Road Trip - summer 2003 - Tiki Road Trip book signing tour

Ritual with purpose: call it magic, call it superstition, call it religion, call it insanity.

My new book, Tiki Road Trip came out in April of 2003. The impetus for this current trip was the attendance of three (later four) book signing events. I was to be one of several featured guest at the giant Mondo Tiki bash in Las Vegas on April the 19th, and then I was scheduled for a book signing event in Los Angeles on the 23rd and another in Emeryville (San Francisco) on the 25th. Before, between, and after these events, it is all about the road. I always say "why travel anywhere for business and fail to take some time to see what you can see". It also happens that the 6th annual Viva Las Vegas rockabilly fest was happening in Las Vegas the same weekend as Mondo Tiki. A lot of my friends from all over the country were scheduled to be at one or both events.

On every other western US of A road trip, I have shot through most of Missouri with few stops. On my 1994 trip, I was passing through at night, having driven through Illinois all day, and in 2002, I needed to be home on the day I was driving through Misery, so I needed to make some time and therefore didn't stop much. During a 1999 trip home from Denver, I did a few bits of old Rt. 66 through Missouri, which was memorable for the presence of a tornado and for the Mobile Exploration Lab (my crappy 1994 Nissan) breaking down (I guess I didn't clean the house before I left). So I decided to devote some time to Missouri this trip. Thus: here I am, typing this first travelogue entry from room 4 in the Stanton Motel on Rt. 66 in Stanton, MO. It is 1:30 AM on Tuesday, April 15 (or actually Wednesday morning now), and there isn't much to report from the first leg of the trip.

This morning, with the car already packed, I put on my beige X-large short-sleeved vintage shirt, which is now official the "Road Trip Shirt", since I wore it all over the country last year too, and then those crappy old cutoffs made from the jeans I bought in Toronto like 6 years ago, and my Docs with no socks (this outfit may become ritual #3, provided this apparel doesn't fall apart). This and 5 days beard made me look like a dope fiend, I am sure; wandering around Missouri in this get-up, I must have come off like some kind of junkie to the okie locals.

I left home about 5:00 PM, with the intent to make it to an unspecified point just past St. Louis, and then get any room I could find for under $30. Traffic leaving Chicago was murder, but I expected that. I stopped to gas up about 34 miles into the trip, and did a straight 300 miles before stopping again.

Hit a an all-night store about midnight, scored some action figures I needed for my collection, plus a new micro cassette recorder, a new road atlas, and some food. Soaked up a whole container of roasted garlic hummous on two cold bagels for dinner, along with an apple.

I stopped where I did - on Rt. 66 but near I-44 exit 230 - because there is a bunch of tourist traps right here that I want to check out tomorrow. There is Meramec Caverns, a Jesse James museum, a toy museum, some other vintage motels, and who knows what else.

Two billboards, just a few yards apart:
"24-hour adult entertainment! Girls! Girls! Girls! Next right!"
and then:
"Porn destroys lives".

My bill for room 4 was $30.54 with tax. I handed the lady a twenty, a ten, a quarter, and three dimes. She didn't offer my penny in change. I didn't press the issue.
The room: cigarette burns on the linoleum floor of the bathroom... a note written with careful penmanship from the maid, explaining that she cleaned the room this morning, and that she works for tips only... handwritten notes in sloppy scrawl all over the room and at the front desk window explaining the other rules: check out time is 10AM, no pets, respect your neighbor, people smuggling extra persons into the room will be ejected... no cooking. The name of the motel is written on the towels in Sharpie... Next to the bed is a weird/interesting hulk of an old TV/radio/clock combo console which has been gutted and turned into a night stand... the 'real' TV is mounted on the wall at an uncomfortable angle, hard to see from the bed.

Someone had just told me, in detail, last week, about a report they saw about the unsanitary conditions found in the bedding of even the best motels - all sorts of nasty bodily fluids and other human residue are more or less embedded in all public bedding, and it is difficult or impossible to remove. I chastised the bearer of this most interesting report for ruining my forthcoming trip, and then tried to forget about it... but you can't forget something on purpose. It is impossible. Sometimes you can try to remember something, and succeed. Sometimes you can try to remember things, but fail to. But forgetting on purpose is another matter: you can try and try to forget something, but whatever it is that makes some things stick in your brain and others dissolve into nothing is not something we have control over.

So in squirming around gingerly on the bedding, as if only half-covering myself with the sheet would keep me more safe from cooties, I also had to contend with trucks going by on the freeway, and then the plumbing was intermittently making some sort of weird grinding noise, and the electricity in the room was producing a sequence of audible humming sounds with no discernible patterns... and I forgot to bring the number one essential travel comfort item in my world: earplugs.

This is a more or less rural area. I left St. Louis a good thirty or forty miles behind me last night, and with the spring time and the rain, it is very green and lush out here. In getting ready to leave the motel, I found old Rt.66 about four car lengths to my left, and then a chain link fence, and then the I-44 freeway. Rt.66 runs parallel to the interstate here, hugging it tightly, and never drifting too far away. On the other side of the freeway is a Toy Museum and the Jesse James Museum, and then a side road leading to Meramec Caverns.

Styrofoam cups are stuck between the fence links, spelling out a message to passersby on the Interstate: "SUPPORT R TROPS". Little flags and yellow ribbons accent the message further. Is it me, or were yellow ribbons originally conceived in that Tony Orlando song as a sign of forgiveness to a lover returning home from prison? How have they become a show of support to overseas troops? Do we suppose that our boys in Iraq are imprisoned, having done something wrong, and that we will forgive them upon their return? Sounds more like a Viet Nam era sentiment to me.
(update: my friend Valerie, who I am not mad at anymore - see below - sends this link which answers my yellow ribbon question in extreme detail)

The Jesse James museum - which was closed - is a pink stand-alone building, in an old-west style (natch) not much bigger than a small retail store. Upon peering through the windows, it seems more retail store than museum, so I suppose I didn't miss much.

Upon entering the Toy Museum (exit 230), Bruce and Lorraine Barnes (the friendliest middle aged couple imaginable) accosted me immediately upon stepping across their threshold, and coaxed me to part with four bucks for the privilege of entering their museum. Their enthusiasm was almost creepy. She mans the register and obligatory gift shop; he will tell you all about how he started collecting toy trucks many years ago. Mr. Truckman left me on my own as he went outside to talk to an entire busload of elderly women who were just leaving. Good thing for it. I am sure they are all nice old grandmas, but sharing the cramped little museum with 40 octogenarians was more than I could handle at that early hour of the morning.

As I stepped into the museum part of the building, Mrs. Claus flipped a switch, causing a turn of the century calliope to fire itself up and start pumping forth a sprightly (if whimsically off key) melody as a vintage train began to zip around an overhead track. This show lasted for about a minute, after which the narrow labyrinth of display cases became silent. Well, not quite: somewhere, off in the distance, a radio was very softly playing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" (The Hall and Oates version).

If you like turn of the century-era metal trucks, this is the place for you. As a life long packrat and collector of many sundry things, I can tell you quite a bit about the value of old stuff, ranging from bakelite radios to sci fi toys, Tiki mugs, old clothes, sound equipment, and certain eras of art, both high and low, but I don't know a damned thing about little metal trucks from 1920. If there were any specimens worthy of exaltation, anything especially rare, any items that would make collectors of this stuff gasp in a frenzy of covetous awe, I wasn't able to tell which ones they were. I think that the goal here is to make people think to themselves: "I remember that!", or "I had that!", or "Whatever happened to...". But of course, I actually kept most of my childhood toys, and my dad wasn't even born yet when most of the stuff in this museum was made, so the true nostalgia factor here was minimal for me, and my interest in trucks being pretty near zero, I was unimpressed. Well, that's putting things harshly. The collection is impressive in it's breadth, and I do like seeing all manner of old stuff, but enough is enough with the trucks.

Mr. Friendly came over to where I was browsing in order to show me how one section of the museum is on old semi trailer (a toy truck museum in a really truck! How clever!), and how all of the toys in the display cases in the trailer are tied down. He used to haul the trailer around to fairs, pop open the back, and show off this portion of the collection to people everywhere. One section of the museum proved to have more recent toys in it; Mr. Happyguy told me that it existed so his younger visitors would have something to enjoy. In contrast to the presumably amazing truck collection, the perfunctory and somewhat random collection ofmore recent pop culture memorabilia I beheld wasn't organized, comprehensive, or in good condition. This array of stuff clearly hadn't been gathered with the same passion as the older items... although I did spy some Six Million Dollar Man toys that I had as a kid and had sold off at a garage sale in a rare and regrettable purge... Maskatron mint on card in box! Evil Knevil stunt cycle! Then there was the array of contemporary 'commemorative collectible' Wizard of Oz and Betty Boop crap...

On a little gazebo by the water hangs an inviting sign: "Take a cruise on the Cavern Queen!". Opposite that, a large, modern building is embedded into the side of the cliffs, as if the cliffs had grown around the building rather than vice-versa. A bronze statue of Jesse James and an accomplice stashing their loot seems to place the famous robber on a par with our founding fathers.

Inside the building is a gigantic gift store, divided into several sections, each catering to a different possible sub-set of the likely tourist population: Jesse James and cowboy ephemera (from oversized neon blue foam cowboy hats to expensive authentic leather Stetsons), Missouri geology information, local wildlife souvenirs, repro seymouria and xiphaginus fossils, some amazing geodes, weird taxidermy, and lots of guns.

Oh, and lots of Rt. 66 memorabilia (someone remind me what, exactly, Elvis Presley and James Dean had to do with Route 66?). That dipshit guy Helnwein has a new painting out, this one of Marilyn, Elvis, Dean, and Humphrey Bogart jamming with an guitar in a diner parking lot. I think this asshole hit rock bottom (or maybe our society hit rock bottom) when one of his imitators(!), a retard named Consani painted (completely seriously, without a hint of irony) The Last Supper, but with Laurel and Hardy, Marlon Brando, Frankenstein's monster, Dean, Presley, Bogart, Charles Chaplin, and a few other 'nostalgic' figures at dinner with, in the Jesus position, Marilyn Monroe, her hands outspread like Christ. My lord, why doesn't somebody just shoot this dipshit? But I digress...

The snack bar is to be avoided by all vegans, and all who value their health on any level. It features an exhaustive array of things that will make you fat: burgers, ice cream, pizza, candy, sodee pop, deep fried whatever, otter meat... or something like that... After buying my ticket (at $12.50! ouch!) for the noon tour from the friendly security lady, I had one half of an hour to make a marginally more healthy lunch of tuna sandwiches, bananas, and pretzels in the car.

The first stop on the tour, at the point where the modern building meshes seamlessly with the actual cave through a wide cavernous (appropriate) opening, is what they call the Ballroom. This section of the cave's floor is covered with still extant linoleum from the 1950's (date estimated based on the style of said linoleum). A stage was built on one end, and a smaller stage was erected next to it. The carekeepers of the caves host everything from dances to church events here; on my arrival, three large crucifixes on the stage were being prepared for an Easter mass the following weekend. An adequate PA system had been installed; I instantly had ideas about improving it. Always at work, I am. "Relax!", I reprimanded myself, "This crappy sound system is not my problem!".

I asked the guide, a portly local gal who proved to be clueless about everything - save for pointing out geological formations that resembled Santa Claus or Abe Lincoln - if the disco ball overhead was a natural formation. A few of my tour-mates chuckled. The guide didn't get it. A large neon sign proclaiming "Jesse James Hideout" had been installed in the cave; after my last quip fizzled, I decided not to point out the irony of announcing one's hideout with a twenty foot wide two-color slab of neon. A little log cabin squarely in the middle of the 'room' - with a mannequin of a hobo moonshiner and a still inside - was not part of James' set up, we were told. We were not told why, then, it was present, save for (perhaps) local color.

Stephanie (our thoroughly inept guide) seemed nervous, and was continually out of breath as she rushed us through the eighty minute tour. She did point out a few geological curiosities that were of interest for reasons other than their resemblance to famous people, but outside of reciting the bits about them that she had memorized from her tour guide training manual, she was unable to provide any truly in depth information, so I quickly gave up asking. Aside from two German couples who, like me, trailed at the back of the group so as to be able to get good pictures (i.e. with no people in them), the rest of the group of twenty or so seemed more than happy to get the tour over with as soon as possible.

We were constantly reminded not to touch key rock formations, as the oils in our hands and the tiny amounts of friction of skin against rock would affect the natural process by which the intricate and delicate natural wonders we beheld were being slowly created over untold thousands of years. However, there were sections of cavern in which the presence of man's intervention had clearly come into collision with the natural order of things. Places where the installation of walkways, passages, lights, or other equipment hindered or diverted what may have happened had we not been there. I wanted to ask which sections had been deemed OK for tampering, and by whom, and how long ago, and why... but our hostess was busy pointing out a rock that looked like a penguin, so I kept my trap shut and decided that Mammoth Caves in Kentucky are a longer tour, and are cheaper ($8), and have better guides, and have eight different tours instead of one. Mental note: go there next time instead of Meramec.

The grand finale occurred when our group was seated on metal bleachers in a little subterranean natural amphitheater, before an immense and breathtaking rock formation that looked like a thirty-foot tall waterfall, pouring from a fissure in the ceiling of the chamber, frozen in time. Stephanie played an old and scratchy recording of "God Bless America" over a crummy sound system, while manually and randomly flipping colored lights on and off, almost in time to the music. I could hear the click-click of the light switches as her sausage-like fingers worked the 'big light show'. It was embarrassing. I wondered what the Germans were thinking.

I guess that given all the tourist dollars Jesse James' ghost brings in around these parts, they decided to saint him.

Free samples are just too tempting, and it is too early in the day for the blood of Christ.

If you miss the wine, you can make up for it with bourbonific fun for the whole family.

Found someone's house with a big plastic teepee in front of it, and they were selling flowers out of the teepee. Sorry, no need to buy them when they're in bloom everywhere you look. I stopped a bit later to take some pictures of said ubiquitous blossoms when the sun was hitting one patch of them 'just so'; I wiped out and fell on my face coming back up the embankment to the car. My arm hurts.

Found a funny sign that said 'Jesus: king of the road', and also a big vacant lot, overgrown with foliage and full of rusted out crap, old farm implements and unidentified laying objects. A hand painted sign, stuck in the mud, read: 'antiques' with the script trailing off the edge, as if they ran out of room, and then below that: 'things and stuff for sale'.

For the second time today, I have found myself stuck behind a Ford pickup truck with a sparkly purple paint job and a yellow siren on top. These two disparate elements of decoration are confusing me; the siren implies that the vehicle is intended for some sort of official use, but the sparkly purple finish implies custom cheese. All I know for certain is that this road is one lane, and it twists and winds too much to pass with safety, and this guy is going really slowly. Oh, if only I hadn't stopped to take pictures of those purple flowers - wait - purple flowers? Purple truck?

The man delivering the purple flowers in his official purple truck will gain some miles on me.

Saw a Cleopatra figurine from the 1940's that was kind of cool and probably worth a lot more than the $3 price tag, but I don't need any more junk like that in my house. More Tikis are always needed. Other old cool stuff... well, always needed, but today I excersized will power, and passed up a bargain.

Stopped at the Totem Pole (since 1933), another gift store / gas station. Big ol' totem pole outside.
No, really.

Found a pair of Trader Vic's salt and pepper shakers for my Tiki collection. These are fairly common items, but are usually seen in a dark orange-brown color, these were in a shade of grey I haven't seen before. Marked at $6 as "Egyptian figurines". There's another theme for the day.

The presence of the totem pole here in Rolla marks a sort of unofficial divider between the east and the west, and to a degree, the north and south. You see very little, if any, reminders of Native American culture either north or east of this point. To the west - both northwest and southwest - one finds everything from tribal reservations to tacky Indian-themed 'trading posts' all over the place.

Rolla is also where the red dirt starts to appear, which is seen all over the place from here through Nevada. I skipped the Onyx Mountain Cavern - one cavern per day is plenty - and the Ed Clark Geology museum. Rolla seems to be the U.S. Capital for the $20 hotel room, which is handy after all the wine and bourbon nearby.

On my last trip, I was trying to nail down exactly why authentic vintage old diners, motels, bowling alleys, and drive-ins look so cool, but why the modern attempts to be evocative of these places are so dreadful. I mean, anyplace that bills itself as a "50's diner" is probably a really lame place, whereas there are so many legitimately old diners, some that go back to the 1940's, or even older, that are amazing - and none of them market themselves to the retro set. You just have to know they're there. What is the difference? Why is an old waterfall-style neon sign from the 1940's a wonder to behold, and yet a modern day neon beer ad in a bar window such an ugly travesty?

The appeal to these old places isn't really anything as superficial as the 60-year-old neon, Formica, or chrome. It has more to do with a sense of history. Walking in to any of the few remaining 'old' locations I have discovered around the country, one is enveloped with a pleasing sense of peace, as if stepping into a time capsule. These diners and motels, the ones that have been maintained for untold decades, carry with them a feeling of having been cared for, of having been preserved, of being recognized as a symbol that things don't necessarily need to be 'improved' in order to be made 'better'. Some things are fine they way they are, and in many cases, simplicity is key. You can't fake the patina on a classic anything. Most of the new places don't know to try.

Almost without exception, all of the places that attempt to appear 'nostalgic' fail miserably. They are too bright, too clean. They feel as though they were assembled by committee from a badly researched 'how to' book. The requisite clutter that seems to be de rigueur for so-called 'retro' diners etc., is mass-produced trash made completely without feeling by corporations who own the trademarks to the various overused and inescapable iconography present within. 'Real' vintage diners never seem to be cluttered with mass produced Coke signs newly painted to look old, or pictures of Marlon Brando on a motorcycle. It is the new ones that have this stuff, and this stuff just isn't intrinsically cool. Seeing a classic Brando movie is cool; but putting his picture in a diner built in the 1980's that serves bad food on purpose doesn't make said diner cool. It makes it a bad diner with a picture of Brando in it.

The same idealized clichÃ©s, repeated over and over, are enough to make one ill.

If I have to look at one more candy apple red '57 Chevy, one more brightly lit Wurlitzer jukebox, or one more ineptly painted copy of Bernard of Hollywood's photo of Marilyn with her dress blowing up, I am going to strangle someone. If someone doesn't stop tacking completely random 45's to the wall, I am going to start ripping them down.

The worst part of it is that the people who maintain businesses on Route 66 just don't understand their clientele. Tourists make the considerable effort required to drive this road because they want to see old stuff. Not new stuff meant to - and failing to - remind them of old stuff. If they wanted to see new stuff, they could stay at home, or go to Planet Hollywood. Tearing down John's Modern Cabins (see below) and building places like Memoryville USA completely defeats the purpose. Even if the old stuff is a little run down, a little decayed, well, that's part of the appeal, oddly. There's a difference between preservation and exploitation; between renovation and restoration.

Authenticity is the bottom line, and the purveyors of most of this co-called 'nostalgia' don't get it.

On a whole other level, there is also an elegance of design that has been lost. Putting a picture of James Dean in your motel lobby when the whole building is a heartlessly conceived plain white box doesn't make it retro. No one is fooled. At some point in our recent history, people stopped caring about living with art and beauty in their day to day lives. Contemporary architecture and design is utilitarian, plain, functional, bleak, and depressing. No one wants to go through the expense to make something pleasing to look at; this isn't a priority if it won't increase revenue.

The over-the-top architecture and design style that we call 'googie' was perhaps the last hurrah for the artists that created it: one can almost feel that the people putting these buildings together sensed that their generation was the last one to care about aesthetics in day to day life, and therefore they pulled out all of the the stops, making the style of their day as ridiculous as they could, just because they may have known they'd never get another chance.

Perhaps this is why it remains the coolest: there was nothing else after it to challenge it.

Just discovered John's Modern Cabins, south of Rolla on the west side of the highway.

I explored them as the sky started to drizzle rain. Here are the collapsing ruins of eight cabins, half of them done in a 'log cabin' style, and half done in a contemporary (circa 1940s that is) style. All are about to cave in. Some have some original furnishings inside: a once-beautiful easy chair with the original floral upholstery is almost recognizable, even with the weeds sprouting from the springs. There's another thing that looks like a water heater tank, but with a root beer logo on it. And an old stove. This stuff is pretty rusted out however, and anything actually useful or valuable that could have been salvaged from these cabins has long since been carted off.

Several signs have been posted: one sign warns people that the property is private and that entry is at the trespasser's own risk, while another indicates that the cabins were built in the 1930's. A series of postings in the sequential-verse style pioneered by Burma Shave ads in the 1940's reads:

...indeed! The last sign says "In 1931 John Dausch opened his 'Modern Cabins' on Route 66. The business closed shortly after the arrival of I-44 in the 1960's, but Dausch continued to live on the property until his death in 1971. For more information, Email Sundayjohn66@aol.com"

"Wow ... what would you like to know? My husband and I became interested in the cabins a couple of years ago while exploring Route 66 and spent about six months researching them for an article that appeared in Route 66 Magazine. In January 2002, we learned the cabins were in danger of being demolished, but we rounded up a group of 66ers to write letters to the property owner, and we convinced her to keep the cabins intact. Her son is trying to shore up the buildings, and the National Park Service has offered some advice through a needs assessment it did last summer as part of its Route 66 Corridor program. The situation with the cabins actually led to the formation of a new nonprofit group, Friends of the Mother Road, which is dedicated to preservation and education along 66 in Missouri.

I went into some of the structures and they felt... unsafe. Some of the foundations (which are on stilts a few feet above ground level) were rickety; they felt like they might collapse under my weight if I moved wrong. But that's half the appeal. Danger is my middle name, baby.

Back on the road... said road being a remnant of old Rt. 66, a one-lane affair still hugging the Interstate as it has done the entire length of Missouri. Another road exists on the opposite side of the highway as well. Between them, the traffic on the highway is backed up for miles in a rush-hour rainstorm.

A steep red dirt hill at the end leads down to a construction zone. My little Nissan isn't designed to tool around over huge Martian boulders, meteor crater holes, and bulldozer tracks, so I must double back and pick up the road on the east side of the highway a few miles back.

Doubling back again, I must get on the freeway - into all the traffic I had scoffed at.

Around mile marker 176 on I-44, heading south, near the Sugartree Road exit, old 66 disappears for a while, and you must get on the highway until exit 169. Over here, 66 is road Zed.

This storm is getting really bad. Every time I come through Missouri, it is like a tornado.

I suspect that I've seen my last tourist trap for the day, but with some daylight left - assuming the storm continues to abate - there will still more than likely be some things to see. Rt. 66 is a divided highway here, in contrast to the bumpy old single lane left over a few miles back. The sunlight is poking strongly through the clouds, reflecting off of the water on the ground and on the foliage to illuminate everything brightly. Brilliant shades of purple and green against a grey backdrop.

Some clichÃ©s about the locals are true - everyone who lives out here has metric tons of junk piled up in their yards. It is everywhere. A badge of honor among the populace. Competing with the Jonses, hillbilly style. The new Hatfield vs. McCoy battle: who can accumulate the most debris on their property. Some of them have tables set up in their yards with stuff all over them, like a permanent swap meet. Where does all of this debris come from? Rusted cars, half sunk into the earth, old appliances, toys, butane tanks, rusted tool sheds left to collapse. Hmmm, what's the difference between this junk and the pleasing melancholy in the decay of John's Modern Cabins? Further enlightenment must be patiently worked towards....

Pulling away from the Villager Inn, room 417. Spent $27.58 (with a coupon - most truck stops hand out little newsprint magazines full of hotel coupons) for a stinky room with a powerful shower. Almost knocked me on my ass. Just the way I like it. Unlike the one the previous night, which was a weak trickle of piss.

I've got 100 miles of Oklahoma to get through today, and then 172 miles of Texas. I'd like to get well into New Mexico before I pull over tonight. That'll give me Arizona to tackle on Friday, which should ensure that I arrive right on time in Las Vegas on Friday night. I have a 6:00 PM appointment to keep there. I've got 29 hours to do it.

Proceeding west through Oklahoma, I make the familiar switch from I-44 to I-40, wishing I had more time to do backroads. Off of exit 66 is the Glancy motel - $18.50 per night. Cheapest I am aware of, anywhere...

According to Bishop James Usher, working in 1658, his god created the world on October 23, 4004 BC.

Cruised through the Elk City, Oklahoma business loop off of I-40. Most of the remnants of Rt. 66 on Oklahoma can be found on the I-40 business loops in various towns. Business loops are basically routes marked with the interstate shield-type signs, but in green instead of red and blue. They take you from a given freeway exit, through a town, and then deposit you back on the interstate a few miles down the road. Old 66 pressed onward through the main drags of many of these towns, and therefore, hopping from town to town via the interstate, but getting off of the big ugly road of the future to motor through the downtown areas of sundry small burgs is the best way to see a majority of Rt.66 in OK.

In this case, I decided to forego the Route 66 National Museum because: a). it is a lame collection of worthless, meaningless, and charmless modern so-called memorabilia in an ugly 1980's building, and b). I saw it once before.

After being coaxed to do so by a gang of billboards, I pulled off the interstate to see what I could see.

The sign reads: population 849, but I'd say that this sign is somewhat out of date.

Most of the buildings are falling down, most of them are abandoned, there's nobody here.

The main drag in this depressed wreck of a town is a single lane in each direction, divided by a strip of land wide enough to hold a home or business, and to require a little connecting road to facilitate U-turns or access to said businesses.

Unfortunately, most of them are closed. I took some pictures of the ruins of a gas station - the old 1960's pumps at the gas station provided some texture - and tried not to stare at the few locals remaining in houses that haven't been abandoned. In keeping with the theme of John's Modern Cabins in Missouri, I found what was once a very beautiful 1940's easy chair, and a fridge from a similar era. Both had been deemed unworthy of salvage by decades of explorers who have otherwise picked the ruins of this route clean of valuables. There is a tree growing from the loo.

It is unclear why anyone still lives here; there appears to be no agriculture, no industry, no tourism. It doesn't even function as an Interstate gas-n-food zone; it is just a hair too far from the highway to compete.

Outside of this, the largest building in town, are two gigantic rusted spheres made of barbed wire. At least five feet in diameter, they mark the entrance to the only business in town that appears to be open.

Entering the building, which is quiet as a tomb inside, and has the general atmosphere of one as well, the only sound was an incessant buzz from a neon sign somewhere. A U-shaped glass counter is where travelers might have been greeted in better times. In this case, the sole inhabitant of this barbed domain was a diminutive old woman, who had been hiding out in a glass-walled office to the right. She waddled out to her post when she decided that I was going to stay for a spell. Beyond her office is a hallway containing glass display cases full of odd collections: someone had quite an assembly of vintage paper dolls on display, and further cases featured a tiny recreation of the Cadillac Ranch (the Ranch is not a brothel, but a 1971 art installation near Amarillo where 10 Cadillacs were half-buried, vertically, in a row, on a farm), and a startling array of miniature irons. Irons. Like, for making your clothes flat. Irons. Tiny ones. Lots of 'em.

To the left is a massive and well stocked gift shop, of course, with the same tired array of 'nostalgia' that I've been looking at for the past four states. A one-room Route 66 museum lays beyond that; this one has a reasonable array of more or less worthwhile ephemera crammed into a single large room. In the back, dwarfing all of this, is the main attraction: the national museum of barbed wire.

Hanging around the lobby and above the entrance are a series of huge canvas banners from the barbed wire associations of Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and other states proclaiming their allegiance to the museum and promoting their organizations. Each sign has the current president of that state's chapter immortalized in gold-colored adhesive stickers slapped onto the sign. The same sort of stickers you get at Home Depot to apply to your roadside mailbox. A pair of Romanesque pedestals house huge three-ring binders, each as thick as three phone books, containing the barbed wire halls of fame: men's and women's. The women's auxiliary book contains an endless series of 8x10" photos of women. All but a very few are in their late middle age, with the identical 'southern old lady' haircut, and the exact same frames on their ubiquitous glasses. These aging clones of former farmer's daughters are as famous within the circles of barbed wire collectors as names like Otto, Sven, Shag, Holden, and Crazy Al are within the equally obscure international circle of Tiki fanatics. Who am I to judge? Each grand mistress of the Devil's Rope has a bio on the back of her picture - many also collect salt and pepper shakers. I wonder how many of them have a differently contextualized but no less coveted set from Kon Tiki Ports hidden among their sundry wagon wheel and bovine-shaped shaker sets?

That's just the entrance, however: interested parties, may view, for free, several thousand square feet of exhibits relating to barbed wire in all of it's holy manifestations. Every possible variety is displayed (except for that one impossibly rare one - you know the one I mean - all collectors of anything know what I mean). Cattle brands and ranching memorabilia add interest. I photographed a display of branding irons from celebrity ranches, and a scorpion made from barbed wire. This one packs quite a sting. Another link between the barbed wire babes and Polynesian popsters; I suspect that either the liquid, flesh, or wire scorpions will do you equipollent harm if handled poorly.

I didn't see another soul in the museum, aside from the proprietor, who warmed up a bit as I left. A large colorful felt Mercator projection of the Earth was covered with pushpins from all of the places from whence visitors to the museum had come. Someone had thumbtacked Easter Island; I was surprised to see this. The octogenarian barbed wire princess in charge pulled the pin out when I commented on it, claiming it was a hoax perpetrated by some random smart aleck. I perpetuated the hoax, telling her that I was actually from there, so she put the pin back in. Well, okay, I am not from Easter Island, but I may very well be the only person she ever meets in her life who has actually been there, and if nothing else, it is a sort of spiritual home for me...

Down the road a bit is the oldest surviving Phillips 66 station. Well, surviving isn't quite the best word to use; this relic was decommissioned decades ago. The pair of bright orange pumps have been mummified in endless new coats of paint, as has the 1940's truck parked near by. The tiny brick building, barely larger than an outhouse, that served to keep the grease monkeys of yore safe from the elements has been equally enshrined. The contrast between this relic and the completely wrecked gas station at the opposite end of town balances things out in a noteworthy fashion.

McClean, Texas is a depressed and depressing place. Abandoned, overgrown, falling apart, looted, and failing to make good on the promises on the billboards stretching out across Texas promising good times in McClean.

Exit 122 on I-40 in Texas: "You'll never forget, a spiritual experience: the largest cross in the western hemisphere".

Yup, that's a pretty big cross, you can see it from the freeway. Lots of tourists there.

Briton, Texas, around exit 114: their claim to fame is that their county water tower is leaning.

It is pictured on all of the signs directing one to anything having to do with this town.

My god, I get excited over some pretty lame stuff, but is there anyone, anywhere who would go out of their way to see a slightly askew water tower?

Approaching Amarillo, Texas on I-40. I am going to try something new. I'll take I-27 just a few miles south, and then pick up US Route 60, which is going to take me through the rest of Texas, all of New Mexico, and part of Arizona. Then it gets into some national forests and gets sort of hard to follow. But, it never veers more than 30 or 40 miles south of I-40, so I can bail out and get back to the interstate if I must. Lots of motels under $30 in Amarillo.

Was on I-27 south / Texas Rt. 87 south / US Rt. 60 west for a while, and now I am on just Route 60 west. We'll see what this adventure brings.

This portion of US Rt. 60 happens to be the Woody Guthrie memorial highway.
"This land is your land, this land is my land."

And I'm looking at the big sky.
That's supposed to be in Montana, but it's pretty big out here too.

Spent the last half hour standing next to the road while officer Stormer (badge 604) of the Parmer County (Texas) sherriff's office violated the Mobile Exploration Lab in an thorough search.

He pulled me over for doing 75 in a 70.
Certainly I was speeding a bit, but come on...

After making me sit in his car while he called in to make sure I wasn't wanted by the Yankee Po-lice, he actually called the station back and double checked, and even asked the woman back at HQ to do some additional searches on my name and license number. While I was sitting there! What a P-r-i-c-k!. He really wanted to nail me for something. I sat there in his squad car, trying to think of any offenses I may have committed that I forgot I was wanted for. Larceny, plagiarism, credit fraud, jaywalking with intent to kill... no, I think I've more or less kept my nose clean, much to my parent's continual surprise. He finally let me go with a warning. I felt like he was going to run me in on principle, as I haven't shaved for a week now, and I was driving without a shirt. I must have looked like a real dirtbag.

As I was walking back to the Mobile Exploration Lab, he called after me and asked me if he could search my car. It was almost like an afterthought, or like he forgot at first and only remembered to ask as I was leaving.

Well, I didn't really want him to search my car. I had nothing to hide, but it is still nerve-wracking to have anyone - a cop in particular - search though all of one's personal stuff. Not to mention that I had to pee, and it is humiliating standing next to the highway with all the cars zooming by, people gawking at the 'likely felon who's about to get what he deserves' freezing by the side of the road, and trying really hard not to be seen doing the peepee dance. I was later told by a lawyer friend that I had the right to refuse him, but I imagine that if I did so he may have become more suspicious, found some further excuse to detain me, and called in his redneck dickhead cop buddies to harass me further and more thoroughly So I let him do it.

May car was jam packed with six cases of copies of my book, other stuff to use as ambiance at my book signing events (like tapa tablecloths, little Tikis, and gaffers tape), clothes, food, maps, baggage, my 'tech bag' (two cameras, laptop, tape recorder, cell phone, batter charger, maglight, and miles of wires, thanks for asking), a pillow and blanket for emergencies, a box of old books that I meant to drop off at a thrift store, and lots of other stuff. He went over it with a fine tooth comb. He cracked open my fresh sealed cases of books. He rifled though my bag o' socks and t-shirts. He explored my cooler full of beverages. He chose not to comment on the bottles of rum and champagne I had saved for later in the trip; they were sealed and full, fortunately. Dipshit missed the one thing that could have been incriminating: rolling around under the seat was an empty plastic bottle that used to contain a prescription medication. These pills were legitimately prescribed to me, and have no possible recreational use, but an empty meds bottle rolling around under the seat never looks good.

Moving grouchily down the highway, at least pleased that I didn't actually get a ticket, I found myself at the New Mexico border less than a mile from the spot at which I had been stopped. The cop pulled a U-turn after I pulled away and immediately pulled someone else over. He hadn't even righted his car in the opposite lane when he turned his blue and reds on. For a moment I thought he was pulling me over again for some reason. Dick.

Immediately into New Mexico, I spied a thrift store that was just closing up. The friendly middle aged lady who was running the place took a look at some of the Tiki mugs I had with me, confirming that she had never seen anything like them before. She wanted to chat, but I eventually broke away as politely as possible. Texas hospitality, just over the New Mexico border. The only person I actually spoke with in Texas was that dipshit cop, who certainly didn't do much to make me feel welcome. Okay, New Mexico. A desert produce stand across the street from the thrift store was selling plaster religious ornaments and huge dried peppers that I initially mistook for gargantuan beef jerkies. The only motel in town was another spectacular one, save for the gang graffiti on the powder blue concrete walls.

Just got done stuffing my face with all the pizza I could for $4.24. Not the worst pizza I've ever had... not the best either. Certainly the best deal. That was CiCi's Pizza in Talico. Or Clovis. I have no idea where I am. There were pictures of the local high school cheerleaders in frames on the wall by the entrance, and video games in an alcove in the back. Brightly lit, cheerless, charmless. Like a cafeteria. I guess skimping on the atmosphere is what makes their chow so cheap. There is a TV in every direction you look, so you don't have to communicate with the people you're with, or - god forbid - strangers.

Just drove three miles down some back-ass road (New Mexico Rt. 272 south off of US Rt. 60) to visit Fort Sumner and Billy the Kidd's grave.

"Fort Sumner was established in 1862 to guard the Navajos and Apaches on the Bosque Redondo Reservation. Discontinued as a military site in 1868, and sold to Lucien B. Maxwell. William "Billy the Kidd" Bonney was killed here by Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881."

The cemetery occupies a few acres of grass surrounded by a chest-high stone fence. There are only a handful of graves there, most of the land is empty. But at the far end of it all, sitting prominently near the back wall, are three tombstones in a full-sized jail cell. The box of black iron bars, eight feet by eight feet by eight feet, keep Billy the Kidd permanently jailed, even 122 years after his death.

The site was deserted. The museum was closed, there wasn't a soul around. The sun was setting, it was cool out, and I found it a very peaceful place for a gunfighter to rest.

Just passed a turnoff, a little road branching off to the side, headed to Roswell.
Tempting... but not this trip.
Hard to skip. One of these trips, I'm going to head down there.... but not this trip.

There is nothing man-made visible, aside from the road.
No cars ahead of me, no cars behind me.
No fences, no signs, no electric wires, no buildings.
It is wide, and it is flat.
I can see the horizon 360 degrees all around me.
No trees, just a few small bushes.

Around mile marker 260-something is a small town, a treasure trove of great googie roadside architecture. Photographed as much of it as I could in the dark - the ones with working neon came out better than the dead ones, obviously.

Stopped in Willard to gas up even though I have half a tank left. The towns out here are few and far between, and I have no guarantees that gas stations will even be open all night in these small burgs. The sole petrol depot in Willard was closed, but the single pump there was left turned on for those who wished to pay-at-the-pump. Good thing for credit cards.

The night is extremely clear. A little while ago I could see millions of stars, but I noticed the conspicuous absence of the moon, which had been full last night. As the last vestiges of sunlight disappeared in the west, the sky in front of me dimmed to navy, then indigo, and then black. Behind me, stars winked into view until the clear sky was full of them. Still no moon. Finally, as if it was a bit shy, it poked up over the southeastern horizon, just a little at first, and then more prominently. Down near the border between earth and sky, the mostly-full waning moon was huge and rust colored. The moonlight caught the haze near the horizon, turning a whole slice of sky an eerie nighttime orange. Luna slowly crept higher in the sky, becoming smaller, but whiter and brighter, until it's shine lit up the night sky with enough intensity to cast shadows against objects on the ground. The stars vanished, overpowered by the Earth's lonely satellite.

Something just waddled across the road.
Some fat, waddly, hairy, little thing. A hedgehog, no bigger.

This is the huge cluster of radio telescopes that are continually monitoring the heavens.

Most people have seen these iconic monuments to astronomy at some point - perhaps in the films 2010 or Contact. It is too dark here to even consider getting photos, and the visitor center is closed until the morning. Maybe I should camp here in the car tonight and check this out in the morning.

These rows and rows of giant gleaming white dishes pointing up in to the sky are no different from any large factories or other industrial buildings, and yet, there is something about them that is beautiful and amazing, whereas their oil refinery or mineral processing counterparts seem to be sinister blots of darkness on landscape, symbols of death. Perhaps it is because of their intent and purpose: the VLA is for the exploration of space, the search for things outside of our own planet, outside of our own experience. Lewis and Clark, Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and their ilk were able to explore our planet on foot, by boat, and on horseback, but for the most part our exploration of extraterrestrial space is limited to the use of the VLA, the Aricebo observatory in Puerto Rico, and a few others. Seems to be a better use of technology and a better excuse to build these huge metal behemoths than some of the dubious uses for chemical plants that poison the air, earth, and water we rely on for life. Or, maybe it's just that the VLA are painted white and don't spew smoke.

Again, this dilemma in enjoying one thing and loathing something else that is intrinsically similar.

It came and went pretty quick.
You're in and out in about 2/10ths of a mile.
Didn't notice any bakeries, pastry shops, or Double R Diners.

Oh man! The biggest bug in history just splatted against my windshield. It looked and sounded like someone took a mustard packet from a fast food restaurant and pounded it against my window with an angry fist. Whatever kind of bug that was, I am glad I didn't encounter it for real. It may have eaten me alive. Now there's a big yellow death-smear all over my window. I don't dare use the wipers - it'll just spread insect gristle all over the place. Man....

There's a town about 20 miles ahead, and if there are no cheap motels there, I am going to pull over in the car at the next comfortable spot and sleep for a while.

later...
"Welcome to Springerville, Arizona - Gateway to the White Mountains". There are indeed white mountains visible, tall and amazing under the bright moon, now directly overhead.

Remember that book, the White Mountains? It was a sci-fi book for kids. I must have read it like 20 times when I was about 9. Creepy tale about three kids on the run from aliens in these Wellesian tripods that had taken over the world and lobotomized everyone. I hear they're making a movie out of it, actually.

Pulling out of the Reed's Lodge in Springerville, where I spent the night (514 E Main St. - US Hwy 60/AZ 180, 928.333.4323). This appears to be a resort town for outdoorsey types. Somewhat resortish, but still with a homey feel to it. High in the mountains of Arizona, it has more of a Pacific northwest feeling to it, rather than the sort of southwest terra cotta and adobe feeling more commonly associated with Arizona. Lots of pine wood everywhere.

When I checked in, a friendly middle aged hippie woman was overseeing the night shift at the desk, her long thick grey hair pulled back into an impressive braid. Turned out she was the owner. I went a little over budget, spending $35.75 for the room. Clean place, reasonably priced. Pretty nice for the price, actually. In the lobby / gift shop, which had been a restaurant or coffee shop in days gone by (one extant booth in a pinewood alcove in the rearmost room gave it away), there are plenty of wooden carvings, antlers, Native American art, books ("The Raping of the West"), cowboy parephenilia, and information about the area.

Complementary cherry cider, coffee, or tea in the morning. This is damned good cider. And hot. They have a small game room here, right next to the fish cleaning area. The air purifier in the room was already on when I checked in. That was nice, but I couldn't make the heat work, so I froze all night. At least the shower kicked ass. A powerful torrent. Like a SWAT team beating back an unruly crowd of rioters. But it was only at chest height, so I had to limbo some. When I checked out, the girl at the counter didn't know what time zone we are in. How can one not know something like this when at their own home or place of employment?

There was a hunting show on TV. Three fat redneck guys were going after an elk. They shot it at 400 yards as it crossed a stream, and then they had to figure out how to get it out of the water. They were bitching about having to get in their boat and fish this huge animal out of the river after they shot it. Well listen, asshole: if you don't want to get the beastie out of the river, don't shoot it while it's crossing. These dopes also had day-glo vests over their camouflage clothes. I understand that they wear cammo to hide from the animals they are going to kill and not eat. I understand that they are wearing fluorescent vests so that these dipshits don't accidentally shoot each other. But doesn't the presence of the bright orange vest negate any benefit provided by the camouflage? Why not just skip the cammo and wear their usual denim coveralls or whatever these guys wear day to day? The day-glo vest defeats the purpose of the camouflage, so why invest in it? On to the bigger question: are you going to do anything useful with the corpse of that waterlogged animal?

Anyway...
After taking me on a pleasing and satisfying route through Texas and New Mexico, US Rt. 60 starts to wind in a peculiar manner around Arizona mountains. Trying to plot a logical course is tough - the only road that cuts more or less straight through the state is I-40. I'll have to follow the smaller AZ Rt. 260 to a jumble of various even smaller roads for about 150 miles as the crow flies - probably over 200 in reality - to get to I-40, and then take US Rt. 93 at Kingman to Las Vegas.

Now might be a good time to mention that I am due to participate in a bus tour of vintage Las Vegas points of interest at 6:00 PM tonight. It should be no trouble to make assuming I don't stop too much today. I ought to have an hour to check into my hotel - the Gold Coast - clean up, and then make it to the Hard Rock, where the bus is departing from. But, should that plan fail, and should time grow short, I decided to tidy up a bit before checking out of last night's lodgings. To wit: I shaved for the first time in a week.

What's this: a weird neo-deco/southwest hybrid building. It's like a revivalist 1930's style with southwest Navajo influence thrown in. It is just sitting there, by itself, no other buildings about, empty... strange.

It was a big-ass rabbit too. I thought it was a baby deer for a second, because, you know, deer and rabbits both look sort of the same.

Not for long though - this velocity is entirely due to coming down a mountain in neutral!

Going back up it'll be a maximum velocity of 30 MPH in 3rd gear again. Just like most of yesterday. Gotta love my hooptie.

I don't think gambling is legal in Arizona - I haven't seen any sort of casino or any other indication of vice, but the main drag through this town is called Deuce of Clubs Boulevard. What the hell? A couple of gas stations, a Wal Mart, a few fast food joints. The usual. Deuce of Clubs Boulevard?

When here, look out for the Downtown Nine motel: awful sign, but amazing googie architecture.

I am driving through the Tonto National Forest. It puzzles me that they named a national forest after a fictional character. Aren't there enough real Native Americans they could have named this forest after? Okay, I am kidding. For those not in the know, the Tonto Apache reservation is near here.

At this point, I am up in the mountains, and there are pine trees everywhere. Coming around a bend, there is a little place to pull over. It is cold up here, but I hiked just a few yards to the edge of a cliff and took in the crisp, thin air. One step too many forward, and I'd fall to my death among the many thousands of pine trees spread before me, forming, at this distance, an endless green blanket over Apache land. Far off, the mountains are blue in the slight haze. The sheer drop in front of me was far from the loftiest I have stood on the edge of (volcanoes on Rapa Nui and the Grand Canyon spring to mind as deeper), but it is nonetheless of high enough elevation to be impressive. For the first of many times on this trip, I was presented with a view stretching off in front of me for scores of miles. Other impressive spans of nature lay in my future, each different in it's own way, each equally difficult to describe, and each unique in it's beauty. This one, verdurous with endless thousands of pine trees, is no exception. Short of diving from the cliff to my doom, none of them were close enough to consider as individuals. Behind me however, between cliff and road, were three dozen pine trees, each of them close enough to smell, to touch, to see small details in bark and leaf. I selected a trio of pine cones from where they lay on their bed of needles and put them on my dashboard.

The first of many 'burma shave'-style signs nearby say: Keep your eyes open / and your speed slow / watch for elk / as you go. These are but one cluster of many, many signs reminding the traveler that this is elk country. I haven't seen any elk, but I have seen lots of pictures of them. A major elk quest occurred on the 2001 road trip, so I will not repeat it here.

...and what the hell is THIS guy doing? Some idiot is pulling something that looks like a rickshaw at first glance, but is actually some sort of machine on two wheels, up the side of the mountain. He must be nuts. This thing has to weight at least a few hundred pounds, and this fifty-year-old guy is dragging it up a damned mountain behind him.

This is where things get scary. I am pulling off of my beloved principal highway system - those lovely magenta lines on the map - and onto a road represented cartographically with a dull grey line. Deep into the mountainous forests, on roads seldom transversed, I must make my way to the opposite sort of road: Interstate 17 lies ahead, somewhere, through the rocks and trees, just beyond Camp Verde.

Lots of cottonwood flying through the air, and I am on I-17, headed to I-40, and then US Rt. 93.

Humphrey's Peak, at 12,633 feet, towers directly ahead, 40 miles in the distance, beyond Flagstaff.

I really wanted to check out Sedona on this trip, but mucking about at tourist traps in Missouri all day Wednesday has made my nature hike for today unfeasible.

Moving north on US Rt.93, I am cutting things close. I am 60 miles from Las Vegas, and I need to get to the Gold Coast, check in, clean up, and get over to the Hard Rock in time for my 6:00 PM bus tour. I could make it, but traffic by the Hoover Dam and in Vegas could monkey wrench me. But it is possible. Worst case, I could skip checking in and cleaning up and go straight to the Hard Rock, but I don't really want to show up all grubby from the road. Good thing I shaved this morning.

I've spent the past hour traveling a grand total of about three miles. I am at Arizona mile marker 2, which means I am still a good 40 minutes away (at the present velocity) from the Hoover Dam. This sucks. There is no way possible to make that bus tour now. Shoot. Time to contemplate other plans for the night.

Back by Kingman, there were lots of interesting mesas, and then coming up US Rt.93 the hills are a deep indigo, almost black. Here, the sun is shining above me, the hills are brown and green, and off in the distance, it is pouring rain on the dark mountains. Somewhere above me, there is a line where the blue skies abruptly end and the murky grey clouds begin. The shadow on the desert floor created by the charcoal grey storm clouds is clearly defined off to my left, turning the sunny afternoon into a stormy night that one can observe rolling steadily closer.

A mile or so later...
At least no one is stopping to gawk at the dam - not only are we now in the rain zone, but people are fed up with the traffic and just want to get on with it. Cops wave people past after less than cursory glances at each car.

I made it to the Gold Coast sometime around 7:00 PM. After checking in, I headed towards to the elevators. I was burdened with both of my backpacks, one hanging from each shoulder, and a bundle of clothes clutched to my chest, falling off of their hangers. I was disheveled, a bit tweaked, sort of manic, and very badly dressed. In this sorry state, I lost all hope of sneaking up to my room unseen and getting my shit together when I realized that in order to get to the elevators, I would have to push my way through a crowd of a few hundred rockabillies congregating at the sixty-foot bar that lay precisely between bell desk and elevator.

I felt quite self conscious as a hundred pompadours turned to look at the scrub pushing his way through the crowd of Bettie Pages and their rebels-without-cause consorts. I was the huffing and puffing strung out geek pushing my way through the crowd of hepsters, they being all cool and aloof, gambling and drinking, and I'd soon be among their numbers - if only half heartedly in their uniform.

I've always maintained that there is an element of rockabilly style that I like, but I have never and will never fully commit to what I see as a quite ironic uniform: so-called rebels all dressing the same. As a result, I am not firmly counted among their ranks, and this doesn't bother me at all - I don't need to be. Back in high school I was too punk for the techno pop set, and too techno pop for the punk snobs. No difference now; I am an amalgamation of all the things that interest me, and no one thing is so very interesting that I could ever fully commit myself to a single 'scene' or community. Fortunately, there is overlap - The jazz cats overlap with the mid-century 'Mod Com' urban archaeologists, who overlap with the Tiki gods, who overlap with the rockabillies, who overlap with the punks, who overlap with the mods and ska. I like 'em all.

Somewhere, among all of these mostly music-based social communities, there is also room for my writer side, my photographer side, my politically aware side, and my spiritual side. Call me a mutt.

Never mind that - I went up to my room, dropped everything on one of the beds, and plopped down on the other. After decompressing and lamenting the missing of the bus tour, I formed a plan for the night. I called a few rooms within the hotel where I had friends, and made contact. I took a very long and very hot shower. I hung up the wad of clothes I had excavated from the trunk of the Mobile Exploration Lab. I dressed in my usual mode, self-conciously not making an effort to look 'extra rockabilly', although as stated above, subtle elements of the style are certainly present for me on a daily basis anyway.

After three long days on the road, filled with a lot of adventure, but not a lot of human contact, I was ready to begin a weekend of intense socializing. Saturday would bring the Mondo Tiki event, but on Friday night I had nowhere to be (thanks to the traffic jam at Hoover Dam, that is). I went down to the casino area, saw some friends from both Chicago and California, and had some beer. I decided to leave the Gold Coast and head to Taboo Cove in the Venusian. A bunch of people from the Tiki Central message board on-line were supposedly going to be there. I met up with Mo, the bartender, and showed her my book. She and I chatted for a bit; it seems that she's the only staff member at the Cove who cares about keeping the Tiki spirit alive. She takes great care over her drinks, and laments that the Exotica music and nightly hula show having been replaced with bad techno leaking over from the dance club next door. Not the point of view you'd expect from a gal who looks like she'd be more at home in a biker bar, but a welcome attitude no matter what the source.

The TC crowd did show up a bit later, and I was able to meet a dozen people whom I had previously only known from text messages and screen names. It was good to put faces to the names; all in all they're a cool crowd. They have been very supportive of my book through it's slow genesis (many being readers of my old web site as far back as 1995), and were all looking forward to Mondo Tiki the next day. Many of them told me how fabulous the bus tour was... "why weren't you there, man?".

Needless to say, after Mo realized that the specific crowd for which her beloved bar had been built had just arrived en masse, the Scorpions, Zombies, and Suffering Bastards began to flow generously, and the night became festive. Eventually, half of the crew decided to go (back) to the Gold Coast. I found it interesting that the percentage of people who had come to Vegas specifically for Mondo Tiki and who were therefore staying at the Hard Rock was about half, and the other half were making the Mondo Tiki event a one day break from their long weekend at Viva Las Vegas back at the Gold Coast. Being a member of the latter group - in spite of my semi-VIP status at Mondo - I followed that posse back to the Gold Coast, where I eventually ended up chatting with a gal named Stephanie.

Steph was a Vegas local who had done an admirable job of putting on the retro-gal look just for the night. Her friends hadn't even bothered to try, and I suspect they thought the whole thing was a little silly. With some different pals, I conjecture that Stephanie would do the vintage girl thing full time; it's either in your blood or it isn't. My opinion as a pop psychologist: she's got the urge, but is suppressing it due to a lack of peer support. Anyway, she was eventually dragged off to some trendy dance club or another, leaving her phone number scrawled in eye liner on a bar receipt. Many hours and many beers later, I decided that a 4AM drunk-dial from yours truly was just what she needed, and of course it came as no surprise whatsoever that she never returned the message I left.

I crawled out of bed around noon and made an effort to become human. I wanted to check out the car show on the roof of the Gold Coast parking garage before heading over to Mondo Tiki.

Mondo was to begin at 2PM; I figured that showing up at one would leave me adequate time to get set up. After cleaning up and getting in gear, I only had a half hour to devote to the car show. It was sunny and cool out, not nearly as hot as Vegas can be. Very pleasant. All the gear heads were gawking at each other's rides. All the gals were carrying parasols against the sun and fielding offers to pose for photographers next to the cars. Several major celebrities of custom car culture were present. I'm not in the know enough to have been impressed by them, but I did see some great cars. Candy Clark and Bo Hopkins (from the film American Graffiti) were there as well as George Barris, who built the Munster's car from the 1960's TV show; people were geeking out about it. I guess in the kustom auto world, he's a guru. From vintage classics immaculately maintained and restored, to over-the-top whacked out Munster-mobiles, the wheels on display made me almost ashamed of my hooptie Nissan in the lot next door... but I'd have the last laugh a scant 24 hours later. The Mobile Exploration Lab rules over all! Read on!

And now: the big event. Mondo Tiki. After years of work, this day was to be the formal debut of Tiki Road Trip, among a huge gathering of my Tiki-obsessed peers. Today's crowd are, literally, the red dot in the center of my target audience. Today, this book sinks or swims.

A valet at the Hard Rock helped me load all six cases of Tiki Road Trip onto a cart, along with a box full of Tiki statues, another full of Tiki mugs, and another full of tablecloths, pens, business cards, gaffers tape, and everything else I might need.

The outdoor recreation area at the Hard Rock is a series of curved pools connected by running water, with waterfalls, sand pits, and tropical foliage enhancing the atmosphere. As horrendously cheezy as the Hard Rock is, this particular venue's decor made it a perfect choice for this event. A stage had been built on one end of the labyrinthine recreation area. Coming in through a service door via the parking garage, I had to navigate past the PA guys setting up the sound system. I chatted with one of them for a sec; he wasn't very interested that I was in the same line of work as he is. Had our positions been reversed, I doubt I would have card less about meeting him either. The day was bright and sunny, and there a hundred people in bathing suits sunning themselves on the sand and in lawn chairs. In my clunky platform heel creepers and black jeans, I shakily navigated the sand pit that lay between the stage and the area that appeared to be the vendors zone. Dozens of stock traders and pro athletes lay in the sun trying to impress the vacuous bikini clad sun bunnies. It seemed clear that these people were not out here for Mondo Tiki. I discovered my pal Otto getting ready to begin his DJ gig in a grass hut; he directed me to where I needed to be. I crossed a foot bridge over one of the rivers connecting the pool sections, walked past a floating bar, and ended up in a shady alleyway between the hotel itself and the tropical pool area. The valet was just arriving with my stuff. The good news was that this vendor's area was nice and shady, the bad news is that a tall hedge separated us from the stage, the bars, the pools, and the rest of the festivities. We vendors had only each other to look at all day.

I found Crazy Al Evans setting up at the table to my right, and Bamboo Ben across the aisle way from me. Holden Westland was a few tables down from Ben. Charles Phoenix was set up down the way a bit. Sven Kirsten was scheduled to share my table with me, and Shag didn't even need one - he didn't seem to be able to move without being swamped with autograph-seekers. He seemed to have spent most of the day navigating a ten-foot area of pavement that more or less almost let him walk past my table. Finally, Mig showed up late to man the Tiki Central table.
(who are these people? Holden = the man responsible for both Tiki Farm, who make Tiki Mugs, and for Mondo Tiki itself, Crazy Al = makes resin Tiki objects and carves Tikis live in stage with the band APE, Bamboo Ben = Tiki carver, Charles Phoenix = author of books on various aspects of mid-century culture, Sven Kirsten = author of Book of Tiki and wrote the foreword to Tiki Road Trip, Shag = popular artist who happened to do the cover art for Tiki Road Trip, Mig = co-moderator of Tiki Central on the web).

The event was scheduled to begin at 2PM, but by 1:40 there were already people lining up to buy Tiki Road Trip. I had custom Ex Libris bookplates made up for the event, and I began to sign books.

The day is a blur. I had but a few scant five-minute pauses in which the crowd waned, enabling me to catch my breath, and have a look around.

As a rule, I asked everyone for whom I signed a book where they were from. I met a guy from Chardon, Ohio, named Jason Smith. Turns out he is an old mutual friend of my best friends from my college years (Sally and Tisha), and he was at an infamous party that Sally and I threw for Tisha in 1987. He and I didn't remember each other, but we DO remember both jumping off a garage roof into a nearby swimming pool, and stealing plaster lawn ornaments from neighborhood gardens. And that was just on the night of the party. Ah, youth...

I have a big chunk of tape in my recorder filled with random voices of unidentifiable people giving me tips about places not mentioned in my book.

A little kid was there with his parents, and I have a funny tape recording of him looking at the book cover and saying: "Tiii-kiiii! Tiii-kkiiii!" and then, the best part (in reference to the woman holding a cocktail on the book cover): "The Tiki lady has juice!".

My pal Judd came over and sat with Sven and I for a while, as did Sven's girlfriend Naomi, who owns a store called 8-Ball in LA. She had a large part of the vendors area back at the Gold Coast set up with her wares. Her employees Amber and Mary Beth (and their pal Jamile) would figure largely into my social life over the following week. But that comes later. Naomi had to leave early, since the artist Shag was due to sign posters in the 8-Ball Room in the Gold Coast, and she had to get set up. She invited Sven and I to participate. Since Sven and Shag both made contributions to Tiki Road Trip, Naomi correctly reasoned that people would want to get all three signatures in one fell swoop.

I met a slew of people, including, but not limited to: most of the members of Tiki Central, a guy from Chicago who offered to sign me up for free on his dating service, the owners of at least three different art galleries, the owners of at least six different Tiki bars, several spectacular women, lots of guys in Aloha shirts, and people who's business cards I have, but I cannot remember why. Sorry. Someone gave me a card that looked like a Monopoly card, that said "Get Out of Hell Free". Two rockabilly girls were walking around wearing basically nothing but a few strategically placed flowers. At one point, a band behind me on the stage was playing One Step Beyond by Madness. Later, I ran away from my booth to catch thirty seconds of a Polynesian hula and dance revue. Other good music was heard. Someone said there was a bikini contest. Two Japanese guys were taking hundreds of pictures - of everything possible. Shag signed their camera.

Bamboo Ben was throwing paper airplanes at Sven. Sven was unable to make one fly. Didn't Germans invent the rocket? Al fired up his chainsaw to play with one of the bands on stage during their rendition of 'Wipeout'. He didn't carve anything; he played the chainsaw musically. Sort of. I barely spoke to Holden, unfortunately. Shag was barely able to move, unfortunately. I traded books with Charles Phoenix, and traded Ben a book for a Tiki mask. People gave me things. Mig's Tiki Central table was covered with photos of prior events sponsored by TC members. Mig left the TC table and donned his gorilla suit, which he carries with him every where he goes. Gorilla X was in the house.

Vanilla Ice was at the pool, as was Tiki Barber, the football player (too cool that he showed up for this one!), and sundry rock stars (aside from yours truly, that is: I revel proudly in my status as an 'ex-rock star').

I was selling books like mad. There was a cardboard box next to me, and I just kept dropping twenty dollar bills into it. I didn't even have time to organize the money, I just tossed each new bill into the box on the ground next to my chair, and sorted it all out later. Of course, I have to pay the publisher for all of these books I was selling. I do not get them free. When I made it to LA and saw my publisher, I had to fork over most of the cash to him. Still, it was funny for me, not a gambler, and anything but impressed with wealth or wealthy people, to have a ridiculously huge wad of twenties in my pocket in Las Vegas all weekend. It made me laugh and feel silly to act like someone else, someone preoccupied with dollars. The thrill of having so much of Santa Monica Press' money wadded up in my pocket was not so much about having this money than it was an indicator that Tiki Road Trip was being enthusiastically recieved. That was the thing that mattered to me, that people were interested in the fruits of my labor.

...and some five hours later, a good hour after the official 6PM end time had come and gone, I called it quits and packed up my things.

I made it to the Gold Coast just in time to stuff two hot dogs down my gullet as I raced to the 8-Ball room. I had a bottle of champagne that I had meant to open during the afternoon, but I didn't have any good opportunities. So Shag, Sven, and I drank warm champagne in a toast to Tiki Road Trip as Shag signed every possible item under the sun. Sven and I stayed a bit to the side, but still scribbled on more than a few copies of Tiki Road Trip while drinking cheap beer from cans that kept appearing in front of us after the champagne ran out. The very last guy in line brought Shag a gift of an entire case of Faygo pop. The soda was a variety of fruity flavors in retro-looking glass bottles. It was cool, but poor Shag had to fly home, and didn't need to lug a case of sodee pop with him.

I went with Sven, Naomi, Amber, Mary Beth, and some other people to eat in the wretched cafe within the casino. The food was miserable as was the service. Mary Beth had some sort of petition she was passing around, trying to get her ex-boss to continue going on lunchtime hikes with her. Or something like that. She expected everyone she met to write a few sentences to this guy persuading him to go a-walkin' with Mary Beth once again, as they had done for many years. She had collected quite a lot of people's persuasive notes already. After that, we decided to go Rio, the dance club in the hotel next door to the Gold Coast. I didn't like the idea, but I followed the herd for once in my life. We got lost, turned around, wandered for a bit, and never made it there. As we roamed around Las Vegas trying to get organized, our group got smaller and smaller. Sven retired - he had to fly to Germany the next morning for a three month film shoot (he's a cinematographer). Finally, I just went back to the Gold Coast to chill with the rockabilly set. It must have been about 11 PM by this point.

Now might be a good time to note that since I didn't attend Viva Las Vegas on Thursday, and had only a bit of time to spend there on Friday, and was tied up with Mondo Tiki all day Saturday, it seemed a bit wrong to spend $80 for an actual ticket to VLV. The wristband that comes with the $80 ticket price gets one into the concerts and events in two ballrooms, and about half of the vendors area (the other half is in one of the 'free zones', i.e. the rest of the casino). Most people, having come all the way to Las Vegas for the event, are going to buy the ticket - the bands are the main draw for the majority of VLV participants. But socializing in the bar and casino areas is free - they can't keep people out of the casino... they don't WANT to keep people out of the casino! Also... I see live music for a living. I estimate that I have worked about 2000 concerts to date in my life. No matter how good any given band is, they aren't going to do anything I haven't seen before. And, at best, I'd only be able to attend maybe 20% of the festival. So I skipped the ticket, and still had a mighty good time.

...that said, security was a bit lax here and there, so I did get to see a few key bands. I felt bad about sneaking around like that, but I wasn't going to drop $80 for a weekend total of perhaps two hours spent actually watching the show.

Wandering around the casino, never far from a beverage, I ran into my friend Valerie from Atlanta. She had done me some wrong back in January, but I forgot that I was supposed to be mad at her when I saw her. Perusing the vendor's area (for those not paying attention, we're back at the rockabilly fest now, not this afternoon's Tiki fest), I came across my ex's other ex, who insisted on giving me news about her current situations (they live near each other at the moment, a comfortable 1200 miles from here). I didn't want to hear anything about her, so I fled, posthaste. Then I met a nice girl named Bernie who claimed to be a stylist and model for neo pin-up photos (looked her up on-line a month later: she's a good stylist who photographs well too). Meandering further, I saw some more of my friends from Chicago, ran briefly into some people I knew from California, and then came across a gal I knew a little called Marion. While chatting with her at the bar, I became aquatinted with a gal named Singha and her freind Elise, whom I found myself sitting in the chairs in the Kino area with, talking about 1980's music. Joy Division and Psychedelic Furs - even only in conversation - were a nice change from the rockabilly onslaught of the past two nights. Someone came over with a case of beer under his arm (right in the middle of the casino - no one stopped him?), and handed Elise and I some more to drink. As if we needed it. More cheap beer from cans.

I didn't have to drive anywhere today, I didn't have to go somewhere and sign books, I didn't have anything to do but recover from drinking rum, beer, and champagne from mid-afternoon until something approaching 4 AM.

I showered, and then decided to leave to Gold Coast again, and go check out some rumored Tiki-remnants on the Las Vegas strip.

I drove wearily to the Treasure Island parking garage, and found my way to the vile Kahunaville restaurant in Treasure Island, which gets the least enthusiastic possible review from me. Then I walked, dehydrated and feeling quite crusty, to the Imperial Palace, where I discovered the remnants of their Tiki-themed buffet and the diminutive Mai Tai bar still extant on the casino floor. That mission accomplished, I zombie-hiked over to the Aladdin, and had a burger and iced tea at Cheeseburger at the Oasis. The burger I sampled was not much better than the one I supplied a poor review of in Tiki Road Trip. Strike two. Still hung-over, I dreaded the walk back to Treasure Island - it was hot outside, and for Easter Sunday, there were a lot of people out gambling and participating in the new and 'improved' Las Vegas-lite's attractions (my opinions about Las Vegas in general can be found in last summer's travelogue). Still, this mission of exploration seemed like something I had to do: after spending all day yesterday basking in an overwhelmingly enthusiastic reaction to Tiki Road Trip, there was little else I could have done with today aside from going on a mission to tweak the Las Vegas section for future editions.

By 4:30 PM, I made it back to Taboo Cove, who advertised a 4 PM opening time, but who did not in fact open until 5 PM. There were two small clusters of Gold Coast refugees waiting for it to open as well. I pulled out my camera and took some good room shots of the mostly-empty bar, and chatted with Mo for a while; she comped me a few cokes to try to further ease my pain.

Making it back to the Gold Coast, I had one thing on my mind: laying down and dying.

This hangover was brutal, and hiking through the Las Vegas tourist crowds in the sun hadn't helped.

Still, for some reason, I decided to go visit Naomi in the ballroom in which she had she had set up her mobile 8-Ball franchise. She and the lovely Amber seemed glad to see me; they offered me one of Shag's regrettably abandoned Faygo pops (the flavor was simply described on the bottle as 'red'), and suggested with some tongue-in-cheek that since they had a 'celebrity' in their midst, that I be the one to pull the tickets for a raffle they were having. So I did. We had some laughs, drank some pop, took some silly pictures.

Naomi and I had dinner in the wretched restaurant in the casino, the same one we had dined en masse within on the previous night, and had a long conversation which mostly centered around relationships. We debated certain topics for what might have been two hours. It was nice to have a challenging and intelligent conversation; between being on the road for four days and then making social small talk for two days, my brain needed desparately to be used. Naomi is a smart cookie. She and Sven make a good couple. I am glad to know both of them, and am glad they found each other.

Still tired, still feeling crappy, still really out of it, I just couldn't go to bed yet. The weekend festival was over in a few hours, and I didn't want to miss anything. I wandered around, a bit zombie like and not really having much fun. I failed to be charming when encountering my Chicago friends, I completely wasted the good fortune of finally (after missing each other all weekend) seeing my pal Julie from Portland, and was unable to make any effort to schmooze the owner of a new Tiki bar in LA. Dawn Shapley, one of the weekend's performers (who happened to be sitting next to me for a bit), struck up a conversation, and I and was unable to muster the energy to say anything of value. Hundreds of pretty girls were completely ignored. I went to bed.

By 11:00, I made it to my second destination, where my friends were already waiting. The girl at the door let me in for free when I told her I was checking out the club for my 'next book'. She didn't believe I had a 'first book', so I went and got one from the car. She liked it. Or she said she did. Either way, I didn't have to pay. Good thing, because:

The band were miserable, really wretched. The club was mostly empty when they started, and more so as the show progressed. It was too loud. The band were trying to present an outrageous stage show, but they came off like a fifth-rate GWAR cover band. None of their songs were remotely memorable. But, it was good to see Sam, Ellen, and Jim. All three of them are originally from Cleveland, as am I. Even though I have known both Samantha and Jim since the late 1980's, somehow they had never met each other. An auspicious night, to be certain. Sam's room mate Gary was out too, as was Sam's newest beau. Sam's old roommates, whom I encountered to varying degrees in 2002, had both moved on, but Samantha still lived in the same beautiful old house. Gary generously offered to let me crash on his extra bed.

We made our way to Samantha and Gary's place all the way back in Hermosa Beach, where I found Gary's room stuffed full of DJ equipment, hep music magazines like 'Q' and 'Spin', and lots of posters of acts like Bjork and Radiohead. I made my way to the spare bed he had in one corner and lost consciousness quickly. Thanks for the crash-spot, bud. I owe ya one.

I read my email and made boiled eggs while the girls (Samantha and Ellen) did their morning-stuff. At some point in time, all were ready to leave the house, and that we did. Our destination: the Getty Museum. Samantha had an exam that night for school, but given that her two best ex-Cleveland now-Chicago buddies were both visiting at the same time, she wanted to make sure we saw something of substance. Her plan was to study on the museum campus while Ellen and I toured the museum.

After parking the car, we boarded a tram that takes visitors up a tall and steep hill to the Getty. The half-dozen small buildings that make up the museum are arranged in harmony with the series of hills and valleys on which they rest. The architecture is ultra-modern, but avoids all of the monstrous steel'n'glass cliches that most architects these days use to nauseating extremes. The area is wide open and spacious with grand gardens, long balustrades, and wide patios giving people plenty of reasons to come up to the Getty other than simply to view the art on display.

There was an excellent exhibition at the time featuring the work of Lee Miller. She was known, at first, as being a top model, and later as surrealist photographer Man Ray's muse, model, assistant, and lover. She later became a talented photographer in her own right. Working two parallel and completely opposite careers (covering Dachau and Buchenwald as a photojournalist, and finding success as a noted fashion photographer), the contrasts and similarities inherent between her two very different photographic disciplines are noteworthy.

There was also an exhibition by contemporary new media artist Bill Viola which I was not as impressed by. Viola shoots short films at extremely high film speeds, resulting, upon playback, in ultra-slow motion. In the case of his new work, each of a series of video screens in various shapes and sizes showed footage of people experiencing different intense emotions at a speed so slow that most of them appeared to be completely still images. The flat screens which hung on the walls of the darkened gallery looked more like illuminated still portraits than video. Gazing at any of them for several minutes at a time, little or no movement could be perceived. Technically it is a fine achievement, but I didn't find that the work moved me enough on either an intellectual or emotional level to give it much praise.

Such is the case with so much contemporary art (say, post-Warhol or so). It all seems to be the artist saying "look at this clever idea I have had about how I can challenge what we perceive art as being, or what art's role in society should be". The viewer can usually do little more than concede to the artist's cleverness, appreciate the difficulty in executing the idea (where applicable), and then move on, unmoved. For me, art is successful only if it touches me on some emotional level. And while intelligence and cleverness certainly move me on an intellectual level, I find precious little contemporary art that moves me spiritually or emotionally. Perhaps the best of the surrealists in the 1930s and 1940s were the last group of artists who were consistently able to achieve a balance of intellect with emotional resonance - even if the abstract or even bizarre nature of their work makes it difficult to understand why it does move the viewer as emotionally as it does. The best surrealist work connects on an unquantifiable level, works it's way out of the artist's subconscious, and finds a comfortable if disturbing place in the farthest reaches of the viewer's psyche, while challenging the awakened intellect as well. Not so with Viola and so many of his peers: the intellect is firmly in place, but the dreams have evaporated.

Pondering all of this after looking at an exceedingly dull collection of 18th century decorative arts (i.e. settees and chandeliers), Ellen and I were reprimanded for crossing a fountain pond on what really did seem to be a series of stepping stones, but were in reality (apparently) merely obstacles for the koi. I drove Samantha's Volvo back towards her neck of the woods while she continued to read in the back seat. We dropped her off at school, and Ellen and I talked dinner. Ellen didn't want to go to Huntington Beach for Sam's Seafood. Foiled again.

I got a call from Sven: the person who was to have rented his half of his house while he spends the summer in Germany had bailed out at very literally the last minute. He said I could crash at his place after all. I phoned his housemate to arrange for a key to be left for me. As much as I enjoy Samantha's company, not mention Ellen's... and even my new pal Gary's... their house was more than a bit full, and so I figured that having imposed on them once already, I'd spend the following two nights at Sven's empty pad so as to give them a break.

A quick stop at the Lava Lounge confirmed what Michelle (the owner) had told me when I saw her in Las Vegas: they had bolstered the Tikiness of the joint to some degree; now I like it even more than I had before. As usual, the Lava Lounge's one downfall was firmly reinforced: the loud band made up of a dozen hippie kids crammed into the corner stage made it almost unbearable to be in the place.

I decided to go out to Burbank to see the 8-Ball store in person, having only been familiar with their temporary Las Vegas encampment to date. Amber and I chatted for a bit, and then I went to the comic book store next door, before driving back to Hollywood to meet Jim Woodruff for dinner. We ate at Torung, a Thai place that had come recommended. It is on Hollywood, just east of Gower. The food was fine; neither remarkable nor poor, but I find that most Thai restaurants tend to be pretty consistent that way. I cannot ever remember being either bowled over or sorely disappointed with any particular Pad See Ew.

I left Jim and made the short trip to La Luz de Jesus to make contact with Billy, the owner, and to get set up for my book signing event. I had seen a small ad for my event in the LA Reader, and I had also hyped the event to the best of my ability, but I was still nervous about the turnout. Not only was it a weeknight, but a lot of my potential readership had been at Mondo Tiki, and had therefore already scored a copy of the tome.

Still, I have been a big fan of the La Luz gallery and the adjoining retail store (Wacko) for some time. I was thrilled to be doing my silly little event there. Billy had a few 5-foot tall Bosko Tikis for sale. We flanked a card table set up for me in the gallery space with the Tikis, and I covered the table with the tapa cloth and little Tiki statues I had been carrying around with me all week. Billy added some Tiki candle holders, also from his inventory.

All in all, the event went better than Billy or I expected. My publisher, Jeffrey Goldman of Santa Monica Press, showed up early with his wife. He was most impressed when I whipped out the wad of cash from Vegas and paid him for all of the books. I said "I have your money here", and he replied, with solid incredulity "all of it?". Guess you had to be there. It was funny. I think he is still a bit surprised at how well this book is doing.

Jim Woodruff had been milling about since dinnertime, exploring all of the pop culture weirdness in Wacko. A bunch of the Tiki Central crew did show up; Doctor Z and Sabu the Coconut Boy (love those internet handles) brought a pair of mammoth binders full of matchbooks and postcards (respectively). In between scribbling on books, I marveled at the astounding collection for a fraction of the time I would have liked to. Sam and Ellen and Gary showed up, as did Naomi, and separately, her employees Mary Beth, Jamile, and Amber. Elise came by too, and at the end of it all, every one of the aforementioned parties (sans Naomi - she was tired after putting her store back together) went over to Tiki Ti, an outstanding vintage Tiki Bar, right around the corner from the gallery.

There was a video crew there filming the bar for a documentary on one of the Hispanic TV channels, many present parties were interviewed.

Afterwards, Elise wanted to make sure I got home OK, so she followed me back to Sven's, even though her car window had been smashed by unknown vandals during the book signing. What a drag! I helped her get the glass off of her seats. Let me clarify that: the window was not smashed as a direct result of the book signing or any revelry associated therewith. The mess of glass was the work of an independant n'er do well. Presumably.

I got a little lost getting back to Sven's, so Elise, following me in her car, pulled over (without warning) behind a parked cop and asked him for directions. I am not sure what part of her intellect thought it would be a good idea to ask a Los Angeles police officer for directions at 2 AM after imbibing a Mai Tai, a Scorpion, a Zombie, a Ray's Mistake, and a Rum Barrel. He walked over to my car - I couldn't just leave her there, so I pulled over as soon as I noticed her own curbward trajectory - and after some conversation, he eventually decided that he had no idea where the address in question was. He was a younger guy, and genuinely seemed interested in helping. He tried for a long time to figure out where the street was... while I tried simply to maintain a pretense of sobriety.

Let me state that I was by no means drunk, and I certainly wouldn't have been driving if I was, but in my experience any slight indication of being under the influence is enough for most cops to throw the book at you with extreme prejudice and good aim.

As he walked away, I asked him if it was legal to make a U-turn on that particular street. He said that he probably wouldn't notice it if I did it. Then he went back to Elise and started hitting on her for a bit, asking her how she knew me, if I was her boyfriend, where she lived. My theory is that he was probably only nice to me because he wanted to 'get to know' Elise, and assumed that being nice to her friends (i.e. pretending not to notice my semi-inebriation and even trying to help me) was a good way in. Loser.

I stopped at Bahooka for lunch, and purely by chance, I ran into this guy Brian, who I had met in Las Vegas. He was originally from the suburbs of Chicago and planned to go there to visit over the summer. Then he's off to China for two months to work on a movie. He does special effects makeup. Monster dude. Tom Savini disciple. I sat down with him. Elise called, and wanted to come by, so after a bit she joined us. The owners of Bahooka have always been friendly, and were thrilled to see that Tiki Road Trip was finally out. I signed one for them.

Brian showed us these cool Tiki poles he had just bought very cheaply at a place called Bamboo 54. Since it was nearby, I went over there and checked it out. The guy there wasn't very friendly, and the only remaining example of the poles like the one Brian had was cracked. Their retail store is in San Gabriel (I was at the warehouse). They opened in 1998, and have some cool lamps and a great bamboo bike. Adding bow-ties to all of their Tiki carvings was a puzzling artistic decision, but that said, they aren't afraid of the traditional inclusion of genitalia on their Tikis, which is something many modern day carvers are often reluctant to represent. Remember people, these were originally fertility symbols, and all of the authentic Oceanic carvings are rather graphic by our conservative American standards. I left there, making my way past some of the great Tiki themed apartment buildings near Bahooka, and eventually to the I-10.

I had a good five hours of daylight left, and I decided to take US Rt.1, the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), for as much of the route to San Francisco as I could. There are three roads connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. The I-5 is pretty far inland, and will zip you between the two towns in five hours flat. It is also a pretty boring and ugly drive. The 101 is more scenic and considerably slower. Finally, US Rt.1, which hugs the Pacific coast and snakes up and through mountains and dense forests, is clearly the ultimate scenic route - if you have two days to kill. I did. I had to be at Trader Vic's in Emeryville at about 6 PM on Friday - that gave me about 28 hours to make the drive.

And now, being away from the hustle and bustle of a major metropolis, the tape recordings resume...

The first interesting thing I found today was a bombed out old camper. It was by the side of an abandoned dead-end road near the beach that I had turned down by accident. It looked like someone dropped one of those big cartoon trapezoidal iron weights on it, the ones always marked "10 tons" that get dropped on Yosemite Sam. The thing was just crushed. There was a halo of junk around it, like the rings of Saturn. Every sort of trash imagineable was spread out from ground zero of the exploded camper to a distance of ten yards. Food packages, clothes, consumer electronics products. Everywhere. It was like someone filled the camper to the brim with this stuff and then exploded it. There was graffiti all over the remains of the camper. Behind it all was an old 1980's large screen TV, the old sort that is four feet tall, half screen and half console and weighing half a ton. This had been ripped in half, and I found one of it's big old lenses on the ground. It was about six inches wide and two inches thick. The glass around the edges was chipped, but I carefully picked it up and inspected the wreckage through the resulting fish-eye. And then I tried, with some success, to shoot some pictures through it.

On the PCH Rt. 1/101 where they run together for a while, north of Santa Barbara. Riding on fumes. Getting a little nervous about that needle way to close to the bottom of the 'E'. Time to get gas. Buelton is ahead: "home of Split Pea Soup - everything for the traveler". Just gas, please. I'm on a downhill grade, I'll coast in to Buelton in neutral, if need be. Oh, I am near Solvang too. No need to see that one again. Stopping there once in like 1996 was enough. It's a little Dutch village replica designed to lure tourists in, but it is not nearly campy enough for my tastes, it is just dull.

Just paid $2.05.9 per gallon for gas. Dropped a $20 and didn't even fill up the tank.

I stopped at the Madonna Inn in San Louis Obispo, just to check it out. I have been hearing about this place for many, many years, but have never bothered to stop there. They have like 200 rooms, all elaborately decorated with a specific theme. Some of them are tropical or jungle themes. One room is decorated with Witco furniture, of interest to aficionados of Polynesian Pop. Color postcards and photos fill an album so that the weary traveler can personally choose his lodgings for the night. All of the best rooms are in the $300 range, and are booked a year in advance. The restaurant, bar, and coffee shop are all overdecorated to a largely unparalleled degree in a sort of French rococo theme. Over the top and gaudy. On purpose. The Copper Cafe, for example is done is copper table, red leather booths, and hand painted murals all over the walls, none of which match or compliment each other in any way. And yet, it is endearing for being so over the top. The marble balustrade is from the Hearst Castle. I won't recount the history of the place here, it is well documented elsewhere. Built in 1958.

This Ocean resort town is lacking any discernible beach, but it has a boardwalk and enough motels and shops and restaurants to keep tourists coming. The main drag of motels, the ones with ocean views start at $80 per night. One block away from the ocean, on the parallel strip of lodging facilities, the economy is taking it's toll; an Asian woman started lowering her initially quoted price before I even responded. She was doing all of the bartering for me. She eventually talked herself down to $36, and I took the room.

I walked around town, peeking into the windows of some thrift stores and antique stores, not spotting much of interest, but still forming a plan to inspect them in the morning. Pizza Port hooked me up with a serviceable 16" pizza with mushrooms for $13.62, and I took half of it to go for tomorrow's lunch. An internet cafe hooked me up with my Email. A walk by the completely deserted tourist drag by the piers yielded little of note. It smells like fish and salt here. Lots of dolphin memorabilia here, is this is a dolphin-watching hot spot? I wonder if the marine life is affected by the huge factory looming just north of town, right on the water. A dark monolith, capped by three gigantic smokestacks jutting into the sky. Red-lit and belching filth.

After several nights of couch-surfing and debauchery, tonight is about having my own room again and relaxing. Some TV and a much-needed reorganizing of my jumbled luggage is in order.

Checked out of the motel before 11 after getting dressed with the movie A.I. flickering away on TV in the background. Wandered through two of the thrift stores in town; nothing to report.

The sea is directly to my left, all rocky and beachless. Looks like volcanic rock, but I am not sure that there were ever active volcanoes here. Lots of tide pools and cliffs. Immediately to my right is a hilly green pasture filled with cows. Sea cows, no doubt.

Sped up US Rt.1, probably faster than I should have, eating last night's pizza. Lots of beauty, lots to see.

Now passing Cambria, CA. A few miles back was my Precambrian era. I keep thinking of the Fellini movie, Nights of Cabiria. I'm a Fellini fan, but that one just annoyed me. Or, I think I should say that Giulietta Masina - Fellini's wife and the titular star of the film - annoyed me. How that film won the best foreign film Oscar that year is beyond me, Not that the Oscars have ever been an accurate assessment of anything important anyway...

Speaking of classic movies, I am about to pass a turnoff for San Simeon, the Hearst castle. As we all know, William Randolph Hearst may or may not have been the template for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

This might be cool to check out, but I suspect that it is something worth spending a few hours with if one is going to bother at all. Next time. It is high on a hill in the distance.

Winding up curvy, twisty hills up, up, up into the most lush and green forest you can imagine, still with the sea to my left, but now it is far below me. Unlike the pine trees in Arizona, which are well-ordered and evenly spaced, with their thin straight trunks bleeding sap onto a carpet of needles, this foliage is overgrown and unruly, all species and manners of plant and tree and shrubbery fighting for it's space and water and sunlight. Not a centimeter of ground is visible, and one cannot see more than a few feet into the depths of the forest.

North of San Simeon on US Rt.1 is a sixty-five mile stretch of the Ventana Wilderness in the Santa Lucia mountains, without a town or village until the summit of Big Sur.

Passing through Gorda, a little town perched up here in the seaside cliffs. It is not even on the map. The main drag is about 500 feet long. The Whale Watcher's Cafe and a Llama farm appear to be all they have to offer - but what a view.

Up here in the densely wooded mountains, far from the nearest real city, in these little woodland towns, one may spot the Henry Miller Library: Books, Music, and Art. It looks like a little shack in the forest among the overgrown trees. I should have stopped. Neptune Cave is here too. Every type of tree you can imagine is growing here, right up to the side of the curvy road snaking higher and higher into the hills. Occasionally, there are spots to pull over and admire the vistas. Now and again one passes small parking lots (6-8 cars) at trailheads that meander off into the dense forest cliffs. There are canyons between the mountains, towering overhead, that seem as though some Olympian god made a big cleft in the hill with a mighty axe. I have spotted more than a few waterfalls.

This is dangerous driving: lots of hairpin turns and blind curves. The guardrails that appear rather infrequently seem like they'd be rather ineffectual in preventing a runaway auto from plummeting over the cliffs to the sea, although there are perhaps enough trees on the way down to slow a car down, maybe trapping it mid-cliff... I hope I never have to find out first hand. This drive is both gorgeous and challenging, lots of fun for the motorist. That said, the traffic only moves as fast as the slowest car on the road; a Sunday Driver will soon find themselves leading a parade of vehicles backed up for a mile or more. Since the road is one lane and passing in the opposite lane is unsafe here, conciencious slow-pokes ought to pull over to the shoulder now and again to let the speedier vehicles pass. I learned this little point of road etiquette from truckers and tour bus drivers on concert tours I have been on, but there's no reason why small vehicle drivers enjoying the scenery shouldn't be aware of the people behind them as well.

North of Big Sur is Fernwood, where the trees grow so densely as to form a canopy over the road. Many mountain roads become impassable in winter; I suspect that autumn is a worse problem here. Oh wait - this is California. There is no winter to speak of. Do the trees shed anyway? It is damp, moss grows on the bark, I expect dinosaurs to come marching out of the overgrowth. Lots of good hiking up here. The few motels are all rustic looking, with log-cabin looks to them.

Coming out of the mountains, moving back down to something near sea level and nearing the beaches at Carmel, the trees and cliffs give way to gentle rolling hills with no plant more than a foot tall. A greater depth of inland visibility returns; the sea is as unchangingly expansive as ever. Plants and flowers are in their prime. It is springtime, and they are all competing for the attention of the insects and other natural forces that will enable them to spread their seeds and pollen far and wide. Co-existing by default, but passively in competition for prosperity and survival are little patches of every possible hue, each clearly defined. The variety of colors here is astounding. Red, green, blue, purple, orange, combinations and variations in shade, all jumbled together. Technicolor never had it this good.

South of Carmel, one passes four bridges in rapid succession. The first three are all "historic bridges", all built in 1932, and the last was built in 1933. It makes sense that the pre-existing smaller sections of this seaside drive would have been connected and united by these bridges during the early 1930's, as automotive transportation really became feasible for large portions of the population.

Did anybody notice that the last 300 miles of this road are as scenic as you can possibly get?

Just hopped onto I-280 towards San Francisco. The PCH adventure is now officially over, but more excitement awaits elsewhere. As usual, I whipped past a lot of beautiful scenery a bit too fast. I really need to make these road trips less ambitious, do smaller sections of the country in more detail, spending more time savoring the places I see. Eventually...

Coming in on the freeway, the San Francisco skyline is spread out before me, as beautiful a city as they come. And how could it be any different, given what this city is surrounded by: the bay, the ocean, the mountains, the forests. A big industrial behemoth like Pittsburgh or Detroit just wouldn't work here. It never would have happened. San Francisco is what it is and could never have been anything else.

Later...
I rolled directly into Trader Vic's in Emeryville after brushing my teeth in the car while pulled over to the side of the road. I got set up in the room reserved for the event (ironically, the only room in the building not intensely Tiki-decorated) and was soon greeted by Tiki Centralite Mike Remmel, who had showed up early to have a few drinks. Other TCer's followed, as well as lots of other fine people, and I was overwhelmed at the turnout. The room was packed, and I had little or no time to rest. Mai Tais kept appearing out of the blue; I think my buddy Jennifer Henry bought one, another may have been courtesy of TC chief Hanford, and I am not sure where the rest came from. I think I had a total of five...

The people who run Trader Vics in Emeryville have always been super cool to the Tiki freak community, and this event was no exception. Tara O'Leary, my contact at Trader Vic's, ran around taking pictures with my camera. The GM came over to say 'hi'; last time I met him I tought he was a nice guy, and my impressions were now reinforced. My old friends Rene and Cameron showed up as did my uncle Alan, aunt Janie, and cousin Matt. Alan was taking lots of pictures to send to my dad. I made sure he got a good money shot - in the literal sense, not the porn sense - of me displaying all the cash. I figured dad would like to see that one of my little obsessions was finally actually making me a buck. Not that I am getting rich off of this book by any means, and not that I did it for the money, and frankly, I'll be lucky to even break even on this trip, but ol' pop will dig the concept of one of my schemes paying off.

In keeping with the temporal distortions of the other signings I did, this one whipped right by.

Someone suggested that the second edition of Tiki Road Trip be printed on waterproof pages.

I have a tape recording of someone telling me about a recurring dream in which they discover a Tiki Bar under a building-sized shell near some water.

While sitting at my little table, someone walked over and put a note into my hand. It was like an old movie where someone receives a mysterious but ultimately vital telegram at an inopportune moment, delivered by a huffing and flustered courrier, as the clock winds down to 'something bad'. This one was a modern-day version of the telegram: a printed-out email informing me that Mig was going to performing in a neo-burlesque show (as the Gorilla, natch), and wanted me to come by after Trader Vic's.

The show was in a large deco-era ballroom on the second floor of a club on Broadway. In last year's travelogue, I went on a little tangent about authentic old-style burlesque revues, and someone here in San Francisco must have had the same views on these things as I do. The show consisted of an MC making really corny wisecracks, a full orchestra (about a dozen players, I think), and a guy who took off his clothes while hopping around the stage (and into the audience) on a pogo stick. I was pleased to hear the band playing Quiet Village between acts. Of course the ladies did their thing as well. A trio of lovelies in elaborate costumes - which never actually came off - managed to keep the audience entranced through a few different numbers spaced evenly throughout the show. The choreography was creative and tight. Another gal did a solo act that did involve shedding garments... but nothing potentially offensive was revealed. Her act ended as Mig, in his world-famous Gorilla X guise, ran out and chased her off of the stage.

After the show, Mig, his girl, and some of the performers took me to Bamboo Hut, which was a disaster. It was loud, crowded, and full of frat boys. What a shameful environment from a place that claims to want to help preserve the spirit of the Tiki.

So we went to a bar down the street. Just a neighborhood bar with nothing descript about it, but we had a good time. After I parted company with the gang, I stumbled into a burrito house and chowed down.

Getting only mildly lost on my way back to San Rafael, I made it to Alan and Janie's house, found the room that had been designated 'mine', and zonked out.

My cousin Matt lives right in the Presidio, a large park area near the Golden Gate bridge. There are only a few homes in there, and you have to be employed within the park to live there. It is an awesome place to live, quiet and green, and yet, technically, still right in the city. Most of the dwellings are new-ish apartments, but there are also some beautiful old homes from the 19th century scattered around the place, though they all appear to be empty. I am puzzled why they aren't in use; there are enough wealthy people in SF who I am sure would love to live in such a beautiful area, or the city itself could put good use to the buildings if they wanted to.

All of that said, George Lucas convinced the city (i.e. 'convinced' them with $300 million) to build his new special effects factory within the walls of the Presidio. I didn't understand what the big deal was when I first heard the outcry a few years ago, but having seen the property, I can now understand: putting a commercial venture within the gates of this urban jewel sets a precedent by which further industry could state a case for setting up shop as well. And before you know it, the Presidio is whittled away, from public parks to industrial parks.

For those who think I am a fan of George Lucas (and given my 8-year involvement in a Sci-Fi mag, there are many who do, with good casue): my current feeling is that he is largely responsible for the complete degradation of modern American cinema, in spite of my fascination with a certain trilogy of films he did in the 70's and 80's, which, in my mind, have little or nothing to do with a similarly named trilogy-in-progress of recent years. He lives in his castle in Marin county, babbling on and on about his state of the art cameras and his digital effects, but he hasn't come up with a good story in decades. He can't direct actors to save his life. Put another way, the guy is an out-of-touch automaton who hasn't had anything to do with a truly good (never mind great) movie since, oh, say, since he helped his pal Steve out with the last Indiana Jones movie (1989). On that one, his role was as executive producer. The last good thing he actually directed was 27 years ago (the original Star Wars in 1977... he didn't actually direct the awesome The Empire Strikes Back, by the way). So there.

Contemporary cinema? Give me David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Terry Gilliam, and Jeunet et Caro over dickheads like Lucas any day.

Anyway, I went down to the Presidio to see Matt's new pad, and to chastise him (with some envy) about his three new female roommates. I am going to cal him Jack Tripper from now on. Matt's brother, Jeremy, was due to pay a visit from his home near Santa Barbara with his new lady friend. Jeremy had no idea I was in town, so Matt and I decided not to tell him. Hilarity ensued when Jer walked into Matt's place to find me on the sofa, nonchalantly reading a magazine. Introductions to his gal were made, and the four of us went to Liverpool Lil's, just outside the Presidio gates, where we paid $10 each for sandwiches.

Matt and I were due to meet his parents back in San Rafael for dinner, and Matt also had a pal up there who was having a birthday party for his kid. I was due to tag along with Matt to that event, but in following him back to San Rafael, I got caught up with a beautiful sun-set view of the Golden Gate bridge, which demanded a stop for photography. After making some images in Golden Gate park (on the south side of the bridge), I couldn't refrain from motoring up into the hills on the north side to get further snaps.

Matt and I met up again later to join Alan and Janie for dinner. We packed into their old rickety camper van and ended up a Chinese restaurant with a sushi bar; I had my usual sushi assortment, and a really great cucumber salad that was larger and more elaborate than what one usually expects in a cuke salad. Everyone else got full on Chinese meals and used the sushi as an appetizer; I continued to munch on only the sushi while the west coast Teitelbaums went schezwan. The waiter was a funny guy, with a silly laugh that he spewed forth at anything that remotely resembled a joke. I was still stuffed from lunch at dinnertime, but sushi is sushi and you just don't say 'no' to it.

Alan and Janie wanted to show me some scans Alan had made of my grandmother's artwork. We agreed that the exhaustive body of paintings and photographs that she had created over several decades needed to be catalogued and preserved. They also gave me a copy of a newspaper article about Janie, who has retired as a school principal. Looks like we were both in the paper that week.

The previous night, Bruce Woodbury, a Tiki guy whom I have met on several occasions, had offered to entertain in the Ugh House, the spectacular home he shares with his girl Enid in Oakland. I don't want to say that the gathering was in my honor, but let's just say that Bruce and Enid love entertaining in their amazing pad, and any excuse will do, including one of my rare visits to San Francisco. Enid was showing us 3-D slides from her childhood. They were great. You had to put them in a viewer, like a View-Master, to look at them. One of them was of her mom with Haiawatha. Another showed Enid and her two sisters - all dressed alike - riding a roadside triceratops. There were many more, and the 3-D effect was great. Jennifer Henry was there; she had provided me (on Friday) with a whole list of Tiki data she has collected. She and I were goofing off playing Enid's baby grand piano, trying to play 'Brazil', and alternating other goofy songs. She did a reasonable attempt at Chopin, I pulled out Nightporter, as usual, to see if anyone got it. No one ever does. Speaking of The Empire Strikes Back, my piano rendition of the grandiose "Imperial March" busted everyone up. Jennifer was also reading tarot cards, and I was impressed with her detailed knowledge of even the more obscure cards. She didn't miss a beat in interpreting the context of each card.

Enid, the ultimate hostess, and not one to be outdone by her guests, pulled out a really fun deck of vintage "Black Cat Fortune Telling Cards", that she had collected but never used. These were a lot of fun, and after Enid predicted my fate, I turned the tables on Jennifer and read her Black Cat fortune.

Tiki Central head honcho Hanford was also present, and Mig showed up later with his girlfriend in tow, and a book for me - a travel guide to pop culture kitsch. It was nice that someone gave ME a travel guide after having spent the last ten days of my life handing them out to other people.

TC-er Randy Jensen was there too, with his gal Naomi (not 8-Ball Naomi). She was showing people her pics from Las Vegas. I ended up busting out my laptop, giving everyone views of John's Modern Cabins in Missouri, and other stuff collected thus far on my trip; the Bourbon Family Store got a laff. All present agreed that a mass road trip on 66 was in order. Naomi was asking me a lot of questions, but her Japanese accent is so thick that I couldn't answer them because I had no idea what she was asking me. Sorry!

All in all, it was a good little gathering. Bruce and Enid's Tiki room is small in size but is packed to the gills with great stuff, and their other sundry collections continue to expand impressively. They are also great hosts; the punchbowl remained full of some rum concoction, and Bruce had Kahiki brand appetizers coming out of the oven every now and again. I was there until almost 4 AM, but I didn't want to split, even though I was starting to fade. Finally, Jennifer and her friend from Illinois left, as did another TC gal who was there (Cindy), leaving only my hosts and yet another TC alumnus, Lisa Greene, who was staying the night. So it was time to cut and run back to San Rafael.

I am sitting at Alta Mira, a fancy pants resort in the hills of Sausalito. I am waiting for Lisa Greene to show up, but I came here an hour early to type. This place is has an amazing terrace where a lot of people who stink of money are enjoying a view of San Francisco bay. Under normal circumstances, I would rate the view as something better than simply remarkable, but it seems that you can't go anywhere in Marin county without experiencing a truly gorgeous panorama. The city itself is spread out across the bay, and Angel Island is much closer, just to the left, verdant and green.

Lisa recommended this place, as it is a vintage establishment where she remembered her ancestors coming. The place does appear to have been erected sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s, but the decor, like so much of northern California, is a gaudy neo-rococo mixed with the traditional San Francisco style, which I am not necessarily a fan of.

The snooty old lady and the uptight gentleman who 'greeted' me at the door didn't seem to savor the idea of my presence; they looked me over like I might be a criminal, or worse. Little do they realize that they are correct. Fortunately for them, my intentions for the afternoon were simply to enjoy some chow with Lisa, leave my 14.9% tip, and hit the road. I slid into the parking lot under the radar of the valet, who may or may not catch up with me at some point. Mandatory valet is bullshit. I can park my own darned car, thank you very much. See, you thought I was kidding when I said I was a criminal.

Being almost at the foot of the Golden Gate bridge, which is just around the other side of the peninsula that Sausalito occupies, there is no view of it to speak of here. However, I can see the Bay Bridge directly in front of me, my view of it obscured only by Alkatraz and several dozen sailboats. The sky is clear and blue, slightly cloudy, but not grey or overcast, and it is a bit cool. The ladies on the patio, which I can view through a window ten inches to my right, are sitting with crossed arms against the cold; the more pragmatic men have simply donned their jackets. No one is sitting inside, I am alone in here with the bitter hostess the uptight Maitre'D, and two loud bartenders joking and squabbling and carrying on in a way they won't get away with once the room fills up with customers.

I am following Lisa Greene back to Vallejo, her stomping grounds. We're going to watch some movies. She's a film noir expert, so I'm looking forward to seeing what she's got in her collection. We took 101 north right through and beyond San Rafael, and then got on Rt. 37 which describes a big arc through a vast marsh over the top of San Pablo bay. It is grey and rainy out, and this road is the only thing breaking up the very wet and swampy San Pablo National Wildlife Refuge through which it passes. It's pretty desolate out here.

Later...
We stopped at the Valano Club in Valejo, in Sonoma County. She ordered a Kamikaze; the bartender thought she said "Cosmic Coffee". This old and dumpy yet charismatic pub has a typical array of memorabilia strewn about every corner and inch of wallspace. There is a picture of Edward G. Robinson on the wall, which Lisa claims is the only one ever taken of him in which he looks sexy; next to it is a modern day Bud ad featuring three bimbos with their butts hanging out of their thongs. This place is definitely a mixed bag. Lots of sports stuff here too. A seemingly random jumble of classic Hollywood and today's sports heroes. But then again, there's Groucho Marx next to Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, so it isn't all bad. And they have a poster-sized version of the photo of Bogart and Bacall that I have in my bedroom. In spite of the larger size, this version has the pair cropped mid-shin. A collection of old matchbooks are framed under glass: Hussy's Bar and Cafe (with an Elvgren pin up - the one with the terrier and the penguin). Another has a TN Thompson pinup I've never seen before: a girl in a black bikini that says "Strictly for the See". Hardy har har. Dinky Doo's was home of the tall, cool Tom Collins. The phone number is simply '49'.

There's a single little Tiki behind the bar, which has had a shirt and tie painted on it. The tie is skinny enough to point to the eighties, were we to date the paint job. Looks like Paul Weller.

I was drinking a mediocre Steinlager beer, which in spite of what the name may have implied, is from New Zealand. Kiwi beer. Love it. Mediocre in taste, but a steal at $3.50 for a 25.4 fluid oz. bottle. And yet, in spite of the claims on the back of the bottle bragging about New Zealand's yachting trophies, this is clearly a Bavarian beer: from the green glass bottle, to the olde Germanic typeface to the little crest on the label. What gives? This is fake Kiwi beer, a pretender to the yachting club throne.

Next we hit the Golden Bubble, which is a run down dump. But, the owner guy took us into the closed second room which is a well preserved 1930's time capsule. Go figure. There are backlit alcoves in the wall, filled with little porcelain souvenirs, and a series of what Lisa almost proudly referred to as the "Special Vallejo Salt Marsh Mouse, a Unique Species". It is basically a half-coconut with mouse ears made of seashells, whiskers, and plastic google-eyes glued to it. Seems they're everywhere in Vallejo.

James Mistake
2 oz [bad] dark rum
2 oz [worse] clear rum
6 oz pineapple juice
1 oz creme de menthe
1 oz orgeat
1 oz lime juice
1 oz some other liquor (probably rum) that I forgot.

Mix all and pour into those ubiquitous green Harvey's mugs over ineffectively crushed ice. Serves two.

Breakfast at IHOP, a fruitless trip to a Salvation Army looking for whatever, and now I'm off to Nevada. I want to take US Rt. 50 from Sacramento onward east, but I don't know how bad the snow is going to be coming through the Sierra Nevadas. So I'll take the interstate to Reno and then get US Rt. 50 there.

Trees are covered with snow, but it is not snowing, and the roads are clear. Signs below at lower altitudes warned motorists to carry chains against potentially hazardous road conditions. Sure is purdy here. The sky is as deep a blue as you could ask for, way up in the mountains, thin air and white landscape. Above the pollution. Coming around a bend is a big valley, big mountains. Nice to be up in the Sierra Nevadas.

One night a couple of years ago, I was at a late night pub, killing time at about 3AM, and this extremely pretty girl sits down next to me. She seemed like kind of a bitch - I mean, she just had a really mean vibe about her, like she was bitter towards the whole world. She started telling me about her impending ski trip to the Sierras. In return, I started telling her about the Donner party. She advised me, about 2/3 of the way into my historical narrative, that if I was about to tell her that the Donner party resorted to cannibalism to survive, that she was going to scream and walk away. I was a little fed up with her rancorous take on humanity, and I also wanted to see if she'd really scream. She did.

11:49 AM - 3579.4 miles

Welcome to Nevada.

Most of the snowy mountains are behind me.

Trees and brown and rocks.

Passing through a winding river valley in Nevada.

A beautiful cerulean river flows strongly next to the highway, the railroad is still in place on the opposite side of the river. Next to that is another railroad, all rickety and old and wooden. Looks like scenery from a Western movie out here.

Noon - 3592.8 miles

Pulled off in Reno to get some pictures of the old buildings, pee, and get some
caffeine.

I don't drink much caffeine, and I hate coffee, but getting up extra early today has made me weary of driving already, and it's only noon.

I bought a 44 oz. cola drink, which immedaitely fell out of the space-age cup holder in the Mobile Exploration Lab, flipped upside down on the floor, and landed on it's side. A bit of soda spewed forth from the straw - but the lid held tight.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

I am bummed that my friend Dagny didn't call me back.
I had been trying to reach her since before I left home.
She lives in Reno, and now I will miss seeing her.

1:46 PM - 3637.9

I am in some dipshit-ass city in Nevada.

I-80 and US Rt. 50 split apart here.

The plan is to take US Rt. 50 across Nevada and Utah. It is a small road, with few towns along it. This is adventure. I have no idea what I am getting myself into. The wretched interstates, for all of their faults, feel safe at least. The act of moving into hundreds of miles of desolate desert on small highways carries with it an element of uncertainty, but also an excitement about what lays ahead.

US Rt. 50 twists jaggedly across 400 miles of Nevada desert, through at least seven mountain ranges and the wide flat plains between them, with only a handful of what can almost be called towns appearing every 70 to 100 miles or so.

One tenth of a mile onto the road, I pass a sign:

Just west of Fallon, NV is Bob's Root Beer, an abandoned drive-in restaurant that had apparently specialized in root beer floats. The property is for sale. There are also some rock shops selling geodes and stuff too, as well as a big totem pole.

I was giving a phone interview to USA Weekend, a newspaper with a weekly readership of 42 million. That's 42,000,000 readers, and they wanted to know all about Tiki Road Trip. I was chatting away on my hated cell phone, which I finally found a good use for in being able to give this interview from the middle of a Nevada desert, when I was pulled over by the Fallon fuckhead cops. Seems that the speed limit changed for - literally - a two block stretch in 'downtown' Fallon - which is, in and of itself, literally a four block stretch - and I hadn't noticed. Awarded a ticket.

I hate people who drive like dipshits when they're talking on their phones. I avoided getting a cell phone at all until just a few days before I left for this trip. And what happens? I am too busy yapping to notice the (hidden and tricky) speed limit change-up for 500 feet of cop-bait. A tourist-trap, indeed. I'm not that guy! I'm not the driving-like-a-jerk-talking-on-my-phone-guy. Or AM I?

There are mountain ranges both in front of and behind me, but both are several days hike distant. Far off, the fine layer of salt on the earth reflects the sunlight, shining like a mirror on the ground, giving the illusion of water. No lakes here. Not for a hundred miles. And nothing grows here, not in the salt. And there are no fences or electricity poles next to the road. This is indeed the loneliest road in America. It is dead here and it is dead quiet here. Except for a little wind blowing, I can't hear anything but the car running a few dozen yards away. I have never been somewhere so desolate. Even in some of the other wilderness areas I have driven through, there were other cars on the road, or settlements within a few miles. It always felt like there were people somewhere nearby, even if I couldn't see or hear them. Out here, I can see a complete lack of evidence of humanity, save for the black road itself.

If there were a villain of some sort present, he'd say: "Scream all you want! We're miles from where anyone can hear you!". So I did. I stretched out my arms, tilted my head back, and standing right in the middle of the road, I let loose a mighty lungful of air as loud and as long as I could. And then twice more. I don't think I've ever been in a place isolated enough where I could do this without the potential to attract undue attention. I felt silly, but it felt good too. Arthur Janov.

Just a few yards down the road, I did find evidence of humanity: someone had written their name in black rocks, arranged against the salty sand near the road. I had seen this phenomenon in Wyoming last year as well. Once the precedent was set, others contributed to the roadside graffiti as well. After a mile of it, it stopped as abruptly as it started. Why people chose to put their geologic signatures in a cluster is a mystery; there are hundred of miles of road on which this activity could take place, but those who contributed all decided to do so within the space of a single mile. Lemmings.

'Tyler'. 'Doug'. 'O.P'. 'fuck off' (in little stones - the guy didn't have the stones to write it larger). 'ETKM'. 'Road Trip' (love that one!), lots of 'so and so (hearts) so and so'.

The bottle people had better not piss of the rock people, or there is going to be some Agent Cooper-style target practice happening.

Just mailed a postcard. The side of the post office says: "AD 1968, AL 5968". What's AL? Are those Jewish years or something?

Later...
In the Toiyabe national forest. Climbing up towards Hickison summit. Hairpin turns, blind curves, no guardrails, things are as hilly and steep and winding here as they were flat and straight just an hour - and 85 miles - ago. In and out of mountains, all across Nevada. I can see that little town way below me. Now, I am barely making 35 miles per hour in 3rd gear, soon I'll be on flat ground again, doing 85 miles per hour across the desert to the next mountain range.

Austin Summit 7484 feet; Summit Mountain still towers to my right at 10,461 feet.

It is grey out now, drizzling a little bit, and I can see that it is going to rain. But the majority of the weather is behind me - big grey clouds have gathered over the previously sunny terrain I have just transversed.

Visitors to this hilly park area up in the hills may take a 0.6 mile hike through the trees in order to view petroglyphs that may date back as far as the earliest human settlements in this part of the world - 12, 000 years ago. It is really quiet here, there are no other visitors to the park at the moment. In order to make the hike seem more enriching than it might otherwise be, the two or three actual petroglyph spots have been embellished on the handy free map and trail guide with eight other sites, pointing out things like "pine tree" (marker number 1 - off to a fascinating start). A spur leading off of the main trail ends up at a scenic overlook. This view of the valleys nearby is interesting, but far from the most awe inspiring vista I have viewed in the preceding two weeks. The mountains I have just come through are brilliantly lit by intense sunlight boring through holes in the continually darkening clouds. This part of the trail is most notable for an incredible variegated rock outcropping. Moss of neon green, rust, purple, and black all cover the same rocks, not unlike the spectacular flower beds I saw coming down from Big Sur. These variously colored mosses all occupy space on a single big ol' rock.

Back on the main trail, the three or four petroglyphified rocks are interesting, but erosion and vandalism (going back to explorer James Simpson's 1859 expedition) have reduced the impact of the primitive art. I didn't know it yet, but tomorrow's adventure would bring a spectacular wealth of primitive rock art when I was expecting to see some old bones.

As I made my way from the spur leading to the scenic vista back to the main trail, it began to drizzle, and by the time I had made the short walk back to trail marker number 8 ("sagebrush"), I was getting pelted with hail. It got steadily worse, until each hailstone was the size of a kernel of corn, and hurt like hell as it hit me in the face. I ducked under a rock outcropping, wondering if some native fella had ever done the same at any time in the past 120 centuries, and waited out the hailstorm. I watched the white pellets bouncing on the ground, beating holes in the leaves, and making quite a bit of noise against the metal, plastic, and glass of the Mobile Exploration Lab, which was still just a bit too far away to attempt a dash for.

That's the name of the town, Eureka, not an exclamation of joy at having found it.

Oh, look at that old school bus - red and yellow. Must be 1940's vintage... and an old burned out log cabin... it is an old ghost town up there.

Pulled through Ely to gas up. There's a grip of nice vintage motels in this town. It's a one horse town, but they've got the only horse around. The filling station is equipped with the old-style pumps in which little wheels with numbers on them revolve to show your total price and quantity. Of course you can't 'pay at the pump'. Inside, I found a disgusting toad-like man masquerading as the filling station attendant. He had a newspaper photo pasted to the register showing the largest buck ever shot. A small sign advertised free coffee, tea, or hot chocolate with fill up. I took advantage of the offer. It was quite an effort for Mr. Toad to move his ass to grab me a packet of Carnation instant hot chocolate powder from under the counter. I think the packet was older than the pumps outside. This just goes to show that not all things that are old are cool. I like my foodstuffs to be as new as possible, thank you. He grunted in the general direction of the hot water dispenser when I asked about it's whereabouts.

Made a wrong turn leaving Ely and ended up in McGill, 13 miles north. One crossroads in the whole town, and I made the wrong turn. Figures. Doubling back, I was stuck behind an ancient couple in an antique pickup truck. I'm not sure if the truck or the passengers were older. They were doing about 15 miles per hour. Couldn't pass 'em. Argghhh... Eventually made it back to the proper road, which turns out to be the strangely named Grand Army of the Republic Boulevard.

11:11 PM - 4125.8 miles

Forgot to flip my cassette tape over, so my last few entries didn't get recorded. Lucky reader!

At Delta, Utah, after moving through the Confusion Range of mountains, I split off of US Rt. 50 onto US Rt. 6 towards Provo. There are lot of mice in the road. Muad'Dibs. They're everywhere. Desert rats.

And there's a deer - didn't run into the road, thank garsh.

12:30 AM

Pulled over in Provo, got a room at the City Center Motel for $29 even.
Near the intersection of Rt. 189 and S. 300th St.
Middle aged Asian guy running the motel.
It is kind of stinky.
The hotel, not the guy.
Although, I didn't get close enough to smell him.
Whatever.
There is a funny picture of a house on the wall of the room.
I don't know why it is funny, but it is.
It isn't meant to be.
It's just cheap.
Maybe it is supposed to suggest that the person in this room is at home.
Probably not.
I think it is here because it was inexpensive.
I think I am getting a cold.

Dagny called me this morning, thinking I was going to be in Reno next Monday, rather than yesterday.

I am bummed that I missed her. I don't actually know her all that well, but sometimes you just get a good feeling about people, you know when you meet them that you have a connection, and that is something worth cultivating.

Hmmmm.... there's a barbecue going on inside a tent near a paint and wall covering store. Smells good.

Driving north on Rt. 189 to US Rt. 40 which will take me to Vernal, Utah, the city which lays claim to being dinosaurville, and the portal to the Dinosaur National Monument park (henceforth DNM). I had passed by this site on all previous trips along the San Francisco-Chicago route, but this time I will finally check it out.

Passing over the Provo River Dam. Up to this point, I had been passing through idyllic terrain, bright blue skies with big fluffy white cumulous clouds, snow-peaked mountains on either side of me, and a bright blue river flowing along next to the road. And now, on the other side of the dam, the river becomes considerably more prominent on the landscape.

There are dinosaurs everywhere here: at the bank, the used car lot, and of course in all of the souvenir shops. One of them has a saddle on it, encouraging 'rides' and photos. Some of them are pink, some of them are green. Some of them are comical, and some of them attempt authenicity. Some of them are clearly meant to be Brontosaurus or Tyrannosaurus Rex, others are simply 'dinosaurs' of unspecified species.

7045 E. 6000 St. South, between Vernal and DNM.
This is a little antiques store, but it is really someone's house. There is a garage and a shed next to the house, full of sundry old objects. More aged stuff litters the lawn and some tables nearby. Unlike the hillbilly junkyards seen along the Missouri trail, this array of 'things and stuff for sale' seems to be more organized, and the adjacent house looks clean and well-maintained. Pleasant even. There are several late model cars in the driveway, but no one appears to be around. In a back shed, musty and dusty, smelling of hundred year old wood, I found an art deco era medicine chest, salvaged from someone's bathroom. It'd look grand in mine. A few sots of rust, but definitely cleanable. When I picked the piece up to examine it further, a little piece of paper that may once have been a sticker drifted off of the top of the fixture and ended up lost under some other bit of furniture. Might have been the price tag. I put the tin cabinet down next to the Mobile Exploration Lab and then cautiously tapped on the door of the house. No answer. Another door, another series of knuckle taps. No answer. I folded up a few bills and wedged them halfway under a plastic plate on the door that had the house number on it. I didn't know how much the item was, so I guessed. Of course, I got a bit of a bargain...

Paid my $10 to see DNM. I have about an hour and a half to see the quarry, which is where all of the bones are. After that, I have until 7:00 to see the rest of the park. Of course, I can come back as often as I want for the next week on my $10 pass, but the commute back here from Chicago is a bitch.

The so-called quarry is actually a small museum. Apparently, this was the site of a sandbar at the end of a river bed at some point, where many dino corpses washed up after being caught in the river. They'd all just sort of float downstream and get deposited here. After the river bed became stone and the dinos became fossilized, tectonic shifts forced the whole riverbed into a more or less vertical position, so it now resembles a cliffside, about 50 feet high. On the face of this cliff are thousands of dinosaur fossils. Many of them have been removed since the site was discovered in 1909, but one area, perhaps 150 feet wide, has been permanently preserved. It is covered by a glass tent, with the usual museum-type exhibits coexisting with this remarkable palentologic artifact. The portions of the erstwhile river bed that extend beyond the confines of the glass structure have been thoroughly strip mined for fossils; it's all bare rock now. I am sure that the ground underfoot was also carefully inspected for fossils before this museum's foundations were poured.

Woodrow Wilson declared 80-acres of this site as a national preserve in 1915, but it was still mined until 1953. Now it is a huge park area.

There are a few standard museum-type exhibits under the glass canopy that supposedly protects the fossils that have done very well by themselves for the past 50 million years. There is a funny notebook that one can peruse, full of clippings from the Weekly World News and other trashy papers of that ilk. Someone compiled all of the claims that dinosaurs still walk the earth, that a T-rex attacked a small town in outer Mongolia, and that the dinos in the Jurassic Park movies were not special effects! A few skulls and infotainment videos provide further ways to savor the sauropod surroundings.

I found a little guide book to a Tour of Tilted Rocks Petroglyph Sites. This is a 22-mile tour of rock art sites within DNM.

There are fifteen points of interest on this particular trail. About four of them are astounding petroglyph sites.

These are rock art carvings, done by the Fremont culture about 1000 years ago. Evidence of desert people culture going back as far as 4000 to 7000 years exists as well. This rock art is amazing, far superior to what I saw yesterday. Then again, yesterday was free. You get what you pay for. You can walk right up to these cliff faces and examine the images. In the case of the most intensive site, most people will be content to park their car at a little roadside shoulder and gaze at the few pictograms that can be seen from a distance. The more adventurous may hike up a steep little foot path onto the mountainside, where dozens more images await. At each turn, as each new portion of rock becomes visible, new ancient artwork becomes visible. I found myself quite high on the precarious mountain side, on what could barely be called a path, trying to keep my feet on solid ground as I took 'one more' step backwards trying to get just the right angle for photos.

Of course, the mountains and rivers and valleys were colorful and unspoiled and beautiful. Each part of this continent is so different from the next, but each has unique elements that make them spectacular. This drive, across the country, is never dull. The landscape is always changing, and is always surprising. Except Nebraska. And Iowa. And Illinois. Still, I wonder if my words can do justice to the variances and the awe inspiring sights that I have seen daily without resorting to the same old useless and boring adjectives.

At this particular point in my travels, within the DNM park, I witnessed mountains torn in half, revealing the tell-tale bands of color marking distinct geological epochs, neatly layered for all to see. A layer of red, a layer of grey, a layer of turquoise, a layer of black. I collected a similarly layered souvenir, twice the size of a hockey puck, neatly broken in half: a microcosm of the mountain near which it lay. I wonder who has the other half. I saw a log cabin built in the middle of nowhere in 1914 by Josephine Bassett Morris. A foot path goes deeper into the hills from her homestead, where she lived alone for 50 years. I saw a hundred examples of millennia-old art. And prarie dogs. I saw a mountain split in half by a river.

By the time I had seen it all - or at least, all that I saw - the sun was setting, so I pointed the Mobile Exploration Lab back along the scenic drive to the park entrance, and reluctantly headed back to US Rt.191. I could have made for the Colorado side of the park, but I am loosing daylight fast, and my cold is starting to kick in more severely; my throat is killing me. So I'll take US Rt. 191 up into Wyoming, and pick up the dreaded interstate 80 for the home stretch to Chicago.

There's an old school playground - iron swings and jungle gyms. Old-school indeed.

The section of US Rt. 191 winding north from upper Utah into lower Wyoming would prove to be the most spectacular part of this entire drive. I had no idea what was waiting for me. The map didn't indicate anything extraordinary, and few people discuss this part of the country. It all started with little signs along the road as I left Utah, giving factoids of historical, palentological, and geological interest. A new sign popped up fairly often, perhaps one every half mile. The landscape changed just as often.

Cretaceous Frontier Formation - Gold was formed here.
Jurassic Morrison Foundation - Graveyard of the Dinosaurs.
Jurassic Carmel Formation - Dinosaurs Roamed Here.
Triassic Navajo Formation - Fossilized Sand Dunes (that's a big ass piece of sandstone I see over there)
Triassic Chinle Foundation - Crocodile Teeth Found Here.
Triassic Cinarump (sp.?) Foundation - Contains a Petrified Forest (and there's a river, and rocks, and it's all red - it is so pretty out here).
Pennsylvanian Weber Foundation - Produces Oil (I don't recall 'Pennsylvanian' being a geological period...?)
Triassic Moenkopi Formation - Reptiles Inhabited This Area.
Mississippian Madison Formation - Remains of an Ancient Sea.
Precambrian - Browns Park Formation - Volcanic Ash.
Cretaceous Dakota Formation - Deposited by Ancient Streams.
Triassic Navajo Formation - Fossilized Sand Dunes (aw, that's a rerun! I want my money back!).

I have never seen geology and paleontology info-signs like this anywhere else in the country. They've got their paleontological pride going strong here. Those are some satisfied geologists.

Here, near the Wyoming border, is the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, and the Flaming Gorge Dam. The sun is becoming low enough in the sky that the world is illuminated with a golden light. Photographers call it - with good reason - the Golden Hour, and everything looks bright and colorful. There is a huge reservoir here, filling up all of the space between two mountains with water of the deepest midnight blue. A dam, which I have just crossed, holds the potential deluge at bay. I am moving up steep hills now.

Park City Formation (Permian) - Phosphate for Fertilizer Mined Here.
Blasting Area!
Next 2.5 miles, do not leave highway.
8% Grade, Ten Switch backs.
Is it wise to use dynamite to mine materials used in making explosives?

Spatial geometry has taken a vacation, and my internal gyrocosmic stabilizers are telling me that after all the twists and turns I have taken in the past mile alone, that I should presently be driving through empty space somewhere over the nearby valleys. I think that, like that cartoon coyote, I am about to realize that I am no longer on the road, and drop to my doom, with a confused and comical look of pathos on my animated mug.

Aside from the mines I passed near, it is spectacular out here. A most unexpected surprise, taking this road. The rocks alternate between tan sandstone, and deep, deep, brick red in color, and both are covered with green foliage. I am moving uphill, at a steep incline, but rather than tackling more mountains, I am moving towards the top of a wide flat mesa, miles and miles wide. Below me they are mining what looks like turquoise, having uncovered a vast sea of bright blue rock from under the surrounding red and tan. Aside from this mine and the road, there is no evidence of human life within my considerable field of vision. From the peak of this place where the earth drops off sharply to the valleys below, I can see for 100 miles in every direction, and there are no towns, no buildings, no crossroads. Fading in to infinity are alternating sequences of mountains and valleys, each a completely different color from the one in front of it, the furthest ones eventually getting lost in the haze of dusk.

Moving higher still, the dam is far off, but the river that feeds it is still visible. A tiny dot of turquoise, now several days walk away from me - the mine - is all that spoils this landscape, which is spread out before me like a new planet I have discovered. If it weren't for the road itself, I might believe an argument that no man had set foot within a hundred leagues of my current position since the petroglyph artists had executed their craft a millennia ago.

I have gushed forth on the natural splendor of my surroundings again and again. And yet, every time I think I have seen the most mind numbingly glorious natural wonder possible, a new one unfolds before me the following day. One cannot compare this variegated vista, this infinitely wide and infinitely colored desert to the lush foliage near the oceanside cliffs of Big Sur - they are so completely different. But both are so wonderful as to challenge my feeble literary skills on even my best day. It is so BIG here. This is religion, right here.

Motoring across the flat plateau, which doesn't seem to be ready to give way back to a lower altitude any time soon, an occasional spot is marked 'Scenic Overview'... but it's all scenic overview. Everywhere you look. The view is eventually obscured by forest. These trees here are the thin white Aspen tress that I like. Each seems to occupy it's own space, no crowding here, and they all grow straight and true, and almost in ordered rows and columns. Their white bark has little black knots in it, oval shaped and giving the impression of a thousand eyes watching visitors to the forest. Sunlight is fading fast and it is getting cold.

Here's a trailhead and a parking area. A sign claims that the trail is a 30-minute hike ending at some beaver ponds. I should walk down that path a ways. This is a great forest.

Oh, right: I should walk down a path into a forest full of eyeballs when it is dark and cold out and I am a hundred miles from civilization. I would probably end up getting molested by a moose or something.

Another sign here informed me, and you by proxy, that "During the last ice age, 3,000,000 to 12,000 years ago, the climate here..." blah blah blah.

Oh - here are a whole herd of white-tailed deer by the side of the road, foraging in the dusk. There are about a dozen of them. They just saw me - they all froze in place, and turned to look at me, their wide ears perking up. I stopped the car. I was looking at them, they were looking at me. A few of them turned and ran into the forest. Good thing those TV elk hunters whom I saw in Arizona last week aren't here. Bang, bang, bang, no sweat, no sport, no mercy. A dozen clean kills. Call me a hippie (that'd be a first!), but I chose to throw stale bagels their way instead. A half mile later around a small bend were another dozen deer. Beyond that, on a grass-covered shelf poking out from the cliffside below me, were another group. In each case, as I slowed down to observe, all members of the herd froze and then, as if it were rehearsed, all turned their heads to look at me during the same instant. They were willing to play stone-face with me in their infinite patience and with no laughter - they'd stare as long as my own resolve held. I usually lost. In my slight and subtle movements toward tech bag and camera, they scattered. I guess hunting is illegal here; it is a national forest. Good thing for it.

The last rays of sun are poking over the distant horizon... good-bye Tuesday. I am 8424 feet up in the air.... I guess the people on the ground already lost their daylight. If the sun was still out, I could probably see Tibet from here. I'm near the Skull Creek campground.

I am never taking the Interstates again (except for in like an hour from now...).

Finally, one last wonder in the last vestiges of sunlight... a burned out section of forest which I walked around in for a bit. Black stumps against red earth. Charred husks, black and sooty, on the rubiginous clay. The headless skeleton of an animal, bones partly black, but elsewhere bleached clean by sun, rain, microbe, insect, bird. Trunks twisted into Dalinian shapes, slender, dreamlike, unnatural. A surrealist's death-garden. And there: a weed poking through the ashes. Hope for nature, always able to resurrect itself.

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

A little before 11 AM - 4773 miles

Leaving the Gas Light Motel in Laramie, which cost me $39.05.
There are a bunch of nutty wooden cut-outs of funny western characters all over the property. A wooden post - as one might see at a crossroads in a cartoon - is covered with signs pointing to far-off destinations: Yellowstone, Denver, Snowy Range, Dinosaur Bone Cabin, Como Bluff. A wooden cut-out of 'Cowboy Casey' arresting a robber are headless: insert your own for a family fun photo-op. The robber's crime (for which he suffered decapitation): chicken theft. I also spotted a life-sized photo of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans in the lobby. Above one of the rooms is a painted cut-out of a guy peeping into the opposite wing of the hotel with binoculars. Someone has a sense of humor. I don't. Not today. I am sick as hell, my voice is almost completely gone, and I have to drive about 1000 miles today. Not much else to see in Laramie, aside from a bunch of old motels worthy of archiving via photographic methods.

11:37 AM - 4785.8 miles

My elevation is 8640 feet, and on my left is an immense statue of Abraham Lincoln.

Having driven this road (I-80) many times, I don't imagine there will be much to explore today that I haven't seen already. And I am sick. That bridge thing over the road in Nebraska will no longer be something to ponder, and funny street names have already been documented. Notice how I failed to mention my passing by Zzyzx Road in Nevada last week, for what would have been one too many mentions in these silly travelogues. That said, Vedauwoo Road (Exit 329 on I-80) is a funny new one I haven't seen before.

12:39 PM - 4867.6 miles

"Nebraska, The Good Life", been there, done that. Giant statue of Jesus. Ho hum.

Everything out here is all about the fur trade, and the pioneers, and the frontier, and covered wagons. Fort Robbins Fur Trade Museum. Unbelievable.

12:54 PM - 4886.8 miles

Kimball, Nebraska. Looking for food and gas, both of which I am sorely in need of.

Looking at the map, I notice that US Rt. 30 hugs I-80 for the entire length of Nebraska, most of Iowa, and a good part of Illinois. This would be a good route to take next time I travel this way... maybe. Nebraska is so boring and flat, that I think it's usually just better to get it over with on the interstate, at night if possible, at top speed.

All I could find as far as food and/or gas was concerned was a gas station that also advertised itself as a fried chicken shack. A big sign says: "C-H-I-C-K-E-N" ('that am the way to spell chicken', according to the old song). A smaller sign says: "Yes, we got chicken". I don't normally eat deep-fried foods, but it looks like my choices today are severely limited. I bought the 3-pc combo with fries and an iced tea.

I have food, I have water, I have tea, I have audio books, I have daylight.

I am not stopping until I need gas again in 320 miles or so.

I have burned up well over 300 miles of Nebraska highway behind me since my last stop. Time for gas.

$22.04 for a tank of gas, and a beef jerky out of a jar of the local stuff for a buck.

In the gas station parking lot, I saw a girl with a Nissan Sentra, like mine, but black (The Mobile Exploration Lab is silver), but her hubcaps haven't been stolen like mine have been (twice), and she has a spoiler on the back (who puts a spoiler on a Sentra?). Rhode Island plates, car full of clothes and stuff. Team Sentra, on the road, coast to coast. Coming to your town soon.

Feeling sloppy. Sick as a dog, voice like Marge Simpson with tonsillitis, haven't shaved since Saturday, wearing (Since leaving Vallejo) the weary tan vintage oversized 'road trip shirt' (now officially a tradition), same cutoffs, no shoes. Car is a mess inside. And dirty on the outside. Very.

I have got to do at least one thing remotely interesting today, so I perused one of those mammoth Golden Armadillo antique malls for 45 minutes. I was hurrying through it, and it still took that long. These joints are like the Wal Mart of old junk, only bigger even that a Wal Mart. Didn't buy anything, but I stretched my legs a bit. I am hoping to make it home by 4 AM.

I sound like a bad pop radio station announcer: "And now, 300 miles of non-stop driving only on radio Nissan". WMEL.

Cop on the Iowa border just pulled me over for no good reason - I was not even speeding - and finding no other excuse to cite me, he gave me a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. Don't these nazi fuckhead bastard commie pigs have anything better to do? I was driving down the interstate, just about to pull over for gas, and he was set up as a speed trap, pointing in the opposite direction (that is, monitoring the westbound traffic). When I passed him (at or very near the speed limit), he busted a U-turn from his parked spot on the median, followed me down the highway for a while, up the exit ramp, and then nailed me as I pulled into a gas station. How could he have possibly seen whether or not my belt was on in the dark, when he was facing the opposite direction, and I was zooming past, my headlights in his eyes?

He could only have chosen to follow me for the sole purpose of looking for any excuse to ticket an out-of-state driver who has no way to fight the ticket (short of coming back to Iowa for a court date). That's a favorite source of revenue for many states; motorists touring through towns get nabbed all the time for even the tiniest infractions, with no realistic chance to plead their case. Sonsabitches. $47.50. Eat me.

I drove 1072.6 miles on the last day of the trip. That may be my record for one day.

Maintained an average speed that day, over 17 hours of driving, of 63.094 MPH (Most I-80 Speed Limits are 70 or 75). Factor stops into that.

5845.6 miles divided by 16 days is an average of 365.35 miles per day, or roughly the same drive from my house to my dad's house in Cleveland every day.

Ended up with $109 more, in cash, than I started with (due to book sales), but after paying the two tickets, and the credit card bill (used for a lot of the gas), this trip cost me about $400. Not bad for 16 days on the road. I'll have to subsidize all future road trips with book signing events!