So Long Stink State: Road Trip Journal IX

Yesterday we finally got the fuck out of Wyoming

We're now in northern Colorado and it's almost as though we're back in a civilized part of the world. There are people with teeth and there isn't nine bars open at breakfast and it doesn't look like a place that's just looking for a bomb.

Even my dad, in his obliviousness to Wyoming's hicks and horrors said that Colorado is a great state. Apparently it's his favorite state to travel to outside of Ohio (and telling from his constant, unsolicited editorials, it might even be nicer than California, which he apparently hates passionately. He says this almost like we're not going back there). Colorado is a pretty nice place. I have some pretty decent memories of this place and, at the very least, it isn't Wyoming.

Hey, why does Wyoming have so much wind? Because Nebraska blows.

Here's proof that I'm no longer on the frontier: This coffee shop that I'm at sells kombucha.

Part of the trip's appeal is to see things and places that I don't normally see in California. Things like indigenous trees. Things like open country. Things like fresh air. Things that LA normally doesn't care about or can't be bothered to have. Though, Colorado has the same kind of appeal that a lot of Los Angeles has, which that it doesn't make me immediately and palaply feel the specter of death.

I mean, they smoke weed and make kombucha up here. This is God's country. Clearly.

I guess I should draw more. Or just do more of something. Listening to podcasts and twiddling away on a “travelogue” is hardly actual work. I'm supposed to get stuff down out here. In a way I sort of have. I started and finished Ledfeather, a book my friend gave me. It's. . . incomprehensible, but I finished it. Since it's by an Indian and Indians, I'm just going to assume that it's a cultural thing so I don't have to live with the thought that the only Native American author I've ever read (besides, like, one Sherman Alexie short story). The idea of that makes me sad. Guilty sad. White guilty sad mess.

I am writing, though. That's nice. I also started up Jo Nesbo's Headhunters, so that should be fun. I can imagine Jamie Lannister pulling a Chigurh.

Anyways, I'm at a coffee shop. There's a flat screen TV on the wall (because what doesn't have a screen nowadays?) and the news is playing. The story is about Paris Jackson testifying in a civil trial. And now I kind want to go back to the country. I know the news over there is going to be the same. It's just that I get the sense that up there people might not watch it. The kombucha is nice, at least.

High Light of the Day: We saw a bear.

Low Light of the Day: It was a baby bear separated from it's ma. Shit suuuuucks.

Hot Springs Eternal: Road Trip Journal Part VII

Hungover. So hungover.

Maybe it's just the abuse I've done to my body, but I am in no real mood to chow down right now. So maybe that's what makes these items from La Comida so unappetizing--

Breakfast Quesadilla-- Yeah, sure, okay. I'm willing to let breakfast tacos happen, so I'll willing to let this happen. Okay. Go on.

Fruit Quesadilla-- Wait. . . What? What the fuck is that even?

Breakfast Churros-- Alright, I'm going home.

Breakfast Margarita-- Not an actual item, but it was what a man and his wife were drinking on the patio.

I'm sitting here in the shade of this hotel's awning, listening to Miles Davis and watching their waterfall flow. I'm sure I embarassed myself last night. That's almost assured. But this is the west. If I can't just get ino a vehicle and start fresh here then where could I? 

 I survived this hangover, I'll survive the next. Also, I think I drunk texted myself into a hunting trip this fall. So that's a new mistake to live through.

High Point of the Day: We found a hotel that doesn't look like a place snuff porn victims were dumped. That was great.

Seriously, though, it was Cody's Dug Up Gun Museum. It's got the coolest collection of rusty shit that you're ever going to see. I mean, if that's your sort of thing.

It isn't like the Cody Center of the West that's up the block, which is simply overwhelming with its content, this place tells a story.Why was this weapon dropped? Who was it that lost this weapon? Why weren't they ever picked up? There's some very obvious reasons for some of them, but then you wonder with

Like I was saying in an earlier entry, these things tell a story.

Low Point of the Day: At the Firearms Exhibits at the Cody Center of the West, I was looking at a Gatling Gun in a display case when I noticed an Indian fellow sitting there staring at it. He then asked me and my dad "It looks happy, doesn't it?"

I don't know if I had a good response to that.

Waldoism of the Day: “This bar is full of the three B's: Bikers, billionaires, and bums.”

Et Cetera: Besides the abundance of camping and gun stores, proof that I am no longer in California can be seen in the little things. There's the laxer smoking laws, there' the fact that I haven't seen a red curb in six days (the same goes for parking meters), and, more than anything, it's the proud lack of a state sales tax over here that really hammers home that I am not in the bureaucratic stronghold that is California. But then you just get the weird things.

“Fireworks Outlet.” Now, I don't know about you, but I were to buy fireworks, I don't think an outlet store would be the first place that I'd head to. If push came to shove, I mean.

As I am writing this in the car, a man walked by without his dog on a leash. Maybe we've got a few things figured out in California that they just don't want to admit to. The opposite is probably true of us, though, right?

Too Tired to Die: Road Trip Journal Part II

Right now I'm missing E3* and watching a reality TV show about a gay couple looking to buy a silo. I don't know if this me hitting rock bottom or if this is the moment that my entire life has been leading up to.

Every single person in every single bar is the exact same guy. It's like they minted them sometime in the late fifties and they accidentally broke out of their government-sponsored matrix. I don't know what it is about living in a dead-end town in the middle of nowhere interesting that just makes you want to hang out a bar a one in the afternoon. . .Oh, wait, I see it. Good work, Idaho townies.

Sorry if this is a lackluster blog entry. There's just something about sitting in a car for ten hours that makes me feel like I just got over a bought of malaria. It's nine at night and it's still light out and I want to pass right the fuck out.

I feel like I need to take a nap before I go to sleep. It's terrible.

Maybe I can score some benzadrine. This is meth country, right, so I can probably get some sweet trucker speed for a song. Maybe the cop who owns this motel will know.

We did another five hundred miles today. Tomorrow we drive up along Idaho's border with Oregon and then head east towards Montana. Hopefully my body will have adjusted to its vigorous regime of sitting down and reading Ledfeather.

Anyways, if you don't hear back from me make sure they bury me in real America.

*I did manage to notice that the next Metal Gear has STEALTH HORSE ACTION. That was a nice surprise.