted day feel that always comes after a really good party. I dragged myself out of bed just in time to catch the tail end of the group breakfast, which happened on a big outdoor patio at the Flamingo. The spread was pretty thin - a few muffins were left and some cold coffee. They brought out a tray of bagels after almost everybody had left which was immediately scarfed down. The most annoying part being that I know they charged at least $10 a head for that.

Still, we managed to say our goodbyes to a bunch of people, which was our real reason for being there. Most of our group of friends was taking off, including Bradley, who had found a ride with somebody from Arizona.

After hanging around there for a few hours, a few of us who were staying went to get a real breakfast. After that Axel and I just headed back to Terribles and took a nap, since neither of us had gotten much in the way of sleep the night before.

Afterwards there was talk of sushi. silentq had mentioned an all-you-can-eat place that sounded like it wasn't bad, so we tried to round up some of the people who were still in town to go on an expedition for raw fish. It didn't really work out though - a bunch of people were already ensconced in the sushi restaurant at the Flamingo. We ended up joining them, and ordered our drinks before looking at the menu. I instantly regretted it - the place was expensive. I ordered half of what I would normally eat in Toronto, and paid twice as much if you include the exchange rate in.

Afterwards I wanted nothing so much as to sit in pub and relax and have a few beers where we could shoot the shit, but that's not really possible on the strip. We ended up sitting in one of the bars in the hotel, where the constant noise of the slot machines was just relentless. The Evil Chemist joined us, and he kept popping up and down to win more money on the slot machines.

Hotel bar
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Eventually we gave up and hauled our exhausted asses back to our hotel. Our trip had been a lot of fun and I had very much enjoyed the company, but at this point I was really, really tired of Vegas.

day 13
April 29
km 6059
TSM was flying out and we were taking off as well, so the bunch of us had breakfast together and then went to pack up our stuff. As always, there seemed to be way more stuff in the baggage to leave than there had been when we arrived, but we were also down a Raphrat - who had caught a ride with somebody else from Tucson - so Axel used his uber packing skills to stuff it all in.

leaving Las Vegas
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Our trip home took us north out of Navada and into Utah. All I had previously known about Utah was that it had mormons in it. I hadn't expected it to be so starkly beautiful. The landscape looked very much like the scenery from Road Runner cartoons - flat desert decorated with cliffs and mesas, tall rocks formations that are thick at the top and taper into the ground, cactus and twisted trees. It was also incredibly diverse, every 100 miles gave us completely new vistas. I was enchanted and we stopped numerous times to take pictures at the lookouts on the side of the highway.

It also seems to have no enforced speeding limit. I think I passed a dozen cars in the entire state, and none of them were travelling below light speed. I mean, what are they going to hit?

Utah
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We ended up camping for the night in Grand River, Utah. Having learned our lesson from the trip in, we specifically chose it for it's low altitude, nestled in a mountain valley. It turned out to be flat, warm, green and slightly damp. It was the first night Astrid and Etienne didn't freeze their asses off in their tent.

day 14
April 30
km: 7170
As we continued to drive north-east, we started hitting mountains like the ones you see on television. Really high, snow-covered peaks. The highway that crossed the Utah-Colorado border travelled through a mountain valley that curled it's way between two sheer cliffs. It was absolutely gorgeous.

When we traced our route home on the map, one thing had leapt out to strike our eager eyes. One place had come to represent all the things that are good and worthwhile and holy on a roadtrip. One name reverberated in our group mind.

Aspen, Colorado.

"Why?" you may ask. Well, the answer is simple.

Because Hunter S Thompson lives there.

Aspen itself turned out to be a very pretty mountain town with the unmistakable patina of yuppy. I don't know what the hell it is they do to a town when they move in - open up chi-chi furniture shops, replace all the surfaces with high-gloss hardwood, hoover up all the parking - but their spoor is unmistakable.

I'm not sure what we thought we were going to do once we got to Aspen, but we did do was find a nice "pub-style" restaurant where we could sit and have lunch and then wandered the streets looking at the stores full of hand-crafted genuine imported items. Purely by fluke we ended up talking to a local woman who walked up to ask us a question, and as we were leaving, Casper turned around and said, "Hey, do you happen to know where Hunter S Thompson lives?"

"Yeah, I've known him for years."

So we got directions to the bar where he drinks, which turns out to be in a small village outside of Aspen. We head out there to see if we can find him, and maybe offer to buy him a shot. Once we get there, however, the bar is closed for renovations.

The store next to it is open though, so we go inside and look around. Not surprisingly, they have a huge stock of Thompson-related items. I buy a book. Casper buys a Gonzo t-shirt and baseball cap. While we are paying for our purchases, Casper asks the woman at the cash register.

"So, can you tell us where Hunter S Thompson lives?"

She gives us directions.

We drive up a mountain on a little winding road that takes us through a little winding town and gets us thoroughly lost. Just as we are about to give up, we find another way up the side of the mountain and drive right up to Thompson's front gates.

Then the debate starts.

I'm firmly in the "go up and knock on the door" camp. Everyone else is firmly of the "he will come out here and shoot our asses" camp. After much haggling, I finally let myself be dissuaded and we take a bunch of pictures and head out. To this day I kick myself because I did not drive back into town, pick up a couple of six-packs, knock on his door, give them to him, and pesonally thank him for being one of the best fucking writers of the last 30 years.

So, yeah. Anyway.

Hunter S Thompson's ranch
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From there we start heading towards Nabraska. We specifically choose our route so that it will take us through Independanc Pass, which at over 12,000 feet is the highest point in the area, Once we got to the turnoff, however, it was closed until June due to still being snowed in. So we had to settle for the second highest pass - at 11,000 feet.

Seeing the heavy snowbanks after camping out in the desert was pretty surreal. The highway gradually wound it's way down through the mountains, passing through little towns and past snow-fed streams. It was really very lovely. Each town had the altitude posted beside the population. We could feel the temperature rise each time we got out of the car.

Colarado
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At last passed through the outskirts of Denver and left the mountains altogether. The land flattened out into a series of farms and we crossed the border into Nabraska. We drove up off the interstate into the town of Alliance, a small town with a very agriculture-industrial ambience. We found a hotel on the outskirts of town and crashed for the night.

day 15
May 1
km: 8556
The next morning we got up early, had a quick breakfast in the motel restaurant and piled back into the car. Our real goal was just outside of Alliance - we were going to Carhenge.

Carhenge is a replica of Stonehenge made out of, well, cars. Apparently the whole thing started as a drunken project at the property-owners annual family barbeque, and has since become a tourist attraction. There are also a number of other sculptures that have since been added to the site, all made from auto parts.

I was actually surpirsed at how impressive the structure is when you see it up close. The surrounding land is as flat as a ruler, so you can see the sculpture from quite far away. You end up walking across an empty feild towards these cars - and let me tell you there aren't any of those modern, wimpy "fuel-efficient" numbers here, every last car on this lot is a genuine '70's era dinosaur -- and you actually get the feeling of being next to something, well, big.

It was cold, miserable and wet. And we hung around there for well over an hour, and everybody agreed that it was well worth the detour. We stopped at a gas station just outside of the site, and I bought myself a Carhenge tshirt. Unfortunately there was a woeful dearth of crushed pennies or slidey pens.

Carhenge
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We may have been influenced by the fact that it was nasty, cold and wet. We were definitely influenced by the fact that we had been on the road for two freaking weeks. But as we got back in the car and began to drive east, we unanimously agreed that it was time to drive like hell, and get our cold tired asses back home. The holiday was done.

Unfortunately there was still this minor matter of 1400 miles to deal with. So we got down to business. I managed to get the first speeding ticket of the trip, while we were still in Nebraska. Oh, how I missed the carefree highways of the south!

day 16
May 2
km: 9876
The advantage of having two drivers is that you really don't have to stop except for bathroom breaks. Astrid took second shift around midnight while I crashed in the back of the car. I woke up at 3am just 30 miles outside of Chicago and was informed that while I was sleeping we had aquired the second speeding ticket of the trip just inside of Illinois.

I took over the driving again for a few more hours and made as far as Kalamazoo, Michigan before I had to take another break. It was around dawn, which is my traditional have-to-be-unconscious-for-a-couple-of-hours-now time. Everybody else in the car was sleeping peacefully, so I pulled into a rest station, took out my contact lenses, threw a sweater over my head and passed the fuck out.

I woke up an hour-and-a-half later, exited the car just long enough to pee, put my contact lenses back in and splash some cold water on my face, got back into the car without waking anybody up, and we were back on the road. Gradually everybody else started moving, and the whole crew was awake by the time we hit the Canadian border. You aren't allowed to be Canadian unless you hit the duty-free on the way back into Canada, so we took care of that, convinced the lovely people at the border that they were stuck with us, and we were offically home.

Once back in Canada we stopped to grab some food in Sarnia. I was more than a little bit wired by then, so I grabbed the opportunity to soak up massive amounts of coffee. It's only a four-hour drive from the border back to Toronto, so we ended up making it home in slightly over 26 hours. We dropped Astrid and Casper off, and got back to Axel's place. In the process of unloading all our crap, we discovered that Axel had managed to somehow lose his daypack.

The last place he could remember seeing it was the restaurant in Sarnia. It took a while for our sleep-addled brains to come up with the name, but after plugging some likely contenders into a search-engine, we finally hit on it and gave them a call. Yep, they had it.

There was no way I was going back to Sarnia on less than four hours sleep, so we promised we would be back the next day, and we immediately proceeded with all haste to getting horizontal as fast as was humanly possible.

day 17
May 3
km: 10065
I felt surpisingly not like shit the next day. Go figure.

The first order of the day was to get some food and coffee into ourselves, which we did at our local greasy spoon. The second order of the day was to drive back to Sarnia.

Making a eight-hour return trip pretty much sucks up an entire day. I extracted extravagant promises from Axel in return for making the drive, we got his daypack back safe-and-sound, and we returned to Toronto. It was a Saturday, which is traditional shittalkin' down at the pub night for us and our friends, so we headed out there and told everybody all the stories of our trip. I was pleased that Astrid and Etienne were out - after the last long road trip to Seattle neither Etienne nor I had left our houses or wanted to be around other people for about a month. Here we were already chattering excitedly about what we were going to do next.

Now that's the sign of a good vacation.

Next year: Mexico!